There is reason, therefore, in making the period of early American settlement begin with the period mentioned. No actual settlement, it is true, was made at the very first of this period, but about this time the question of colonizing the region of the Columbia River began to be seriously agitated in various parts of the United States. A company having this end in view was organized about this time in Boston, and another in New Orleans, while in various parts of the country the propriety of forming such organizations was seriously discussed. Every effort was made by these societies, and by individuals whose interest in the subject had been awakened, to obtain and disseminate such information as should awaken popular interest in the territory and further the ends of its colonization.
The first enterprise that followed from this agitation, was that of Nathaniel J. Wyeth, of Boston, for the establishment of a settlement for trade and agriculture on the Lower Columbia. After the failure of a first attempt in 1832, Wyeth succeeded in the year 1834 in planting a small settlement on Wapato Island, at the junction of the Willamette with the Columbia. Untoward circumstances and disaffection among his followers defeated his first attempt, and sent him back to the east, after two years of gallant struggle, feeling that his second was far from successful. His settlement, while it has had in some sense an unbroken continuity, and has contributed of its members to the subsequent settlements in Oregon, can hardly be said to have had the character of a permanent colony. The largest results of Wyeth’s enterprise are rather to be looked for in the contribution he made in various ways to the furtherance of other enterprises than his own.
Substantially the same may be said of the enterprise of Hall J. Kelley, the leading promoter of one or more of the emigration societies already mentioned. He contributed materially to the ultimate settlement of the territory by his persistent and widespread agitation in the east, and later in some measure by bringing into the Willamette Valley a small band of men, some of whose number became permanent settlers. No colony, however, was planted in this region under his leadership, and he did not himself finally make Oregon his home.