The caravan was divided into three companies, and each of the companies subdivided into four watches. Each company had the duty of acting as sentries for the camp every third night, and each watch took its turn. The first watch was set at eight o'clock in the evening, just after the evening meal. For a short time there would be talking, perhaps singing, or the music of the violin or flute. Usually, however, the day's traveling had been hard and trying, and at an early hour the emigrants went to sleep.
Late in the summer of 1843 Whitman's pioneers left the mountains behind them, and came down into the valleys watered by the tributaries of the Columbia River. As they approached the missionary settlement at Wai-i-lat-pui a band of Cayuse and Nez Percés Indians came to meet them, bringing pack-mules loaded with supplies. Few messengers could have been more welcome. They told Whitman that his wife and friends were still at the little clearing where he had left them almost a year before, and were eagerly looking forward to the arrival of the new settlers. The leader thought that the caravan could finish its journey without him now, so he chose one of his most reliable Indian guides, Istikus, and placed him in charge of the company. Whitman himself hurried on to the mission. Back of him rolled the long train of canvas-covered wagons that had traveled so far over prairies, rivers, and mountains. Almost a thousand men, women, and children were coming into this far western section of the continent to settle and hold the country for the United States.
Whitman's ride changed the situation. No more statesmen could speak of the impassable mountains or the impossibility of taking settlers' wagons into Oregon. Before Whitman left Washington Daniel Webster sent a message to England stating that the United States would insist on holding all territory south of the forty-ninth degree of latitude. When President Tyler was told that a caravan of nearly a thousand people under Whitman's leadership had started for Oregon, a second and more positive message to the same effect was sent to England. All over the United States men were now demanding that their government should claim the country as far as the Pacific coast, and one great political party took as its watchword the motto, "Oregon, fifty-four, forty,--or fight," referring to the degree of latitude they wanted for the boundary line. The Hudson's Bay Company, finding so large a colony of pioneers settling among them, was forced to give over its efforts to hold the northwest entirely for itself. In time the English statesmen agreed to the claims of the United States, and on July 17, 1846, a treaty was signed, fixing the boundary between Canada and the United States at the forty-ninth degree, which gave Oregon to the Republic.