Native American tribes west of the Cascade Mountains in the territory. This commission was created because the Donation Land Act in 1850 allowed citizens to settle up to and the government wanted the lands west of the Cascades for settlement and to move the tribes to Eastern Oregon. However, Gaines and his fellow commissioners Alonzo A. Skinner and Beverly S. Allen were only able to get treaties signed that allowed the tribes to remain on the west side and in the foothills of the Willamette Valley. The commission ratified 19 treaties and was then disbanded in February 1851. His tenure was marked with fierce partisanship, facing opposition from the press and the Democratic-controlled territorial legislature. Gaines unsuccessfully tried to keep the territorial capital at Oregon City. The governor also pushed for other Whig policies that were often at odds with popular sentiment. These unpopular positions, coupled with fierce partisanship, cemented a perception that Gaines was an Easterner, out of touch with Pacific Coast needs and attitudes. In 1853, Gaines left office, succeeded by the Democrat Joseph Lane, who assumed the reins of government for three days. Undeterred by the past hostilities of the Oregon electorate, he chose to stay, remarrying and settling on a farm just outside Salem. His second marriage was to Margaret B. Wands in 1853. In 1854 he and two of his sons (Archibald and Abner) drove over a herd of over 200 head from Kentucky and Arkansas across the plains to Oregon, including 35 purebred Durham, in order to help start a beef cattle industry in Oregon. Slave owner In 1825 Gaines purchased a plantation called Maplewood in Kentucky. Around a dozen enslaved persons worked this plantation, including the mother of Margaret Kite Gaines, who was born in 1833. Aged five or six, Margaret was put to work in Gaines' house, where her duties involved looking after his children. In 1849 Gaines permitted her to marry Robert Garner, whose owner, James Marshall, occupied a neighboring plantation. In 1849 Gaines left Kentucky to become governor of the Oregon Territory, and therefore sold Maplewood and its enslaved residents to his younger brother Archibald Gaines. In 1856 Margaret, her husband and four children escaped to Cincinnati, but a posse quickly tracked them down. As they were surrounded, Margaret tried to kill herself and her children (successfully killing her two-year-old daughter), rather than be returned to slavery. Garner's life inspired