[About this transcript: Items inside italicized square brackets have been added for clarity. Page and chapter numbers are hyper-linked to facsimiles of the original pages, with the kind permission of the 1st-Hand-History Foundation ( www.1st-hand-history.org ).
Marshall, William I. Acquisition of Oregon and the Long Suppressed Evidence about Marcus Whitman, 1911, Vol. II., pages 5-343.]
THE ORIGIN OF MISSIONS TO THE OREGON INDIANS.
"Great men never fear the truth, and wish nothing to be concealed from them."--Montesquieu.
"I have been obliged to mention all these facts because they are true, and because the first duty of a writer who respects himself is not to conceal the truth" (Lomenies' "Beaumarchais and His Times," Vol. III., p. 224).
Nothing even in the history of Oregon (which is so romantic even when truthfully written), more strikingly illustrates the aphorism "All history tends inevitably to myth," than the true story of the origin of the missions to the Oregon Indians, compared with the legendary accounts that the advocates of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story had evolved, only thirty-nine years after the four Flat Heads appeared in St. Louis in the autumn of 1831.
Let us compare the legendary account of the visit of the Flat Heads with the contemporaneous ones.
The account, quoted literally from Chapter XIII. of "Barrows' Oregon" (but omitting several pages of sentimental and most of it wholly irrelevant rhetoric), is as follows: "Four Flat Head Indians had come, in 1832, from Oregon, 3,000 miles, on a special mission of their own devising. . . . They had heard from an American trapper of the white man's God, and of a spirit home better than the hunting-grounds of the blessed and of a Book that told truly of the Great Spirit, and of that home and the trail to it. The report is that the Iroquois had given to them some of the Christian teachings which had become theirs in colonial New York; and very likely some of the mountain trappers, who left the white frontier and rude clearing and may be the Book and the family altar long years before, had done the same things. . . .
"Twenty-seven years before Gen. William Clark had been over the mountains and left his name on their river. . . . This was the man to whom the four Flat Heads must open their business. Very likely the general thought they had come to talk of a war, or a treaty, or of lands, or of beaver. Their religious purpose did not
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much interest him. . . . How long they were in St. Louis does not appear, only that they were there long enough for the two old men to die and for one of the younger to contract diseases of which he died on his return at the mouth of the Yellowstone. They made known distinctly the fact that they had come their long journey to get the white man's Book, which would tell them of the white man's God and heaven.
"In what was then a Roman Catholic city it was not easy to do this, and officers only were met. ... In that old Indian and papal city the poor Flat Heads could not find 'the Book.' . . .
"Their mission was a failure. . . .
"Gen. Clark received the farewell address of the two surviving Flat Heads."
Then Barrows puts in quotation marks, as if its authenticity were undoubted, the following: " 'I came to you over a trail of many moons from the setting sun. You were the friend of my fathers who have all gone the long way. I came with one eye partly opened, for more light for my people, who sit in darkness. I go back with both eyes closed. How can I go back blind to my blind people? I made my way to you with strong arms, through many enemies and strange lands, that I might carry back much to them. I go back with both arms broken and empty. The two fathers who came with us--the braves of many winters and wars--we leave asleep here by your great water and wigwam. They were tired in many moons, and their moccasins wore out. My people sent me to get the white man's Book of Heaven. You took me where you allow your women to dance, as we do not ours, and the Book was not there. You took me where they worship the Great Spirit with candles, and the Book was not there. You showed me the images of good spirits and pictures of the good land beyond, but the Book was not among them to tell us the way. I am going back the long, sad trail to my people of the dark land. You make my feet heavy with burdens of gifts, and ray moccasins will grow old in carrying them, but the Book is not among them. When I tell my poor, blind people, after one more snow, in the big council, that I did not bring the Book, no word will be spoken by our old men or by our young braves. One by one they will rise up and go out in silence. My people will die in darkness, and they will go on the long path to the other hunting-grounds. No white man will go with them and no white man's Book to make the way plain. I have no more words.'"
Barrows then states that the two survivors went with the famous artist, George Catlin, in the first steamboat that went up to the mouth of the Yellowstone (which we know from "Catlin's Letters," hereinafter quoted, as well as from other contemporaneous sources, was in the spring of 1832), and that Catlin returned and
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went to Pittsburg, and there was shown a letter from a clerk in Gen. dark's office who had heard the alleged speech with its mournful refrain--"the Book was not there"--and that he wrote to Gen. Clark, and that Clark replied, "It is true that was the only object of their visit, and it failed." Then Catlin said, "Give the letter" (i. e., the alleged letter of the clerk) "to the world."
Barrows continues: "In his Indian letters, number forty-eight, Catlin thus speaks of this matter: 'When I first heard the report of this extraordinary mission across the mountains I could scarcely believe it; but on consulting with Gen. Clark I was fully convinced of the fact. . . . They had been told that our religion was better than theirs, and that they would all be lost if they did not embrace it.'" Substantially this account has been given by all the leading advocates of the Whitman Legend, Spalding in his pamphlet, Sen. Ex. Doc. 37, 41st Cong., 3d Sess., p. 8; Nixon, Chapter III.; Craighead, Chapter V.; Mowry, Chapter I.; Mrs. Eva Emery Dye, "McLoughlin and Old Oregon," Chapter I.; Coffin, "Building of the Nation," Chapter XXVI., and many others. How it compares with the contemporaneous accounts we shall presently see.
The first mention that has ever been found of these four Flat Heads is in a letter dated December 31, 1831, from Rt. Rev. Joseph Rosati, Bishop of St. Louis, to the editor of the "Annales de l'Association de la Propagation de la Foi," of Lyons, France, and printed in that publication in 1832 (V. 599, 600). A translation of so much of it as concerns this subject is on pp. 188-9 of Vol. II. of "Records of the American Catholic Historical Society" of Philadelphia, in an article on "The Origin of the Flat Head Mission," by my friend, Major Edmond Mallet, L.L.B., as follows: "Some three months ago four Indians, who live at the other side of the Rocky Mountains, near the Columbia River, arrived in St. Louis. After visiting Gen. Clark, who in his celebrated travels had seen the nation to which they belong and had been well received by them, they came to see our church, and appeared to be exceedingly well pleased with it. Unfortunately there was no one who understood their language. Some time afterward two of them fell dangerously ill. I was then absent from St. Louis. Two of our priests visited them, and the poor Indians seemed delighted with their visit. They made signs of the cross and other signs which appeared to have some relation to baptism. This sacrament was administered to them; they gave expression of their satisfaction. A little cross was presented to them; they took it with eagerness, kissed it repeatedly, and it could be taken from them only after their death. It was truly distressing that they could not be spoken to. Their remains were carried to the church for the funeral, which was conducted with all the Catholic ceremonies. The other two attended
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and acted with great propriety. They have returned to their country.
"We have since learned from a Canadian who has crossed the country which they inhabit that they belong to the nation of Tetes-Plates (Flat Heads), which, as with another called the Pieds-Noirs (Black Feet), have received some notions of the Catholic religion from two Indians who had been to Canada and who had related what they had seen, giving a striking description of the beautiful ceremonies of the Catholic worship and telling them that it was also the religion of the whites; they have retained what they could of it and they have learned to make the sign of the cross and to pray. These nations have not yet been corrupted by intercourse with others; their manners and customs are simple and they are very numerous. We have conceived the liveliest desire to not to let pass such a good occasion. Mr. Condamine has offered himself to go to them next spring with another. In the meantime we shall obtain information on what we have been told and on the means of travel. . . . ."
It is also printed on pp. 11-12 of "Indian and White in the North West or a History of Catholicity in Montana, by L. B. Palladino, S. J., Baltimore, 1894." Father Palladino had been a missionary among the Flat Heads for twenty-five years.
The register of burials of the Cathedral at St. Louis states that one of these Indians--Narcisse--was buried October 31, 1831, Rev. Edmond Saulnier officiating, and the second--Paul--was buried November 17, 1831, Rev. Benedict Roux officiating (Records of American Catholic Historical Society, Vol. II.. p. 190).
The original Protestant version of this visit of the Flat Heads is to be found in a letter of G. P. Disoway to the New York Christian Advocate and Journal and Zion's Herald, then the leading journal of the Methodist Church, enclosing a letter of William Walker (an exploring agent for the Wyandots), dated Upper Sandusky, Ohio, January 19, 1833, which was published in that paper for March 1, 1833, p. 105, as follows: After stating that on his way to explore the regions west of the Missouri River he had called on Gen. Clark to present letters of introduction to him and get such letters from him to the various Indian agents in the upper country, Walker continues: "While in his" (i. e., Gen. Clark's) "office he informed me that three chiefs from the Flat Head nation were in his house and were quite sick, and that one (the fourth) had died a few days ago. They were from the west of the Rocky Mountains. . . . The distance they had traveled on foot was nearly 3,000 miles to see Gen. Clark, their great father, as they called him, he being the first American officer they ever became acquainted with, and having much confidence in him they had come
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to consult him, as they said, upon very important matters. Gen. Clark related to me the object of their mission, and, my dear friends, it is impossible for me to describe to you my feelings while listening to his narrative. I will here relate it as briefly as I well can. It appeared that some white man had penetrated into their country and happened to be a spectator at one of their religious ceremonies which they scrupulously perform at stated periods. He informed them that their mode of worshiping the Supreme Being was radically wrong, and instead of being acceptable and pleasing it was displeasing to him. He also informed them that the white people away toward the rising of the sun had been put in possession of the true mode of worshiping the Great Spirit. They had a book containing directions how to conduct themselves in order to enjoy his favor and hold converse with him; and with this guide no one need go astray, but every one that would follow the directions laid down there could enjoy, in this life, the favor and after death would be received into the country where the Great Spirit resides and live forever with him. Upon receiving this information they called a national council to take this subject into consideration. Some said if this be true it is certainly high time we were put in possession of this mode, and if our mode of worshiping be wrong and displeasing to the Great Spirit it is time we had laid it aside; we must know something more about this; it is a matter that can not be put off; the sooner we know it the better. They accordingly deputed four of their chiefs to proceed to St. Louis to see their great father, Gen. Clark, to inquire of him, having no doubt but what he would tell them the whole truth about it.
"They arrived at St. Louis and presented themselves to Gen. Clark. The latter was somewhat puzzled, being sensible of the responsibility that rested on him; he, however, proceeded by informing them that what they had been told by the white man in their own country was true. Then went into a succinct history of man, from his creation down to the advent of the Savior; explained to them all the moral precepts contained in the Bible, expounded to them the Decalogue, informed them of the advent of the Savior, his life precepts, his death, resurrection, ascension, and the relation he now stands to man as a mediator--that he will judge the world, etc.
"Poor fellows, they were not all permitted to return to their people with the intelligence.
"Two died in St. Louis and the remaining two, though somewhat indisposed, set out for their native land.
"Whether they reached home or not is not known."
The article covers about two columns, but contains nothing else of consequence to this discussion, being merely some pious comments of the parties writing and of the editor, with some informa-
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tion--and more misinformation--about the Flat Heads especially and the Indians beyond the Rocky Mountains generally.
As Walker's letter (while giving no dates, beyond its own date of January 19, 1833), speaks of the survivors as having already returned to their home, and as it is certain that they went by steamboat up the Missouri to the mouth of the Yellowstone (as we know from Geo. Catlin's "Indian Letters," Vol. II., No. 48, p. 108, et seq.), and as it is agreed that these Indians spent a winter in St. Louis, and as steamboats did not leave St. Louis for the Upper Missouri except in spring and early summer, nothing is more certain even from this first Protestant account of the matter, if carefully read, than that instead of "appearing in St. Louis in the summer of 1832," as all the advocates of the Whitman Legend claim they did, these Flat Heads "appeared" there--as the Catholic version states-- in 1831, and disappeared from there in the early spring of 1832.
Catlin's letter No. 2, Vol. I., p. 14, begins as follows:
"Mouth of Yellowstone River, Upper Missouri, 1832.
"I arrived at this place yesterday in the steamer 'Yellowstone' after a voyage of nearly three months from St. Louis, a distance of nearly 2,000 miles, the greater part of which has never before been navigated by steam." Idem, p. 247. Letter No. 31 begins as follows : "Mouth of Teton River, Upper Missouri," with no other date, but on p. 256 in this same letter No. 31 he says:
"When I first arrived at this place on my way up the river, which was in the month of May, in 1832," etc.
A letter written by Dr. Whitman, really a journal covering May 14 to December 17, 1835, and covering sixteen pages of foolscap-- from which nothing has yet been published--(but which I copied from the original) says: "The following is the history of those Indians that came to St. Louis to gain a knowledge of the Christian religion, as I received it from the trader under whose protection they came and returned. He says their object was to gain religious knowledge. For this purpose the Flat Head tribe delegated one of their principal chiefs, and two of their principal men, and the Nez Perces tribe a like delegation, it being a joint delegation of both tribes. In addition to this delegation a young Nez Perces came along. When they came to Council Bluffs two of the Flat Heads and one of the Nez Perces returned home, and the other Flat Head, the chief, and the Nez Perces chief and the remaining one of the delegation and the young Indian came to St. Louis, where they remained through the winter. At St. Louis two of them died and the only remaining one of the delegation died on his return at the mouth of the Yellowstone, so that there was no one left to return but the young man."
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There is not a word in this about their "having come in search of the white man's Bible," or anything whatever about the Bible or about any book.
Rev. H. H. Spalding wrote a letter to Rev. D. Greene, Secretary, covering eighteen pages of foolscap, dated Fort Vancouver, September 20, 1836, from which the Missionary Herald published copious extracts in 1837, but the following extract, which I copied from the original and which shows that the Spalding-Whitman party knew in 1836 that the Flat Heads wanted Catholic missionaries, has never yet been published:
"Soon after leaving the frontier line of the States we were satisfied that if we ever did anything for the Flat Heads we must begin this year. I will give you the fact, not to be published on any consideration or anything against the Catholics. We were credibly informed that the Governor of Missouri, as a Catholic, was then sending a message to the Flat Heads if they wished for missionaries they should have them. We know they want missionaries."
Father Palladino says ("Indian and White in the North West," p. 9, et seq.) that somewhere between 1812 and 1820 a band of about twenty-four Iroquois from the Caughnawaga Mission, near Montreal, wandered into and across the Rocky Mountains as far west as the Flat Head Valley in what is now Northwest Montana, and being pleased with the country and with the Selish or Flat Head tribe, concluded to remain there and intermarried with them. The leader of this band was Ignace La Mousse, better known among the Indians as "Big Ignace" or "Old Ignace."
He became prominent among the Flat Heads, and being a zealous Catholic taught them what he could of that faith and excited among them so strong a desire for "Black Robes" (i. e., priests) that in the spring of 1831 a deputation of two Flat Heads and two Nez Perces started to St. Louis to obtain priests and arrived there in the autumn of 1831.
Bonneville, Chapter X., mentions this band of Iroquois and also the piety of the Flat Heads, and in Chapter XLV. Irving not only quotes Bonneville's, but also Wyeth's testimony as to the observance by the Nez Perces of the religious services they had learned from the Hudson's Bay Co. traders, especially Pambrun at Fort Walla Walla and from these Iroquois. Wyeth's journal (published by the Oregon Historical Society) also states the same thing more fully than Irving's Bonneville. This was before any missionaries, Protestant or Catholic, had gone to either the Flat Heads or the Nez Perces.
It goes without saying that these Iroquois could get much nearer to the Flat Heads on religious matters and have vastly more influence over them than any white man could ever hope to have, and
12 ACQUISITION OF OREGON.
their presence among the Flat Heads, which is a fact perfectly well established by non-Catholic testimony (as well as by Palladino, De Smet and Bonneville) furnishes a simple and perfectly natural explanation of the origin of the delegation of Flat Heads to St. Louis.
The Catholic version of this mission of the four Flat Heads is also entirely consonant with what afterward occurred, for this tribe refused to receive any Protestant missionaries (though meeting them either at the Rendezvous or at Fort Hall each year that any came, to wit, 1834, 1835, 1836, 1838, 1839 and 1840), but they sent in all four deputations to St. Louis for priests, and finally on the first Sunday in October, 1841, Father De Smet and other priests established among them St. Mary's Mission (where Stevensville, Montana, now is), and it has been the most successful of all the Catholic missions beyond the Rocky Mountains, though as we shall see it had its dark days from 1851 to 1866.
Father Palladino says the reason why the Flat Heads would not receive the Protestant missionaries was because they did not wear the "Black Gowns," were married and did not have "the big prayer," i. e., the mass.
The only other contemporary account so far as known is in Catlin's letter No. 48, hereinbefore mentioned. That the reader may see exactly what the methods of quotation are which the advocates of the Whitman Legend have resorted to, not only in this instance, but upon almost every other controverted point, I will quote so much of Catlin's letter No. 48 as concerns these Flat Heads and will follow it by the two sentences which Barrows (p. 112), Craighead (p. 43), Rev. Jonathan Edwards (Marcus Whitman, M. D., pamphlet, Spokan, 1892, p. 5), quote from it to support their claim that these Flat Heads could not get a Bible in St. Louis, and that they went back saddened by the failure of their mission.
On pages 108 and 109 of Vol. II. of Catlin's "Indian Letters," in this letter 48, he gives descriptions of the Flat Heads and Nez Perces and says that numbers 207 and 208 (on plate 119) are pictures of two young men "who were part of a delegation that came across the Rocky Mountains (p. 109) to St. Louis a few years since to inquire for the truth of a representation which they said some white men had made amongst them 'that our religion was better than theirs and that they would all be lost if they did not embrace it.' Two old and venerable men of this party died in St. Louis, and I traveled 2,000 miles companion of these two young fellows toward their own country and became much pleased with their manners and dispositions. The last mentioned of the two died near the mouth of the Yellowstone River on his way home with disease which he had contracted in the civilized district and the other one I have since learned arrived safely amongst his friends, conveying
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to them the melancholy intelligence of the deaths of all the rest of his party, but assurances at the same time from Gen. Clark and many reverend gentlemen that the report which they had heard was well founded, and that missionaries, good and religious men, would soon come amongst them to teach this religion so that they could all understand and have the benefits of it. When I first heard the report of the object of this extraordinary mission across the mountains I could scarcely believe it, but on conversing with Gen. Clark on a future occasion I was fully convinced of the fact; and I, like thousands of others, have had the satisfaction of witnessing the complete success of Mr. Lee and Mr. Spalding, two reverend gentlemen, who have answered in a Christian manner to this unprecedented call." This letter is not dated, but the last sentence shows that it was written as late as 1837 to 1838.
Barrows and Craighead quote of this only the following:
"When I first heard the report of this extraordinary mission across the mountains I could scarcely believe it, but on consulting with Gen. Clark I was fully convinced of the fact. . . . They had been told that our religion was better than theirs and that they would all be lost if they did not embrace it." Rev. Jonathan Edwards quotes a little more, but carefully refrains from quoting the part that shows that Clark and many reverend gentlemen had assured them that missionaries would be sent to them.
Concerning this style of quotation, which in this instance has deceived tens of thousands of readers into believing that Catlin's letter 48 supports the claim that these two Flat Heads were returning to their home broken-hearted over the failure of their mission, although in the part which is not quoted Catlin distinctly declares that the sole survivor "arrived safely amongst his friends, conveying to them . . . assurances from Gen. Clark and many reverend gentlemen that . . . missionaries, good and religious men, would soon come amongst them to teach this religion," I will only remark that it is exactly as fair as any quotation that Barrows or Nixon makes upon any important disputed points, and while I have not compared every quotation in the other books advocating the Whitman Legend with the book, Government document, newspaper or magazine or manuscript from which it professes to be quoted, as I have done with Barrows and Nixon, so far as I have examined the other books, they are little if any behind Barrows and Nixon in garbling quotations and juggling with authorities and suppressing all the really vital evidence on the subject. (Cf. my "A Strange Treatment of Original Sources," being a review of Dr. W. A. Mowry's "Marcus Whitman and the Early Days of Oregon" in my "History vs. The Whitman Saved Oregon Story," Chicago, 1904, for
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an exposition of the methods of one of the latest volumes in defense of the Whitman Legend.)
It will be noticed that neither the first account printed in this country--that in the Advocate of March 1, 1833, nor Dr. Whitman's letter of May 14-December 17, 1835, nor Catlin's letter No. 48, says anything about these Indians having come for the Bible, much less that they were refused the Bible for any reason, and still less because Clark was a Catholic, and so far from that the Advocate account distinctly states that Clark did his best to inform them about the Christian system, and Catlin's letter 48 (when honestly quoted) shows that they were promised missionaries "by Gen. Clark and various reverend gentlemen."
It is true that Walker's letter in the Advocate mentions that these Indians had heard from a white man about "a book which contained directions about how to conduct themselves in order to enjoy the favor of God."
Walker's letter, however, was long ago discredited by Rev. D. Lee, who with his cousin, Rev. Jason Lee, went to Oregon overland in 1834 to establish the Methodist Mission.
Rev. D. Lee, with Rev. J. H. Frost (who went to Oregon with the reinforcement to the Methodist Mission in 1839-40), published "Ten Years in Oregon," New York, 1844, pp. 344.
On pp, 110-111 Mr. Lee says, as the result of his own personal inquiries of Gen. Clark in St. Louis in 1834, on his way to Oregon, that this account published in the Advocate was "high wrought" and "incorrect."
In the first published version of the Whitman Legend by Rev. H. H. Spalding in the Pacific, the California organ of the Congregationalists, October 19 and November 9, 1865, there is not a word about these Flat Heads having come for the Bible, but in his preliminary articles on the "History of Indian Affairs Among the Nez Perces" (Pacific, June 29, 1865), is to be found the following: "That people, who as early as 1832, of their own desire, sent to the 'rising sun' (St. Louis) for the 'white man's religion.'"
A priori it is wholly improbable that they came for the Bible, which in any language would have been as useless to this tribe of wandering savages, whose language had never been reduced to a written form and no member of which had learned to read, as a stereopticon would be to a school for the blind or a grand piano to an asylum for deaf mutes, or a refrigerator to a band of Esquimaux, and to whom all written and printed matter was an incomprehensible and most powerful "medicine."
This is very forcibly stated by Sir George Simpson (who was very thoroughly versed in Indian character and superstitions) in his "Narrative of a Journey Around the World" (Vol. I., p. 242),
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as follows: "After the arrival of the emigrants from the Red River" (in 1841) "their guide, a Cree of the name of Bras Croche, took a short trip on the Beaver" (the little steamer of the Hudson's Bay Co., which plied up and down the Columbia and north along the coast to the Russian trading post in what is now Alaska).
"When asked what he thought of her, 'Don't ask me,' was his reply; 'I cannot speak; my friends will say I tell lies when I let them know what I have seen; Indians are fools and know nothing. I can see that the iron machinery makes the ship to go, but I cannot see what makes the iron machinery itself to go.' Bras Croche, though very intelligent and like all Crees partially civilized, was, nevertheless, so full of doubt and wonder that he would not leave the vessel till he got a certificate to the effect that he had been on board of a ship which needed neither sails nor paddles."
Though not one of his countrymen would understand a word of what was written, yet the most skeptical among them would not dare to question the truth of a story which had a document in its favor.
A savage stands nearly as much in awe of paper, pen and ink as of steam itself; and if he once puts his cross to any writing he has rarely been known to violate the engagement which such writing is supposed to embody or to sanction. To him the very look of black and white is a powerful "medicine."
As the Whitman Legend grew and the unwise publication of Father Brouillet's pamphlet in 1858 as a part of J. Ross Browne's report (House Ex. Doc. No. 38, 35th Cong., 1st Sess.) on the "Late Indian War in Oregon and Washington Territories," fanned to fever heat the slumbering embers of Spalding's bitter antagonism toward everything in any way connected with the Roman Catholic Church, in his crazy brain it seemed necessary to excite in every way and to the utmost extent the anti-Catholic sentiment of his coreligionists in support of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story, and there was soon evolved the falsehood that these half-naked savages, just emerging from the "stone age" and totally destitute of a written language, had gone to St. Louis for "the Bible," and that Gen, Clark was a Catholic, and so, though willing "to feast, and arm, and blanket, and ornament" them, "refused them the Bible," and when, in 1870, Spalding came East, he began to tell this version of the four Flat Heads in St. Louis. The first place where I have found it is in Rev. G. H. Atkinson's article in the Missionary Herald for March, 1869, and the second is in what purports to be an interview with Spalding in the Chicago Advance (the Western organ of the Congregationalists) of December 1, 1870 (which article Rev. S. J. Humphrey--long time in charge of the Chicago
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branch office of the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions--told me in 1888 he wrote out for Mr. Spalding).
Those who have not access to a file of the Advance will find the article quoted on pp. 8-12 of the notorious Spalding's pamphlet published as Sen. Ex. Doc. No. 37, 41st Cong., 3d Sess.
On p. 8: "The Flat Heads and Nez Perces had determined to send four of their number to the 'Rising Sun' for that book from Heaven. They had got word of the Bible and a Saviour in some way from the Iroquois. . . . They fell into the hands of Gen. Clark. He was a Romanist and took them to his church and to entertain them to a theater. How utterly he failed to meet their wants is revealed in the sad words with which they departed."
Then follows the ridiculously improbable speech (hereinbefore quoted from Barrows) in which these half-naked savages, just emerging from the stone age of humanity, are made to talk of the Bible and of the ceremonial of the Catholic Church, "where they worship the Great Spirit with candles," etc., precisely as a very narrow-minded and intensely bigoted evangelical Protestant would do. It is as incredible that these Indians could have delivered any such speech as this as it is that wild, uneducated Apaches or Hottentots or Esquimaux could intelligently discuss the relative merits of Buddhism and Christianity, or write an entertaining and instructive essay on the doctrine of evolution, or argue understandingly the binominal theorem or the Copernican theory of astronomy.
Barrows avoids a direct statement that Clark was a Catholic and so refused these Indians the Bible, but he plainly intends with his Chapter XIII., "The Four Flat Heads in St. Louis," to convey that impression, and certainly does convey it to all who do not know what the facts were, and those who have depended on him as a trustworthy authority have fallen into the trap so cunningly set openly by Atkinson in the Missionary Herald in 13(59 and by Spalding in the Advance, and by innuendo and suggestion by Barrows. Thus M. Eells' "Indian Missions," published by the American Sunday School Union, in 1882, on pp. 18-19, says: "Anxious to get the Bible ... ... ... they journeyed eastward till they reached St. Louis.
They found Capt. Clark, the old explorer, then Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the whole Northwest, and made known their wants to him, but being a Catholic he studiously avoided making public the facts." And O. W. Nixon, in his "How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon" (a book more ridiculously absurd and untrustworthy than Barrow's "Oregon" and Gray's "History of Oregon"-- if such a thing is possible) says on p. 51, "Gen. Clark was a devoted Catholic," and then he goes on to give essentially Barrows' account, including the impossible speech of the Flat Heads when setting out on their return.
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For some years I was myself humbugged by this tale that Clark was a Catholic and therefore had refused the Bible to these Indians, but at length, having found about everything else written on this subject by every advocate of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story to be false, I thought I would investigate this, and accordingly wrote to Dr. Elliott Coues (who was furnished by the children and grand children of Gen. Clark with all his papers and letters and journals to assist him in the preparation of the fine new edition of the "History of the Expedition of Lewis and Clark," which Francis P. Harper of New York published in 1894) and asked him if he could furnish me any information as to whether or not Gen. William Clark was a Catholic. He replied that he was satisfied that Clark was not a Catholic, for in all his letters and papers he had discovered nothing which would indicate that he had ever been a Catholic, and about a year later, on August 19, 1898, he wrote me that he had been interested in following the matter up and had inquired of five of the descendants of Gen. Clark, viz., his son Jefferson K. Clark, two grandsons, also a cousin of this same third generation, also Mrs. Phil. Kearney, herself a Catholic and a direct descendant, and they all agreed that he was never a Catholic.
Dr. Coues adds: "You can consider this unanimous testimony as conclusive, final and beyond any shadow of question."
Learning soon after that not only was Gen. Clark never a Catholic, but that he was a Mason all his mature life and was buried by the Masonic fraternity, I wrote to Dr. Vincil, Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge of Missouri and the historian of Masonry in Missouri, and he replied as follows: "Gen. William Clark was a charter member of St. Louis Lodge No, 111, chartered by the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania September 15, 1808. This lodge went down during the war of 1812. He was also a charter member of Missouri Lodge No. 12, chartered October 8, 1816, by the Grand Lodge of Tennessee. This lodge was one of the three lodges that united in forming the Grand Lodge of Missouri on February 22, 1821, and was the first lodge chartered by the Grand Lodge of Missouri, under the name and number of Missouri Lodge No. 1, by which name and number it still exists on our register."
Now, whatever may be the state of the case with regard to French and Italian Freemasonry, it is perfectly well known to all that know anything about Masonry that no Masonic body of any kind in any English-speaking country is ever allowed to be opened for so much as a single minute for the conferring of any degrees or the transaction of any other kind of business unless there is lying on its altar an opened Bible in the vernacular, and any one who knows anything about Masonry on the one hand or about Clark's
18 ACQUISITION OF OREGON
character on the other, knows that had those Indians asked Gen. Clark for a Bible they would have received it instanter. This surely is enough to show the absolute and ridiculous falsity of all this fiction about these Indians coming in search of the Bible and being refused it.
Ross Browne's report (Ex. Doc. No. 38, H. of R., 35th Cong., 1st Sess.) is very brief, covering only thirteen pages, and unquestionably was intended to be just, and, though it contains several mistakes such as any eastern politician or newspaper writer sent to the Pacific Coast on such a mission would have been likely to make, on the whole it is a temperate and fairly judicial report.
Mr. Browne always claimed that it was not his intention to have Father Brouillet's pamphlet published as a part of his report, but that he merely enclosed it with his report for the information of Hon. J. W. Denver, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, to whom his report was made.
This statement seems conclusively established by the following paragraph from page 3 of his report: "In 1835 missionary establishments were formed west of the Rocky Mountains. The French, through their connection with the Hudson's Bay Co., established Catholic missions and the Americans Protestant missions, between which jealousies and bickerings soon sprang up. Misrepresentations were, no doubt, made on both sides, and the result was that bitter hostilities were engendered between the cliques attached to each persuasion. In the autumn of 1847 Dr. Marcus Whitman and his family were murdered by the Indians. Mr. Spalding, another missionary, charges that it was done with the knowledge and connivance of the Catholic missionaries. I send inclosed the reply of Father Brouillet, which professes to refute this charge. A perusal of the pamphlet will abundantly show the bitterness of feeling existing between the different sects and its evil effects upon the Indians. It will readily be seen that as little dependence can be placed upon the statements made by one side as by the other, and that, instead of Christianizing the Indians, these different sects were engaged in quarrels among each other, thereby showing a very bad example to the races with whom they chose to reside."
Not a trace of that impossible "farewell speech" of the Flat Heads to Gen. Clark has ever been produced in print or in manuscript of an earlier date than February 16, 1866, when in the second of nine long articles published in the Walla Walla Statesman by Rev. H. H. Spalding under the title "Early Oregon Missions, Their Importance in Securing the Country to the Americans," the germ of this impossible speech appeared (prefaced by the statement that Mr. Spalding received it from the surviving one of the delegation after he had established his mission among the Nez
ACQUISITION OF OREGON 19
Perces), as follows: "In the spring, as the other two were about to return to their nations, the chief made his last lament to Gen. Clark: * * * 'I came to you, the great father of the white men, with but one eye partly open. I am to return to my people beyond the mountains of snow at the setting sun with both eyes in darkness and both arms broken. I came for teachers. I am going back without them. I came to you for the Book of God. You have not led me to it. You have taken me to your big house where multitudes of your children assemble and where your young women dance as we do not allow our women to dance, and you have taken me to many other big houses where the people bow down to each other and light tapers to worship pictures. The Book of God was not there. And I am to return to my people to die in darkness.'" All these nine articles are as wildly hysterical as his eleven articles in the Pacific in 1865 with which he launched his (and Gray's) version of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story.
A fuller form of this alleged speech of the Flat Heads to Gen. Clark appeared in the purported interview with Rev. H. H. Spalding, which Rev. Dr. S. J. Humphrey wrote out for him, and which appeared in the Advance for December 1, 1870, and only part of it appears there, accompanied by the statement that "the survivor repeated the words years afterward to Mr. Spalding."
Whether this speech originated in Spalding's imagination or was a combined effort of Spalding and Humphrey can never be known with certainty, nor will it ever be possible to determine beyond dispute whether its amplification into the full form in which Barrows first of all publishes it (and which form of it is printed by Craighead, Nixon and Mowry in quotation marks as if its authorship were undoubted), was due solely to Barrows' very fervid fancy or was a work in which he was assisted by Spalding and Atkinson, but not till Mowry's "Marcus Whitman" appeared did any author venture to assert that it had ever been "circulated" before the Statesman and Advance articles in 1866 and 1870 or that any one ever claimed to have reduced it to writing prior to that time, but Mowry says (p. 46): "One of the clerks in Gen. Clark's office took down at the moment the speech of the Indian as it was interpreted to Gen. Clark, and it began to be circulated."
For this he offers no authority, and undoubtedly no authority can be produced for it save Dr. Mowry's desire to have it so. If it began to be "circulated" in the early spring of 1832, pray how did it happen that with all the excitement and discussion there was about this matter, in no letter or diary or book or magazine or newspaper article has so much as one sentence of this speech been found till thirty-four years afterward in the Statesman and thirty-
20 ACQUISITION OF OREGON
eight and a half years afterward parts of it appeared in the Chicago Advance in an "interview" with Rev. H. H. Spalding?
Whether the invention of the story that these Flat Heads came for the Bible and returned broken-hearted because Gen. Clark, being a Romanist, would not give them one, is the sole invention of Spalding or the joint production of him and that other highly emotional and imaginative Congregational clergyman, Rev. Geo. H. Atkinson, must also always remain a doubtful point.
As we shall see later, to Mr. Atkinson's incessant labors in keeping the Whitman Legend before the public is very largely due the wide credence it has received, with the resulting falsification in the public mind of the real history of the Oregon Acquisition.
The March (1869) Missionary Herald (p. 76) has an article entitled "Fruit of the Oregon Mission," by Rev. G. H. Atkinson, D. D., being his "Report of his remarks at the late meeting of the American Board at Norwich, Conn.," in which under the subhead "Call of the Indians for Religious Light" he says that "a delegation of Flat Heads went to Gen. Clark and stated that they came to gain a knowledge of the white man's God.
"Governor Clark . . . being a Catholic, showed them the Cathedral at St. Louis, and probably introduced them to the priests." This is the first place, as far as yet appears, where any advocate of the Whitman Legend charges Clark with being a Catholic, and though this evidently abridged report of his speech (which gave the Spalding-Gray version of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story) does not say that Clark refused these Indians the Bible, it is not certain but what that was in it, as well as the statement that Clark was a Romanist.
ESTABLISHMENT OF MISSIONS TO THE OREGON INDIANS.
(a) The Methodist Missions, 1834-47.
(b) The American Board or Spalding-Whitman Mission, 1835-1848.
(c) The Catholic Mission, 1840-1851 and 1866 to the present time.
CONTINUANCE AND END OF THE PROTESTANT MISSIONS.
That within three years after the publication in the Christian Advocate and Journal of what Rev. D. Lee assures us was a "high-wrought and incorrect account" of the mission of the four Flat Heads the Methodists and the American Board should both have established missions to the Oregon Indians in a region more remote in time and difficulty of access than Central Africa is today, and that within twelve years after the establishment of these missions there should have been sent from the States ninety-nine people to carry them on and should have been expended on them very close to $300,000, is not only proof of great unwisdom on the part of the Methodist Missionary Board and the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, but also is conclusive proof of the total falsity of that fundamental postulate of the Whitman Legend that the people of the country were indifferent about and ignorant concerning Oregon.
No such enormous expenditure of mission funds would have been tolerated for so long a time by the people who contributed the money if "Oregon had not been in the air," so that there was a very general and widespread interest in it, and that is precisely what Part I. of this book demonstrates to have been the case.
In 1834 Rev. Jason Lee and his nephew, Rev. Daniel Lee, natives of Stanstead, Lower Canada (now Quebec), with three laymen, P. L. Edwards and Mr. C. M. Walker of Richmond, near Independence, Mo., and Mr. Cyrus Shepard of Lynn, Mass., joined Mr. N. J. Wyeth's second overland party, and April 28, 1834, started from Independence, Mo., and being escorted as far as Fort Hall by Wyeth's party and from there by Thos. McKay's Hudson's Bay Co. party, reached Fort Vancouver September 15, 1834. (For the un-
22 ACQUISITION OF OREGON
bounded hospitality of their reception and the constant kindness of their treatment by the Hudson's Bay Co.'s officers at Fort Walla Walla and Fort Vancouver the reader is referred to Chapter VII. of Part I., ante.)
On the way Wyeth and part of his men had stopped the last half of July in the Snake River Valley to found Fort Hall.
Instead of going to the Flat Heads or their allies, the Nez Perces, the Lees founded their mission in the Willamette Valley, some six to eight hundred miles from the Flat Heads and about 400 miles from the Nez Perces.
The history of the mission from the standpoint of the missionaries themselves is to be found in "Lee and Frost's Ten Years in Oregon," by Revs. Daniel Lee and J. H. Frost, and in Rev. Gustavus Hines' "History of Oregon," and to these, which are easy of access, all are referred who care to examine the subject in any detail. Suffice it to say that in May, 1837, a reinforcement to the mission of thirteen persons arrived from New York, and in September of the same year another reinforcement of seven persons arrived; and June 1, 1840, the ship Lausanne, which had left New York the preceding October, anchored at Fort Vancouver, having on board another reinforcement of fifty-one persons, under the lead of Rev. Jason Lee, who had returned to the States in 1838 and succeeded (though not without strong opposition from several of the directors of the Missionary Society) in raising this great reinforcement to a mission which already had more persons connected with it than were really needed for any missionarying that could be done to advantage among the Oregon Indians (Cf. G. H. Hines' "History of Oregon," p. 36, for this opposition to Lee's extravagant plans).
With the arrival of this immense reinforcement the decay of the mission--which had already well begun--was so accelerated that "The Missionary Board at a regular meeting held July 19, 1843, recommended to the Bishop having charge of foreign missions either the appointment of a special agent to proceed to Oregon and investigate the financial concerns of the mission or supersede Mr. Lee by a new superintendent. The latter course was decided upon by the Bishop, and in the September following it was announced that the Rev. George Gary of the Black River Conference was appointed to the superintendency of the Oregon mission.
"The instructions to the new superintendent were few, but he was clothed with discretionary power and had the destiny of missionaries, laymen, property and all put into his hands. With this unlimited authority Mr. Gary, on arriving in Oregon, entered at once upon the delicate and responsible duties which devolved upon Mm" (Hines' "History of Oregon," p. 237). Not having heard of this order Rev. Jason Lee had started back to the States to try to
ACQUISITION OF OREGON 23
raise more money, leaving the mouth of the Columbia on the English bark Columbia on February 3, 1844 (Cf. Hines' History, p. 201).
The new superintendent reached Oregon City June 1, 1844, and speedily discontinued all the mission stations except The Dalles, which was also abandoned in August, 1847, and so an end was put to the Methodist Mission to the Oregon Indians, which had cost about a quarter of a million dollars and had not Christianized any Indians.
It is true that various "revivals" are chronicled in Lee and Frost's "Ten Years in Oregon" and G. Hines' "History of Oregon," but the net result was not one Indian really Christianized (Cf. Senator Nesmith's Address, Transactions Oregon Pioneer Association, 1880, pp. 19-22).
Whether it would have been possible for any other set of missionaries to have produced better results no mortal can know, and it is therefore needless to waste time in speculation on that point.
How the Missionary Society regarded the course pursued by these missionaries is stated in the annual reports of the Methodist Episcopal Church Foreign Missionary Society as follows:
Twenty-seventh annual report, 1846, p. 35:
"The first dispatches from this mission after the arrival of the great reinforcement were brought in the ship Lausanne and received by the Board in April, 1841. Dr. Elijah White, who had returned to this country in the same vessel, presented himself before the Board at its regular meeting, held on the 21st of the same month, and made a verbal communication. From his remarks, as also from the dispatches of the superintendent, it appeared that after a most unpleasant and excited controversy between himself and Mr. J. Lee, he had been induced to resign his office as physician to the mission. After hearing Dr. White in his defense the Board disapproved of his leaving the mission without their consent, but directed the treasurer to settle his accounts.
"Letters were subsequently received from Messrs. Kone and Richmond, and also one signed by several lay members of the mission, all of which indicated dissatisfaction with their circumstances and more or less with the superintendent. From this period up to the time of the appointment of the present superintendent, all the written communications from Oregon and all the verbal statements of returning missionaries only served to (p. 36) satisfy the Board more and more that they had either been misled as to the necessity of so large a number of missionaries in that field or that in some instances at least they had been unfortunate in the selection of the persons to occupy it. Added to all this was the unaccountable fact that the Board had not been able to obtain any satisfactory report of the manner in which the large appropriation to the late rein-
24 ACQUISITION OF OREGON
forcement had been disbursed. Every possible effort had been made to procure such a report, and all our successive dispatches warranted the expectation it would soon be forthcoming. But in this the Board were doomed to be disappointed--no such report was received."
The result of these reports was the appointment of Rev. George Gary to supersede Jason Lee, with unlimited powers, as stated by Hines.
The twenty-seventh report (p. 37) thus states the result of Superintendent Gary's labors: "With the exception of Mr. Brewer, farmer at The Dalles, all the secular members of the mission have been honorably discharged. The mission property, excepting churches and parsonages, with the necessary appendages and the farm at The Dalles, has all been disposed of, and so far as we are able to determine with much judgment and (p. 38) propriety and to the best advantage of the mission. On account of its distance from civilization and the difficulty of obtaining supplies it was judged necessary to retain the farm at The Dalles for the use of the mission family, and also with a view to directing the attention of the Christian Indians to agricultural pursuits. We are happy to learn that Brother Brewer is diligent and faithful in the work assigned him and that he is exerting a good influence upon his Indian neighbors.
"The avails of the mission property in Oregon amounted to between twenty and thirty thousand dollars. A portion of this has been appropriated to the payment of discharged missionaries, but the larger portion is secured to be paid in annual installments, which as they become due will serve materially to lessen the amount necessary to be drawn out of the treasury to meet the current expenses of that mission.
"Among the property disposed of was the Manual Labor School, which has now become the 'Oregon Institute.' Should this institution secure the sympathies and receive the patronage of that enlarging community, as we sincerely hope it may, it will probably subserve the great purposes of education better than while it was under the exclusive management of the mission.
"Having disencumbered the mission of its secular character, and thus removed every plausible ground of suspicion regarding the purity of our motives, it will be the policy of the Board in future to confine themselves strictly to their proper calling.
"By such a course they are sanguine in the hope that the greatest hindrance to ministerial influence and success will be removed out of the way. But it should be kept in mind that, however burdened and clogged in its operations the mission may have been on account of its connection with worldly concerns, and however injurious this
ACQUISITION OF OREGON 25
state of things may have been to its spiritual advancement, it has, on account of this very connection, conferred great temporal benefits on the territory.
["Indeed, it is not too much to say that the importance this territory has assumed in the estimation of the American republic is attributable more to the influence exerted by our mission than to any other cause. Whether we regard its colonization, civilization or evangelization, the Methodist missionaries have been its most influential and successful pioneers.] And though (p. 39) the immigrants, on account of the secular character of the mission, were disposed to look on them with a suspicious eye and in some instances to impute to them motives of avarice and ambition, yet upon the organization of a territorial government (this, of course, was not a territorial government, but merely the provisional government-- W. I. M.) one of these lay missionaries was elected to the office of Governor and another to that of Judge of the Probate and Circuit Courts. These facts speak volumes and show conclusively that we have not entirely forfeited the public confidence in Oregon; and when first impressions, founded in suspicion and jealousy, shall be subjected to the tests of candor and truth the indebtedness of the colony to our mission will, we doubt not, be generally acknowledged."
In the words which I have put in brackets there seems to be the first germ of that claim that the missionaries "Saved Oregon," which we shall see fully developed on the part of both the Methodists and the Congregationalists (but each for his own denomination) in Rev. G. H. Atkinson's letter of November 20, 1858.
How the claims advanced in this extract appeared to Hon. J. W. Nesmith--the war Senator from Oregon, and one of the ablest of Oregon pioneers, and one whose character for fearless devotion to the right and for the most unflinching honesty was of the highest-- after thirty-seven years of observation and reflection had given ample opportunity for the "tests of truth and candor to be applied to the subject," is evidenced by the following extracts from his annual address in 1880, Transactions Oregon Pioneer Association (p. 19):
"Some misapprehension has, I conceive, existed relative to the self-sacrificing character of the early missionaries who came to Oregon. My own observation of them was principally confined to the Methodist missionary station at The Dalles and those of the Willamette Valley. They were not the sort of people who explore and develop the resources of a new country. They were hired and paid for their services by a wealthy society in the East and sent here in comfortable ships. On their arrival they were provided with homes, food and clothing for themselves and families and
26 ACQUISITION OF OREGON
were exempt from the trials, privations and sufferings that fell to the lot of the poor immigrant in his unaided struggle to support himself and family. Their ostensible object was to convert the Indian to Christianity, of which they made a lamentable failure. Large sums of money had been contributed by charitable people in the East for the benefit of the Indians and great quantities of clothing and other articles had been donated for the same purpose. The clothing and goods were sold to the natives and settlers and the only benefits conferred upon the Indians were opportunities to obtain by barter and trade what the generous donors had intended as a gratuity. Before leaving the East I had read accounts in a New York missionary paper of the most wonderful success of the Methodist missionaries in the conversion of the heathen in Oregon, and that at The Dalles of the Columbia 1,500 of them had been brought to a knowledge of Christ, baptized and received into the church militant in two days. The account concluded with an appeal for more material aid and urged the young people to sell their jewelry and turn the proceeds into the treasury of the Lord to aid his self-sacrificing servants in far away Oregon to bring the benighted heathen to a knowledge of the gospel of salvation. After my arrival here I was surprised to find but one Indian--old Sticcus of Dr. Whitman's mission--who made any pretension to Christianity or practiced its precepts.
"In the neighborhood of the mission we found the most abandoned Indians and worthless characters that we had anywhere met in our travels. It was not entirely, perhaps, the fault of the missionaries themselves that their evangelical labors were not crowned with success, as there seem to be inherent difficulties in the inculcation of the abstract doctrines of Christianity in the minds of the untutored children of nature.
"On one occasion I attended service conducted by a missionary for the benefit of the Indians at Willamette Falls. The old chiefs, Yalocus and Wansanius, with Slacom and other head men of their tribe and about 300 of their people, were present. The sermon was preached in Chinook jargon and consisted in an effort on the part of the preacher to unfold to his benighted, filthy and half-naked audience the mysteries of the plan of salvation. The poverty of the language did not admit of any elaborated presentation of abstract ideas or principles; the preacher dwelt strongly upon the efficacy of prayer and illustrated its benefits by pointing out the superior physical comforts enjoyed by the white people over the savages in habitation, food and clothing, and told them that they might enjoy similar benefits by its practice. He then interrogated them as to whether they were willing to ask for and receive the inestimable
ACQUISITION OF OREGON 27
benefits to be derived from prayerful supplication to the Deity. Old Wansamus responded in behalf of his people:
"'Nowitka, six; mica potlatch passissie, sakallux, sapalell, ittillwilla, cayuse, hyu close itca copa konniway nica tillicum. Yaka koniway kwaniisum wawa copa sohala tyee.' Which translated to English was substantially: "Yes, my friend; if you will give us plenty of blankets, pantaloons, flour and meat and tobacco, and lots of other good things, we will pray to God all the time and always.'
"I went away impressed with the opinion that it was a difficult task to convince a people of the necessity of making any provision for the next world while they were too lazy and indifferent to provide for the commonest wants of the present. It seemed an impossibility to make them comprehend the advent of original sin into the world and that they were liable to future punishment for Adamic transgression, while the question of vicarious atonement could not be brought within the grasp of their limited understanding. Indeed, I thought it a difficult matter for a man to be a Christian until he had by his own honest toil and industry provided himself with a bat, a shirt, a pair of pantaloons and ammunition for his stomach, with a comfortable place to sleep. In my humble judgment the Methodist missionaries in Oregon and perhaps elsewhere have made the common mistake of attempting to propagate emotional religion and impress upon the untutored mind of the ignorant savages the mysteries of the plan of salvation and the recondite principles of theology, about which the most intelligent white people differ so much in opinion among themselves, until they have first taught them to provide for their physical comfort by their labor. The missionary labors of Cortez and Pizarro at an earlier period were conducted by Castilian cavalry mounted upon Andalusian steeds, and the truths of the gospel were thrust home at the points of the saber and the lance. Barring the cruelty of Cortez and Pizarro's plan it was as rational as that adopted by the Methodist missionaries. Neither brute force nor the utterance of uncomprehended theories are likely to convey to the untutored mind intelligent conviction upon abstract questions. It is my opinion that the Methodist missionaries conferred no benefit upon the natives. They were, however, of some advantage to the early pioneers in forming a nucleus for settlement and trade by which both parties were benefited. But the cause of Zion did not occupy their undivided attention, considerable of which was devoted to the acquisition of things that perish. Each missionary claimed 640 acres of land individually, besides thirty-six sections claimed and held by the church. This claim of a principality outside of their regular donation claims caused about the first litigation in Oregon between the
28 ACQUISITION OF OREGON
mission and Charles E. Pickett, who in 1845 located upon vacant land near the mouth of the Clackamas. and the mission brought suit to oust him, in which, aided by all the lawyers in Oregon, they were unsuccessful. When the Rev. Mr. Gary came here in 1844 to wind up the business of the missions a large amount of property was offered for sale and there were persons among the settlers who had some means and desired to make small purchases of horses, cattle and other property, but they were prohibited from entering into competition. The church formed a close corporation and none but its members were permitted to bid upon property ostensibly offered at public sale. The property was sold on a long credit and the grasping avarice of some of the purchasers caused amusement to the outsider, who looked upon the whole thing as a kind of 'division of raiment.' I do not desire to be understood as asserting that the individual missionaries were any better or any worse than the rest of us. Among them were good men and bad men, some of whom manifested more interest in the accumulation of the dross of this world than they did in the cause of Zion and the work of the Lord was not prospered among the heathen. The last lingering benefits conferred by the Methodist missionaries in Oregon are now being felt by many poor people at The Dalles, whom the society, in its attempt to rob old pioneers of their homes, have involved in expensive and vexatious lawsuits in their attempts to acquire that to which they never had a shadow of legal title and for which, in their grasping avarice, the society took and received from the taxpayers of the nation twenty thousand dollars in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and sixty." (Should be sixty-three--W. I. M.)
That last sentence refers to the facts (as appears in U. S. Supreme Court Reports, Vol. CVIL, Missionary Society vs. Dalles), that the troops at the outbreak of the Cayuse war took possession of the totally abandoned mission premises at The Dalles and established a post there and reserved 350 acres of the public land (to which the U. S. Supreme Court by a unanimous judgment declared that the Missionary Society had no title) for a military reservation, and that by some means the Missionary Society in June, 1863, got a bill through Congress awarding them $20,000 for this military use of this property, to which, after fighting the case to the court of last resort, they were declared to have had not a shadow of title. So far as reported yet neither the Missionary Society nor the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church has ever made any proposition to refund any part of this $20,000 to the taxpayers of the nation.
Possibly, however, it was all needed to pay the expenses of the long years of litigation which the Missionary Society waged with
ACQUISITION OF OREGON 29
Dalles City and with certain individual citizens thereof in its fruitless attempt to hold this land, to which every land office official and every judge before whom it brought the case declared, as Senator Nesmith did in this address, "that they never had a shadow of a legal title."
What opportunity Nesmith had to form a correct judgment about the effect of the Methodist Mission on the destiny of Oregon is evident from the following sketch of his life. He was elected orderly sergeant of the great migration of 1843, with the duties of adjutant. His subsequent career is best given in his own words in his testimony in the case of the Hudson's Bay Co. vs. the United States, given in Washington, D. C., May 15, 1866, as follows:
"Int. 28. 'How long have you been in Oregon, and how long have you been a member of the United States Senate?'
"Ans. 'I went to Oregon in 1843, and that has been my residence ever since. I took my seat in the United States Senate the 4th of March, 1861.'
"Int. 32. 'Have you held any public offices or positions prior to your election as United States Senator ? If so, please to describe them.'
"Ans. 'Yes, I have held several. In 1845 I was a judge under the provisional government. In 1846 and 1847 I was a member of the Legislature. In 1847 I commanded a company in the Indian war. In 1853 I was appointed United States Marshal for the Territory of Oregon. In same year I commanded a company in the Rogue River war. In 1854 I was brigadier general of the Oregon militia. In 1855 Icommanded a regiment of volunteers in the Indian war. In 1857 I was superintendent of Indian Affairs for Oregon and Washington, and held that office until 1859. That was the last office I held until I came to the United States Senate.'" (Cf. report of case of Hudson's Bay Co. vs. United States, Vol. VI., pp. 30-31.)
Elected United States Senator as a War Democrat, Nesmith was a very useful and influential member of the Senate and a trusted counselor of Lincoln. On the reconstruction issues he returned to the Democratic party after the war. In 1873 he was elected a member of the House of Representatives to fill the unexpired term of Hon. J. G. Wilson, deceased.
How likely that judgment was to be fair and impartial the reader can judge from the following extracts from a biographical sketch of him in Vol. II. of "History of the Pacific Northwest," by Hon. Elwood Evans (p. 493):
"Colonel Nesmith's natural and normal characteristics are worthy of much study as well as illustrating the kind of mind developed on the frontier. First of all stands out clearly his confi-
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dence in his own mental operations and conclusions. He took no steps except upon his own judgment and felt certain that what he worked out for himself was practically correct. This led to his astonishing independence. It is not an easy thing to withstand one's life-long associates, to take up with a cause which may throw one down from a well-earned popularity, and to identify one's self with a cause which is, for the present, and may ever be, the weaker. This is a moral quality of the highest value, and to men with the qualities of leadership like Nesmith, to whom popularity is worth something, is one of the most difficult to attain. It involves a certain truthfulness with one's self, and shows a commanding self-respect which compels fidelity to principle. Coupled with this high quality he had a breadth and common sense which forbade narrowness.
"He had not only respect for and loyalty to his own opinions, but respect and charity for the convictions of others. He had peculiarly that large view which prefers to see men and their ideas go for what they are worth, and if they cannot be reconciled when in conflict to expect that the best will survive the struggle.
"The substratum of his character, it will be seen, was earnest and rugged, involving a self-respect and sturdy truthfulness which is found alone in the best men. To this he added an intellect of exceptional clearness and vigor, remarkable for its ready reasoning and wonderful memory.
"His death occurred in 1885, and of none of her sons may Oregon feel more proud. His public career was without taint or corruption, as his private life had been without stain of dishonesty."
Lest any should claim that Nesmith's opinion is unfair because he was not an ardent supporter of Methodist missions, let us examine the effect which the disastrous failure of this mission produced on one of the ablest men in the Methodist Church, and one whose extreme devotion to missions as shown in his opening paragraph was probably never surpassed by any sane and intelligent man.
The "Works of Rev. Stephen Olin, D. D., late President of Wesleyan University," were copyrighted and published in two volumes by Harper Bros, in 1852--eight years after the collapse of the Oregon Mission. Vol. II. (p. 397, et seq.) is an address on "Missions and Methodism."
"A Review of the Twenty-seventh Annual Report of the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1846." It begins as follows: "Were we called upon to designate that event upon which future ages are likely to look back as vastly the most important in the history of the last 100 years, we should refer to the revival and new development of missionary enterprise."
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He then goes on to enumerate and comment upon the importance of "other stupendous facts which have made the period referred to one of the most memorable in the annals of our race." After several pages of this extravagant eulogism of missions as unequaled in their benefits, even from the purely material and economic standpoint, Dr. Olin takes up the twenty-seventh annual report, and after reviewing various other mission fields (on p. 425) he comes to the Oregon Mission, and says: "No missionary undertaking has been prosecuted by the Methodist Episcopal Church with higher hopes and more ardent zeal. That the results have fallen greatly below the usual average of missionary successes and inflicted painful disappointment upon the society and its supporters none, we presume, can any longer hesitate to confess. There is, perhaps, no reason to believe that others would have been able under the circumstances to judge more wisely or act more discreetly.
"It is nevertheless true that from the more favorable position which we now occupy we can easily detect the causes which, whether regarded in the light of mistakes or misfortunes, led by inevitable tendencies to the failure of this mission, and the church cannot afford to lose the benefit of lessons for which it has paid so dearly.
"The founder of the Oregon Mission, the Rev. Jason Lee, now no .more, was a man of unquestionable piety; and he gave many proofs during his connection with the Board of possessing several high and indispensable qualifications for a pioneer in such an enterprise. Had the mission never been extended beyond three or four families, and had it been confined to its appropriate work of evangelization, we see no reason to doubt that his zeal, force of character and perseverance would have fully justified the confidence reposed in him by the Board; but when he became the head of a religious colony and sole director of a complicated system of operations, evangelizing, mercantile, agricultural, mechanical and semi-political, which involved an expenditure of $42,000 in a single year, he was thrown into an untried position, from which the wisest men in our ministry might well have shrunk, and for which, we incline to think, no man likely to be called to such duties was more eminently unfit than Mr. Lee. That he should have obtained over minds of the highest order among us such an ascendency as is implied in their approval of his impracticable schemes is more surprising than that, under such circumstances, he should himself indulge in visionary hopes. The mission was commenced in 1834 by two clergymen and two (should be three--W. I. M.) lay assistants. At the end of six years there were sixty-eight persons connected with this mission--men, women and children--all supported by this society.
"This unexampled increase had been added to the original com-
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pany at the urgent representations of Mr. Lee after being several years in Oregon, enjoying better opportunities than any other man for becoming acquainted with the actual wants of that region.
"The Indian population, for whose benefit this mission was established, does not, in the estimation of the Rev. Daniel Lee, colleague and nephew of the superintendent, exceed 16,000. How such a number of missionaries found employment in such a field it is not easy to conjecture, especially as the great body of the Indians never came under the influence of their labors.
"They were in fact mostly engaged in secular affairs--concerned in claims to large tracts of land, amounting in all to thirty-six sections, claims to city lots, farming, merchandizing, blacksmithing, carpentering, cabinet-making, grazing, horse-keeping, lumbering and flouring, with the constant trading, hiring and paying attendant upon all these branches." (Report, p. 42.)
We do not believe that the history of Christian missions ever exhibited another such spectacle. That the effect of this signal perversion of an evangelizing enterprise was no better than ought to have been expected, the report before us, as well as some that preceded it, clearly intimates.
The mission became odious to the growing population, with whose interests and designs, good or bad, it came into perpetual conflict as an unwieldy, overshadowing, intermeddling, many-handed business establishment. As zeal grew lukewarm and piety deteriorated under this secularizing process, the infirmities of human nature were occasionally manifested, and at length irreconcilable differences arose among the missionaries, which led to the return of several individuals to the United States and to a disclosure of the real state of the mission.
"This has, of course, been followed by retrenchment and reorganization. The seculars have been discharged and the trading establishments, mills and work-shops have been broken up and sold by an agent, most judiciously selected and sent out for the purpose."
The best strictly contemporaneous evidence on the question of what the Methodist Mission did in furnishing information to the nation as to the value of Oregon is to be found in the reply of Thos. E. Bond, Secretary of the Methodist Missionary Society, to Hon. N. G. Pendleton, Chairman of the Military Committee of the House of Representatives, dated January 22 and April 11, 1842, and published on pp. 63-64 of the report of that committee (generally known as Pendleton's report) and quoted herein (Part I, p. 214).
Returning to the twenty-seventh annual report we find (p. 42) the following: "Among our dispatches from Oregon we have received a most interesting communication from Rev. G. Hines, en-
ACQUISITION OF OREGON 33
titled 'Oregon as It Is.' . . . 'With a few unimportant omissions this document was published in three successive numbers of the Christian Advocate and Journal, where all these various topics may be seen and interestingly elaborated. We extract only that portion which relates to our mission. The views here presented, it will be seen, go strongly to sustain the course of our superintendent in relation to the secular affairs of our mission. The following are our extracts:
" 'The Methodist Episcopal Church in Oregon: It is not my design to trace the history of the Oregon Mission through all its different stages of prosperity, adversity and revolution, from its commencement to the present time, however interesting such an exhibit might be; but simply to present it in its present state, as it regards numbers, piety and efforts for the promotion of the cause of Christ. In this it will be necessary to speak of some of the changes which have taken place since the arrival of Rev. G. Gary, our present superintendent. These changes principally relate to the fiscal concerns of the mission. These concerns existed in the different departments of land claims to large tracts of land, amounting in all to thirty-six sections, claims to city lots, of farming, merchandizing, blacksmithing, carpentering, cabinet-making, grazing, horse-keeping, lumbering and flouring, with the constant trading, hiring and paying attendant upon all these branches. It is only enough to mention this unheard-of amount of temporal business in connection with any mission to convince all that it must be a very great clog to the performance of any spiritual work. The influence of the multiplicity of business and the accumulation of care and perplexity occasioned by the different branches were decidedly deleterious to the missionaries themselves, and if any who have been constantly connected with this business have exerted a happy and Christian influence it has been in spite of the temporal business in which they have been engaged. To say nothing of the losses which the mission was constantly realizing in its ill-directed efforts to sustain this load of business, it was constantly sinking under the burden; and every successive effort to relieve it but increased the difficulty under which the mission has groaned. Though there may be some among us who have been connected with the different branches who are of a different opinion, yet it appears to most of us that the period for disburdening the Oregon Mission of the ponderous load that has been pressing her into the dust may be regarded as a happy epoch in her history.'"
The twenty-ninth annual report (1848, on p. 37), after reciting that Rev. Geo. Gary had returned from Oregon, leaving the superintendency in the hands of Mr. Wm. Roberts, and stating the impression produced by "Bro. Gary's address," and giving some reso-
34 ACQUISITION OF OREGON
hitions of approval of his course in Oregon, continues as follows: "Of the mission in its present organization the report of Brother Gary was quite favorable and certainly authorized increased hopes of its future success. The secular appurtenances being now entirely lopped off and the missionaries confined to their appropriate work they will no longer be suspected of secular motives nor perplexed with a load of business cares and responsibilities. Disburdened of these worldly entanglements they will henceforward be able to pursue their legitimate calling untrammeled by appendages which, connected with missionary enterprise, are always of doubtful utility; and certainly, in the present state of that territory, entirely unnecessary."
THE AMERICAN BOARD OR SPALDING-WHITMAN
MISSION.
As the detailed story of this mission is pretty fully stated in the extracts from the correspondence and diaries of its various members hereinafter presented (most of it for the first time), it is not necessary to present in this chapter anything but the merest outline of its unfortunate history.
Stirred by the same "high-wrought and incorrect" account of the Flat Heads in St. Louis that started the Methodists to found their Oregon Indian Mission, the American Board sent Rev. Samuel Parker, a Presbyterian clergyman of Ithaca, N. Y., and Dr. Marcus Whitman, a physician (never a clergyman) of Rushville, N. Y., on an exploring tour in 1835 to decide on a location for a mission to the Oregon Indians.
Under the escort of the American fur traders they went to the fur traders' rendezvous, which that year was on Green River, in that part of Wyoming which belonged to the Old Oregon Territory.
Whitman returned to the States, while Parker went on to Fort Vancouver and in 1836 returned to the States via the Sandwich Islands and Cape Horn.
In February, 1836, Whitman married Miss Narcissa Prentiss and associated with himself Rev. H. H. Spalding (who appears to have been an early lover of Miss Prentiss, but, rejected by her, had married Miss Eliza Hart, October 12, 1833), and returned to Oregon to found the American Board Mission.
Prudence would have suggested to most men that under these circumstances Spalding was the last person with whom he should have gone missionarying, but prudence, unfortunately, was a quality conspicuously absent from Dr, Whitman's character, and so, having received as an additional member of the party Mr. W. H. Gray, a cabinet-maker, as a mechanic and farmer, and not (as Gray
ACQUISITION OF OREGON 35
claimed years after the mission was destroyed) as "secular agent" for the mission, in the spring of 1836 they started overland for Oregon.
Whitman's letter of February 15, 1836, to D. Greene, Secretary, dated at Rushville. N. Y., reads as follows: "I saw Mr. Spalding on his way to the Osages. He consented to accompany me if the Board saw fit to alter his designation. ... I am willing to accompany Mr. Spalding as an associate, yet I know little of his peculiar adaptedness to that station."
Their journey is elsewhere described (Cf. chapters on the Discovery of Route for and Development of the Transcontinental Wagon Road and on the Relation of the Hudson's Bay Co. to the American Exploration, Occupation and Settlement of the Oregon Territory).
Before they left the States the Whitmans and Spaldings quarreled and continued it on the way, and when they reached their field of labor the antagonism between them was so great that instead of uniting in the establishment of one station Whitman located at Wailatpu, twenty-five miles from old Fort Walla Walla and about six miles from the present city of Walla Walla, among the Cayuse Indians, and Spalding went 125 miles to the east and located at Lapwai among the Nez Perces, near where the city of Lewiston, Idaho now is. Though this mission was never reinforced on so wildly an extravagant scale as the Methodist Mission, that fact was not due to any superior wisdom or discretion on the part of Whitman and Spalding, for if their requests had been granted they would have had about four times as many sent them as the Methodist Mission had.
April 21, 1838, Spalding and Whitman, excited by what they heard from Rev. Jason Lee (who was then at Whitman's station on the way to the States for his great reinforcement) wrote a joint letter to Rev. D. Greene, Secretary, covering ten pages, in which, after giving a very flattering account of the prospects of the mission, they continued: "To occupy these posts immediately we ask, as the least possible number which God and our consciences will admit us to name, for thirty ordained missionaries, thirty farmers, thirty school teachers, ten physicians and ten mechanics with their wives." That is 220 adults, which would have meant, if with the same proportion of children as to the Methodist Mission, very close to 300 people. Farther on in the letter they ask for supplies to correspond: "Several tons of iron and steel, a sufficient quantity of balls, thirty to the pound, or lead with moulds with a due proportion of powder, 2,000 gun flints, fifty gross Indian awls, 100 dozen scalping knives, crockery, tinware, fifty 2½-point blankets, fifty 3-point ditto, two best cook stoves, six box stoves," etc., etc.
36 ACQUISITION OF OREGON
No part of this reinforcement was ever sent, but it is surprising that the American Board did not suspect the sanity of both Spalding and Whitman for calling for any such number of people. In 1840, when the quarrel between the Spaldings and Whitmans had reached such a stage as to threaten the very existence of the mission, Whitman sought to throw the responsibility for this wild request on to Spalding, and (March 27, 1840) wrote to D. Greene, Secretary, as follows: "I feel to regret a joint letter sent by Mr. Spalding and myself in 1838 as containing a forced view of things calculated to excite hopes not to be realized. This I wished to avoid in all my correspondence. The letter was written in Mr. Spalding's peculiar style, for which I do not feel responsible. But the signing I regret, and also that such a bill of Indian goods was asked for."
But aside from the moral weakness which any man who is of mature years (Whitman was born in 1802) displays when he pleads "the baby act" as bis excuse for anything which he has freely and deliberately done, the following extract from a letter which Whitman wrote to D. Greene only fifteen days after the date of this "joint letter" shows that instead of "standing up to the rack" like a man in 1840 and admitting that he as well as Spalding had been very unwise in this extravagant request for people and supplies, he was willing to "twist the truth" very badly in his effort to throw the blame for this on to Spalding and thus escape his fair share of responsibility for this "joint letter."
May 8, 1838, he wrote a five and a half page (letter size) epistle, beginning as follows: "I have had the pleasure of signing a joint letter to yourself, prepared by Bro. Spalding and filling a blank with supplies left for that purpose." The "blank for supplies" was left on p. 4 of the joint letter of April 21, 1838, and is all filled in Whitman's handwriting, and the list of supplies is so long that it required more than 500 words "to fill the blank."
To those persons who have formed from Barrows, and Nixon, and Craighead, and Mowry, and Mrs. Dye, and Atkinson, and Rev. M. Eells and President Penrose, and Laurie, and the other advocates of the Whitman Legend the idea that Whitman was a truly great man, never shirking responsibility and with strength of character proof against the ordinary temptations and weaknesses of humanity, this, which is by no means the only proof in his own handwriting, that he was ready to save himself from censure by "pleading the baby act" and throwing on to another the sole responsibility for what was really the freely executed joint act of himself and that other will come as a great shock.
No advocate of the Whitman Legend has ever mentioned this crazily extravagant call for reinforcements, and still less this at-
ACQUISITION OF OREGON 37
tempt of Whitman to wriggle out of his share of the responsibility for it.
In 1837 Gray, contrary to Whitman's wishes, had started back across the plains to the States to try and get a reinforcement for the mission, and the American Board had arranged for three clergymen, viz.: Revs. Cusshing Eells, Elkanah Walker and A. B. Smith and their wives, to go. Gray married, and at Cincinnati a young man named Cornelius Rogers joined the party. These eight persons (four men and four women) were all the reinforcement that ever reached the American Board Mission to the Oregon Indians, though two small reinforcements seem to have been sent around Cape Horn in later years, both of which, stopping at the Sandwich Islands and hearing very unpleasant reports about the Oregon Mission, remained beneath the much more genial skies and among the more gentle-mannered natives, and, I shrewdly suspect" more agreeable missionaries of Honolulu and its vicinity.
The reinforcement reached Wailatpu August 29, 1838 (as appears by Mrs. Eells' diary, published in Transactions Oregon Pioneer Association for 1888, p. 88), while the joint letter of Spalding and Whitman of April 21, 1838, calling for the 220 adults and a corresponding quantity of supplies, and Whitman's letter of May 8, 1838, saying that he "had the pleasure of signing the joint letter and filling the blank for supplies" (both of which letters went by the hand of Rev. Jason Lee to New York), were not received by the American Board till November 1, 1838, as the endorsement of D. Greene, Secretary, on them shows.
Messrs. Eells and Walker started a new station at Tshimakain (i. e., the place of springs), 165 miles north of Wailatpu, at a place now called Walker's Prairie, a little northwest of the present city of Spokane, and Rev. A. B. Smith started another station at Kamiah, some sixty miles east of Spalding's station at Lapwai.
But the decadence of the mission speedily began and as early as November 27, 1839, Spalding's diary (heretofore unpublished) says: "Mr. Rogers arrived from Kamiah.
"Aasimalkain attempted to drive Mr. Smith from the country, or rather to frighten him to pay property, but when he found Mr. Smith ready to go he very willingly gave him the land."
Idem, October 14, 1840: "An express arrived from Mr. Smith requesting my presence immediately, as there is trouble with the Indians. The Blue Cap has ordered Mr. Smith to leave the country."
Idem, January 8, 1841: "Mr. Smith writes very discouraging as to the people--is inclined to consider them given up of God and devoted to destruction."
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Idem, March 26, 1841: "Pakatas arrived yesterday from Mr. Smith's. He is to leave that station on the 12th of next month. . . . What will be the result of this step I know not, but fear it will not be good."
Idem, April 21, 1841: "Mr. and Mrs. Smith arrive. . . He deems the Indian race doomed to destruction. Especially this people he considers a hopeless case."
Idem, May 14, 1841: "Jacob returned from Walla Walla with the intelligence that Rev. Messrs. Smith and Clark with their ladies left Walla Walla for Vancouver on the llth inst. in company with Mr. Ermatinger."
Thus ended the connection of Rev. A. B. Smith with the mission. He seems to have beeri the ablest man intellectually of all the A. B. O. F. M. missionaries to the Oregon Indians. Mr. Rogers withdrew at about the same time, and in September, 1842, Mr. Gray and wife deserted the mission in a manner that Rev. Messrs. Eells and Walker, as we shall see, denounced bitterly to the Board in their joint letter of October 3, 1842, as deceptive and dishonorable.
Meanwhile the quarrels of the various members of the mission-- especially of the Spaldings and Whitmans and Mr. Gray--had brought the mission to the very verge of destruction by causing the order of the Board in February, 1842, for the discontinuance of three of its four stations and the recalling to the States of Gray and Spalding (i. e., two out of the five then remaining connected with the mission). Whitman's ride was made for the purpose of securing and it did secure the rescission of this destructive order, and also for the purpose, if that order was rescinded, of obtaining a reinforcement of clergymen and laymen to strengthen the mission.
This reinforcement the Board did not grant them and they never subsequently sent a single man or woman to Oregon, although Whitman in almost every letter he wrote begged and pleaded for such a reinforcement.
As we shall see later the decadence of the mission went on very rapidly after 1839 till it was destroyed by the dreadful massacre of November 29-December 8, 1847, in which Dr. and Mrs. Whitman and twelve others were slain and fifty-three others, mostly women and children, taken prisoners.
These were rescued by the prompt and wholly gratuitous efforts of the Hudson's Bay Co.'s officers, Mr. Ogden and Mr. Douglas, and with them Mr. Spalding and his family were brought down the Columbia to Fort Vancouver and to Oregon City on the Willamette, where they arrived January 10, 1848 (Cf. Spalding's letter dated January 8, 1848, at Fort Vancouver, published in the Missionary Herald July, 1848, p. 240).
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The Cayuse war, the first of the Indian wars which at intervals vexed the settlers of the Old Oregon Territory and of Northern California for some thirty years, at once began.
Messrs. Eells and Walker remained for a short time at Tshimakain and then fled for protection sixty miles north to the Hudson's Bay Co.'s post of Fort Colvile (not ville--it was named for a man named Andrew Colvile), where they were most hospitably welcomed and entertained and whence they were escorted by the First Oregon Riflemen on June 1, 1848, to the Willamette settlement, and the American Board Mission to the Oregon Indians was at an end.
That there were some excellent features in the plans of Whitman and Spalding for the civilization and Christianization of the Oregon Indians by teaching them farming and stock raising is unquestionable, and if conditions had favored their full development they might have been fairly successful; but the prime essential of favorable conditions was that they should for at least a generation be located so remote from white settlements and from routes over which white migrations moved, that the Indians would not have their fears aroused and their jealousies excited by the evidence that soon they must be crowded to the wall by the greed for land of the pale faces; and unfortunately for the success of the Spalding-Whitman mission it was scarcely under way when the tide of migration to Oregon poured directly across the pastures and hunting grounds of the Cayuses and its rapidly increasing volume speedily filled them with alarm, lest soon the Willamette Valley should be full and then their own lands would be seized.
Whether any other persons, with conditions as they were, would have done more to benefit the Indians than these American Board missionaries did each reader must judge for himself.
With all their faults I suppose no one doubts that they were zealous and industrious missionaries, but whether all or any of them were specially patriotic, or could be classed in any sense among great men or men who did anything entitling them to he ranked as national heroes are matters about which the needful evidence--long carefully concealed--is herein for the first time printed, so that each reader can weigh it for himself.
That both the Methodist and the American Board missions to the Oregon Indians produced some beneficial results on the destinies of Oregon no one, so far as I know, denies.
If the expenditure between 1834 and 1848 of nearly $300,000, a sum greater compared with the wealth of the country and the income of the missionary societies and the purchasing power of money than two million dollars would be today, and the labor of all these men and women, the equivalent of fully 150 years' labor of one man and 150 years' labor of one woman, saying nothing of the labors of
40 ACQUISITION OF OREGON
the children of the missionaries, did not produce merely some, but very considerable beneficial results, it would certainly be a most lamentable and unparalleled waste of money and human energy.
The question is not did it produce some, or even a good deal of, benefit to Oregon to locate with missionary money a few dozen Methodists and Presbyterians among its early settlers, but, was the benefit in amount commensurate with the expenditure, and, granting that it was commensurate with the expenditure, was it the kind of benefit which those who contributed many of them by great self denial and out of their poverty to the funds of the missionary societies expected, and had a right to expect, from the expenditure of money contributed to convert the heathen to Christianity?
INDEPENDENT CONGREGATIONAL MISSIONARIES.
The craze to send missionaries to the Oregon Indians as the result of the "high-wrought and incorrect" article in the Christian Advocate, and the quite as "high-wrought and incorrect" account of the results of their labors which the missionaries sent back for publication in the Christian Advocate and the Missionary Herald, during the first few years that the missions existed, spread to Congregational churches which were dissatisfied with the management of the American Board, resulting in sending, in 1839, Revs. J. S. Griffin and Asahel Munger and their wives, and in 1840, Revs. Harvey Clark and Alvan T. Smith, and Mr. P. B. Littlejohn and their wives, as Independent or Self-Supporting Congregational Missionaries.
These people labored under the delusion that the half-naked savages of the Oregon Territory were so eager to adopt the white man's ways and religion, that all they needed to do was to get to Oregon, totally ignorant as they were of Indian languages and customs, and, forthwith, without any missionary society to support them, they would be able to start a mission, and make it self supporting. Failing to find any such opening when they reached Oregon, poor Munger grew so much crazier than he was when he started on so wild an errand, that in December, 1841, after driving two nails through his hand, he raked out a great bed of coals, and threw himself down on them, and thrust his hand into the hottest part and held it there till it was burned to a crisp, and died four days after (Cf. Mrs. Whitman's letter, February 2, 1842, in Tr. Or. Pi. A., 1891, p. 144).
The others, Messrs. Griffin, A. T. Smith and Harvey Clark, cured of their delusions about the eagerness of the Indians to lay aside the buffalo robe and the blanket for the white man's clothes, and the rifle, and the tomahawk, and the scalping knife for the plow and hoe, and the excitement of the hunt and the warpath for the
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hard steady plodding labor of the farm; and the "medicine bag" and the "playing medicine" for Calvinistic, or Methodist, or any other system of theology--settled down on farms in the Willamette Valley, and so ended the Independent or Self-Supporting Missions to Oregon Indians.
THE CATHOLIC MISSIONS IN OREGON.
As no one has ever pretended to claim that the Catholic missions had any agency in saving Oregon to the United States, and as their record so far as known shows no such extravagant expenditures of money and energy as were made upon the Methodist Mission, and called for by Spalding and Whitman for the American Board Mission, they will require but brief mention in the story of the Oregon Expansion. Revs. F. N. Blanchet and Modeste Demers were the first Catholic priests who went to Oregon, and they went from Montreal with the Hudson's Bay Co.'s Annual Express, and arrived at Ft. Vancouver in November, 1838. These, however, were not a result of the visit of the Flat Heads to St. Louis, but of the very natural desire of the French Canadian employes at the Hudson's Bay Co.'s posts, and the small settlement of discharged employes of the company who had located farms in the Willamette Valley, to have clergymen of their own faith to minister to them, and though these priests labored assiduously among the Indians, especially those west of the Cascade Range, they were not primarily missionaries to the Oregon Indians.
Father Blanchet, in 1848, was made Archbishop, and Father Demers was made Bishop of Vancouver Island, and in 1881, at the age of 85, after sixty-two years' service as a priest, Father Blanchet resigned his office to Archbishop Seghers, who had been appointed his coadjutor in 1879, and died June 18, 1883, at the age of eighty-seven. (Cf. for the origin and history of the Oregon Mission, "Shea's Catholic Missionaries Among the Indians," New York, 1854, T. W. Strong; also a paper by Maj. Edmond Mallet, L. L. B., (for years superintendent of the Swamp Lands Bureau of the General Land Office, Washington) published in New York Freeman's Journal, Feb. 27, 1886; also in Proceedings of First Annual Meeting of United States Catholic Historical Society, 1886; also in Catholic Sentinel, Portland, Ore., 1886; also in U. S. Catholic Historical Magazine, 1887, Vol. I., No. 1; for sketch of Fr. Blanchet's life and labors, Vol. II., p. 217, History of Pacific Northwest, by Elwood Evans.)
THE FLAT HEAD MISSION.
The delegation to St. Louis in 1831, not being speedily followed by priests, Ignace La Mousse, in 1835, started for Montreal, taking
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with him his two sons, hoping to obtain priests, but learning that there were Jesuit fathers at St. Louis, went there instead, and the records of the cathedral there show that the two sons were baptized there, December 2, 1835, under the names of Charles and Francis Xavier Ignati. (Cf. "Indian and White in the Northwest," p. 19; also Records of the American Catholic Historical Society, Vol. II, p. 194.)
No priests arriving in 1836 or 1837, in the autumn of 1837 three more Flat Heads started for St. Louis for "black robes," joining W. H. Gray's party, but all the Indians in the party were killed at Ash Hollow by a war party of Sioux.
In 1839 a fourth deputation from the Flat Heads, consisting of young Ignace and one other Iroquois, went to St. Louis, and a letter of Bishop Rosati, dated St. Louis, October 20, 1839, and addressed to the Father General of the Society of Jesus, at Rome, gives an account of their arrival, and says: "Of the twenty-four Iroquois who formerly emigrated from Canada, only four are now living."
They were promised that a priest should go to them the next year.
In the spring of 1840, the famous Father P. J. DeSmet, S. J., made his first journey to the Rocky Mountains, and met a party of Flat Heads at Green River, and went with them via Pierre's Hole, Henry Fork, Beaver Head Fork (near Red Rock Lake), Big Hole Basin, and the Jefferson River to the Gallatin Valley instructing and baptizing the Indians during the six weeks he was with them, and then he left them to return to St. Louis for a sufficient reinforcement to establish a mission among them.
In 1841, with five assistants, he went with the Oregon migration to Fort Hall, and from there struck north to the Flat Head country, and Sunday, October 3, 1841 (near where Stevensville, Mont., now is), celebrating the first mass there, he founded St. Mary's Mission.
In 1842 two of his assistants founded a mission among the Coeur d'Alenes, and later other missions were established among other Rocky Mountain tribes.
At first all went well, as it did for the first few years with the American Board Mission and the Methodist Mission, but the fickle nature of the savage showed itself, and in 1850 St. Mary's Mission was abandoned, but for just what reasons we are not informed, all that Father Palladino tells us being, that the "Flat Heads had become estranged, careless, indifferent and pretentious to a degree that all endeavors of the fathers in their behalf and for their spiritual welfare were unheeded." (Cf. "Indian and White in the Northwest," p. 50). In 1866 St. Mary's Mission was re-established
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and continued in very successful operation till 1891, when the last of the Flat Heads were removed to the Jocko Reservation, with their confederated tribes, the Pen d'Oreilles, Kalispels, and Kootinays. St. Ignatius Mission had been established in 1844 among the Kalispels, and in 1854, it was removed to its present site on what is now the Jocko Indian Reservation. (Cf. for the founding and history of these Catholic missions to the Indians in the Northwest part of the old Oregon Territory, "Letters and Sketches," etc., by P. J. De Smet, S. J., 1843; also "Origin, Progress and Prospects of the Catholic Mission," by P. J. De Smet, S. J., 1845; also "Oregon Missions and Travels in the Rocky Mountains," De Smet, 1847; also "Catholic Missions Among the Indians," Shea, New York, 1854; also "Indian and White in the Northwest," or a "History of Catholicity in Montana," by L. B. Palladino, S. J., Baltimore, 1894).
It is only justice to the Catholic missions among the Flat Heads and their confederated tribes to say that when the disastrous Indian war of 1855-6 was waged, on the lower Columbia, these tribes remained at peace--how much of this is to be ascribed to the well known moral superiority of the Flat Heads to other Indians even before they had had any intercourse with whites, how much to the well known love of peace of the Flat Heads, how much to the religion they professed, and how much to the fact that they were in a remote nook of the world, out of the line of white migration and so not excited by fears that the whites would take their lands away from them, each reader must judge for himself.
But that it is preposterous for the devotees of any one creed to claim that their faith has more power than other Christian creeds to prevent Indians who have been taught it for a few years from going on the warpath against the whites, when all other conditions of contact with the whites, and attempts of the whites to settle on their lands, or to force them to go on reservations to which they object are the same, is proved beyond dispute by the whole history of Indian wars since white settlements first began on this continent.
But the fact is undisputed that the Flat Heads have remained what Lewis and Clark found them, "the best of all Indians," and that no part of this tribe has ever taken part in any war against the whites, or any massacre of whites, and when their old time allies, the Nez Perces, in 1877, went on the warpath against the whites, led by Chief Joseph, the Flat Heads preserved the white settlements in the Bitter Root Valley from pillage and massacre. (Cf. "Indian and White in the Northwest," p. 49.)
THE VARYING FORMS OF THE WHITMAN SAVED OREGON
STORY.
That the reader may understand all the facts about the origin and development of the Whitman Saved Oregon Legend, and the widespread credence it has attained; making it by far the most remarkable attempt ever made to inject into our history a pure legend concerning so important a subject as the acquisition of nearly one-twelfth of all our domain on this continent, it seems best to print first the varying forms the legend assumed from 1858, when the first version of it ever written (so far as known) is to be found in Rev. G. H. Atkinson's letter, down to the form which the same Rev. G. H. Atkinson, twenty-nine years later imposed on Scribner and Company, and which they accepted and published in the authorized American edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and thus had the bad preeminence of being the first publishers of an encyclopaedia to print this ingenious fiction as history.
(A) AND (B). THE FIRST TWO VARIANT VERSIONS OF THE WHITMAN SAVED OREGON STORY (HERETOFORE UNPUBLISHED), BEING REV. G. H. ATKINSON'S FIRST AND SECOND VERSIONS.
It still remains true--July, 1905--that the earliest known published version of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story is the brief and vague one written by S. A. Clarke (and avowedly derived from Spalding), which appeared in the Sacramento Union of November 16, 1864, and was quoted by me, in my discussion of Prof. Bourne's "Legend of Marcus Whitman." (Cf. Tr. American Historical Association, 1900, p. 232.)
Prof. Bourne, however, has found in two letters to the American Board, written by Rev. Geo. H. Atkinson, November 20, 1858, and September 7, 1859, two very variant and doubtless the earliest written forms of the legend, and I am indebted to his courtesy for copies of them, with permission to publish.
I did not read these with care in my two examinations of the manuscripts at the American Board rooms, in Boston, in 1887, and 1897, because, knowing that Atkinson went to Oregon via the
ACQUISITION OF OREGON 45
Sandwich Islands, as a Home Missionary of the Congregationalists, not arriving in Oregon till June, 1848, more than six months after the Whitman massacre, and that therefore he could have no personal knowledge of anything relating to Whitman's ride, or anything else in his career, after I had examined with care all the immense amount of correspondence of Whitman and his associates, when I reached Atkinson's letters, being short of time, and not knowing that he had ever held any such position as "recovery agent" for the American Board, I did not suppose that his letters would be of any importance in connection with the development of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story, and so merely entered in my notebook from the index to Vol. 248 of the American Board Mission the following: "Letters of Rev. G. H. Atkinson, on claim to Dalles Station, Nos. 202-205." I read and copied from a number of his earlier letters but stopped with his letter indexed as No. 201, of October 19, 1857, hereinafter quoted.
I have been well satisfied for fifteen years past that to the activity and persistence of Mr. Atkinson, and especially his talk with Secretary Treat, in 1865, as narrated in his letter of March 19, 1885, hereinafter quoted, which resulted in Treat writing to Rev. G. Eells, and securing his statement of May, 1866 (published in Missionary Herald December, 1866), the general circulation and credence of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story was more largely due than to the efforts of any other one person; but I had no idea that as early as 1858 and 1859 he had written the legend in widely varying forms to the Secretary of the American Board. It is evident from these letters that he had derived these forms from conversations with Rev. H. H. Spalding and Rev. C. Eells, and equally certain that, as yet, Spalding and Gray had not invented the Walla Walla dinner story, as the origin of Whitman's ride, nor Rev. C. Eells, his story (which is entirely different from and wholly irreconcilable with the Spalding-Gray story of the Walla Walla dinner table), of a meeting of the mission called in September, 1842, to consider Whitman's going to the States to save Oregon, and reluctantly consenting to it after two days' discussion of the matter.
The extracts from the two letters of Rev. G. H. Atkinson are as follows:
LETTER OF G. H. ATKINSON TO AMERICAN BOARD. Extracts: Oregon City, November 20, 1858.
Subject: The disputed claim to the Dalles Mission Station which Dr. Whitman, took in 1847, paid a note for it for $600, his agent held it till August 14, 1848, when Oregon Territorial Act, 1st Sec., gave title up to 640 acres. Methodist title disputed.
46 ACQUISITION OF OREGON
February, 1849, Walker, Spalding and Eells proposed to Methodist Mission retransfer of the property to get note of $600, the note was not returned, and is still held by Methodists. No mention of title, but title vested in American Board by virtue of its occupancy, August 14, 1848.
The Dalles Mission Station of 640 acres is worth from $20,000 to $100,000 as a townsite.
Methodist agent claims it by virtue of retransfer, says his title is good.
Quotation:
"I am told also that he remarked 'The Government will not refuse us a title to the Dalles. They will give it to us for they gave our missionaries $100,000 to come out to Oregon as colonists when there was danger the English would get the country.' The man who informed me said that he had it from the Methodist Episcopal agent, and also from another source, and that he could get a copy of the order at Washington for $100,000 of the "Secret Service money" to be paid them. He says also that Jason Lee went to Washington in 1835 or 1836, and got this, and that Mr. Linn of Missouri introduced and advocated the measure, probably in secret session of the Senate.
"I mention these things as I have heard them, and also for a reason which I will notice before closing this letter."
Abstract:
Methodist title disputed; a squatter claims it. The Papists have a claim to part of it. Dr. Whitman's nephew, who was his agent or teacher, asserts a claim. "The best or good judges of proprietary titles are satisfied that you have the only legal equitable rights to the claim." The Government is going to have an army station there, and Methodists expect to get $20,000 or $30,000 for the Reserve. Some men offer 100 acres near Oregon City for 100 acres at the Dalles. Various other complications.
ON DALLES STATION, ITS VALUE, MISSION, LOSSES, ETC.
Quotation:
"That station is worth to your board from $20,000 to $100,000. I would share it with the Methodist Episcopal Board; I would not give them all.
"After the massacre Rev. Mr. Spalding looked after the mission property which was lost, or destroyed, or used by the Indians and the Oregon Army. He found the losses to be from $30,000 to $40,000." (This apparently includes losses at all the American Board stations.--Note by E. G. Bourne.) "He used his exertions to get that allowed and paid by the United States Government,
ACQUISITION OF OREGON 47
especially as your mission, and particularly Dr. Whitman, were the most effective agents in settling Oregon, and saving it to the country. In 1842, Dr. Whitman saw, and your missionaries saw, that the tendency was to give Oregon to the English. Hudson's Bay Company employes were taking some of the finest lands in the valley, and they were all English, or subject to English authority. He saw that the slow process of colonizing by sea would not save Oregon to the United States of America. Besides the Hudson's Bay Company vessels would not bring an American to Oregon except a missionary, and they would freely carry every American out of the country.
"The Hudson Bay Company affirmed that no wagon could cross the mountains and come into the valley, and that no families could immigrate that way. Several wagons had come as far as Fort Hall and had been sold for a song there on account of these representations. Dr. Whitman saw that an immigration must come across the mountains in their wagons, or the country would be lost to the United States of America. The Hudson's Bay Company had already brought Red River farmers over the Northern route. Dr. Whitman determined in 1842 to return to Missouri, and bring over an emigration. He started early in that spring, and when he arrived in Missouri he told the people who wanted to come to be ready early in the spring of 1843, and he would pilot them through to the Columbia River. He hastened to the East, hardly visiting his friends or your mission house, and returned to Missouri early, and started with the emigrants. He led them to Fort Hall, and then the Hudson's Bay agent told them that it was impossible for the wagons to cross the Blue Mountains. They were weary with their march and, like mariners on a wreck in mid-ocean, they began to be disheartened. Dr. Whitman stood up before them and said, 'My countrymen, you have trusted me thus far and I have led you safely. If you will trust me still I will lead you to the Columbia River in your wagons.' They trusted him and came on. He rode before them day after day marking the route, setting up guides, and if a difficult precipice was to be passed he had the wagons taken to pieces and let down by ropes. He worked very hard, sleeping alone in advance, watching night and day, ministering to the sick, and caring for all like a father until he brought them to his station at Wailatpu. There he furnished the needy with flour, and beef, and vegetables, and kept some families of that and of every succeeding year's emigration over winter, receiving in return a little labor, or a note which has never been paid. The emigration of 1843 was a large one, and it has always been regarded as the one that saved Oregon to American interests. Besides all this, your missionary ladies were the first white ladies that ever crossed the Rocky Moun-
48 ACQUISITION OF OREGON
it
tains. They showed that white ladies could make the journey, and when, in 1836, they got to the Grand Rendezvous of the Fur Trading Companies in the mountains, one of the traders said, 'There is something which Dr. McL. cannot ship out of the country;' alluding to the fact that their successful journey would lead other families on.
"Now, if Government can afford to give the Methodist Mission $100,000 to send out a few families of missionaries, blacksmiths, carpenters, and teachers, by ship to save Oregon, then surely they ought to pay the losses of your mission which occurred in defense of the country. And if it was worth $100,000 for that small company of colonists to come, although they could not breast the tide of foreign influence, much more was it worth $30,000 or $40,000 to the Government to have your missionaries make the path for families and wagons, and bring over the mountains a large emigration, and feed and help them into the valley to live--which emigration did actually breast the tide and secure the possession of the territory to our nation. Very possibly Mr. Calhoun's masterly inactivity policy had reference to the Methodist Episcopal Mission colony, but it is quite certain that Oregon was saved by the masterly activity of Dr. Whitman. Some of the friends of the A. B. C. F. M. here believe that these losses can be recovered from the Government or saved from Indian payments and made to inure to the Board if the subject be fairly laid before the proper authorities at Washington, and we think it ought to be done."
Notes further that there is value in the Wailatpu Station, also Clearwater and Spokane Stations.
In P. S. "I write as the matter lies in my own mind, putting together the facts which have been stated to me, making my inferences from them. You will consider it for the Board only.
"Respecting the Methodist Episcopal Board abandoning the Dalles Station, Messrs, W. and E. (i, e., Walker and Eells) will swear that they received such a notice, and that Mr. Walker went down to buy the property with Dr. Whitman."
A. signs himself, "Rec'y. Agent A. B. C. F. M."
September 7, 1859.
ATKINSON.--TO AMERICAN BOARD. II.
Acknowledges receipt of your letter stating the Board had officially stated that it had no claim on Dalles Station.
ACQUISITION OF OREGON 49
Quotation:
"Two other matters still claim attention. First, the large account for losses which the Board has against the Government or the Indians we have conversed about. Brother Eells spent a day or two here recently discussing this and another matter named below. He agrees with me in the firm opinion that the Government ought and that it can be persuaded to pay those losses, perhaps reserving the amount from appropriations to the Cayuse Indians, who were the cause of them. Your missionaries saved Oregon to the nation, and in fact settled the question of immigration to it by land. Immigrants by sea could never have saved the country from the Hudson's Bay Company, who were the English agents to people it. This they were doing. Your missionary ladies were the first white women who ever crossed the Rocky Mountains. Dr. Whitman brought the first emigrants from the Rocky Mountains to this valley. The agent of the Hudson's Bay Company had stopped every wagon at Fort Hall before 1843. But for Dr. W. Mr. Webster would have bargained Oregon for Newfoundland, or the fishing interests there, and that with the approval of President Tyler.
"Sir G. Simpson was at Washington in 1842 (and before), making efforts to this effect, and constantly reporting that no wagon ever had or ever could reach our valley overland. Dr. Whitman found this state of things when he reached Washington in the winter of 1842-3, and after his hard trip over the mountains. Clad in his buffalo robe, he visited Mr. W., and by dint of earnest pleading and the assurance that he would lead a company in their wagons to the Columbia, he gained the promise that Mr. W. would proceed no farther in the above treaty. He went to Mr. Tyler and got the same promise from him. He made a hasty visit to Boston and to his friends, returned to the border of Missouri by March, and conducted the company which were waiting for him to Fort Hall. There they were told they could not go on with their wagons, but must exchange for horses. Dr. W. begged them to trust him, promising to lead them safely to the Columbia. He did so. That emigration by wagons settled the question for others which speedily followed. It gave the territory to our people in fact. Dr. W. and the mission supplied the emigrants that year and for subsequent years with flour, vegetables and beef, and saved many of them from starvation. He also furnished many of them with employment, and a home for a few months till they could get into this valley. It was not mission work but it was a work of humanity. The people were suffering. Many of the emigrants of 1847 had stopped at his station to winter and nearly all of them were murdered with him and Mrs. W. The provisions which Dr. W. furnished were in most cases never paid for. The people were not able then and after his
50 ACQUISITION OF OREGON
death and the discovery of the mines such changes occurred as to prevent collections.
"The massacre caused the destruction of nearly all the property at that station, at Clear Water, and the abandonment and loss of all the improvements at Chimakain. Papers in your possession, and which may yet be sent; will show how much was lost. The Indians caused this great destruction and waste. The Government valued Oregon, and freely expended money in negotiations, and as we are informed in helping the Methodist Mission. Ought they not to pay these losses to you who in fact made the country theirs, and without whose agent they would have lost it? Ought they not to do it by withholding the amount from Indian appropriations? Two great reasons urge this repayment, either of which is strong alone. I am aware that some if not all of these facts are known to you, but their connection and the importance of urging the matter, now the appropriations are being made, lead me to mention them." , Other subject is Eells' project of founding Whitman Seminary.
In these two versions, widely variant and both totally false in general and in details, we see the Whitman Saved Oregon Story in process of forming, in the minds of three credulous clergymen, all eager to get money from the National Government, and all profoundly ignorant alike of the long and brilliant diplomatic struggle for the possession of Oregon south of 49 degrees, which, since March, 1814, had engaged the best energies of our ablest diplomats --Madison, Monroe, John Q. Adams, Gallatin, Richard Rush, Henry Clay, Martin Van Buren, E. Livingstone, Daniel Webster, Henry Middleton and Edward Everett, and of the debates on Oregon in seventeen sessions of Congress prior to March, 1843, in which an overwhelming preponderance of sentiment, whether we consider the number of the speakers, or the weight of their arguments, or the influence they had on the public opinion of the nation as evidenced by the length of their terms in offices from members of the House of Representatives, or Governors of States, up to Senators, Cabinet members, Ministers to England or Russia, Vice-President or President, was in favor of the position that under no circumstances should we surrender to Great Britain any part of the continent south of forty-nine degrees; and also of the twelve unanimous Committee Reports to the Senate and House of Representatives, at those seventeen sessions, in which every phase of the Oregon question was thoroughly discussed by some of our ablest statesmen--Floyd of Virginia; Baylies, Reed, Richardson, J. Q. Adams, Edward Everett, and Cushing of Massachusetts; Benton and Linn of Missouri; Robt. J. Walker of Mississippi; Strong and Cambreling of New York; Calhoun of South Carolina; Polk of
ACQUISITION OF OREGON 51
Tennessee; Pendleton of Ohio; Reynolds of Illinois; Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire; Clay and Morehead of Kentucky; Buchanan of Pennsylvania; Ingersoll of Connecticut, and such a vast amount of information given as was never possessed by the Government, nor published for the information of the Nation about any other territorial acquisition we have ever made on this continent, even on the date when such other acquisition came fully into our possession.
It is evident to any one who will study the origin and development of the Whitman Legend that it would never have been heard of had the National Government paid the thirty or forty thousand dollars claimed by Spalding and Eells for the destruction of the mission, and allowed their claims for a mile square of land around each mission station.
Of that I have been satisfied for twenty years and more, but till I read Atkinson's letter of November 20, 1858, I had no idea that it sprung up first from a contest with the Methodists as to which of them "had saved Oregon," and so, as a reward, was entitled to the square mile townsite at The Dalles.
This makes the origin of the legend vastly more sordid than I had previously supposed, for while it seems certain that the American Board were justly entitled to receive from the National Government a fair compensation (to be withheld from any amount due the Cayuse Indians by treaty for their lands) for the property destroyed as the result of the Whitman massacre at their three stations of Wailatpu, Lapwai, and Tshimakain (though such fair compensation would not probably at the outside exceed one-fourth part and probably not one-eighth part of $40,000), and though it seems equally evident that they ought to have had a square mile of land allowed them at each of those stations (which they had established and occupied for eleven years, in the case of the first two, and nine years in the case of the third, when they were abandoned as the result of the Whitman massacre), it is equally evident that neither the Methodists nor the American Board had the least shadow of a claim on the square mile of land at The Dalles, concerning which the facts are as follows: March 22, 1838, Rev. Daniel Lee and Mr. H. K. W. Perkins, going by boat up the Columbia from the Willamette, arrived at The Dalles, to establish a Methodist mission there. (Cf. Lee and Frost's "Ten Years in Oregon," p. 152.) The Methodists continued to occupy it as a mission station till August, 1847, when they decided to abandon the mission, having, in May, 1847, offered it to Dr. Whitman "without charge for the buildings and improvements." (Cf. Whitman to D. Greene, May 12, 1847, American Board Mss.); and (Id. to Id. September 13, 1847) "The cost of this station (i. e. The Dalles)
52 ACQUISITION OF OREGON
was simply the cost of those things which could have been taken away in case of abandonment. The whole cost was $721.13. After paying the expenses, which is all that will appear in this year's bill, there will be a balance to be paid next year of $651.38." Dr. Whitman's nephew, Perrin B. Whitman, a boy of seventeen, was sent to occupy The Dalles Station, and three months later, shortly after the Whitman massacre, he abandoned it, and the American Board never afterward attempted to occupy it, nor did the Methodists ever again attempt to re-establish a mission there, but, in June, 1850, Mr. Roberts, the superintendent of the Methodist Missions in Oregon, returned to The Dalles, and surveyed the little more than a square mile of land (to be exact 643 37-100 acres), which he proceeded to claim for the Methodist Missionary Society, under the Act of August 14, 1848, organizing the Teritory of Oregon, which, among other things, declares, "That the title to the land not exceeding 640 acres now occupied as missionary stations among the Indian tribes in said Teritory, together with the improvements thereon, be confirmed and established in the several religious societies to which said missionary stations respectively belong," claiming that, though they abandoned the station, there was a contract with Dr. Whitman that the American Board should maintain a mission station there, and that in the event of its failure to do so the station should revert to the Methodist Missionary Society, and that it having been abandoned on account of Indian hostilities, they were constructively in possession though they never made the least attempt to actually reoccupy it as a missionary station.
On February 28, 1859, the American Board delivered to the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church a release of all their right and title to "the property in the vicinity of The Dalles on the Columbia River, known as the missionary property." When they applied to the Land Office in Oregon for a patent they were refused, on the ground that by no possible construction of this law, liberal or otherwise, could their claim be put under the provisions of the Act of August 14, 1848.
They then appealed the case to Washington, and somehow managed to induce Columbus Delano, Secretary of the Interior, to reverse all the decisions of the land officials who were thoroughly acquainted with the circumstances of the case, and on July 9, 1875, a patent was issued to the Methodist Missionary Society for the 643 37-100 acres.
They then proceeded to sell town lots till they had received $23,700 from the people of The Dalles, but their title was contested in the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Oregon, and their patent was declared invalid, and on appeal
ACQUISITION OF OREGON 53
to the United States Supreme Court that tribunal, by an unanimous decision, in 1883, held that the Circuit Court's decision was right, and that neither the Methodist Missionary Society, nor the American Board had any right to The Dalles Station, and that the quitclaim by the American Board of February 28, 1859, conveyed nothing because the American Board had no rights to be conveyed, that the patent issued by Secretary Delano was invalid, and that the judgment of the Circuit Court must be affirmed. (Cf. United States Supreme Court Reports, Vol. 107, pp. 336-347, Missionary Society v. Dalles, also (p. 347) Missionary Society v. Kelly; Missionary Society v. Wait).
How many thousands of dollars of the money contributed to the Missionary Society to spread the gospel among the heathen were expended in this long and expensive and inexcusable litigation is known only to the officers of the Missionary Society; but in the Journal of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, held in New York, May 1-31, 1888 (p. 441), is a "Report of Committee on Missions" which, after reciting briefly part of the above facts, recommends that the sum of $23,700 be appropriated to refund the bare principal of what it had received for lots sold at The Dalles, to the purchasers or their heirs in four annual payments, but without interest, which recommendation was adopted, and the $23,700 appropriated.
The attempt to hold this claim at The Dalles, following the equally unjustifiable attempt to hold thirty-six square miles of the best of the Willamette Valley, in which they were also beaten in the courts, created a very bitter feeling against the Methodist missionaries in Oregon on the part of many of the old settlers. (Cf. Annual Address of Hon. J. W. Nesmith, Tr. O. P. Association, 1880, pp. 21-22), quoted pp. 25-6-7, Pt. II, ante.
The claim of the Methodists that they saved Oregon is exactly as baseless as the claim that the American Board Mission, and particularly Dr. Whitman, did it.
The claim that the Government gave them $100,000 to go to Oregon as colonists has, according to H. H. Bancroft, this basis only, that the Government gave from the Secret Service fund $50 per head, to make up the charter price demanded for the ship Lausanne, which took out "the great reinforcement" to the Methodist Mission, which reached Oregon in May, 1840.
This was kept a secret till after the treaty was made fixing the boundary line. (Cf. H. H. Bancroft's "Oregon," Vol. 1, p. 176.) As there were fifty-two persons in this reinforcement (of whom sixteen were children), if the $50 per head covered all, the total amount paid was $2,600, and if only the adults, the amount paid was only $1,800, instead of $100,000.
54 ACQUISITION OF OREGON
This first version of the Whitman Legend says, "In 1842 Dr. Whitman saw, and your missionaries saw, that the tendency was to give Oregon to the English."
As to that, it is enough to say that in no diary or letter of Whitman, or of any other of these American Board missionaries, is there a single sentence prior to the time when Whitman--after finding the whole country aflame on the Oregon question--had reached St. Louis on his return to Oregon in May, 1843, which expresses the least interest in or concern about the political destiny of all, or of any part of the old Oregon Territory. Their letters to the American Board and their personal letters to their friends, together with fragments of their diaries still in existence, amount to the equivalent of 2,000 to 2,500 pages, letter size, of 200 words to the page, and in all this immense amount of manuscript (of which but little has yet been printed), there is not, I repeat, one sentence nor even one phrase in any sentence expressing the slightest interest in or concern about the political destiny of the whole, or of any part of the old Oregon Territory. After his visit to the States, when he found a general interest in and excitement about the speedy settlement of Oregon (as is evidenced by numerous newspaper and magazine articles in the years 1838 to 1843, and by debates in Congress, and two strong Committee Reports on Oregon to the Senate, and four to the House of Representatives, in those five years, of which more than 25,000 copies, aggregating more than 2,500,000 pages, had been printed and circulated by the National Government, but to which no word or act of his had contributed), Whitman did begin to express interest in the question of the settlement of Oregon by Americans; but if he, or any of his associates in the mission, had cared anything about it before May, 1843, they had all managed to completely conceal their feelings and wishes on the subject. Dr. Whitman and all the rest of them were as ignorant of the diplomacy of the subject as was Atkinson when he wrote this letter, and did not know that by the treaty of 1818 and its renewal in 1827 (commonly known as the first and second treaties of Joint Occupancy), it was specifically provided that while those treaties continued in force it was impossible that any settlements made or trading posts established could strengthen the English or weaken the American title, a position not only always positively asserted by all our Presidents, Secretaries of State and diplomatists who ever had occasion to allude to the matter--John Q. Adams, Albert Gallatin, Andrew Jackson, John C. Calhoun, George Bancroft, James Buchanan, Edward Everett and Edward Livingstone, but tacitly assented to by all the British diplomatists who ever negotiated on the Oregon question (no one of whom ever pretended to claim that the British title to any part
ACQUISITION OF OREGON 55
of the Oregon Territory had been, or could have been, in any way strengthened by any settlements made or posts established subsequent to October 20, 1818, the date of the first of those treaties), and in November and December, 1843, explicitly assented to by Lord Aberdeen, head of the British Foreign Office from 1841 till after the Oregon treaty was made in 1846. (Cf. on these authorities quoted by me, (Pt. I, p. 278, et seq., ante.)
"Hudson's Bay Co. employes were taking some of the finest lands in the valley and they were all English or subject to English authority." (Cf. on this, "Copy of a document found among the papers of the late Dr. John McLoughlin," Pt. I, p. 430, et seq., ante., which explains how this settlement began, and McLoughlin's policy respecting it.) These Hudson's Bay Co. settlers knew that the Willamette Valley where they settled was certain to be United States territory, being so informed by McLoughlin, and so careful was he in his selection of only the best and most thrifty of them to settle there, that in the fourteen years, between 1829 when Etienne Lucier began it, and the autumn of 1843, less than fifty of them all told were allowed by him to remain in Oregon and settle, when their terms with the Hudson's Bay Co. expired. (Cf. Nesmith's address before the Oregon Pioneer Association, Tr. of 1875, p. 56), while the adult Americans then in Oregon (before the 1843 migration arrived) were 107.
"He saw that the slow process of colonizing by sea would not save Oregon to the United States of America." No sane man ever proposed to colonize Oregon by sea; but certainly if that had been undertaken we had an enormous advantage over England (whose ports are 3,000 miles or more farther from Oregon than ours), at a time when ocean steamships were only beginning to be used, and several years before any migration even from Europe to our Atlantic ports were undertaken by steamers.
On this point the following ought to be conclusive:
(1) J. Q. Adams, Secretary of State, to Richard Rush, our Minister to England, July 22, 1823. (Am. State Papers For. Bel., Vol., Doc. 417.) (Quoted on p. 164 of Part I, ante.).
(2) Cushing's Report No. 101, House of Representatives, Twenty-fifth Congress, Third Session, Vol. 1, p. 16. (Of this report 10,000 copies, or 120,000 pages were ordered printed by the House of Representatives February 16, 1839.) (Quoted on pp. 203-4 of Part I, ante.)
(3) Sen. Ex. Doc. 39, Second Session, Twenty-first Congress, Pilcher's explorations, Ashley's letter, Rocky Mountain Fur Co.'s First Wagons to the Rocky Mountains (quoted on pp. 69-71; 71-74; 74-75; 193-4; 318-322 of Part I, ante.)
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(4) Sen. Ex. Doc. No. 174, Twenty-sixth Congress, First Session, February 12, 1840, being the first or Government edition of Greenhow's Histpry of Oregon. (Cf. quotations from it in Part I, pp. 204-9, and especially on 207-8, as to the ease of occupying Oregon overland.)
"The Hudson's Bay Co. had already brought Red River farmers over the Northern route." This relates to the 1841 migration of twenty-three heads of families, or in all eighty persons, men, women and children, brought by the Hudson's Bay Co., not as settlers, but "as half servants of the company" to work the farms of the Puget Sound Agricultural Company, on the Cowlitz River on the north side of the Columbia.
Being dissatisfied with the treatment they received, most of these Red River settlers went to the Willamette settlement, and are included (as were the Catholic missionaries) in Nesinith's before mentioned estimate of fifty British settlers in Oregon, when the 1843 migration arrived.
Of course this statement that the Red River settlers came before 1842, which is confirmed from six entirely independent sources, four of them strictly contemporaneous, viz.: (1) Spalding's Journal (Sept. 10, 1841); (2) Rev. E. Walker's Journal (Sept. 21, 1841); (3) Sir Geo. Simpson's Narrative of a Journey Round the World, 1841-42, p. 89) ; (4) Whitman's letter to Rev. D. Greene, Secretary, dated November 11, 1841, utterly annihilates the Spalding-Gray version of the origin of Whitman's ride, as due to a taunt at a dinner table at Ft. Walla Walla, about the first of October, 1842, anent the announcement that these Red River settlers had then just arrived at Ft. Colvile, 300 miles up the Columbia and would soon be down. Not only is this the version generally given by advocates of the Saving Oregon Story (Cf. Barrow's "Oregon," p. 162, Nixon's "How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon," p. 106; Craighead's "Story of Marcus Whitman," p. 60, also the editions of McMaster's "School History of the United States"; Montgomery's "Leading Facts in American History;" H. E. Scudder's "School History;" "The Expansion of the American People," by Edwin E. Sparks, p. 306, issued prior to the time (1899-1900) that the reading of my manuscripts convinced Messrs. McMaster, Montgomery, Scudder and Sparks that they had been imposed upon by Gray, Spalding, Barrows, Nixon and Craighead), but Mr. Atkinson himself, with that titter disregard for facts which is the characteristic of myth lovers the world over, adopted that version when Spalding and Gray published it in 1865-66, and spread it far and wide through the States, by his address at the annual meeting of the American Board at Norwich, Conn, (for which Cf. Missionary Herald, March, 1869, p. 76, "Fruits of the Oregon Mission"), and by his address before the
ACQUISITION OF OREGON 57
New York Chamber of Commerce, in 1867, and by his centennial address before the Pioneer Historical Society of Oregon at Astoria, February 22, 1876 (pamphlet, p. 8). This Pioneer Historical Society of Oregon, at Astoria, is an altogether different institution from either the Oregon Pioneer Association or the Oregon Historical Society.
It will be noticed that this 1858 version started Whitman to the States early in the spring of 1842, so as to give him time to work in the States arousing an interest in a migration to Oregon, whereas, as a matter of fact, it is absolutely certain that he did not start for the States till October 3, 1842, and did not reach the Western frontier of Missouri till February 15, 1843.
This version also gives an amusing illustration of the facility with which myth makers, depending on fancy instead of facts, not only exaggerate what actually was done by some members of a party, but transfer the whole performance from its actual doers to the hero of the myth.
When the 1843 migration reached the Wakarusa, a small tributary of the Kansas River, only fifty-seven miles west of Independence, Mo., this is what happened, according to Peter H. Burnett's letters, written from "Linnton, Oregon Territory, 1844," (no day or month date given, but certainly written the latter part of January or some time in February or March, 1844) "On the twenty-fourth of May we crossed the Walkalusia, a tributary of the Kansas, about 20 yards wide, clear running water over a pebbly bed. We let our wagons down the bank (which was very steep) with ropes. There was, however, a very practicable ford, unknown to us, about one hundred yards above." (This was published in New York Herald, January 6, 1845, and reprinted in Oregon Historical Quarterly, December, 1902, p. 409.)
The same experience is related a little more in detail in Part Two of "George Wilkes' History of Oregon," New York (May, 1845, p. 72) as follows:
"We encamped this evening on the banks of a beautiful little river called the Wapalusia, a tributary of the Kansas. It was but about 20 yards wide, its clear pellucid waters rolled over a pebbly bottom, and its abrupt banks were studded with the cottonwood, and which, on some portions of its course, intermingled their foliage across the stream.
"As soon as we had fallen into our regular disposition for the night, and staked our horses, several of us turned out with nets and fishing tackle, to sweep and to tickle the stream. But though we were successful in furnishing ourselves with some amusement, we were not so successful in the object of our endeavors--being
58 ACQUISITION OF OREGON
only fortunate enough to secure a few trout, most of which fell to the share of the female department of the expedition.
"On the morning of the 24th, we made preparations for crossing the stream, but in consequence of the steepness of its banks, were obliged to let our wagons down with ropes, and to draw them up in the same way. This was the first proof we had of the advantages possessed by the vehicles with falling tongues, for they were easily lifted out of danger, while the others ran against the bottom in their descent, and one of them was snapped off. Our cattle plunged into the water without any hesitation, and all crossing without difficulty, we were in a short time regularly following our onward movement. We might have avoided all the delay and trouble of this crossing, if we had searched a hundred yards farther up the stream, for there we would have found a practicable ford." This Part Two of Wilkes' was the whole of the series of letters covering "some 125 pages of foolscap," which Burnett ("Old Pioneer," p. 177) says he wrote "at Linnton in the winter of 1843-44," and of which the New York Herald published probably not more than one-fourth.
It seems almost incredible that this party of more than 250 men, of fully average intelligence, should overlook an easily practicable ford, only 100 yards above where they went to the trouble to let their wagons down and draw them up the steep banks with ropes, especially when they had fished the river the evening of the 23rd, and that they did so is evidence of the trouble caused by a total lack of any organization and the readiness with which an unorganized crowd, like a flock of sheep, follows its leader.
Here, however, was no "taking of wagons to pieces," and no "lowering them down difficult precipices," in the mountains beyond Ft. Hall, but a needless lowering of wagons by ropes down the steep bank of a little creek, in the prairie country of Eastern Kansas, and not only is there not in any contemporaneous account of that migration the least intimation that at any other point on the whole journey there was any necessity of repeating this lowering of wagons by ropes, but Burnett, in Wilkes' History (p. 88), says, "Our route, at any rate, can be so improved with a small amount of labor as to be quite practicable, and even as it was, we came through it with our wagons in perfect safety, without even unloading them at a single point. Many, if not most, of the bad hills we had passed could have been avoided or overcome with a very little labor."
But Whitman's three letters, dated ghawnee Indian Mission, May 27, 28, and 30, 1843, hereinafter printed, prove that he did not start from there (which was ten miles from where the migration rendezvoused and started) till May 31, so that so far was
ACQUISITION OF OREGON 59
Whitman from having anything to do with this solitary (and needless) instance of lowering the wagons (not taken to pieces) with ropes, not down precipices in the mountains between Ft. Hall and the Columbia, but down the steep banks of a creek in the prairies of Kansas, that when it was done he was (and continued for a full week thereafter) still resting at the Shawnee Indian Mission, about fifty miles behind the migration.
When the 1845 migration reached The Dalles, part of them under the lead of S. K. Barlow determined to make a wagon road across the Cascade Mountains into the Willamette Valley. They were unable to finish it till the spring of 1846, and a charter was granted to Mr. Barlow for it as a toll-road, but he was so public spirited that when the amount of tolls paid had covered the cost of building the road and keeping it in repair he donated it to the Territorial Government. Down Laurel Hill, on the western slope of the Cascades, it was common in the early years of this road for immigrants to attach a hawser to the rear of the wagon and take a turn or two around one of the great trees at the top and then "ease down" the hill by "paying out" the rope. But with this, which was more than 150 miles west of his mission, Whitman had as little to do as he had with the crossing of the Wakarusa by the 1843 migration.
Yet there can be no doubt but what it was a vague recollection of something he had heard or read about these two occurrences, which the myth loving mind of Atkinson seized upon, and transferred to Whitman, who had absolutely nothing to do with either of them. (Cf. for the history of the Barlow Toll Road, pp. 202-5, Vol. 2, Elwood Evans' "History of the Pacific Northwest," and for the lowering of wagons down Laurel Hill, an address by Gov. T. T. Geer on "Personal Reminiscences of Oregon," in Oregonian, August 12, 1901.) The various other equally ridiculous errors in this, so far as yet appears very first version of the "Whitman Saved Oregon" story, which has been unpublished now for more than forty-five years, such as that Whitman led the 1843 migration to Ft. Hall, that the Hudson's Bay Co.'s agent at Ft. Hall told them that it was impossible for wagons to cross the Blue Mountains, that Whitman made them a speech saying, "You have trusted me thus far and I have led you safely," that the emigration of 1843 saved Oregon to the American interests, that "Oregon was saved by the masterly activity of Dr. Whitman," will be exposed in later chapters.
Mr. Atkinson signed himself Recovery Agent for the A. B. C. F. M. It would be interesting to know what per cent, of the "twenty thousand to one hundred thousand dollars The Dalles townsite was estimated (by Mr. Atkinson) to be worth," the American Board had
60 ACQUISITION OF OREGON
agreed to pay him for "recovering" the property, to part of which, by the unanimous decision of .the United States Supreme Court, Dalles City had an indisputable title in trust for all its inhabitants, and to the rest of which, by the same decision one Windsor D. Bigelow was declared to have an equally good title, but to no part of which the same decision declared had the Methodist Missionary Society or the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions any right whatever.
As we have already seen, for some reason (which does not appear in the Supreme Court Report), on February 28, 1859, the A. B. C. F. M. quit-claimed to the Methodist Missionary Society all its interest in The Dalles property, and so when they replied to Mr. Atkinson's letter of November 20, 1858, they informed him that they had officially stated that they had no claim to The Dalles Station. As nothing equals nothing, they had--according to the unanimous decision of the United States Supreme Court--just as much right after they quit-claimed as they had before.
In his letter of September 7, 1859, there being no longer any chance for him to act as "recovery agent" for The Dalles Station, he turns his attention to the thirty to forty thousand dollar claim for property destroyed at the time of the Whitman massacre, and gives his second version of the "Whitman Saved Oregon" story, and while he drops some of the wilder and more easily proven false features of the first version, e. g., that Whitman started for the States early in the spring of 1842, that he took the wagons to pieces and let them down the precipices by ropes, and that the Methodists had received $100,000 from the Secret Service fund to assist them to colonize Oregon, and that the Methodist Episcopal agent said he could get a copy of the order at Washington for $100,000 of the Secret Service money, he introduces some new features equally false, if not quite as ridiculous. These features show the earmarks of Spalding's invention, for it will be noticed that, whereas, in the first version, there is not a word about Whitman having visited Washington and interviewed President Tyler and Secretary Webster, nor one word about Sir Geo. Simpson being in Washington at that time deceiving our statesmen about the accessibility of Oregon, nor about Webster being about to bargain Oregon off for Newfoundland and the fishing interests there, and that Whitman barely succeeded in stopping the treaty by promising to lead a migration through with wagons, which seem to have been Spalding's invention, or possibly Spalding and Gray's joint invention, these all appear in this second version, and will all be fully discussed hereinafter and absolutely disproved.
It will be noticed that in neither of these two versions does he even hint that any missionary business impelled Whitman's ride.
ACQUISITION OF OREGON 61
His plea at the end of each letter that on account of all this (which he imagines to be true, but all of which is as totally without foundation in fact as his assurance that "You have the only legal equitable rights to the claim, i. e., The Dalles Station), the Government should forthwith pay the Board's grossly extravagant claim of $30,000 to $40,000. for the destruction of property as the result of the Whitman massacre, reminds one of those clamorous patriots who shout most vociferously at every session of Congress for "the old flag and an appropriation."
(C) THE THIRD, OR S. A. CLARKE VERSION OF THIS
LEGEND.
In the Sacramento Union, November 16, 1864, appeared the first version of the "Whitman Saved Oregon" legend which has yet been found in print, and it is published in the reprint of my discussion of Prof. Bourne's "Legend of Marcus Whitman," at the end of this volume.
Though avowedly derived from Rev. H. H. Spalding, it was very brief and vague, and not signed by Spalding or any of his associates in the mission, and it attracted little attention.
(D) FOURTH, OR SPALDING-GRAY VERSION OF THE "WHITMAN SAVED OREGON" STORY.
This (which is the version which has been most generally accepted and published by the advocates of the Whitman Legend) is the first account which any of the members of the American Board Mission to the Oregon Indians ever printed, nor has any trace of any feature of the "Whitman Saved Oregon" story in any form ever been found in any diary kept or any letter written by any of them prior to this, which Rev. H. H. Spalding induced the Pacific--the California organ of the Congregationalists--to print, October 19, and November 9, 1865, as the tenth and eleventh of his two series of articles on "History of Indian Affairs Among the Nez Perces," and "Early Missionary Labors Among the Indians of Oregon." These articles, eleven in number, began in its issue of May 25, 1865, and several of the earlier numbers display such abundant proof of the lunacy of Mr. Spalding that it is surprising that even an intensely bigoted denominational organ should have printed them.
The ninth article (Pacific, September 28, 1865) is entitled, "Two Missionary Ladies Saved This Coast to the United States of America," and he claims in it that his wife and Mrs. Whitman did more than "any other two persons dead or alive" for the Great West, and that the establishment of the overland wagon road was due solely to his and Whitman's efforts, and it concludes as follows: "About that time" (i. e., 1842), "as events proved, that shrewd
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English diplomatist, Gov. Simpson, long resident on the Northwest coast, reached Washington, after having arranged that an English colony of some 150 souls should leave the Selkirk Settlement on the Red River of the Lakes in the spring of 1842, and cross the Rocky Mountains by the Saskatchawan Pass."
The following is a verbatim copy of the tenth and eleventh articles:
"EARLY MISSIONARY LABORS AMONG THE INDIANS OF
OREGON--NO. 3. "DR. WHITMAN'S WINTER
JOURNEY, 1843.
"The peculiar event that aroused Dr. Whitman and sent him through the mountains of New Mexico during that terrible winter of 1843 to Washington, just in time to save this, now so valuable country, from being traded off by Webster to the shrewd Englishman for a 'cod fishery' down East, was as follows: In October of 1842 our missions were called together on business at Wailatpu, Dr. Whitman's station, and while .in session Dr. W. was called to Fort Walla Walla to visit a sick man. While there the 'Brigade' for New Caledonia, fifteen batteaux, arrived at Walla Walla, on their way up the Columbia with Indian goods for the New Caledonia or Frazer River country, accompanied by some twenty chief factors, traders and clerks of the Hudson's Bay Co., and Bishop Demois, who had crossed the mountains from Canada in 1839, the first Catholic priest on this coast; Bishop Blanchett came at same time. While this great company were at dinner, including several priests, an express arrived from Fort Colville, announcing the, to them, glad news that the colony from Red River had passed the Rocky Mountains and were near Colville. An exclamation of joy burst forth from the whole table, at first unaccountable to Dr. Whitman, till a young priest, perhaps not as discreet as the older, and not thinking that there was an American at the table, sprung to his feet, and swinging his hand exclaimed, 'Hurrah for Columbia, Oregon; America is too late; we have got the country.' In an instant, as by instinct, Dr. Whitman saw through the whole plan clear to Washington, Fort Hall and all. He immediately rose from the table and asked to be excused, sprang upon his horse, and in a very short time stood with his noble 'cayuse,' white with foam, before his door, and without stopping to dismount he replied to our anxious inquiries with great decision and earnestness, 'I am going to cross the Rocky Mountains and reach Washington this winter, God carrying me through, and bring out an emigration over the mountains next season, or this country is lost.' The events soon developed that if that whole-souled American missionary was not the 'son of a prophet' he guessed right when he said a deep
ACQUISITION OF OREGON 63
laid scheme was about culminating, which would deprive the United States of this Oregon, and it must be broken at once or the country is lost. We united our remonstrances with those of Sister Whitman, who was in deep agony at the idea of her husband perishing in the snows of the Rocky Mountains. We told him that it would be a miracle if he escaped death, either from starving or freezing, or the savages, or the perishing of his horses, during the five months that would be required to make the only possible circuitous route, via Fort Hall, Taos, Santa Fe, and Bent's Fort. His reply was that of my angel wife six years before: 'I am ready not to be bound only but to die at Jerusalem or in the snows of the Rocky Mountains for the name of the Lord Jesus or my country. I am a missionary, it is true, but my country needs me now.' And taking leave of his missionary associates, his comfortable home and his weeping companion, with but little hope of seeing them again in this world, he entered upon his fearful journey last of October, 1842, and reached the city of Washington last of March, 1843, with his face, nose, ears, hands, feet and legs badly frozen. It is well that the good man did not live to see himself and faithful associates robbed and their character slandered by that very Government he was ready to lay down his life for. It would have been to him, as it is to me, the most mournful event of my life.
"Nothing but the continued outstretched hand of God and his clothing of buffalo hides, with the fur inside, and his unyielding spirit, saved him from perishing from the intense cold.
"On that terrible 13th of January, 1843, when so many in all parts of our country froze to death, against the advice of his Mexican guide the Doctor left his camp in a deep gorge of the mountains of New Mexico, in the morning, to pursue his journey. But on reaching the divide the cold became so intense, and the animals actually becoming maddened by the driving snows, the Doctor saw his peril, and attempted to retrace his steps, and if possible to find his camp, as the only hope of saving their lives. But the drifting snows had totally obliterated every trace, and the air becoming almost as dark as night by the maddening storm, the Doctor saw that it would be impossible for any human being to find camp, and commending himself and distant wife to his covenant-keeping God, he gave himself, his faithful guide and animals, up to their snowy grave, which was fast closing about them, when the guide, observing the ears of one of the mules intently, bent forward, sprang upon him, giving him the reins, exclaimed, 'this mule will find the camp if he can live to reach it.' The Doctor mounted another and followed. The faithful animal kept on down the divide a short distance and then turned square down the steep mountain. Through deep snowdrifts, over frightful preci-
64 ACQUISITION OF OREGON
pices, down, down he pushed, unguided and unurged, as if he knew the lives of the two men and the fate of the great expedition depended upon his endurance and his faithfulness, and into the thick timber, and stopped suddenly over a bare spot, and as the Doctor dismounted--the Mexican was too far gone--behold the very fireplace of their morning camp! Two brands of fire were yet alive, and smoking; plenty of timber in reach. The buffalo hides had done much to protect the Doctor, and providentially he could move about and collect dry limbs, and soon had a rousing fire. The guide revived, but both were badly frozen. They remained in this secluded hole in the mountains several days till the cold and the storm abated.
"At another time, with another guide, on the head waters of the Arkansas, after traveling all day in a terrible storm, they reached a small river for camp, but without a stick of wood anywhere to be had except on the other side of the stream, which was covered with ice, but too thin to support a man erect. The storm cleared away and the night bid fair to be intensely cold, and besides they must have fire to prepare bread and food. The Doctor took his ax in one hand, a willow stick in the other, and laid himself upon the thin ice, and spreading his legs and arms he worked himself over on his breast, cut his wood and slid it over, and returned in the same way.
"That was the last time the Doctor enjoyed the luxury of his axe, so indispensable at that season of the year in such a country. That night a wolf poked his nose under the foot of the bed where the axe had been placed for safe keeping, and took it off, for a leather string that had been wrapped around the split helve."-- Pacific, October 19, 1865.
"EARLY MISSIONARY LABORS AMONG THE INDIANS OF
OREGON.--4.
"DR. WHITMAN'S SUCCESSFUL MISSION AT WASHINGTON.
'•On reaching the settlements, Dr. Whitman found that many of the now old Oregonians--Waldo, Applegate, Hamtree, Keyser, and others--who had once made calculations to come to Oregon, had abandoned the idea because of the representations from Washington that every attempt to take wagons and ox teams through the Rocky and Blue Mountains to the Columbia had failed. Dr. Whitman saw at once what the stopping of wagons at Fort Hall every year meant The representations purported to come from Secretary Webster, but really from Gov. Simpson, who, magnifying the statements of his chief trader, Grant, at Fort Hall, declared the Americans must be going mad, from their repeated fruitless at-
ACQUISITION OF OREGON 65
tempts to take wagons and teams through the impassable regions to the Columbia, and that the women and children of those wild fanatics had been saved from a terrible death only by the repeated and philanthropic labors of Mr. Grant at Fort Hall in furnishing them with horses. The Doctor told these men as he met them that his only object in crossing the mountains in the dead of winter, at the risk of his life, and through untold sufferings, was to take back an American emigration that summer through the mountains to the Columbia with their teams. The route was practicable. We had taken our wagon, our cattle, and our families through, seven years before. They had nothing to fear. But to be ready on his return. The stopping of wagons at Fort Hall was a Hudson's Bay Co. scheme to prevent the settling of the country by Americans, till they could settle it with their own subjects from the Selkirk Settlement. The news spread like fire through Missouri. The Doctor pushed on to Washington and immediately sought an interview with Secretary Webster--both being from the same State--and stated to him the object of his crossing the mountains, and laid before him the great importance of Oregon to the United States. But Mr. Webster lived too near Cape Cod to see things in the same light with his fellow statesman who had transferred his worldly interests to the Pacific Coast. He awarded sincerity to the missionary, but could not admit for a moment that the short residence of six years could give the Doctor the knowledge of the country possessed by Gov. Simpson, who had almost grown up in the country, and had traveled every part of it and represents it as one unbroken waste of sand deserts and impassable mountains, fit only for the beaver, the gray bear, and the savage. Besides, he had about traded it off with Gov. Simpson, to go into the Ashburton Treaty, for a cod fishery on Newfoundland.
"The Doctor next sought an interview with President Tyler, who at once appreciated his solicitude and his timely representations of Oregon, and especially his disinterestedness through hazardous undertaking to cross the Rocky Mountains in the winter to take back a caravan of wagons. He said that, although the Doctor's representations of the character of the country, and the possibility of reaching it by wagon route, were in direct contradiction to those of Gov. Simpson, his frozen limbs were sufficient proof of his sincerity, and his missionary character was sufficient guarantee for his honesty, and he would therefore as President rest upon these and act accordingly; would detail Fremont with a military force to escort the Doctor's caravan through the mountains; and no more action should be had towards trading off Oregon till he could hear the result of the expedition. If the Doctor could establish a wagon route through the mountains to the Columbia River, pro-
66 ACQUISITION OF OREGON
nounced impossible by Gov. Simpsori and Ashburton, he would use his influence to hold on to Oregon. The great desire of the Doctor's American soul, and Christian withal, that is, the pledge of the President that the swapping of Oregon with England for a cod fishery, should stop for the present, was attained, although at the risk of life, and through great sufferings and unsolicited, and without the promise or expectation of a dollar's reward from any source. And now, God giving him life and strength, he would do the rest; that is, connect the Missouri and Columbia Rivers with a wagon track so deep and plain that neither national envy nor sectional fanaticism would ever blot it out. And when the 5th of September, 1843, saw the rear of the Doctor's caravan of nearly two hundred wagons with which he started from Missouri last of April, emerge from the western shade of the Blue Mountains upon the plains of the Columbia, the greatest work was finished ever accomplished by one man for Oregon on this coast. And through that great emigration during that whole summer, the Doctor was their everywhere present angel of mercy, ministering to the sick, helping the weary, encouraging the wavering, cheering the mothers, mending wagons, setting broken bones, hunting stray oxen, climbing precipices, now in the rear, now at the front; in the rivers looking out fords through the quick sands; in the deserts looking out water; in the dark mountains looking out passes; at noontide or midnight, as though those thousands were his own children, and those wagons and those flocks were his own property. Although he asked not and expected not a dollar as a reward from any source, he felt himself abundantly rewarded when he saw the desire of his heart accomplished, the great wagon route over the mountains established and Oregon in a fair way to be occupied with American settlements and American commerce. And especially he felt himself doubly paid, when, at the end of his successful expedition, and standing alive, at his home, again on the banks of the Walla Walla, these thousands of his fellow summer pilgrims, way worn and sun browned, took him by the hand and thanked him with tears for what he had done.
"During the Doctor's absence, his flour mill, with a quantity of grain, had been burned, and consequently he found but a small supply at his station on his return, raised by Mr. Geiger, a young missionary. But what he had in the way of grain, garden vegetables and cattle, he gladly furnished the needy emigrants at the very low figure of the Willamette prices, which was six hundred per cent, lower than what they had been compelled to pay at Forts Hall and Boise, and one-half lower than they are today in the same country. And this was his practice every year till himself and wife and fourteen emigrants were murdered in the fall of 1847,
ACQUISITION OF OREGON 67
because, as Gen. Brarnlette says, 'they were American citizens,' and not, as I am bold to say, and can prove, because he was a physician. Shame on the American that will intimate such a thing. The General, who is the Vicar General of the papal hosts on this coast, does not thank you for such an excuse. He tells you plainly that it was to break up the American settlements on this coast.
"Often the good Doctor would let every bushel of his grain go to the passing emigrants in the fall, and then would have to depend on me for breadstuff's for the winter and whole year till next harvest, for his own large family and the scores of emigrants who every year were obliged to stop at his station on account of sickness or given out teams. Although the Doctor had done so much for his country, it seems his blood was necessary to arouse the Government to take formal possession of this coast; as it was his death by savages that sent the devoted J. L. Meek over the mountains to Washington in the spring of 1848, to beg the Government in behalf of the citizens of this coast, to send us help and to extend its jurisdiction over us. That prayer was answered by act of Congress, approved August 14th, 1848."--Pacific, November 9, 1865.
It will be noticed that this original form of the Spalding-Gray version made Whitman arrive in Washington, D. C., "the last of March," (and even if he went to Washington before going to Boston --which is extremely improbable--he could not, as the world then was, have reached Washington before the last of March, since lie did not reach Westport, Mo., according to his own statement (quoted in the next chapter) till February 15, and as the ice did not break up in the Missouri after that uncommonly severe winter till April 11, 1843 (Cf. Old Pioneer, p. 102), he was obliged to go on from there by saddle horse to St. Louis, and by stage from St. Louis). As the 27th Congress had expired by limitation of law March 4,1843, and there was no special session of the 28th Congress called, nor any talk of calling one, there was no conceivable reason why he should have gone to Washington till after he had been to Boston to see whether or not he could save the mission.
Furthermore, to go to Washington first would be to appear there as an unknown man, an Indian missionary whose six years' labors had been so unsatisfactory to the American Board that they had ordered his station discontinued, and directed him to go to Tshimakain, 165 miles out of the line of travel for migrations from the States to Oregon--an order which he and all his associates deemed equivalent, if enforced, to the destruction of the mission; whereas, if he could go to Boston first and secure, as he did, the rescission of that destructive order, and obtain as he easily could, letters of introduction to prominent public men in Washington, he
68 ACQUISITION OF OREGON
would be able to appear there with the prestige resulting from having induced the American Board to reconsider its ill advised order, and leave him in his station at Wailatpu, on the line of travel of the Oregon migrations, and so able to render them some service by furnishing them supplies.
The claim that he went to Washington first has not a particle of contemporaneous evidence to support it, but rests only on the varying testimony of people who thought (or imagined), from twenty-three to forty years after the event, that Whitman told them so after his return. But in every case in which we can compare these "recollections" with contemporaneous documents, they are proved to be incorrect. I have spent much time and considerable money in trying to trace Whitman's journey, but can find no contemporaneous record of any dates between February 15, at Westport, Mo., and March 29, at New York City, and March 30 to April 8, at Boston, and May 12, at St. Louis. It is altogether probable that he went to Washington from Boston, as he seems to have reached his home in Rushville. N. Y., about April 18th.
In the S. S. Times of January 24, 1903, a letter from Rev. E. E. Strong, D. D., editorial secretary of the American Board C. F. M., containing the following: "In response to your letter of December. 31, I may add a little to the statements made in my letter which was presented in the Sunday School Times (of November 15, 1902) affirming that there is nothing in the records of our American Board which militates against the claim made that Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon to the Union."
The precise expression used by Dr. Strong in the article in the Sunday School Times of November 15, 1902, was as follows: "But I think I can say that, in what records we have, there is nothing to contradict the common version of the Whitman Story."
"The records of the Board show that Dr. Whitman came to Washington, and that he subsequently appeared in Boston, very much to the surprise of the secretaries, having left his mission without the authorization of the Committee. . . . The records of the Committee (i. e., the Prudential Committee of the American Board) at its meeting of April 4, 1843 . . . mention the presentation by Dr. Whitman of his plans for taking with him on his return to the mission, a company of 'intelligent and pious laymen to settle at or near the mission station, but without expense to the Board or connection with it.' This plan is given approval if the right men can be found."
All that needs to be said about this--the only scheme for a migration to Oregon which the records of the Board and also the first account ever given of the origin and purpose of Whitman's ride, in the Missionary Herald for September, 1843, ascribe to
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Whitman--is: First. That it is precisely the same scheme as stated in Walker's letter of October 3, 1842, to D. Greene (for which Whitman did not wait as he had agreed to do). (Cf. pp. 135 infra.) Second. That it was distinctly a scheme to strengthen the mission, and not to save Oregon to the United States; and, third, that, though Whitman often mentioned it in subsequent letters, as a desirable thing to be accomplished, it amounted to absolutely nothing, since no part of it was ever carried into effect.
During the whole continuance of the mission there was no semblance of a white settlement at or near any of the mission stations of the American Board, nor was there, at any time during the existence of the missions, a single white family not employed by or directly connected with the mission stations settled at any point in the old Oregon Territory east of the settlements in the Willamette Valley (which was about 250 miles west of Whitman's station) except the families connected from 1838 till the summer of 1847 with the Methodist Mission, at The Dalles, about 145 miles west of Whitman's station.
As we have seen there were a few families of the various migrations who stayed over the Winter after their arrival, with the Whitmans, and were employed by the mission, but they invariably went on to the Willamette in the spring, except that in a very few cases they remained permanently in the employ of the mission.
The only other whites in all that vast region east of the Willamette till some years after the mission came to an end were the fur traders, and a few "squaw men," i. e., men who had not only married squaws, but who lived with and like the Indians, and were so far from being either "pious" or "intelligent" that they were commonly regarded as more degraded and hopeless than the Indians themselves.
Being satisfied that the records of the American Board do not contain a single sentence giving the least support to the idea that Whitman went to Washington before he went to Boston, I wrote to Dr. Strong, July 22, 1903, asking him for the proof of his statement, and received a reply from Rev. James L. Barton, D. D. (one of the three "corresponding secretaries" of the Board), stating that Dr. Strong was in South Africa, and that he (Dr. B.) could give me no definite information on the subject.
No reply being received from Dr. Strong, after more than a year and a half, I again wrote to him, on February 18, 1905, stating that I did not believe that anything could be produced from the contemporaneous records of the American Board that would show that Whitman went first to Washington, as I had found nothing of that kind, nor had Prof. Bourne, and it was evident that Dr. Mowry had not, or he would have published it, and asking if any
70 ACQUISITION OF OREGON
such document existed that he send me a copy of the same, with bill for copying. To this Dr. Strong replied, under date of March 15, 1905, as follows:
"You quote from, a letter of mine in the Sunday School Times, which I wrote in reply to an inquiry from the editor of that paper, whether there was in the records of the American Board anything which militated against the claim made that Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon to the Union. I replied in the negative. ....
"The point in mind in writing the letter was that the Minutes of the Committee and the letters on file show that Whitman appeared before the Prudential Committee very unexpectedly, but succeeded in gaining its approval of his plan of taking, on his return across the mountains, a company who should settle in Oregon.
On examining the records today in view of your inquiry, I find that I overstated what they show. I should have said the records of the Board show that subsequent to the time when it is claimed that he went to Washington, he appeared in Boston, very much to the surprise of the secretaries, having left his mission without the authorization of the Committee. The records of the Board, so far as I have examined them, do not show how Dr. Whitman came from Oregon to Boston, whether via Washington or by some other route. ... I regret that in my letter to Dr. Trumbull when intending to say merely that the records of the Board did not militate against any of the claims made as to Dr. Whitman's interview with Mr. Webster, etc., I inadvertently said that these records show that he went to Washington before coming to Boston. . . ."
As to Dr. Strong's opinions that "nothing in the records of the American Board contradicts the common version of the Whitman story," and that "nothing in the records of the American Board militates against the claim made that Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon to the Union," it is sufficient to say that in the opinion of such historians as the late Hon. George Bancroft, the late Prof. John Fiske, the late Horace E. Scudder (who was the editor of Barrow's "Oregon"), Profs. John B. McMaster, of the University of Pennsylvania; Francis N. Thorpe; Harry Pratt Judson, of the University of Chicago; Andrew C. McLaughlin, of the University of Michigan; Edward Channing, of Harvard University; Allen C. Thomas, of Haverford College; Wilbur P. Gordy, Superintendent of Schools, of Springfield, Mass.; and many others to whom I have submitted in typewritten manuscript parts of the extracts from the records of the American Board, which are herein for the first time made accessible to the public, those records not only "contradict the common version of the Whitman Story," but they utterly annihilate every claim made for any political or saving Oregon theory of Whit-
ACQUISITION OF OREGON 71
man's ride, and also every claim that he was in any sense a great man, or the possessor of the qualities needful for a leader of men. These letters of Dr. Strong to the Sunday School Times, and his tardy and reluctant admission to me that he had written to the Times without any careful examination of the contemporaneous original documents in his own office, together with the following correspondence with him, furnish a melancholy example of the recklessness with regard to facts that has characterized the actions of the officials of the American Board in common with all the other advocates of the Whitman Legend, since it was first launched upon a credulous public, who were expected to accept it without investigation because it was told by sundry missionaries and vouched for in the December, 1866, Missionary Herald by the officers of the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions.
"1882 W. 22d St., Chicago, 111., July 22, 1905. "Rev. E. E. Strong, D. D., "Dear Sir:--
"I am obliged by your letter of March 15th, 1905, in which you admit the correctness of my position that there is nothing in the records of the American Board that shows whether Marcus Whitman went to Washington before he went to Boston, and I much regret that you did not examine those documents with more care before writing your letter to the Sunday School Times.
"On pages 76, 79, of my little book, 'History vs. the Whitman Saved Oregon Story' (copy of which I mail to you herewith under separate cover), you will find my discussion of that point. I do not believe there is the remotest probability that he went to Washington till after he had been to Boston, and it is absolutely certain from the letters of President Tyler to his son, Robert, quoted by me on pages 35-36-37 of that little book, that neither Dr. Whitman, nor anybody else, in the spring of '43 or at any other time during Tyler's administration, changed in any manner or to any extent Tyler's opinions about what should be done concerning Oregon, as he held exactly the same opinions on December 11th, and 23d, 1845, and January 1st, 1846, that he held in 1842-43.
"Furthermore, the evidence (which I have been the first to bring into the discussion of the question), in Choate's two speeches, on January 18, and February 3, 1843, in which he expressedly declared that he was authorized and requested by Webster himself to state that he, Webster, had neither made, nor entertained, nor meditated a proposition to accept any line south of the 49th parallel as a negotiable boundary line for the United States, for the boundary of Oregon is, of itself, enough to utterly overthrow the whole Whitman Saved Oregon Story, and prove beyond any possibility
72 ACQUISITION OF OREGON
of dispute, that there was not the slightest danger of the loss of any part of Oregon south of 49 degrees if Marcus Whitman (of whose existence even, there is no proof that either Webster or Tyler were then aware), had never been born. In a later speech Choate explained that he had written a letter to Webster asking precisely that point, i. e., whether Webster had, as Benton declared, proposed to yield Oregon as far south as the Columbia, and that Webster had replied as stated in Choate's speeches.
"If there existed no other evidence but these two speeches of Choate--Webster's lifelong, most intimate, personal and political friend--they would themselves, to any one who knows the laws of evidence utterly annihilate the Whitman Legend as far as any saving Oregon results of his ride were concerned.
"As to the origin and purpose of his ride, your archives contain the proof which has been sufficient to convince every real historian (and every one making any pretensions to being a historian always excepting W. A. Mowry)--who has read the typewritten copies that I circulated in manuscript some years since, that the sole purpose of Whitman in making that ride was to save his mission from destruction by securing, as it did, the rescission of the order of your Board, made in February, '42, and which was the only object considered at the special meeting of the mission on September 26, 27, 1842, except W. H. Gray's dishonorable desertion of the mission (which they were compelled to consider then because it was done at exactly that time, Gray having returned from Willamette on the 22d of September, and announced that he had arranged to leave the mission).
"You seem still to think that Marcus Whitman was a great patriotic hero.
"If so, why is your Board afraid to print his letters and those of his associates between 1840 and 1848, and especially the letters between March 1, 1840, and March 1, 1843, which, in the minds of all who have read them--always excepting W. A. Mowry--show conclusively that Whitman was not a great man, was sadly lacking in the qualities needful for a leader of men, was in no sense specially patriotic, or concerned about the opening of a wagon road to Oregon, and was not by anything in his career entitled to any other or higher commendation than what the Missionary Herald, gave him in the meager biographical sketch comprising only 162 words with which it prefaced the account of his massacre in its July, 1848, number, to wit, 'He was a diligent and self-denying laborer in the work to which he consecrated his time and energies." It is now more than six years since I wrote to Dr. W. A. Mowry offering not only to rest the whole Whitman matter on the correspondence of Whitman and his associates if he would induce your
ACQUISITION OF OREGON 73
Board to print it, but also to myself contribute one-half of the needful expense of its publication as stated on pages 47, 48 of my 'History us. The Whitman Saved Oregon Story/ and lest it should be claimed that this offer was never brought to your attention by Dr. Mowry, I now and hereby call your attention to it, though I have not the slightest belief that your Board will ever accept the offer, and print the certain and indisputable evidence therein stated as to the career of Marcus Whitman.
"When was it ever known before that unwise friends of a common place man seeking to make a great patriotic and national hero of him, carefully suppressed, not only his own correspondence in their possession, but that of the men most intimately associated with him, and sought to build up his fictitious reputation on what those associates thought they remembered from twenty-three to forty years after the event, although their alleged recollections are utterly irreconcilable with their contemporaneous correspondence and diaries?
"I also enclose a little pamphlet just issued by me entitled, 'The Hudson's Bay Co.'s Archives Furnish No Support to the Whitman Saved Oregon Story,' which I commend to your careful perusal if you desire to know the truth about the various points discussed in it.
"In writing this letter, as in all that I have written on the Whitman matter, I have had constantly before my mind the following quotations: 'Great men never fear the truth, and wish nothing to be concealed from them.' (Montesquieu.)
"I have been obliged to mention all these facts because they are true, and because the first duty of a writer who respects himself is not to conceal the truth." (Lomenies "Beaumarchais and His Times," Vol. 3, p. 224.)
"In great haste, I am,
"Yours for the truth of history,
(Signed) "WM. I. MARSHALL."
"American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. "Congregational House, No. 14 Beacon Street,
"Boston, Mass., July 25, 1905. "Mr. Wm. I. Marshall,
"1882 W. 22d St., Chicago, 111. "My Dear Sir:--
"Your letter of July 22d I find on my table this morning, after a brief absence from my office. The little book and pamphlet which •you say you have sent me have not reached me as yet. Very likely they will do so soon, and I shall surely be glad to read them.
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"My only purpose in writing now is to acknowledge your letter and to make brief comment on two suggestions that you make in your letter. I have never pretended to go into this controversy in regard to Whitman's character and deeds, but there are two points upon which I think I can speak positively.
"First--that the American Board has never spent time or strength, or in any wise employed others, to make a hero out of Dr. Whitman. The Board has had other work to do than either to write up or write down any of its missionaries. What you regard as the 'legend' of Marcus Whitman was never inspired by or pushed into prominence by the Board or its officials; indeed, the constant wonder expressed to us is that the American Board has not done a great deal more than it ever has done in honor of Dr. Whitman. "Second--your ask, 'Why is your Board afraid to print his (Whitman's) letters and those of his associates between 1840 and 1848, etc?' Are we so afraid? What makes you think so? I suppose your answer will be that you judge so from the fact that we have not printed them. Why should we print them ? The Board is not a historical society, but is engaged in preaching the gospel to men of this generation.
"So far as I know there has been no hindrance whatever to historical students in the examination of all correspondence between the Board and its missionaries in relation to the Oregon Mission. There has not been the slightest thought of covering up anything in our archives. It is not our business to go into this controversy, either to save or destroy a reputation.
"Now please do not think me indifferent to the truth of history. I fully agree with the quotations you make from Montesquieu and Beaumarchais as to 'truth in history,' and the two truths which I now wish to insist upon are these:
"1. That the American Board has not sought, and is not now seeking to make a great hero out of Marcus Whitman, and
"2. That the American Board is not afraid to permit what facts it has in its possession in regard to his case to be made known to the world.
"I am very truly yours,
(Signed) "E. E. STRONG."
"1882 W. 22d St., Chicago, Ill., Dec. 10, 1905. "Rev. E. E. Strong, D. D.,
"Editorial Secretary, A. B. C. F. M.,
"Boston, Mass. "Dear Sir:--
"Great pressure of other work has prevented an earlier reply to yours of July 25th last.
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"In mine to you of July 22d last, I had called to your attention my offer made in a letter some six years ago to Dr. W. A. Mowry, that if he would induce your Board to print the correspondence of Dr. Marcus Whitman and his associates in your Oregon Mission, I would not only rest the whole Whitman case on that correspondence, but contribute f 500.00 toward its publication, which certainly would be half of the needful expense. To this, in yours of July 25th, you reply, 'Why should we print them? The Board is not a historical society, but is engaged in preaching the gospel to men of this generation.'
"This reminds me of an incident in the career of Rev. H. H. Spalding as follows:
"If you will consult the Home Missionary, April, 1852, page 276, you will find a letter from Mr. Spalding, written soon after Anson Dart had asked to have him superseded as a sub-Indian agent, on account of his neglect of duty. In this he accuses Dr. Dart of having made a treaty with the tribes of the Middle District (i. e., between the Cascade and Blue Mountains,) an article of which provides that no American (i. e., Protestant) missionary shall ever again enter their country.
"Mr. Spalding follows this statement of alleged historical fact with several paragraphs of hysterical assertions about his feelings, including the following:
" 'I lifted up my lamentations amid the wild roar of the ocean's waves. I wept for the poor Nez Perces. ... I wept as I called to mind the many years of hard labor, etc. ... all apparently laid a sacrifice at the bloody shrine of the Papacy, by the baptized hands of an American officer, the husband of a Presbyterian wife! The superintendent was of course influenced to this anti-American step by the same influences which instigated the poor benighted Indians to butcher their best friends. . . . Henceforth my field of labor is among my countrymen in this valley. I am now about my master's business--preaching the Gospel.'
"Fortunately for the establishment of the truth of history Dr. Dart happened to be in New York when this was published, and immediately wrote to the Home Missionary a letter, which they were constrained to publish in their May issue, declaring that there was 'not a word of truth in what Mr. Spalding says, that not only had no such treaty been made with the Indians of the Middle District, but no treaty whatever had been made with the Indians of that district, and that, in the various treaties made with the Indians of Western Oregon, there was no such provision.' Not only that, but if you will refer to the letter (No. 173, Vol. 248) of Rev. E. Walker, to Rev. S. B. Treat, dated December 7, 1857, you will find that Mr. Spalding himself knew and admitted to Mr. Walker that no such
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treaty was made and that it was not in the power of Dr. Dart to make such a treaty.
"Returning now to your letter of July 25th, you write: " 'The American Board has never spent time or strength, or in any wise employed others, to make a hero out of Dr. Whitman. The Board has had other work to do than either to write up or write down any of its missionaries. What you regard as the 'legend' of Marcus Whitman was never inspired by or pushed into prominence by the Board or its officials. Indeed, the constant wonder expressed to us is that the American Board has not done a great deal more than it ever has done in honor of Dr. Whitman.'
"This statement, I regret to say, is as directly contrary to the facts as your two previous ones printed in the Sunday School Times of January 28, 1903, that 'There is nothing in the records of the American Board which militates against the claim that Marcus Whitman saved Oregon to the Union.'
"And 'The records of the Board show that Dr. Whitman came to Washington and that he subsequently appeared in Boston.'
"Every person who has made a study of the Whitman controversy, and to whom I have shown this paragraph in your letter of July 25th, is as much astonished at it as I am.
"If you are not a historical society, why did you assume the functions of a historical society, and print, in the Missionary Herald of December, 1866, the Rev. C. Eells' absolutely false version of the origin, purpose and results of Whitman's ride? The Whitman Saved Oregon Story had been launched by Spalding in October and November, 1865, in two articles in the Pacific. These were not noticed at all by the Missionary Herald, because, as Treat told Rev. G. H. Atkinson, Spalding was untrustworthy; and then Atkinson suggested to Treat to write to C. Eells, which Treat did in February, '66, and on May 28, '66, Eells wrote his ingeniously false account of the origin of that ride, saying that Whitman called the mission together to consider a settled purpose of his to go to the States. That they debated that for part of two days and reluctantly consented to his going and that the understanding of all the members of the mission was, that his single purpose in making that ride was to save Oregon to the United States.
"As this statement could not be disproved absolutely without a careful study of the records of the mission in your office, while the Spalding-Gray version could easily be shown to be pure fiction without consulting your records, it was the publication of this equally fictitious, but not so easily provable fiction which galvanized into new life the already moribund Whitman Saved Oregon Story.
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"Why, also, if not a historical Society and not interested in supporting the Whitman fiction, did the Missionary Herald print, in March, 1869, (page 76) under the title, 'Fruits of the Oregon Mission,' Rev. G. H. Atkinson's address at the annual meeting of the American Board at Norwich, Conn., exploiting the Whitman myth? This address it is explicitly stated was delivered at the request of Treat. If the American Board or its officials never 'pushed into prominence the legend of Marcus Whitman,' how did it happen that the Missionary Herald again, in May, 1870, (page 143) lauded Whitman as the saver of Oregon?
"And how did it happen that in February, 1885, and again in September, 1885, pages 55 and 346, it printed two long and sophistical defenses of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story, by Rev. Thomas Laurie, D. D., full of the same suppressions of fact, perversions of evidence and misquotations of authorities that have characterized all the defenses of the Whitman fiction, and concluding with the 'testimony' of 'Judge' James Otis, who, as I have demonstrated beyond any possibility of dispute, in my 'History vs. The Whitman Saved Oregon Story' (pages 80, 83), never saw Marcus Whitman, nor corresponded with him, but unquestionably ascribed what he heard from Dr. White to Dr. Whitman?
"How, also, did it happen, that in the Ely Memorial Volume (pages 13 and 14), it printed the Whitman Saved Oregon fiction as a matter of historic verity and as one of the most important results of the work of the American Board, and when a revised (?) edition was issued, it did not revise this pure fabrication out of it? Coming down to a little later time, how did the Missionary Herald come to print in December, 1897, (page 494) under the title, 'In Memory of Marcus Whitman,' a glowing eulogy of him as the saver of Oregon, and referred to and commended the articles in the Missionary Herald for February and September, 1885, hereinbefore noticed, and recommended as trustworthy authority on the subject 'Barrow's Oregon,' which is beyond any question as false and misleading a book claiming to be historical as ever bore the imprint of a reputable publishing house? Furthermore, if the American Board never 'inspired or pushed into prominence the legend of Marcus Whitman,' how can you explain what appears in the report of the 88th annual meeting of that Board, as published on pages 477, 492 of the Missionary Herald for November, 1897, when they appointed a committee to recommend the observance of the fiftieth anniversary of the Whitman massacre, and that committee recommended special memorial services in Boston and Washington, and also selected a committee to attend the unveiling of the monument to Whitman on the Witherspoon Building in Philadelphia, and a committee to arrange for a suitable monument to
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him to be erected by the American Board? That last committee by the way, has never yet reported as far as I am informed.
"Furthermore, how did it happen that in the Missionary Herald for August, 1895, (page 304) there is another article eulogizing Marcus Whitman as the saver of Oregon?
"It appears that you were editorial secretary in '95 and '97 and presumably knew something about this matter that appeared in the Missionary Herald.
"I am glad to say that the other statement you make that the Board has not hindered historical students in examining the correspondence of your Oregon Mission is correct, but when you say 'it is not our business to go into this controversy either to save or destroy a reputation,' I am sorry that this great truth did not dawn upon you and your predecessors in office, and abide with you and them during all the years since 1866 that you and they have persistently striven to build up a fictitious reputation for Marcus Whitman, which could only be accomplished by falsifying the history of the country, and destroying the reputation for common sense-- let alone great sagacity--of the many illustrious statesmen, and the long line of heroic fur traders and explorers who had saved Oregon to us before any missionary ever dreamed of going there. The attempt to array the missionary societies and their supporters against the honest historians of the land is one sure to end disastrously to the missionary cause.
"A very devout friend of mine who attended the '97 Memorial Meeting in Washington said to me, 'I could not help thinking when I saw that great crowd dispersing from the church, what will happen to these young people when, a few years hence, the facts appear, and they discover the extent to which they have been humbugged about Marcus Whitman?' Will they not say, 'If such a bare-faced fiction as this can grow up about a man within less than a half a century after his death, in these days of railroads and telegraphs, and daily papers, and frequent mails, and practically everybody reading, how about the stories we find, not merely in the Old Testament, but about Jesus, and the Apostles, and the establishment of the Christian Church?' I am much afraid that to many of them the shock will result in unsettling their faith in the bible and its teachings.
"The readiness with which you have stated these things as being true which I have felt compelled to criticise, without yourself first taking the least pains to investigate the records in your office to ascertain the truth, fully justifies H. H. Bancroft's caustic and epigrammatic paragraph as follows:
" 'Religion not being an exact science missionaries acquire such
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a habit of looseness in their statements as to render them very unreliable in regard to historical facts.'
"Regretting that your repeated 'looseness of statements' has compelled these searching criticisms, I venture to suggest that 'preachers of the gospel,' even though they have attained to the dignity of D. D., and have for years been chosen editorial secretary of a great missionary society, if they rush into print on doubtful historical questions (the more especially if they are very modern questions), should lay aside the 'preaching of the gospel' long enough to acquire, from a study of 'original sources,' a little real knowledge of the subjects on which they write.
"Yours respectfully,
(Signed) "WM. I. MARSHALL."
No sooner was the attention of Spalding and Gray called to the fact that the 27th Congress expired by limitation March 4, than they promptly revised their "recollections," and had him reach Washington March 2 (Cf. Spalding's pamphlet, Sen. Ex. Doc. 37, 41st Congress, 3d Session, p. 21), so as to be there before Congress closed, oblivious of the fact that, with the traveling facilities as they were in the spring of 1843, it was not merely improbable but absolutely impossible for him to have reached Washington before the middle or last of March.
March 3d is given as the date by Barrows, Craighead, Nixon, M. Eells, Mowry and most other advocates of the legend, with as little care for the possibilities of the case as Spalding and Gray exhibited.
This story was told with no material variations by Mr. W. H. Gray in articles in the Astoria Marine Gazette in 1865 and 1866, which he subsequently published as a "History of Oregon," (Portland, Ore., San Francisco and New York, 1870) and its correctness he repeatedly asserted in articles in Oregon papers and in pamphlets down to the day of his death in 1889.
In this statement it will be noticed that Spalding says that Whitman's death "sent the devoted J. L. Meek over the mountains to Washington in the spring of 1848." This is grossly incorrect. Meek's journey was a much more hazardous trip than Whitman's, and was made not in the spring but in the dead of winter.
Whitman left Wailatpu October 3, 1842, Meek left Oregon City, 300 miles farther west, January 4, 1848, but owing to various delays in the movements of the Oregon troops, he did not leave The Dalles, some 145 miles west of Wailatpu, till the last of January, and though escorted by the troops to the foot of the Blue Mountains, beyond that the little party (of seven at the start and five from Ft.
80 ACQUISITION OF OREGON
Boise) had no protection except what their own courage could furnish.
For a long distance they had to journey on snow shoes, and for much of the rest of the way they had not saddle animals enough to enable all to ride, so that one or two of the party were constantly walking for a great part of the distance. And as to pack animals--they would seem never to have had any after they were compelled by the depth of snow to abandon their animals and take to snow shoes, two days' journey east of Ft. Hall (Cf. Ch. XXXVI. and XXXVII., "River of the West").
Of all the persons who have thought they recollected (some twenty-three to forty years after the event) that Whitman made his ride to save Oregon, Mr. W. H. Gray is the only one who was ever subjected to a cross-examination on it in judicial proceedings. In the famous cases of the Hudson's Bay Co. and the Puget's Sound Agricultural Co. vs. the United States, the trial of which occupied from August 5, 1865, to September 10, 1869, and resulted in an award to the Hudson's Bay Co. of $450,000, and the Puget's Sound Agricultural Co. of $200,000, and in which testimony was taken in British Columbia, Oregon, the State of Washington, Montreal, London, Washington, D. C., North Carolina, Detroit, Mich., New York City, Tortngas, New Orleans and Cincinnati, and in which, among the witnesses for the United States, were Generals U. S. Grant, Phil Sheridan, Gordon Granger, Alfred Pleasanton, Rufus Ingalls, Jas. A. Hardie, C. C. Augur, David H. Vinton and Benj. Alvord, and Admiral Charles Wilkes and Commander Gibson of the TJ. S. Navy, and of Oregoni ans, United States Circuit Judge M. P. Deady, Jesse Applegate, and many other pioneers of the old Oregon Territory. Mr. W. H. Gray was a witness, and the following extracts from his testimony will show his qualifications as a historian, and how unique were his notions as to the care one should exercise in verifying the statements he writes down for history:
"Int. 1. 'State your age, residence and occupation ?'
"Ans. 'My age, fifty-six; residence, Astoria, Oregon, occupation at present, inspector of customs; cabinetmaker by profession.'
"Int. 26. 'Did Dr. Whitman go to the Eastern States in 1842?'
"Ans. 'Yes, sir.'
"Int. 27. 'Do you know whether the American Board at that time complained of the greatness of the expenditures which he had made at that station?'
"Ans. 'I do not think they did.'
"Int. 28. 'Have you not recently written an article in regard to that matter, published in the Astoria Gazette?'
"Ans. 'Not in relation to the expenses incurred in building that station, but in relation to his expenses in getting to the States was
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the ground of the complaint of the Board. It cost him over a thousand dollars to get to the States.'
"Int. 29. 'Are the statements made by you in that article true ?'
"Ans. 'I think they are, to the best of my knowledge and belief.'
"Int. 30. 'Did Dr. Whitman tell you that he went to see Mr. Webster and Mr. Fillmore for the purpose stated in that article?'
"Ans. 'Dr. Whitman, when he left his station to go to the States, gave me the facts as stated in that or previous articles. On his return he visited me at Oregon City; he gave me the substance, almost verbatim, as near as I can recollect of that article.'
"Int. 31. 'Did he say that he saw Mr. Webster, as Secretary of State, and Mr. Fillmore, as President, upon the subject?'
"Ans. 'He said he called upon them both, and had the conversation with them.'
"Int. 32. 'When did Dr. Whitman die?'
"Ans. 'He was killed in 1847.'
"Int. 33. 'When did Mr. Fillmore become President?'
"Ans. 'If my memory serves me, he became President on the death of General Taylor.'
"Int. 34. 'When did General Taylor die?'
"Ans. 'I cannot say what year; it is a matter I have not charged my mind with at all.'
"Int. 35. 'How, then, can you say that Dr. Whitman saw Mr. Fillmore, as the President, in 1842?'
"Ans. 'That is the impression that passed in my mind when I inserted the name Fillmore as being President at that time.'
"Int. 36. 'Have you not said that Dr. Whitman told you he saw Mr. Fillmore and Mr. Webster at the time he was in Washington ?'
"Ans. 'I think I said so.'
"Int. 37. 'Will you now swear that he told you that he saw either of those gentlemen at that time ?'
"Ans. 'I am pretty positive that he told me that he saw Mr. Webster; and if Mr. Fillmore was Acting President in the winter of 1842-43, he saw him. I am satisfied that Dr. Whitman told me that he saw the President, and my own impression is that Fillmore was Acting President; but I had a doubt in my own mind when I penned the article, whether it was him or Tyler.'
"Int. 38. 'Did Dr. Whitman inform you that Mr. Webster stated that he (Mr. Webster) was ready to part with what was to him an unknown and unimportant portion of our national domain, for the privileges of a small settlement in Maine, and the fisheries on the banks of Newfoundland?'
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"Ans. 'The substance of that idea was communicated to me by Dr. Whitman.'
"Int. 39. 'Do you not know that Dr. Whitman reported to the American Board that he had been treated by the officers of the Hudson's Bay Company with the utmost and unlimited kindness all the time he had been in Oregon?'
"Ans. 'I am well satisfied that Dr. Whitman reported that to the American Board; I did the same myself when I was home.'
"Int. 40. 'Are you not the same W. H. Gray who, as member of the Legislative Committee in 1845, signed a memorial to Congress asking for the establishment of a territorial government?'
"Ans. 'I am.'
"Int. 41. 'Does not that memorial contain this sentence, speaking of the subjects of Great Britain: "It is but just to say that their conduct towards us has been most friendly, liberal, and philanthropic," and also this, "The British subjects and American citizens vie with each other in their obedience and respect to the laws and in promoting the common good and general welfare of Oregon ?" '
"Ans. 'I think those passages are in that memorial.'
"Int. 42. 'During the time that you were connected with the mission, was not every facility and courtesy for transportation or temporary dwelling at the posts of the company extended to the members of the mission by the company's agents ?'
"Ans. 'I think, as to the facilities for temporary residence, it did not appear to me that the company, as such, .were disposed to put themselves out of the way, and in consequence of that fact there was but little visiting or remaining about the posts of the company.'
"Int. 43. 'Was there ever any lack of courtesy or of the spirit of accommodation manifested by any of the company; if so, by whom ?'
"Ans. 'We used to think there was, occasionally, by Mr. Pambrun, and also by the controlling influence at Vancouver.'
"Int. 44. 'Did you not, in 1839, apply to Dr. McLoughlin for the situation of teacher for your wife?'
"Ans. 'I think I did.'
"Int. 45. 'Did he decline to employ her?'
"Ans. 'I do not recollect distinctly the result of that application ; she was not employed.'
"Int. 46. 'Did you at the same time seek for employment at Vancouver?'
"Ans. 'My impression is that I did.'
"Int. 47. 'Have you not been conscious of an unfriendly feeling towards the company and its agents ever since their refusal to employ you and your wife?'
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"Ans. 'Not on account of that transaction or refusal to employ us.'
"At the conclusion of his cross-examination is the following statement: 'The witness desires to state that since testifying on cross-examination he has ascertained that Mr. Tyler was President, instead of Mr. Fillmore, at the time of Dr. Whitman's visit to Washington, alluded to in the 37tli cross-interrogatory.'" (Cf. Vol. V., pp. 172-191 of Hudson's Bay Co. vs. United States.)
The Spalding-Gray version of the origin of Whitman's ride is the one used in Barrow's "Oregon," in chapter 26 of Coffin's "Building of the Nation," in the Ely Memorial Volume, the official history of the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions, written by Rev. Thos. Laurie, D. D., by O. W. Nixon, in "How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon," by Rev. J. G. Craighead, D. D., in "The Story of Marcus Whitman," by Rev. L. H. Hallock, D. D., in his address at Walla Walla at the fiftieth anniversary of the Whitman massacre, by Rev. G. H. Atkinson at the meeting of the American Board at Norwich (published in Missionary Herald March, 1869, p. 76), by Rev. Jonathan Edwards, in his pamphlet, "Marcus Whitman, M. D., the Pathfinder of the Pacific Northwest." (Spokane, 1892), by Rev. Wm. Elliott Griffis, D. D., in his "Romance of Conquest," and by various authors of school histories who depended on Barrows, and Gray and Spalding as trustworthy, but all of whom (excepting Dr. W. A. Mowry), on reading my manuscripts in 1899-1900, were convinced of its total falsity, and straightway revised it out of their books. It is also the form which has been used in almost countless newspaper and magazine articles, and sermons, and addresses at missionary meetings, and though it is false from beginning to end, it will doubtless continue to be used for many a year to come, by speakers and writers who are anxious to "paint with a large brush," and to tell a story that "sounds well," regardless of whether it is true or false. There were no fifteen, nor any other number of batteaux at or near that time, at Ft. Walla Walla, bound to New Caledonia or anywhere else up the Columbia nor down the Columbia (for the annual express bound down did not reach Walla Walla that year till October 27, when Whitman had been gone twenty-four days; no twenty, nor any other number (except one) of chief factors, traders and clerks of the Hudson's Bay Co., the one being that staunch Scotch Presbyterian, Archibald McKinlay, the trader in charge of Walla Walla; no "Bishop Demois" (Demers) nor any other bishop, of the Roman Catholic or of any other church, no "several priests," nor so much as one priest, old or young, discreet or indiscreet, of the Catholic or any other church; no great dinner party; no express arriving from Colvile, nor from any other place; no anything except the very lively imagination twenty-three years
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afterwards of a clergyman who, even before the Whitman massacre was not particularly careful to distinguish between facts and fancies and always after that was so mentally unbalanced as to be wholly unworthy of confidence upon any subject connected with the work of the mission, or its ending, as I shall prove by most indisputable evidence of his own writing.
There never was but one Red River migration to Oregon, and that was in 1841, and instead of "some 150 persons," it consisted of twenty-three heads of families, in all eighty persons, including children, a fact perfectly well known to Rev. H. H. Spalding when he wrote this article, for his own journal under date of September 10, 1841, reads, "Reached the Fort" (i. e., Colvile) "about 2 P. M. . . Mr. McDonald's brother is here from a party of twenty-three families from the Red River, crossing the mountains to settle on the Cowlitz as half-servants of the Co. They started with oxen and carts. The carts are left and they are packing the oxen. There are in all 80 persons (probably counting children). The man returns tomorrow with provisions." This brief paragraph quoted by Rev. M. Eells on page 18 of his pamphlet, "Marcus Whitman," is all which bears in any way upon the Whitman Saved Oregon Story that he has ever published from the diary of Rev. H. H. Spalding containing some 25,000 words, which has been well known to him for some twenty-five years past, and in his possession much if not all of that time.
How vital some other parts of that diary are to any proper discussion of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story will hereinafter appear. Sir George Simpson's "Narrative of a Journey Around the World During the Years 1841 and 1842," 2 Vols., London, 1847, in an account of these Red River settlers whom he passed in July, 1841, says that there were twenty-three families.
The attention of Mr. Archibald McKinlay, in charge of Ft. Walla Walla from 1841 to 1846, having been called to the Spalding-Gray version of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story, he wrote, in a letter to Hon. Elwood Evans (quoted by Mr. Evans in an article entitled "The Winter Journey of Marcus Whitman," in the Seattle Daily Intelligencer, of April 28, 1881), as follows: "At the time referred to, September or October, 1842, there could have been no one at the fort except myself to have 'taunted' the Doctor. I will say of the officers of the Hudson's Bay Co. that I never heard one of them at any of the posts make use of taxinting language to any American citizen respecting the boundary question.
"The officers and men of the company knew enough of the rules of hospitality to avoid such tender subjects, and they were never referred to unless in conversation upon general news, and then only in such way as to avoid offence. Think you that I would taunt,
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or allow to be taunted in my own house, a gentlemen for whom I always entertained a very warm feeling of friendship? As the accusation proves itself to be a malicious slander, full of prejudice and concocted without due consideration or regard to facts, I shall make no further reference to it, but simply express my chagrin that the worthy pioneers of Oregon should permit such nonsense in their historic columns. The Red River colony arrived at Fort Walla Walla in the first week in October, 1841. They were at Walla Walla when the old fort was burned October 3, 1841. The express from Selkirk arrived about the 25th of October in charge of Mr. Richard Grant, afterwards for several years in charge of Ft. Hall.
"In 1842 not a single immigrant came to Oregon from Red River. The East Side Express of that year arrived on the 27th of October. . . . When the express boats of 1842 reached the fort, Mrs. Whitman, who had been waiting at the fort several days for their arrival, took passage for The Dalles." We have already seen that Spalding's diary of September 10, 1841, confirms this statement of the year of the arrival of the Red River immigrants as 1841.
Walker's diary for 1841 (among unpublished manuscript of Oregon Historical Society), also confirms it as follows: "Tues., Sept. 21, 1841. 'A part of the company from the Red River to the lower country came in and spent the night with us.'" When, in the next chapter, we come to examine the long concealed evidence on the Whitman matter, we shall find that Whitman knew October 4, 1841, that these Red River settlers were then at Ft. Walla Walla, and we shall see how wholly unimportant the matter seemed to him then and afterwards.
(E) THE CUSHING EELLS VERSION.
This version of the origin and purpose of Whitman's ride, of which there is not the slightest trace in any of the four earlier versions (A), (B), (C) and (D), was never written, so far as appears, till May 28, 1866, and never printed till Mr. Eells' letter of May 28, 1866, containing it, appeared in the Missionary Herald for December, 1866; and it was so ingeniously contrived that, though from matter easily accessible in print, it could be easily shown to be grossly improbable, its absolute falsity could not be proved beyond dispute, without the quotations herein presented to the public for the first time from the manuscripts of the American Board, and the diaries of the members of the mission.
For this reason apparently the later advocates of the Whitman legend have, with one accord, dropped all dependence on the Spalding-Gray version, and no longer quote it (although still insisting that Gray and Spalding were excellent and trustworthy men, and
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using them as "witnesses" to what they allege Whitman did at Washington and elsewhere in the East), but use the Eells' version of the origin of Whitman's ride.
(Cf. Mowry's "Marcus Whitman," Rev. H. W. Parker's "How Oregon Was Saved to the United States," in Homiletic Review, July, 1901, reprinted in a pamphlet by Funk and Wagnal's Co., New York; Rev. M. Eells' "Reply to Prof. Bourne's Legend of Marcus Whitman;" (pamphlet nominally published by The Statesman Publishing Co. of Walla Walla, but actually, I am informed on good authority, published by Whitman College), "Is Whitman's Ride a Legend?" by Gen. C. H. Howard, in Chicago Advance, January 24, 1901; "Whitman of Oregon," in Interior, January 17, 1901.)
The Spalding-Gray version must have come to Mr. Eells' notice immediately after its appearance in the autumn of 1865, and, doubtless, the Clarke version came to his notice in the autumn or early winter of 18G4, but there is no letter or diary of his that contains any mention of the Saving Oregon theory of that winter's ride, till May 28, 1866.
Nor is that all, for in April, 18G5, Rev. C. Eells disclaimed all knowledge of any other than missionary business as impelling Whitman to that ride in an interview with the late Hon. Elwood Evans, of Tacoma, Wash, (who had then been for some years very industriously gathering materials for his "History of the Pacific Northwest"), as stated by Evans (in an article on "Dr. Whitman and Oregon," in Daily Oregonian, of March 15, 1885, which article was also reprinted in Weekly Orogonian, Miarch 20, 1885), as follows: "I had seen Mr. Eells" (Rev. Cushing Eells) "in 1865. I endeavored to learn the history of those missionary years, my inquiries were particularly directed to the two immigrations of 1842 and 1843; he was as reticent as if he knew nothing, surely he breathed not this patriotic claim for the little missionary convocation of 1842. True that was in April, 1865, and Myron Eells has indicated the 'great work was not known or realized till 1866,' and possibly it was still a secret."
Rev. M. Eells, in his "Reply to Prof. Bourne," tries to break the force of my mention of this fact, in my discussion of Prof. Bourne's paper at the 1900 meeting of the American Historical Association, and has the hardihood to deny that Mr. Evans ever published any such statement, saying (reply, p. 58), "The writer has every newspaper article that he ever heard of that Mr. Evans ever wrote on the subject, especially between 1881 and 1885, and there is not a hint of such a statement in any of these articles. Dr. Eells (i. e., his father, Rev. Cushing Eells) was then alive, and the writer does not think that Mr. Evans would have dared then to have made the statement."
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But the fact is, that not only did Mr. Evans publish this while Rev. Cushing was alive, but Rev. M. Eells knew about it so well, that in the Oregonian of May 21, 1885, he replied to Mr. Evans' article in the Oregonian of March 20, 1885, as well as he could under fifteen heads, in an article of about 9000 words, but carefully refrained from even alluding to this statement, which, now that Mr. Evans is dead, he says, "Mr. Evans would not have dared to print while Rev. C. Eells was living." My scrap books containing both articles are now lying open before me. That Rev. M. Eells, when he wrote his "Reply," had not forgotten about either Mr. Evans' article in Daily Oregonian of March 15, and Weekly of March 20, 1885, nor his reply to it, in Oregonian of May 21, 1885, is certain, for on pages 7, 23 and 45 of the "Reply to Prof. Bourne" he quotes from, and in a foot note refers to the article of March 20, 1885, and on pages 7 and 18 also quotes from and by foot note refers to his own article of May 21, 1885. How came Rev. C. Eells to change front completely between April, 1865, and May 28, 1866?
In that identical article of Rev. M. Eells in the Oregonian of May 21, 1885, we find the direct answer to this question as follows: "Rev. G. H. Atkinson, D. D., of Portland, Oregon, writes, March 19, 1885," (i. e., to Rev. M. Eells) "I filed many letters that came to me in early years, and his (Mr. Spalding's) among the rest, and packed them in a box, but mice and rats got in and made their nests, and the larger portion were lost. Hence I cannot fix the date" (i. e., when he first heard the Whitman Saved Oregon Story). "It had been in my mind some years as a great historical fact, of value to the A. B. C. F. M. and to Christian institutions on this northwest coast, and to the nation as well. While east in 1865 I called upon Rev. S. B. Treat, secretary of the A. B. C, F. M., and made known the facts as stated to me by Mr. Spalding. He was much surprised that Dr. Whitman had done so much to save Oregon, and thus prepare the way to secure California by concurrent events. He intimated that Brother Spalding wrote and said extravagant things sometimes, and that they must be careful of quoting and relying on him implicitly. I replied that I knew Brother Spalding's rather erratic way of leaping to conclusions, but on more acquaintance I usually found him very correct in the statement of facts, though strong in prejudice against the Jesuits, and some who seemed to uphold them. I then said to him: 'Mr. Treat, I wish you to know these facts as they are for the honor of God in your missions in Oregon, and for the encouragement of the churches. I refer you to Rev. Cushing Eells to confirm what I say. He is very careful in all his statements. You all rely upon him.' He said: 'We do and I will write him.' He did so, and your father (C. Eells) confirmed what I said and added more facts,
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which they used at their annual meeting at Pittsfield, Mass., and made a strong impression."
As Rev. S. B. Treat had been secretary of the American Board since 1847, he must have known that the Missionary Herald had declared in September, 1843, and again in July, 1848, that Whitman made his ride on missionary business, and as to him had come Atkinson's letters of November 20, 1858, and May 7, 1859, containing the two variant and wholly fictitious accounts of the origin and purpose of that ride (as hereinbefore quoted), to which he had paid no heed, one would suppose that instead of taking Mr. Atkinson's advice, and writing to Rev. C. Eells to find out what he thought he remembered twenty-three years after the event, about the origin and purpose of Whitman's ride, he would have spent a half day in studying the letters which Eells and Walker wrote in 1842 and 1843, and especially their two joint letters of October 3, 1842, and Walker's of February 28. 1843, and the other correspondence of the mission leading up to that ride, and the first and second accounts of its origin and purpose as stated in the Missionary Herald, September, 1843, and July, 1848.
What Mr. Treat did, and why he did it, is stated in the "Introduction" which, in the Missionary Herald, of December, 1866, (p. 369) he prints before Rev. C. Eells' letter of May 28, 1866, as follows:
"RESULTS OF THE OREGON MISSION.
"If any one had desired, in past years, to depreciate the success of the American Board he would have regarded the history of the mission commenced beyond the Rocky Mountains in 1836 as especially pertinent to his argument. Rev. H. H. Spalding and Marcus Whitman, M. D., proceeded on that year from Liberty, a frontier town in Missouri, to the 'Rendezvous' on Green River 1400 miles, and thence to Ft. Vancouver, 800 miles farther. They were accompanied by their wives, two excellent women, the first of their sex to cross from the Atlantic slope to the Pacific.
"The country which they traversed from the Forks of the Platte to Walla Walla, 1600 miles, they found to be 'barren and desolate beyond anything they had before conceived of.'
"Operations were commenced by Mr. S. among the Nez Perces, and by Dr. Whitman among the Kayuses in November. Other laborers soon followed; and the Mission continued its endeavors with more or less encouragement till November, 1847, when Dr. and Mrs. Whitman were killed by the people among whom they dwelt.
"The other missionaries, Messrs. Spalding, Eells and Walker, felt constrained to abandon their stations with their families; and,
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in consequence of various hindrances, such as Indian wars, the unsettled state of the country, etc., their work has never been resumed. It would have been easy to say, at any time since 1847: 'You have expended 140,000; you have lost two valuable laborers; and you have very little to show for it.'
"But the question of missionary success is imperfectly understood. . . . But outside of the direct and ordinary results of evangelical efforts, there is always a fruitage which no generous and philosophical mind can fail to recognize as of very great value. Our Protestant civilization--what is it but an outgrowth (p. 370) of the gospel?
"And yet it is this self-same civilization which the missionaries of the American Board are creating and establishing on every side of them.
"A thorough discussion of this matter of missionary success is much needed at the present time.
"Even in our churches there is a degree of unbelief on the subject, which would at once disappear if the case were fairly stated. It is to be hoped, therefore, that some competent pen will be turned in this direction.
"And while we are waiting for this service, it is desirable that the facts bearing on the question should be made as accessible as possible.
"It is with this view that the following letter is published. The Home Secretary of the American Board, having become satisfied that the value of the Oregon Mission, in certain particulars especially, was not fully appreciated, wrote to Rev. C. Eells on February 22, last, in order that he might obtain information which should be perfectly reliable.
"In due time he received a communication which is now submitted to the friends of missions, in the confident belief that it is entirely trustworthy."
This is followed by the letter, dated Walla Walla, W. T., May 28, 1866, in which appears for the first time, so far as any one has yet discovered, any allusion even, in Rev. C. Eells' handwriting to the Whitman Saved Oregon Story, twenty-three years, seven months and twenty-five days after Whitman started on his ride.
The letter was long and verbose as his epistles generally were, and as it is easily accessible in many libraries, I will merely summarize most of it, and quote only the essential parts.
"Rev. S. B. Treat, Secy. A. B. C. F. M.
"Dear Brother:--
"I regret that I am not able to do justice to the topic upon which you ask for information. I will endeavor faithfully to make such statements as shall occur to me. The Hudson's Bay Co., at
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an early day were aware of the existence of mineral deposits in that portion of Oregon claimed by both England and the United States.
"If I remember correctly I had not been long in this country before the statement was made, that gold had been found on the Columbia River, taken to England, made into a watch seal, brought back there, and worn by a gentleman connected with the Hudson's Bay Co. In those early days Dr. Whitman made in my hearing th& following statement: 'There is no doubt that this country abounds in the precious metals.' "
Concerning this, it should be remembered that in 1866 the whole country was and had been for eighteen years before that in a fever of excitement over mining for the precious metals, beginning with the gold discoveries in California in 1848, followed by the silver discoveries in Nevada in 1859, and the gold and silver discoveries in the Rocky Mountain regions farther east and north, southern and eastern Oregon, northeastern Washington, Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming and Montana.
Specie had entirely disappeared from circulation all over the country except in the Pacific Coast region, gold was at a high premium, and it was thirteen years after this before specie payment was resumed. This attempt to make it appear that the Hudson's Bay Co. on the one hand, and Whitman on the other, knew of the existence of the precious metals in the old Oregon Territory as early as 1843, is merely an Illustration of that "reading of present conditions into the past," which is one of the marked characteristics of myth lovers.
In all the correspondence and fragments of diaries of Whitman and his associates, during all the eleven years their mission existed, amounting to fully a million words, there is not one single sentence which says anything about the existence of the precious metals, or of any other metals in any part of the old Oregon Territory.
Mr. Eells' letter then goes on to state that "Dr. Whitman understood with a good degree of correctness apparently, that it was the plan of the Hudson's Bay Co. to secure this country to the English Government." Undoubtedly he felt strongly in reference to this subject. At that time his missionary associates judged that he was disturbed to an unwarrantable degree. The result has furnished accumulative evidence that there was sufficient reason for determined earnestness on his part.
"An unyielding purpose was formed by Dr. Whitman to go East. The mission was called together to consider whether or not its approval could be given to the proposed undertaking.
"Mr. Walker and myself were decidedly opposed and we yielded only when it became evident that he would go, even if he had
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to become disconnected from the mission in order to do so. According to the understanding of the members of the mission, the single object of Dr. Whitman in attempting to cross the continent in the winter of 1842-3, amid mighty peril and suffering, was to make a desperate effort to save this country to the United States.
"On reaching Washington he learned that representations had been made there corresponding to those which had been often repeated on this coast. 'Oregon,' it was said, 'would most likely be unimportant to the United States. It was difficult of access. A wagon road thither was an impossibility.'
"By such statements Gov. Simpson (the territorial Governor of the Hudson's Ba,y Co.) had well nigh succeeded in accomplishing his objects of purchasing this country, not for a mess of pottage, but a cod fishery; Dr. Whitman was barely able to obtain from President Tyler the promise that negotiations should be suspended."
Then, after giving the usual version of the legend about Whitman's services in gathering and leading out the migration of 1843, including the fictions about the attempt of the Hudson's Bay Co. year after year to prevent wagons going beyond Ft. Hall, and their attempt to prevent the wagons of the 1843 migration from going on with wagons, and Whitman's alleged speech there to the migration, Mr. Eells continues: "I may not be able to furnish evidence entirely satisfactory to others; but in view of all the past relating to this subject, of which I have been an eye and ear witness since August, 1838, I am prepared to say, that to my mind there is not a shadow of a doubt that Dr. Whitman by his efforts with President Tyler and Secretary Webster in 1843, and his agency during the same year in conducting an immigrant wagon train from the western frontier to the Columbia River was instrumental in saving a valuable portion of this northwest to the United States."
It is apparent at a glance, that if this version of the origin of Whitman's ride is the true one, it completely annihilates all that portion of the Spalding-Gray version which relates to the origin of that ride, since if Whitman called the mission together (which required eleven days' time--September 15 to 26th--as we shall see from Eells' letter of October 3, 1842, in next chapter) to consider his "unyielding purpose" to go East to save Oregon, and they discussed it for two days, then certainly he did not suddenly resolve to go anent a taunt at a crowded dinner table at Walla Walla.
Yet the Missionary Herald, having published this, in December, 1866, and endorsed it as "entirely trustworthy," in March, 1869, printed (p. 76 et seq.) Rev. Geo. H. Atkinson's address at the Norwich, Conn., meeting of the American Board, under the title, "Fruits of the Oregon Mission," introducing it with a commenda-
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tory paragraph, though it gave the Spalding-Gray version of the origin of the ride, and when a few years later the "Ely Memorial Volume" was issued as the official history of the missions of the American Board, it also used a condensation of the Spalding-Gray version, without any intimation that the C. Eells version existed.
It will be noticed also that no one of the four earlier versions alludes to this meeting of the mission being called to consider Whitman's going to the States to save Oregon, and that this version, like the four earlier ones, says that his "single object" in making the ride was to save Oregon, and this, the first version which declares that the meeting was called for that purpose, does not give the least intimation that that meeting considered any missionary business.
Mr. Eells' letter is followed by three "Remarks" (by the editor of the Missionary Herald]. First, on the influence of the missions on the Indians; second, on the influence of the missions on the whites. The last part of the third remark I will discuss in connection with the "True Causes of the Whitman Massacre."
The first part of the third is as follows: "3. While it is apparent from the letters of Dr. Whitman at the Missionary Home, that in visiting the Eastern States in 1842-43 he had certain missionary objects in view (of which Mr. Eells may not have been cognizant), it is no less clear that he would not have come at that time, and probably he would not have come at all, had it not been for his desire to save the disputed territory to the United States.
"It was not simply an American question, however; it was at the same time a Protestant question. He was fully alive to the efforts which the Roman Catholics were making to gain the mastery on the Pacific coast; and he was firmly persuaded that they were working in the interest of the Hudson's Bay Co. with a view to this very end. The danger from this quarter had made a profound impression upon his mind. Under date of April 1, 1847, he said: 'In the Autumn of 1842, I pointed out to our mission the arrangements of the papists to settle in our vicinity, and that it only required that those arrangements should be completed to close our operations.'"
That parenthetical clause ("of which Mr. Eells may not have been cognizant") is highly amusing to one who reads the record of the Special Meeting of September 26-7, 1842, which authorized Whitman's journey (of which meeting Eells was scribe), and Eells' letter of October 3, 1842, endorsed by Walker, and Walker's letter of October 3, 1842, endorsed by Eells, and Walker's letter of February 28, 1843, and the brief "Resolve" of September 28, 1842, signed by Eells, Walker and Spalding, which was the only document
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Whitman took with him to the American Board from the three men who remained associated with him in the mission.
In 1878 C. Eells made another "statement," published by his son, Rev. M. Eells, in the Seattle Daily Intelligencer of May 27, 1881, which after the same assertion as to the calling of the mission together "To consider in regard to the expediency of Dr. Whitman going to Washington, D. 0., to do what he could to save the then Oregon to the United States of America," ended with "The all controlling object was to make a desperate effort to save the country to the United States of America. It was expected that the opportunity would be improved for the transaction of business relating to the mission."
In 1883, when 73 years old, Rev. C. Eells made the following affidavit (but not in any judicial proceedings where he would expose himself to any pains and penalties for perjury), and Rev. M. Eells published it, on page 9 of his pamphlet, "Marcus Whitman, M. D.," Portland, Oregon, 1883.
"September, 1842, a letter addressed to Rev. Messrs. E. Walker and C. Eells at Tshimakain reached its destination and was received by the persons to whom it was written. By the contents of said letter a meeting of the Oregon Mission of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was invited to be held at Wailatpu. The object of said meeting, as stated in the letter named, was to approve of a purpose formed by Dr. Whitman, that he go East on behalf of Oregon as related to the United States. In the judgment of Mr. Walker and myself that object was foreign to our assigned work. With troubled thoughts we anticipated the proposed meeting. On the following day, Wednesday, we started, and on Saturday afternoon camped on the Touchet, at the ford near the Mullan bridge. We were pleased with the prospect of enjoying a period of rest, reflection and prayer--needful preparation for the antagonism of opposing ideas. We never moved camp on the Lord's day. On Monday forenoon we arrived at Wailatpu and met the two resident families of Messrs. Whitman and Gray. Rev. H. H. Spaulding was there. All the male members of the mission were thus together. In the discussion the opinion of Mr. Walker and myself remained unchanged. The purpose of Dr. Whitman was fixed. In his estimation the saving of Oregon to the United States was of paramount importance, and he would make the attempt to do so, even if he had to withdraw from the mission in order to accomplish his purpose. In reply to considerations intended to hold Dr. Whitman to his assigned work, he said: 'I am not expatriated by becoming a missionary.' The idea of his withdrawal could not be entertained, therefore to retain him in the mission a vote to approve of his making the perilous endeavor
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prevailed. He had a cherished object for the accomplishment of which he desired consultation with Rev. David Greene, secretary of correspondence with the mission at Boston, Mass., but I have no recollection that it was named in the meeting. A part of two days was spent in consultation. Record of the date and acts of the meeting was made. The book containing the same was in the keeping of the Whitman family. At the time of the massacre, November 29, 1847, it disappeared.
"The fifth day of October following was designated as the day on which Dr. Whitman would expect to start from Wailatpu. Accordingly, letters, of which he was to be the bearer, were required to be furnished him at his station in occordance therewith. Mr. Walker and myself returned to Tshimakain, prepared letters and forwarded them seasonably to Wailatpu. By the return of the courier information was received that Dr. Whitman started on the 3d of October. It is possible that transpirings at old Fort Walla Walla hastened his departure two days.
"Soon after his return to this coast Dr. Whitman said to me he wished he could return East immediately, as he believed he could accomplish more than he had done, as I understood him to mean, to save this country to the United States. I asked him why he could not go. He said, 'I can not go without seeing Mrs. Whitman.' She was then in the Willamette Valley.
"I solemnly affirm that the foregoing statements are true and correct, according to the best of my knowledge and belief. So help me God.
"(Signed) CUSHING BELLS.
"Sworn and subscribed to before me this 23d day of August, 1883,
" (Signed) L. E. KELLOGG, "Notary Public, Spokane County, Washington Territory."
This affidavit gives us an opportunity to apply a pretty rigid cross-examination to the Eells' version, by comparing it with the long concealed evidence in the next chapter, and with other contemporaneous evidence, and under that cross-examination it is easily shown to be as purely a creature of the imagination as the Spalding-Gray version.
The comparison of this with the record of the Special Meeting as to the purpose of the meeting, and what, it really did, and the purpose for which Whitman was authorized to go to the States will properly come in the next chapter; but here the reader's attention is requested to the exceeding ingenuity of this statement as to dates.
He says, "September, 1842, a letter, etc.," but he is careful not to give the date in September, nor to state the part of the month.
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He remembers with perfect accuracy the day of the week when they .started, piously informs us that they camped on Sunday, because "we never moved camp on the Lord's day;" he remembers the day of the week when they reached Whitman's station, who was tliere, that a part of two days was spent in consultation, and says that the 5th of the following October was fixed as the date for Dr. Whitman's starting (which is wrong) and that they were to return to their station and send letters, and that they "sent them seasonably," which was plainly meant to convey the impression that they sent their letters so that Whitman had them to take to the States.
On page 16 of a pamphlet entitled "The Whitman Controversy," printed in Portland, in 1885, Rev. M. Eells, son of Cushing Eells, trying to break the force of Mrs. Victor's question in an article she had published on the subject, "What did he fear in the reports of Walker and Eells, that he thus gave them the slip?" says, "I asked Dr. Eells if his letters arrived at Dr. Whitman's before the doctor started and his reply was, 'yes.' " His courier reached Walla Walla "seasonably"--before the 3d--and Dr. Whitman did not "give him the slip." This article of Rev. M. Eells was a reprint in this pamphlet from the Oregonian of January 11, 1885.
Why did Rev. C. Eells fail to put the day of the month into his statement? Plainly because to do so would have shown the absolute impossibility of their letters having arrived "seasonably." The fact is, as appears by the letter of Eells of October 3, 1843, and also by Walker's diary that they started for Wailatpu on the 21st day of September, arrived there on the 26th, spent the 26th and 27th there, started home on the 28th, which was Wednesday, and Walker's diary under date of Saturday, October 1, says "Rose very early this morning and made a start home. Rode very fast and got home in good season."
Pray how could they begin on Monday, October 3, and write long letters of 14 pages and 16 pages, large sized letter paper, and get them back over a distance of 165 miles "seasonably," if Whitman agreed to go on the 5th, and much more, if, as was the fact, Whitman started on the very day they began writing these letters?
But Eells' statement that it was "September" leaves the reader to infer (as he inevitably would, if he had never seen the letters in the archives of the American Board, and Walker's Diary) that it was early in the month of September, and that they had plenty of time to write letters at their leisure and send them "seasonably" to Wailatpu.
Walker's Diary states that they began their letters to D. Greene, Secretary, October 3 (as both letters are dated), and that he finished copying his October 8, and read it to Mr. Eells, and "October 11, 1842, finished up all my letters to the States."
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In his letter of February 28, 1843, Walker says that they sent the letters at the time agreed upon, and that when their courier returned he reported nobody at Wailatpu, but a man of the Hudson's Bay Company, and no information as to whether Whitman had gone or not, but that subsequently they heard from Mrs. Whitman that the Doctor started for the States on October 3, 1842.
Now Mrs. Whitman did not leave Wailatpu, as appears by her letter of October IT (Transactions Oregon Pioneer Association, 1891, p. 167), till October 11, and her letter of October 17 says that "Letters arrived today from Messrs. Walker and Eells," but as the courier did not bring them to Walla Walla, it is not certain what day they reached Wailatpu, twenty-five miles away, but it is altogether probable that it was October 16.
It is certain, however, that it was subsequent to the morning of the llth of October, and that Whitman did not, therefore, "agree to go on the 5th," but did agree to start as late as the llth.
It has always been a mystery why be thus gave them the slip, and came to the States without any documents from the three men remaining associated with him in the Mission, except a very brief resolution passed on the morning of September 28, authorizing him to go, "if suitable arrangements could be made to continue the operations of his station" in his absence.
My own impression is that he knew so well the vacillating character of both Eells and Walker that he feared they would write something which would make it harder for him to secure the rescission of the destructive order of February, 1842, than it would be if he went without any documents from them.
Until I first read these letters at the American Board Rooms, in 1887, I was charitable enough to believe that Eells, and Gray, and Spalding were honest men, who, in the lapse of years had forgotten many things, and that that order had come to them unexpectedly, like a flash of lightning out of a clear sky, and that whatever discrepancies there were between their statements and the facts of the case, as determined from other things than these letters (which I had then not read), were to be accounted for by the length of time, and the astonishing events connected with the development of the Pacific Slope.
But when I came to read and study carefully these letters I was reluctantly forced to the opinion, to which everybody else has come to whom I have shown even a small part of them, that, as I wrote Mr. Mowry, in 1887, "The causes leading up to that meeting of the Mission, held in September, 1842, had been so long acting, were so vitally connected with the whole history of the Mission, had caused so much correspondence between its members and the Ameri-
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can Board and so much bitterness of feeling between the different members of the Mission, that it was impossible, if they had lived to be a century old and retained their faculties, that they could ever have forgotten what it was that caused that Special Meeting of September, 1842, to be called, what it discussed, and why Whitman went to the States, and that it was perfectly certain that their own troubles and wrangles so filled the whole horizon of their thoughts that they had no time to spend in discussing the political destinies of Oregon."
(F.) Rev. Geo. H. Atkinson's Final Version, which he imposed on the authorized American Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica about 1886, and so gave it the bad pre-eminence of being the first encyclopedia to print any form of this fiction.
As we have seen, in 1858 and 1859, Rev. G. H. Atkinson was responsible for the first two widely variant forms of the Whitman Legend, and in 1865, by his having persuaded Rev. S. B. Treat to write to Rev. C. Eells, he was directly responsible for the circulation of the Eells version, though himself continuing till as late certainly as 1876 to advocate the Spalding-Gray version, which is utterly irreconcilable with the Eells version.
About 1886, in some mysterious way be succeeded in getting Scribner & Co. to accept for their edition of the Britannica an article on Oregon, in which he gave the following version of the origin and purpose of Whitman's ride, which is so ingeniously contrived as not even to allude to its real purpose: "Western pioneers having been told that wagons could not be taken to the Columbia, and induced to exchange them for horses at Fort Hall, Dr. Whitman, to remove the bar thus put up against immigration, recrossecl the plains in the winter of 1842-43. He published his plans to help emigrants through to Oregon with their families and wagons, and hastened to Washington to arouse government officials to retain their hold of Oregon and care for it, and then returned, overtaking nearly 1,000 emigrants at the North Platte river."
Prof. John Porter Lamberton, of Philadelphia, who was the editor of this edition of the Britannica, and expected to write its article on Oregon, says in a letter to the Sunday School Times (of Philadelphia), September 27, 1902, that he "Was much surprised to find the Whitman Legend endorsed in the volume treating of Oregon, in an article written by a Dr. Atkinson of Portland, Oregon."
February 12, 1888, I wrote Chas. Scribner's Sons, called their attention to the fictitious nature of Atkinson's article, quoted to them George Bancroft's emphatic endorsement of the correctness of my statements in my Peabody Institute lecturej in Baltimore, in 1884, as to the true origin and purpose of Whitman's ride, and
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that it did not exercise the least influence on the political destinies of any part of the Oregon Territory, and offered, if they wished to make their book truthful in this matter, to lay before them (confidentially) without charge, the convincing evidence I had obtained of the falsity of all forms of the Whitman Legend, but they declined to investigate, and their edition of the Britannica still continues to impose this fiction on the public as part of the history of Oregon.
THE LONG CONCEALED EVIDENCE FROM ORIGINAL SOURCES AS TO THE ORIGIN AND PURPOSE OF WHITMAN'S RIDE.
It is time that the contemporaneous evidence about the origin and purpose of Whitman's ride, which has been so carefully concealed for forty years by all the advocates of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story should be stated without fear or favor, and if it proves not only destructive to his fictitious reputation, but sadly damaging also to the reputations of those of his associates who, since 1865, have, by suppression of the truth and the fabrication of plausible fictions about the matter striven to make a great patriotic hero out of Marcus Whitman, that they might shine in his reflected light, and increase the endowment of Whitman College, and glorify the missionary operations of the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions, and the Presbyterian Board of Missions, and swell the contributions to their treasuries, by so falsifying the history of the country as to make it appear that the saving of the Old Oregon Territory to the United States was the incitement to and the result of that ride, and so, that though their missionary work among the Indians was a sad failure, the mission was a great success, because it resulted in saving Oregon to the nation, the only ones who should be blamed are those whose long continued falsifications of history have rendered this statement of the exact truth about the matter a necessity. Assuming the unquestioned Validity of that fundamental canon of historical investigation that, "A single authentic contemporaneous written statement of the reasons which impelled any man to do any deed must be held to outweigh any number of subsequent explanations, however ingenious, that he, and much more that his friends may put forth, to account for his actions." I shall now quote from the letters of Whitman and his associates, and the reports of the meetings of the Oregon Missions from 1840 to 1843 inclusive, and the diaries of Revs. H. H. Spalding and Elkanah Walker those parts which settle beyond any question the origin and purpose of that ride. Not a single line of this correspondence quoted in this chapter between Whitman and his associates and the American Board and of the diaries quoted was ever published, until after the circulation of my manuscripts
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among our leading historians, and my papers before the Chicago Historical Society (February, 1898,) and the Chicago Institute of Education (April, 1898,) and the North Central History Teachers' Association (October, 1900,) had made the facts pretty widely known to historical students, and but little of it has yet been published, and as I cannot expect to make any money out of this book, I cannot even now afford to print one-half of what I should like to have put before the lovers of historic truth.
The reader may rest assured, however, that the parts omitted in my quotations of any letters or reports of these missionaries, or of any other documents used by me do not in any case convey any different impressions from those given by the parts quoted. In some cases the omitted parts are entirely irrelevant to any issues herein discussed, and in others they would merely strengthen the parts quoted. It is now about six years since I wrote to Dr. W. A. Mowry (who is in closest touch with the American Board Commissioners of Foreign Missions) that if he would persuade the Board to print 2,500 copies of a book containing verbatim copies of
(a) Every letter in their archives from Dr. and Mrs. Whitman.
(b) Such other letters as I should name from the other members of their Oregon Mission from 1835 to 1866, together with a few from Rev. G. H. Atkinson to the Board about the affairs of the missions, (c) Such letters of Dr. and Mrs. Whitman in the Transactions of the Oregon Pioneer Association for 1891 and 1893 as I should select, (d) The minutes of the action had by the American Board on these letters, and copies of the replies to them of Revs. D. Greene and S. B. Treat, Secretaries, I would pay $500 towards the cost of publishing, if allowed 250 copies free for distribution to libraries and among historians, and if the balance of the edition were put on. sale at bookstores; and I would be content to rest the question of Marcus Whitman's character, and ability, and his relation to the Oregon question solely on that book. I added that I did not care how many more letters than those I should indicate they should print, nor how many notes and explanations they might offer, if they would only give historians a chance to read the text of these letters.
Five hundred dollars would be ample to cover one-half the necessary cost of the proposed publication of 2,500 copies. To this letter I never received any reply.
W. H. Gray says, in his "History of Oregon," and in numerous pamphlets and newspaper articles that he was "Secular Agent of the Mission," but his real position was, at first, that of "Mechanic," but in 1838, when in the States, he succeeded in persuading the Board to print his name in the Report for that year as "Physician and Teacher." No sooner did this reach Dr. Whitman, than in a
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letter dated October 22, 1839, after criticising two other errors in the report he continues: "3rd. Wm. H. Gray, Physician--I cannot conceive how you have been so much imposed upon as to report him as physician. What can a man learn in sixteen weeks of public lectures (which is barely all he can boast), to entitle him to that distinction ? It cannot be regarded in any other light in this country than a slur upon the Board and this Mission." Under this caustic criticism the American Board substituted "Mechanic," for "Physician," and his designation thereafter in the Reports of the Board was "Mechanic and Teacher." Nowhere in all the correspondence of the Oregon Mission with the Board is there any mention of the term "Secular Agent" as applying to Gray, while he remained connected with the Mission, though when he deserted the Mission, in September, 1842, it was to become "Secular Agent" of the Boarding School in the Willamette Valley. (Gf. for Gray's official designation the summaries of the Annual Reports of the American Board in the Missionary Herald as follows: January, 1837, p. 24; January, 1838, p. 13; January, 1839, p. 14; January, 1840, p. 15; January, 1841, p. 14; January, 1843, p. 14. In the January, 1842, number no list of the Oregon Missionaries was given.)
He quarreled with every member of the mission (See Spalding's letter of October, 1842), and being unwilling to continue as a subordinate, in 1839 explored with a view to starting another station and blossoming out as a full-fledged missionary himself, and at a meeting of the Mission in the Autumn of 1839 (from which Eells and Walker were absent), he succeeded in getting a vote passed authorizing him to start a station; but Eells and Walker promptly vetoed this project, whereat Gray became furiously angry and began to scheme to leave the Mission. His first move was to apply to the Hudson's Bay Company for the position of teacher of their school at Fort Vancouver for his wife, and employment for himself, which, like the high-minded, honorable men that they were in all their dealings with these missionaries, the Hudson's Bay Company refused to grant, distinctly on the ground that he produced no satisfactory evidence that his associates were willing that he should withdraw from the Mission. (Cf. Gray's own testimony in case of H. B. Co. vs. U. S., Vol 5, p. 175, quoted in the last chapter; also Eells' letter of October 3, 1842, pp. 130-1, infra. Gray spent the winter of 1839-40 at Spalding's station, but refused to do a day's work till April, 1840, though Spalding was building a mill, working very hard, and much needed his assistance. As Spalding's letter of defense against the charge which had caused the order for the discontinuance of his station and his recall to the States, and of justification for his course in continuing at his station instead of obeying the order of the Board contains about 4,500 words, I can
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only spare space for extracts from it as follows: It was dated Clear Water, October 15, 1842, and addressed to D. Greene, Secy. "True, the workmen who were engaged upon the mills at this station were repeatedly told by a member of this Mission, who has since left, that the Board would censure me for building them, especially as I had given the natives to understand that they were designed for their benefit. Pie said the instructions of the Board would not allow us to build mills, especially for the natives. I felt that the honor of the Board required me to reply, and attempt to counteract the growing prejudice in the minds of these persons. I held that the instructions of the Board did give us liberty to build mills, and in this and any other judicious and economical way, such as teaching to build, cultivate, etc., allow, and to a certain extent require us to aid the natives. I am aware that this was one of the greatest causes of the difficulty between Mr. Gray and myself. He remained here through the winter the mills were building, without working at them a single hour till a few days before the sawmill was ready to run. He always gave the above reason why he would not assist me.
"Another reason which Mr. Gray gave why he could not engage in the school or in any other kind of work whatever at this station was, that the majority of this Mission had prevented him from going to the new station above Walla Walla which he had selected, and which he as well as myself understood the vote of the late meeting to allow him to do. And now he would wait till the Mission gave him employment in a regular way. He remained in his room most of the winter, while I labored hard in rafting, framing, etc., assisted Mrs. Griffin more or less in school, wrote evenings. Why Mr. Gray at last (i. e. about the first of April) changed his mind and commenced work I know not. But he told one of the workmen about that time that I should doubtless be removed.
"I am informed that Mr. Gray has given you the substance of an interview between us in the blacksmith shop in the spring of 1840. I know not what Mr. Gray has written, but feel myself called upon to give what I consider a true statement of the affair, and one which I can substantiate by three witnesses who were present. The vote giving Mr. Gray liberty to establish a new station passed at the meeting of the Mission in the Fall of '39 having been vetoed (as Mr. Smith very properly terms it, as you will see from an extract from a letter of his marked B.), by letters from two members of the Mission not present at the meeting, and by one who was, Mr. Gray turned back from Walla Walla with his family and effects, and arrived here on the 28th of December; but said he could not winter with me or engage in any kind of
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work till the Mission appointed him his place and work. I think Mr. Gray was justly grieved that the Mission did not allow him to go to his selected station after they had voted to locate him. With these views Mr. Gray spent the winter, as I have before observed, without rendering any assistance in the school or in the mills. I consequently paid Mr. Connor for about two months' work in planting time and expected to plant about half the cultivated ground and leave the rest for Mr. Gray if he remained here. As Mr. Connor was preparing for planting, Mr. Gray ordered him not to put a plow into the field, the land was hiss, etc. On hearing it I supposed there must have been some misunderstanding between the two and went into the blacksmith shop where Mr. Gray was, as also the three witnesses above referred to were, and laughingly asked Mr. Gray if it was true what Mr. Connor had said. He replied that it was. I then sincerely asked him if it was true that he took the premises from me. He said he did. I asked him by what authority. He said by the authority of the Mission. I asked if he wished me to leave immediately. He replied that I might remain in the house as long as I wished, that he was going to build another one. He then said, 'If you had not asked me the question, I was going to offer to cultivate the farm and give you half the produce and leave you at liberty to preach, translate,' etc. I observed that nothing could meet my feelings better. True he did not say that now he would not, but no other impression was left on my mind. I immediately commenced digging a ditch to water a small piece across the stream, and as Mr. Connor was about to plough it for me, Mr. Gray told him he would be sorry if he put a plough in the ground or touched the team. Finding myself without any means of subsistence, I engaged my provisions of Mr. Connor, provided he could raise sufficient. A few weeks after Mr. Gray gave up the farm and offered to cultivate and give me half, which offer I gladly accepted, as I wrote you soon after. Whether the Mission did instruct Mr. Gray to take that step or not, I have no evidence except Mr. Gray's word.
"Another subject I must notice, which I judge from remarks in one of your letters has been communicated to you, viz.: an interview between Mr. Hall and Mr. Blair in Fort Vancouver. The latter was the man who constructed the mills at this place, and was present at the tmhappy interview in the shop above referred to. I have been informed that Mr. B. used very ungentlemanly language to Mr. Hall, and among other things called this Mission a band of robbers. Mr. Hall immediately said (from what motives I know not), that Mr. Spalding was the cause of such feelings. Mr. Blair denied that I was in any way the cause, but has since repeatedly mentioned as the cause of his prejudice against the.
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Mission, the treatment Mr. Spalding has received from some of the Mission, referring to the affair in the shop, and the treatment he received at Wailatpu on arriving in the country, as also the impression he had received from two of the brethren that the mills would be taken from me as soon as completed. ... In self defense I think I am called upon to state how Mr. Smith has and still feels towards other members of the Mission. Concerning Mr. Gray, he once replied to two of the brethren who proposed to have Mr. Gray locate with him, 'How could I consent to such a thing, when it is as much as I can do to receive a visit from him?' To another, who spoke of Mr. G.'s going to assist him in building, he replied, 'We are good friends now, and I wish to keep so by having nothing to do with him.' And as to his feelings towards Dr. Whitman, or rather Mrs. W., it was found necessary in about six months after he was located at Wailatpu to call a special meeting to settle difficulties between Mr. Smith and Dr. Whitman, and at that meeting Mr. Smith declared he would leave the Mission rather than be connected with Dr. Whitman, and when it was found impossible to associate the two together Dr. Whitman consented to leave the station to Mr. Smith and commence a new one on the Tukana, where he would be more central as physician. But notwithstanding the vote to this effect with his consent and the arrangements of Dr. Whitman to move, Mr. Smith very suddenly moved to a place where he was the next fall located by a vote of the Mission, viz., Eamiah. . . .
"Concerning Mr. Gray, by way of self defense, I feel that I am called upon to make known what otherwise I would not. I feel that these persons have no just cause of complaint that these facts are exposed and if need be others. It seems to me that their own statements have made it necessary. At the first meeting after Mr. Gray and his party arrived (in 1838), the three clergymen who accompanied him (i. e., G. Eells, E. Walker and A. B. Smith), said respectively and decidedly they would not be associated with Mr. Gray. I assented to his being associated with me. I knew not that he was dissatisfied, till the next year I was informed by Messrs. Smith, and Rogers that he wished to go to a station by himself, or rather into another language. Mr. Hall (of the Sandwich Islands* Mission--W. I. M.) had previous to this information told me that Mr. Gray must not continue associated with me, as his disposition rendered him unfit to be associated with any one and if he continued in the Mission he should be located alone. Referring to Mr. Gray in a letter to me after the meeting which voted him to a new station, Mr. Hall said, 'A man may do very well as a mechanic who would not do at all as an equal or associate. This you have already seen to your sorrow and great inconvenience.'
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But you may say from what follows that I do not seem to place much reliance upon Mr. Hall's word. Be that as it may you have not expressed a want of confidence in his testimony, and therefore I give it. Mr. Gray had expressed a desire to leave the Mission and engage in a school in the lower country, and at the meeting in '41 a vote was passed giving him liberty to open correspondence on the subject. This season he has carried his plan into operation, and was making preparations to leave when your last letter arrived.
I understand that the brethren who have left the Mission make my doings their reason. But, does it look at all likely that a majority of a mission would leave the several stations where they had been at much expense for building, etc., and where the people must be left without any one to point them to the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world, simply on account of the proceedings of a single individual when especially his associates were unanimous in the opinion that his proceedings were suited to hinder the progress of Christianity, and moreover as the Mission is perfectly competent to censure that member and advise his recall, and the Board perfectly competent to recall or expel the offending member and leave the Mission at liberty to pursue the work without embarrassment?"
Having sulked in his room and nursed his wrath till March 20, 1840, Gray then wrote a twelve page letter to Rev. D. Greene, Sec. of the American Board, and on April 15, 1840, he wrote another twelve page letter to Rev. D. Greene, Sec. Both were full of complaints against his associates, and especially against Spalding, and were the first letters received by the Board from the Oregon Mission which mentioned the quarrels in that Mission, though Mr. Hall of the Sandwich Island Mission, who had visited them the year before, had written to Rev. D. Greene about their hopeless dissensions, and advised that the Board abandon that field to the Methodists.
March 20, 1840, Gray wrote, "The committee may yet feel to recall some members of this Mission or to send an agent to enquire into the state of affairs. One or the other I would hope might be done soon." . . . "The influence of the Holy Spirit seems not to be sufficient nor a severe Providence of God, the hand of death nor bringing some of our number near to the grave to bring this Mission to act together." ... "Under such circumstances I write you at this time. It is now March. I see no prospect of the Mission getting together, the convening or calling of a meeting as you will see by last meeting's proceedings is in the hands of the committee of the whole. Mr. Whitman and Mr. Spalding are a part. Do you advise me under such circumstances to remain longer a member of this Mission? I do not wish to be hasty in any step but what to do I cannot tell. I fear the death blow to this Mission
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is already struck and with its burial will sink the whole Indian race."
That last sentence furnishes an excellent index to the mental caliber of W. H. Gray.
April 15 Gray wrote, "Let Dr. Whitman and Mr. Spalding or Mr. Lee order as many hundred ploughs, etc., etc., as they please. If they were engaged in teaching the Indians the value of their souls I am confident they would not think so much about ploughs and mill irons, etc." . . . "The prospect now is that Mr. Spalding will resist any effort on the part of the Mission to bring him to act in accordance with the suggestion of the Board." . . . "The committee may feel to censure me for making the communications I do, or they may feel to censure me for not making it sooner. I can only say that I have delayed hoping that others in the Mission would take hold of the case and communicate the facts, others I suppose have thrown this duty upon me as the one best acquainted with every fact in relation to the affairs and proceedings of the Mission."
The endorsement by D. Greene, Secy, on each of these letters is "Recd. 8 Feb., 1841. Acted on Genl. letter 8th Mch., 1841. D. G."
This "general letter" (of which I have never seen a copy), was plainly a letter of severe rebuke and warning. It (with two letters to Mr. Spalding personally from Rev. D. Greene), was received August 21, 1841, and Spalding went with it to Eells and Walker's Station as per Spalding's Diary, and Eells' letter of March 1, 1842, as follows: "August 21, 1841. Two letters came to me from Rev. Mr. Greene. . . . The letters are dated November, 1840, and they answer a letter I wrote in May, 1840, making but about 15 months from the date of my letter to the reception of the answer. . . . They also say that they have been informed that there are unhappy alienations among us and from the circumstances and indications of wrong feelings in the letters from two of the brethren he fears the information is correct. Mr. Greene . . . sincerely hopes the breach may be healed. ... I judge from the information received at the last meeting that Messrs. Smith and Gray are the persons referred to in Mr. Greene's letter." "September 8, 1841, (at Tshimakain) "Show the letters I have received from Mr. Greene. Read letters from him to the brethren here." And Eells and Spalding went with it to Whitman's station, as appears by letters from Eells and Whitman, as follows:
Eells wrote to D. Greene, Secretary, March 1, 1842, and after stating that Mr. and Mrs. Spalding visited them the previous autumn bearing a general letter from the Board to the members of the Oregon Mission, goes on: "I am ashamed and confounded that things exist in this mission which greatly merit such reproof as this
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letter contains. I am also much pained on account of the communications which have been sent to you relating to this subject. There is too much reason to believe that they have not been written in a right spirit. . . . At the time of the last annual meeting I sat from six to eight hours, with few moments' cessation, acting the part of a third person between the parties, and fondly hoped that a settlement was made which would be permanent, but have since been distressed to learn that if a bar was at that time put up, it has since been let down. If we shall be spared till the next meeting of the mission, I have confidence to believe that special efforts will be made to see if we cannot come to a more correct and happy understanding of the relations which we sustain toward each other as missionary associates, and of the duty resulting from the relations." This last meeting was that of 1841, held at Wailatpu, of which Spalding's Diary contains the following account: "Wednesday, June 9, 1841. Open the meeting of the mission. Mr. Walker is chosen Moderator again, and Mr. Eells Scribe, in the place of Mr. Smith, who is absent and will probably never meet with us again. I fear that Bro. Smith has been hasty in leaving the mission. It would have been better had he attended the meeting and asked the advice of the Mission, but I hope he knows his own business and will not offend his God."
"June 11.
"During the business today it came out more than probable that the feelings of the brethren towards myself and Mrs. Spalding were not such as are greatly to be desired in order to succeed in this Holy cause which probably can only be promoted by charity and united prayer and effort. That we deserve this more than cold treatment from our brothers and sisters as a chastisement in the hands of our kind Heavenly Parent, there is no doubt and oh may we be extremely careful lest we feel bitter against these instruments doubtless of good, and so sin yet more against him who has sent them.
"I was particularly grieved by being accused by Mr. Rogers through Dr. Whitman of using all my knowledge of the Nez Perces language to the disadvantage of the Mission, and gave this as the reason why he did not lend me his dictionary last winter, while he was absent at Walla Walla and Wailatpu. I think that this charge is entirely without foundation. If it is not I am a stranger to my own feelings towards Bro. Rogers and Bro. Smith in the subject of language. For the last year I have considered them as my teachers and have treated them as such. I was still more grieved that the brethren took this charge from the hands of Rogers and applied it to all my conduct in relation to the Mission, stating
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distinctly that they considered me as operating in every way to destroy the Mission.
"That I have sinned against my brethren in thought and deed which myself and dear wife feel that we have for the last two years there is no doubt, but that the above charge has its origin in envy is more than probable from the facts brought forward all of which except one or two small things which occurred in the States and were long since settled were entirely untrue, and have their origin either in Indian reports misunderstood, or in jealousy, I fear too many of them were the latter."
"June 12.
"It was voted today that Mr. Gray cooperate with Dr. Whitman. May this union greatly promote the cause of Missions in this country. An attempt was made to give Mr. Rogers two American cows and one bull, but the vote was laid on the table. It was voted that Messrs. Walker and Eells, also Dr. Whitman have liberty to give cattle to natives, or sell to strangers, but my request to pay Mr. and Mrs. Smith in part for their kind labors with us in a cow and bull was refused. ... It was stated today that Mr. Rogers left the Mission on account of ill treatment received from myself and Mrs. Spalding, and one principal offense was that he was not invited into her sick room, by me, on his return from Walla Walla, though he made no inquiry after her health nor mentioned her name, and though he knew she was thought to be in a very dangerous state. Also was informed that Mr. Gray and Mr. Smith and Dr. Whitman had been writing to the Board for more than a year to have them take some steps in relation to me. Also that Mr. Hall represented to the Board through Mr. Bingham the unchristian conduct referred to under date of January 29, 1840.
"The Lord in great mercy look upon these men and forgive their sins, and sustain his unworthy servant and hand maiden under these accumulating trials."
"June 13.
"Sabbath. Had a familiar talk with Dr. and Mrs. Whitman. Confessed that I had said a great many things which I ought not to have said, and asked her pardon, but was astonished at self righteousness manifested by our brother and sister."
The "unchristian conduct" referred to under date of January 29, 1840, in Spalding's Diary, was as follows: "Very unpleasant a,nd unprofitable talk last night between Messrs. Gray, Whitman, Rogers and Hall on one side, and myself on the other. Mr. Griffin was called in to prove that several charges against me were unfounded. One charge was I had influenced Mr. Griffin to refuse
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to do work for Mr. Gray on the 23rd. Mr. Griffin declared he had not been biased by me in any way, but refused to do the work as he had other work on the ground; that he was placed in the shop by the Prudential Committee and considered himself in charge of the shop, and was in a job of work which was pressing hard, viz.: had taken iron of me to work on shares by virtue of an agreement with the Prudential Committee some time ago, had done work for me and was not working for himself, and considered himself at liberty to refuse other work till this work was done. I pronounced this charge unkind and groundless, but the brethren refused to take it back. I can only pray for them and refer the case to Him who knows the heart. Another charge, Mr. Griffin was doing work for me.
"This was also found untrue from what appears above, but the brethren refused to take back the charge, again I can only pray for them.
"Another charge, I am conspiring against the Mission, as proof Dr. Whitman and Mr. Rogers heard Timothy last Sabbath say to his class that it was my wish that the people become settled as soon as possible, have farms, houses, plenty of provisions, hogs, cattle, etc., so that their children could attend school constantly and, if I should die, it is my wish that my children should become their teachers, should they live.
"When this thing was brought up I was satisfied it was all the work of the Devil to draw me away from the work which has laid so near my heart since I first settled among this people, viz.: the settlement of the people. What the brethren heard was true, and a doctrine which I have always preached, but so far from being conspiracy against the Mission, I consider it the life of the Mission. I will meet them on this subject before a reasonable world.
"God in mercy give me grace and wisdom to do my duty regardless of all the slanders that grow out of jealousy."
October 22, 1841, Whitman wrote to Rev. David Greene, Secretary, as follows: . . . "And first, as to the difficulties of the Mission, I have to say that at the earliest period at which it will be possible for the persons involved to assemble, we shall come together with Mr. Eells as Moderator, and either settle to our satisfaction, or else mutually divide and leave the Board to fill our places with others more suitable. When I last wrote you, I told you I thought we were prepared to cooperate together, but more recent facts have shown that hope to be vain, for Mr. and Mrs. Spalding have proved it otherwise. He was here a number of days with Mr. Eells, and left a few days since. He has again expressed a full desire to be reconciled to all in the Mission, but as Mrs. Spalding was not
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present, and not wishing to make a reconciliation to be soon broken or of partial understanding, we did not go any farther than to agree to act as being under covenant relations. Mr. Eells will take the part of an Agent of the Board, and hold us together until all is adjusted, or until a full account shall be prepared for the information of the Board." '
While this letter of Whitman's of October 22, 1841, puts all the blame on the Spaldings for the trouble between them, the following extracts from Spalding's Diary show that he took an entirely different view of the matter.
"December 3,1841. Dr. Whitman" (who had arrived at Lapwai November 26), "is not willing that the persons who have been examined and who give satisfactory evidence that they are new creatures in Christ should be received into the church, till our difficulties are settled. He read over a long list of charges vs. me, many of which were true and for which I told him I was willing and anxious to make any concessions or do anything he wished, if he would let me know his wish, as most of them had been often rehearsed and I as often intended to acknowledge my faults, but though he did not directly say what he wanted still he gave us plainly to understand that nothing short of excision from the Mission would satisfy him and Mr. Gray. Many of the charges were facts probably, and many of them were direct falsehoods got up by somebody. The Lord grant that I may see clearly where I have sinned against my brother and give me a hearty disposition to repent of them and give me patience to bear with Christian humility the wrongs that are heaped upon me. May I receive them with submission as chastisements in the hands of my kind Heavenly Father."
"February 23, 1842." Mr. Spalding sent an express with letters to Walla Walla.
Among them, he writes in his Diary, was: . . . "A package to Wailatpu containing letters of confession to and begging the pardon of the following persons, viz.: Dr, Whitman and wife, Mr. Eells and wife, Mr. Gray and wife, Mr. Walker and wife and Mr. Rogers.
"I trust by the grace of God to humbly repent of my sins vs. these brethren and sisters. That I have sinned against" (them) "and before God I feel conscious. May the Lord in great mercy forgive me and give me grace to do the work he has for me here to do in a way not to give offense to my brethren any more, however inconvenient it may be for me or expensive to the Board. . . . The many offenses of some of the brethren against myself and wife is a matter of their own consciences well known to themselves. When they feel that they have injured me they will be likely to make it known to us."
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May 12, 1842, Gray wrote a letter which both he and Whitman signed, making it really a joint letter in which they say:
"Our Mission is to meet on the 16th of the present month, when your letter to us as a mission will be considered and answered by the Mission. Mr. Spalding has notified us that he shall not be present at the coming meeting. ... In relation to the internal affairs of the Mission, there is no change, at least all things remain as they were last fall, and no better understanding with Mr. Spalding. The proposed meeting for a settlement in the Winter he refused to attend. ... If the Mission is to be continued four families are indispensably necessary. If it is to be given up the sooner the better. . . . There will probably be a large party of emigrants coming to this country in the Spring of 1843. Some young men are now returning with the expectation of bringing out a party next Spring. All the Mission are in good health, and we hope soon to be able to say all are united, either in a final separation or in everlasting union to cooperate."
How totally indifferent both Whitman and Gray were about the political destinies of Oregon, or about this migration (which they expected would start in 1843), getting through speedily and safely is evident from the fact that neither of them nor any of their associates in the Mission, in all their voluminous correspondence up to this time having written so much as one paragraph on the political destiny of any part of the old Oregon Territory, nor of advice to intending immigrants to it, in this letter (the last one of theirs which would reach the States before that migration would gather, and written when Whitman had no idea of going to the States), they do not write one word of advice and assistance for its guidance, but they do find time to write about the foolish wrangles which had threatened the mission with destruction from its very beginning.
The Seventh Annual Meeting met May 16, 1842, with Elkanah Walker, Moderator, and Cushing Eells, Scribe, and the following is an exact copy of all the report of its proceedings, except of some purely routine business that cuts not the least figure in this discussion.
Spalding did not appear, and after various routine business, "All the letters from Mr. Greene received by the members of this Mission since the last annual meeting were then read, also correspondence from the Sandwich Islands. . . . Two letters from Rev. H. H. Spalding, addressed to Dr. Whitman and Mr. Gray, containing his reasons for not attending the present meeting were read and referred to the committee of the whole. . . . The committee to whom were referred two letters of Rev. H. H. Spald-
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ing containing his reasons for not attending the present meeting report the following resolutions:
"1st. That we consider the reasons contained in the letters above referred to insufficient to justify Mr. Spalding's absence from this meeting.
"2d. That considering the dissension that exists in this Mission, it is our unanimous conclusion that a reconciliation must be made which promises permanent peace and harmony, or a separation must take place.
"3d. That Rev. H. H. Spalding be earnestly requested to be present at this place on or before the 30th inst, and that the above resolution signed by the Moderator and Scribe be forwarded to Mr. Spalding immediately.
"The above report and resolution were unanimously accepted and adopted."
Mr. Spalding's station it must be remembered was three days' journey from Wailatpu.
"Thursday, 26th. Mr. Spalding arrived.
"Friday, 27. Present all the missionary brethren. The last letter from the American Board was again read. On motion Messrs. Walker and Eells and Spalding were appointed a committee to prepare an answer to the two letters of Rev. David Greene, November 2, 1840, and March 8, 1841.
"Resolve. That the two letters of Rev. David Greene, under date November 2, 1840, and March 8, 1841, be referred to a committee of the whole, in order that they may furnish instruction to the committee appointed to answer the above named letters.
"The requisite instructions having been furnished, the committee appointed to write to the American Board prepared a short letter, which was presented on the 7th of June, and after some correction was approved and forwarded with very little delay.
"Resolve. That in view of the state of this Mission, especially the station at Lapwai, we deem it advisable that Rev. H. H. Spalding remove to Wailatpu to take charge of the natives at this place for the present, and that Dr. Whitman remove to Lapwai to take charge of that station till circumstances shall warrant a return."
The following is an exact copy of the letter to the American Board above referred to.
"Wailatpu, 8th June, 1842.
"Dear Sir: The undersigned were appointed a committee to answer your letters, bearing date 2d November, 1840, and 8th March, 1841.
"We can only at this time refer to those parts which speak of difficulties existing in this Mission. The above letters were referred to a committee of the whole.
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"The first question which was decided was that there was difficulties in the Mission.
"The next was what were these difficulties.
"To answer this question each one was requested to state in writing what he considered them to be. After this each one was called upon to give specifications showing the existence of these difficulties.
"The next question was what stood in the way of a reconciliation ?
"This question was also answered in writing by every member present.
"It would doubtless be of no interest to you to know every particular regarding the investigation or persons.
"We may state that there was a very full investigation which occupied the meeting eight days, and we are happy to say that difficulties have been met and settled in a Christian manner, and we feel that we now have reason to hope for permanent peace and harmony.
"We verily believe the Lord was with us and granted us grace to repent where we had done wrong, and to forgive where we had been grieved.
"It was the unanimous opinion at the close of the investigation that, should the Prudential Committee have taken any action on any communication yet unanswered, that the Mission ought to wait until this communication can be answered.
"Yours submissively in fraternal Christian affection,
(Signed) "E. WALKER,
"CUSHING EELLS, "H. H. SPALDING, "Committee."
Of the details of this eight days' reconciliation Walker's Journal gives a very meager account, but the only one known to exist. It is chiefly valuable as showing that in the opinion of Mr. Walker-- the most thoroughly straight forward man in the Mission--much of the blame for the troubles of the Mission rested on Whitman.
"Friday, May 27, 1842. Had a session this morning and resolved ourselves into a committee of the whole, with Mr. Eells in the chair, and commenced considering the difficulties of the Mission. Each one made out statements of what was considered the difficulties. In the afternoon specifications commenced.
"Saturday, 28. Had a prayer meeting this morning and continued the business of yesterday till near night. . . .
"Tuesday, 31. Had a hard session today and there was so much bad feeling manifested that I thought it was an abomination for us to meet and pray.
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"Wednesday, June 1. Made a list of specifications and had some conversation on other points. Finally concluded not to have much of a session in the afternoon. Mr. Eells and I took a long ride in the rain and felt that all hope was gone.
"Thursday, 2. Much talk was had today on the awful consequences that would follow if a reconciliation should not take place. I felt much and said considerable, and hope that it was not in vain. I think there was a better state of feeling than there has been since the session began, and I felt quite confident that a settlement would be made,
"Friday, 3. Commenced this morning rather late, and had a hard day. My feelings have been anything but calm. I have been much moved by some threats the Doctor made, that if he was not allowed to pursue his own course he would leave the Mission. The Doctor asked to be allowed to go on in his own way without being checked.
"Saturday, 4. Had a restless night last night. Could see no way in which we could advance on account of the threat the Doctor had made. . . . Mr. Spalding and the Doctor had some conversation and to all appearance with good result. . . . There seems to be a good prospect that the end will be good.
"Monday, 6. A considerable part of the day was spent in conversation between the Doctor and Mr. Spalding and all appeared to go well. Had the session in the evening. . . . Met in the afternoon but could not get Mr. Eells to attend.
"Tuesday, 7. Had no session until the afternoon. Some things were talked over and all declared that they were satisfied, then some reproof was administered. We closed at a very late hour."
This, which was at least the seventh or eighth reconciliation of this senseless quarrel between the Whitmans and Spaldings, came too late to avert the destructive order of the Board, made February, 1842.
This order, the carrying out of which in the opinion of all the members of the Mission, meant its destruction, left the Missouri frontier in the hands of Dr. Elijah White on the same 16th of May that this Seventh Annual Meeting convened, and reached Dr. Whitman September 15, 1842.
How came that order to be issued?
No sooner had Gray written these two letters of March 20, and April 15, 1840, than he told Rev. A. B. Smith, and Whitman, and Cornelius Rogers, and forthwith they all began to complain to the Board, all of them blaming Spalding as a slanderer, and mischief-maker and liar, and Smith also blaming Gray, and recommending that he as well as Spalding be recalled to the States, while Gray wrote another letter under date of October 14, 1840, and four days
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earlier Mrs. Whitman wrote a letter to her father (which appeared in Transactions Oregon Pioneer Association, 1893, pp. 128-133), as follows: "The man who came with us is one who never ought to have come. My dear husband has suffered more from him in consequence of his wicked jealousy, and his great pique towards me, than can be known in this world. But he suffers not alone--the whole Mission suffers, which is most to be deplored. It has nearly broken up the Mission. This pretended settlement with father, before we started, was only an excuse, and from all we have seen and heard, both during the journey, and since we have been here, the same feeling exists. His principal aim has been at me; as he said, 'Bring out her character,' 'Expose her character,' as though I was the vilest creature on earth. It is well known I never did anything before I left home to injure him, and I have done nothing since, and my husband is as cautious in speaking and thinking evil of him or treating him unkindly as my own dear father would be, yet he does not, nor has he, received the same kindness from him since we have been missionaries together.
"Every mind in the mission that he has had access to he has tried to prejudice against us, and did succeed for a while, which was the cause of our being voted to remove and form a new station.
"This was too much for my husband's feelings to bear, and so many arrayed against him, and for no good reason. He felt as if he must leave the Mission, and no doubt would have done so, had not the Lord removed from us our beloved child. This affliction softened his feelings and made him willing to suffer the will of the Lord, although we felt that we were suffering wrongfully. The death of our babe had a great effect upon all in the Mission; it softened their hearts towards us, even Mr. S.'s for a season. I never have had any difficulty with his wife; she has treated me very kindly to my face, but recently I have learned that she has always partook of the feelings of her husband. I have always loved her and felt as if no one could speak against her. The Lord in His Providence has brought things around in such a way, that all see and feel where the evil lies, and some of them are writing to the Board and proposing measures to have an overture and settlement made, and it may require his removal or return to effect it; not so much for his treatment toward us as some others also. A particular charge against him is duplicity."
This vote to have Whitman leave Wailatpu and start a new station was passed at a special meeting of the Mission, held at Spalding's station, February 19-25, 1839, with Spalding Moderator, and Walker Scribe. Spalding's Diary, February 23, 1839, reads: "Several resolutions passed. . . . Another comes up to remove Dr. Whitman from Wailatpu to commence a new station in the
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region of the Peluze, that he may be more central as the physician of the Mission. Much debate. Passed." Spalding's Diary, under date of September 2, 1839, says: "Our general meeting opened by a sermon by myself. I was chosen Moderator again, and Rev. A. B. Smith Scribe. . . . Dr. Whitman is to remain at Wailatpu. I do not approve of this."
What all this "tempest in a tea-pot" was about it is impossible to determine with absolute certainty, but its origin seems to have been in the fact that some four years or more before they started missionarying together Spalding had been a lover of Mrs. Whitman, who had rejected his suit, and some time subsequently accepted Whitman. There is no claim in all the voluminous correspondence of these missionaries, nor in the fragments of Spalding's, Mrs. Spalding's, Rev. E. Walker's, Mrs. Walker's, and Rev. C. Eells' diaries which still exist, that any of this talk of Spalding against Mr. and Mrs. Whitman had been outside of the Mission, nor is there any intimation that there was any suspicion even of sexual immorality or financial dishonesty on the part of any of the members of the Mission.
September 28, 1840, only sixteen days before this letter of Mrs. Whitman's, Rev. A. B. Smith, then connected with the Mission, wrote a fourteen-page letter to Rev. D. Greene, Secretary, in which, after bitter complaints about Spalding, he goes on as follows: "I would recommend that Mr. Spalding be recalled to the States and dismissed from the service of the Board without bringing him to any trial respecting his conduct here. From what I have seen and know of him I greatly fear that the man will become deranged should any heavy calamity befall him. These remarks I have just read to Dr. Whitman" (who, it must be remembered, was an M. D. and not a preacher--W. I. M.), "and he concurs in what I have written, and says, moreover, that Mr. Spalding has a disease in his head, which may result in derangement, especially if excited by external circumstances."
Yet well knowing that Spalding was on the verge of lunacy, and that his ill-considered talk about them had not been carried to the Hudson Bay Co.'s officers, who were their nearest neighbors, nor to the settlements in the Willamette Valley, some 300 miles west of them, neither Dr. nor Mrs. Whitman were magnanimous enough to ignore Spalding's unruly tongue, but allowed themselves and the Mission to continue to be kept in a turmoil about it till compelled to harmonize by the general letter of March 8, 1841, that resulted in the reconciliation which took eight days to effect, as per the letter of June 8, 1842.
On page 10 of this letter of September 28, 1840, Mr. Smith recommended the recall of Mr. W. H. Gray, as follows: "Respect-
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ing Mr. Gray, I would remark that in my opinion, and I presume the opinion is general in this Mission, it would be better that he should return home rather than go to another mission."
In this destructive order of February, 1842, which caused Whitman's ride the American Board adopted these recommendations of Mr. Smith and recalled both Spalding and Gray to the States. (Cf. Annual Rept. for 1842 of Am. Bd. pp. 140-1 infra.)
Gray, eager to stir up more strife, wrote on October 14, 1840, an eighteen-page letter to D. Greene, Secretary, in which he declared that Whitman and Spalding had already had five reconciliations (two of them while on the journey to Oregon in 1836). These five reconciliations did not include this one which Mrs. Whitman mentions in her letter of October 10, 1840, and of which Gray seems to have known nothing. Gray's letter, after describing the proceedings of the Fifth Annual Meeting in 1840, says: "Dr. Whitman stated that he thought, or believed, that the whole difficulty originated between him and Mr. Spalding before they left the United States, and thought that they would never be got along with till one or the other was removed. He said that the difficulty was between Mr. Spalding and his wife. Mr. Spalding had said more publicly than it would be for him to repeat it here 'That he (Mr. Spalding) would not come on a mission with Mrs. Whitman.' He felt he had been injured by Mr. Spalding by the reports he had circulated from town to town in the United States. He thought Mr. Spalding had acted a double part in relation to Mr. Smith, advising Mr. Smith to go to Kamiah, and then opposing it the way he did. The charge of duplicity was too prominent and too well substantiated for any one except Mr. Spalding not to see that he was actually guilty of double dealing."
After stating that Spalding then made a sort of confession of wrong doing, he continues: "How far other members of the Mission are satisfied with Mr. Spalding's confession and proceeding I cannot say--for myself, I do not feel that it amounts to any more than four previous ones he made to Dr. Whitman and myself, at the Pawnee Village, at Fort Boise on the Snake River, at Walla Walla on the Columbia, and at Clear Water in the presence of Mr. Hall, soon after the death of Dr. 'Whitman's little daughter" (who was drowned on June 23, 1839.--W. I. M.). "The three first times these things were brought up and settled, as I supposed, left upon my mind little or no impairing of my confidence in Mr. Spalding, as a Minister and a Christian. The fourth call came under the solemn and awful hand of death for us to bury, as it were in the grave of Dr. Whitman's only child all our difficulties, and ancient or past offenses against each other, in one grave forever.
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Then I had hope that good had come out of affliction. But in a few more days the same jealous and unsubdued disposition burst forth anew and produced the communication you have already."
Spalding's Diary gives an account of this meeting which was held at his Station beginning July 5, 1840, and the following are extracts from it: July 5. "One of the brethren from the other house comes into morning prayer, a thing unusual, doubtless I can imagine his object. In doing what I think to be duty I am obliged to grieve him or rather suffer his own jealous heart to make a breakfast out of itself. . . . Mr. Walker was chosen Moderator and Mr. Smith Scribe. . . . Adjourned to Monday morning, July 8, 1840. ... It was proposed to have a conference, quite unexpected but not unacceptable. I perceive that the brethren feel that I am somewhat in their way.
"A strange doctrine is advanced, viz.: that if one does not agree with the multitude he of course was in error, and should be dealt with. I objected and said that God was always right but not the multitude. I trust the Lord was with me. My dear wife had furnished me with several portions of select Scripture, on which I kept my eye almost constantly. There seemed to be a fruitless effort at something which looked very suspicious, but a great want of strength to perform their purpose. Oh is this the work of Missionaries? I went home with a sick soul."
"July 9, 1840.
"Conference again. Had scarcely opened when the Doctor rose in great agitation and said that either himself or me must leave the Mission.
"That the root of all the difficulties in the Mission lay between us, viz.: in an expression I made while in the states respecting his wife before she was married to Dr. Whitman, viz.: that I would not go into the same Mission with her, questioning her judgment, but which we had settled certainly four times before.
During the whole talk, which (was) long, I kept silent with my eye on my portions of Scripture. After several had spoken plainly betraying their object I was requested to speak, but I saw clearly that the time had not come and consequently kept my eye fixed on my paper. A long silence ensued.
"Dr. Whitman's storm began to abate. He thought a reconciliation could be had and began to admit that he might sometimes have said things that he should not have said. Mr. Eells said that the object of this interview was to have everything settled forever. I for the first time inquired do I understand you to say forever?
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"My inquiry was understood, as the matter to which Doctor Whitman referred had been settled several times. The Doctor saw his nakedness and apparently melted, and declared (that he) would henceforth strive with me and all brethren in our common work. That our hands should be together henceforth and (not) separate. About all present said they felt that they had been more or less guilty in respect to the lamentable state of things that had existed some time, and wished now to forget everything and labor as one heart. I thought the time had come to speak and I observed though I have had severe trials for several months past, and have in fact done less than nothing, yet I am willing to let everything pass and resolve to unite my efforts to labor for the common cause. I feel that our own sins are the greatest obstructions to our work, and for the honor of the cause we ought to unite. After several prayers we separated."
How totally wanting Whitman was in the ability to lead men is evident from the following extracts from a seven-page letter of his, dated October 29, 1840, in which he discusses the proposition to sell out to the Methodists, and to withdraw the Mission (which had been considered among them, and recommended to the Board by Rev. E. Walker, and Rev. A. B. Smith, and by Hall of the Sandwich Islands Mission, who had visited them the preceding year, as the easiest way out of the troubles into which their quarrels had brought them), and goes on as follows:
"You will see by Mr. Smith's letter a proposition to relinquish this Mission, and sell out in favor of the Methodists, together with such reasons as occurred to his mind. Some of these reasons are apparent to every one, and I shall not repeat them. To some of them he gave my name and assent, as also my opinion in favor of selling to the Methodists. The reasons which affect my mind most forcibly in favor of such a measure were not named by him. One was what Mr. Walker wrote me concerning his advice to the Board to withdraw the Mission. Another is the want of harmony, and the apparent difficulty in producing a reconciliation. . . . One other, and the greatest reason for abandoning the Mission is to try and get the Board out of the embarrassment into which it must be brought by what will be laid before them by some members of the Mission. ... I would that the true causes were given for relinquishing the Mission as they exist in it, and not altogether in the people and things more remote. . . . We cannot keep the Mission together at our General Meetings long enough to settle upon any principle of action. It has always been the case that we must break up our meetings before any of the work necessary for harmonizing the Mission could be entered upon. To me it seemed we should never separate until there was no more to be done to
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facilitate our work. But it has invariably been the case that some of the members would set a time to leave, and then everything must come to that time, let what would be the state of the Mission."
Was there ever penned a more pitiably childish admission of incapacity to lead than this, in a man--not in his green and callow youth--but past thirty-eight years old, and who was the acknowledged leader of the Mission?
It is not I who charge Marcus Whitman with lacking the qualities needful for leadership, but it is Marcus Whitman himself, who herein declares, after the close of the Fifth Annual Meeting of the Mission, and certainly at least the sixth reconciliation of the senseless quarrel with Spalding (which as we shall soon discover was as futile as all the previous ones had been), that he, knowing well what should be done, was unable to keep his five wrangling associates together (for Smith was then a member of the Mission,) long enough to even enter upon any of the work necessary for harmonizing the Mission.
September 3,1840, Rev. A. B. Smith wrote a fifty-two page letter to Rev. D. Greene, of which forty pages are filled with complaints about Spalding. On page seven he takes up Gray's communication to the Board concerning difficulties in the Mission--says Gray consulted with him about it, and he told him he would sanction his making such a communication. P. 20, he says Spalding quarreled with Dr. Beecher at Lane Seminary, that he thinks the American Board never had any testimonials from Dr. B. in favor of Mr. Spalding, that Dr. Whitman told him that he (Dr. W.) was much grieved in Cincinnati at Mr. Spalding's conduct towards Dr. B. That Mr. Spalding wanted to have Dr. Beecher attend a missionary meeting while he was there so he could make an open attack upon him, and that though he (Mr. Smith) had called on Dr. Beecher in Cincinnati, and had considerable talk about Indian Missions, not one word, good, bad or indifferent, did Dr. B. utter about Mr. Spalding, through knowing that Mr. Smith was going to be associated with him in the field. He also says that he had understood that Mr. Spalding had had no training in his boyhood, had grown up without any restraint, and had no self control. On pp. 15, 16 and 17 he gives an account of the meeting of the Mission in July, 1840, agreeing essentially with Gray's report of it; says "Dr. Whitman remarked that he supposed that the origin of all the difficulty that had existed in this Mission lay between him and Mr. Spalding. It was something of long standing and existed before they left the States. It would not be so public for him to state it in that meeting as Mr. Spalding made it himself while in the States. That Mr. Spalding had published from town to town
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before he left the States that he would not go on a mission with Mrs. Whitman."
He then says Spalding made a sort of a confession of wrong doing, and says (p. 17) "Bros. Walker and Eells seemed to hope that Mr. Spalding would pursue a different course in future, though they evidently had fears. I remarked to Mr. Walker that I had understood that Mr. Hall (of the Sandwich Island Mission), had already made some statements to the Board respecting the unhappy state of this Mission. . . . Mr. Gray remarked to me that it was the fifth time that he had beard Mr. Spalding make the same kind of confession since he left the States in company with him. As for myself, I had seen so much I felt that I must see his farther conduct before I could speak with strong confidence. Dr. Whitman was very sanguine in his expectations that Mr. Spalding in future would do better. But this is the Dr.'s failing to form hasty conclusions and be very sanguine in his expectations and then has the mortification of seeing his expectations fail."
June 2, 1841, Rev. A. B. Smith wrote an eleven-page letter to D. Greene, Secretary, in which he thus expresses himself about the troubles of the Mission:
"Should all the letters which have been sent reach you you will be in possession of all the information you need, though I wish you might have it from persons who have been mere spectators and disinterested persons. Mr. Hall has been with us as a spectator and whether he has expressed himself freely to the Board or not, I am not able to say, but I have before me an extract of a letter of his to Dr. Whitman in which he gives his opinion respecting the course he would recommend to the Board to pursue. I give you the extract on my own responsibility, as I have had no permission from him to make this use of it. Under date of March 13, 1841, he writes as follows: 'It is the opinion of myself, and Mr. Chamberlain, and probably of some others, that the Board had by all means better dispose of their interests in the Oregon to the Methodist Board, and withdraw entirely from that field. They could conduct a mission there in connection with their own mission at less expense than our Board, and it would probably be the most effectual way to heal the unhappy divisions which exist among you. In fact I do not think those wounds can ever be healed except by a withdrawal of some of your present number and how can this be effected? To labor for any length of time harmoniously as you are seems impossible. A reconciliation was made as you remember while I was there, and how long did it last? Such elements can never combine harmoniously and why should those who wish to live quietly and labor for the glory of God be tied to a firebrand which is continuously exposing them to conflagration?"
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This last sentence plainly means H. H. Spalding.
We have herein before quoted from his letter of September 28, 1840, in which he gives not only his own opinion that Spalding was likely to go crazy, but also Dr. Whitman's opinion as a physician, to the same effect.
October 15, 1840, Whitman wrote a fourteen-page letter to D. Greene, Secretary, and in all its pages he did not write one word about the three wagons of Meek, Wilkins, Newell and Ermatinger-- the first wagons which ever went through to the Columbia--having been driven through from Fort Hall to his Mission station and on to Walla Walla only a few days before, but he finds time and space to enlarge on the miserable quarrel which then for four years had threatened the destruction of the Mission, as witness the following:
"Mr. Gray has lately informed me that letters have been sent by him and others setting forth differences that have existed in this Mission.
"It was never my intention to trouble you with them though I have thought them of such a nature that Mrs. Whitman and myself must leave the Mission, and so strong was this feeling that I should have left previous to the convening of the Mission in 1839 had not the Providence of God arrested me in my deliberate determination to do so, by taking away our dear child in so sudden a manner by drowning. Since that time many appearances have changed and I have not seen it my duty to leave. But for your information and to settle more fully every point and policy of the Mission, as well as to adjust whatever may be wrong in the feelings of its members, I would advise and request that one of the members of the Sandwich Island's Mission or some agent of the Board be sent here with such power and instruction as you may see necessary. Some of the members of the Sandwish Island Mission might come here for health and a change of climate, and in the meantime do all you should direct, without attracting the attention of the public. . . . The Mission would unite if they could, but if you send an agent you will be able to obtain all that will be necessary to enable you to act."
NOTE ON WHITMAN'S LETTER OP OCTOBER 15, 1840.
If there were no other letter of Whitman's in existence than this, it, in connection with Mrs. Whitman's of October 10, 1840 (Cf. p. 115 ante), would be enough to at once remove Whitman's name from the list of great men, and put him among very commonplace men, certainly as low as I have placed him--"merely a third or fourth rate man."
Consider for a moment the indisputable facts.
No one had forced him to accept Spalding as an associate in his mission, but he had invited Spalding to that position as he himself wrote "without
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March 28, 1841, he wrote a seven-page letter to D. Greene, Secretary, in which he says, "As to continuing the Mission I have nothing new to say, but I hope let it be as it may we may have an authorized agent as I suggested last Fall sent to us, either from the Islands or otherwise, as you may see fit."
November 9, 1840, Cornelius Rogers wrote a three and a half page letter to I). Greene, Secretary, in which he says, "I find that
knowing much about him." (Cf. Whitman's letter of February 15, 1836, p. 35 ante.)
Their two stations had only been established since November, 1836, less than thirty-two months before Whitman, according to his own statement herein unblushingly made, without one word of apology or regret to the American Board, and as if it were a question concerning only himself and his wife, and not a matter about which he was under the slightest obligation to consult the officers of the American Board or his associates in the mission, had formed a "deliberate determination" to desert the mission before the annual meeting in 1839.
He was the only physician connected with the mission, and there was no other physician in the country nearer than Fort Vancouver, 245 miles west of his station, and 125 miles farther from Spalding's, 165 miles farther from Eells' and Walker's, and 185 miles farther from A. B. Smith's station.
Under the most favorable conditions of wind and weather the journey to and from Vancouver would occupy eighteen days from Whitman's and twenty-six to thirty days from the other stations, even supposing the doctor could be spared to start immediately from there, and in bad weather or in winter this time might be increased by 25 to 100 per cent, while the expense would simply be ruinous.
Revs. C. Eells, E. Walker and A. B. Smith and their wives had only arrived from the States nine months before, had spent the winter at Whitman's Station (where they certainly were not under Spalding's influence), and had gone to establish their stations only three or four months before the Whitmans formed this "deliberate determination" to desert the mission, knowing well that meant its certain and speedy destruction; and all because Spalding talked about him and his wife to the other members of the mission, and this, though as a physician he well knew that Spalding was on the verge of lunacy!
Any first or even second rate man would certainly have recognized his obligations to the American Board and to his associates in the mission, and would never have dreamed of coming to any "deliberate determination to leave the mission," without consulting anybody, but, if he felt that his position was so unsatisfactory that he desired to leave, would first of all have written to the Board that, as a physician was absolutely indispensable to the existence of the mission, he must request them to send a competent physician to take his place, and that he would withdraw from the mission on the arrival of his successor.
Less than this no honorable, high-minded man would ever for one moment have thought of doing.
If the reader will refer to Rev. C. Eells' letter of October 3, 1842 (p. 130 infra) endorsed by E. Walker as correct, he will find a very bitter attack on W. H. Gray for his dishonorable desertion of the mission in September, 1842. But Gray was only a mechanic, by no means indispensable to the continuance of the mission.
What would Eells and Walker have written had they known that more than three years earlier, Whitman, the one man absolutely indispensable to the continuance of the mission, had "deliberately determined" to desert it?
No wonder every Whitmanite has avoided quoting or even alluding to this letter, with its amazing self-revelation of the intrinsic weakness of Whitman's moral nature.
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very discouraging letters are on their way to you from this Mission. I cannot state my views now to you, but I intend to write you by the express in March. I am calculating to do some printing and teaching this Winter at Clear Water.
"Dr. Whitman does not feel so much despondency now as he has done and I hope he and all will have more hope and be able to go on successfully. I am more encouraged now than I have been for some months past. If you should send an agent here as Dr. Whitman says he has recommended, I wish you would send some man advanced in years of good judgment and of much experience in teaching doctrines of Religion, and who would be able to aid by his decision of character and correct estimation of things the operations of the Mission."
February 27, 1841, C. Rogers wrote a seven-page letter to D. Greene, Secretary, in which, after discussing the difficulties of the Mission and the dissensions between the members, he says:
"The existence of many circumstances unfavorable and of which I suppose you are not altogether ignorant make it very doubtful whether my connection with this Mission continues long."
Having before them (as the endorsement of D. Greene, Sec., on them shows), these three letters of Rev. A. B. Smith of September 3, 1840, September 28, 1840, and June 2, 1841, one of Gray's dated October 14, 1840, three of Whitman's, dated October 15, 1840, October 29,1840, and March 28,1841, and two of Cornelius Rogers', dated November 9, 1840, and February 27, 1841, aggregating more than 130 pages, largely occupied with complaints about the quarrels, and reconciliations, and renewed quarrels of the Mission, together with letters from Rev. E. Walker and from Hall and Chamberlain of the Sandwich Islands' Mission, recommending that the Board discontinue the Oregon Mission, it is not strange that the Prudential Committee of the American Board Commissioners Foreign Missions required eight days--February 15-23,1842--to act on them all, and the only wonder is that they did not cut up the whole Oregon Mission, root and branch.
(While the endorsement of D. Greene, Secretary, on these letters of complaint was "Acted on February 25-26" the resolutions were passed by the Prudential Committee February 15 and 23. Mr. Greene's endorsement doubtless states the days he acted on them by preparing the letters to the Mission announcing the action of the Prudential Committee.)
Instead of such sensible action as this would have been, they passed an order discontinuing the southern branch of the Mission (i. e., three out of its four stations, including Wailatpu, Whitman's station, which was by far the most important of the four), recalling Spalding and Gray to the States and ordering Whitman to dispose
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of the Mission property of the discontinued stations and go 165 miles to the north (and just that much out of the line of travel from the States to Oregon), and join Eells and Walker (with whom both his and Mrs. Whitman's relations were not always agreeable), at Tshimakain.
This order was a singular compound of wisdom and folly. Gray and Spalding should certainly have been recalled, but if any station should have been continued it was Wailatpu, and Eells and Walker should have been sent there. Had this been done no one who reads this contemporaneous correspondence can doubt that there would have been no Whitman's Ride.
The letter containing this order left the Missouri frontier May 16, 1842, in the hands of Dr. Elijah White, and reached Wailatpu September 15, 1842, and Eells, in his letter of October 3, 1842, writes: "On the 31st" (i. e., of August) "he (Dr. W.) wrote us the following: 'Mr. Gray is to leave today for the Willamette with the expectation of seeing what arrangements he can make for his family and if to his mind he intends to leave with his family at an early date, but in the event of not pleasing himself he intends to go to the States in the Spring.' During the absence of Mr. Gray, Dr. White arrived at Wailatpu with letters from the Missionary House, Boston, for this Mission. The letters were soon forwarded to this place. The day after they reached us (September 21), Mr. Walker and myself started for Wailatpu, where we arrived on the morning of the 26th. Mr. Gray had then been back four days, and was making preparations to move with the least possible delay."
This same fourteen-page letter of C. Eells of October 3, 1842, which contains the report of the Seventh Annual Meeting of the Oregon Mission (hereinbefore quoted pp. 111-13 ante), contains also the report of this Special Meeting of September 26-27, thus called by Whitman, not as Rev. E. Eells stated, when he endorsed the Whitman Saved Oregon Story, May 28, 1866, to act on a long meditated project ,of Dr. Whitman to go East to Save Oregon to the United States, but (as the article in the Missionary Herald for September, 1843, distinctly declared), "to consider this decision" discontinuing three of the four mission stations, and recalling Spalding and Gray to the States.
Those on the Pacific Coast who have discussed this Whitman Saving Oregon Story, especially Mrs. Victor, and the late Hon. Elwood Evans, have repeatedly, during the past twenty-five years called for the production of this report, but have always been met with a denial of its existence, based on Rev. C. Eells' statement in 1883, that it was destroyed at the time of the Whitman Massacre, but I found it within an hour after I began to examine the MSS. of the American Board, and the following is a verbatim copy of it:
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"A special meeting of the Oregon Mission was called on the 26th of September, 1842. After being opened with prayer a general letter from Rev. David Greene containing an account of the action of the Prudential Committee respecting this Mission was read, also a copy of one approved by the Mission at their last meeting and forwarded to the Missionary House." (This is No. 9, Vol. 138, MSS. of A. B, C. F. M., dated June 8, 1842, giving an account of the eight days' reconciliation, and signed by Walker, Eells and Spalding, Committee, and copied in full on pages 111-12 ante.--W. I. M.)
"Resolve. That in compliance with a suggestion of Mr. Gray he be requested to present to this meeting in writing a statement of the course he has taken in making preparation to leave the Mission together with his reason for so doing.
"A paper was presented by Mr. Gray containing some statements and resolutions.
"The following is a copy.
"Wailatpu, September 26, 1842.
"To the Members of the Oregon Mission of the A. B. C. F. M.:--
"I would respectfully submit to you the following reasons for the course I deem it expedient for me to pursue, and the engagements I have entered into.
"'First. In view of the vote passed at the meeting of the Mission in 1841, approving of my correspondence with Gentlemen of the Hudson's Bay Company in reference to a school for the benefit of the children of the same. I have conversed personally with several Gentlemen on the subject connected with the company, and also with a number of the Methodist Mission, all of whom are anxious and ready to do what they can to establish a boarding school for the benefit of their children, and the country at large. To erect buildings and to secure the permanence of the school the members of the Methodist Mission in particular have contributed nobly. Having procured the funds necessary for the school to go into immediate operation, they were obliged to drop the school and so discontinue their efforts for want of some one to take charge of the secular department and carry on the school. In view of the present and prospective wants of the country and the prospect of usefulness in this Mission, I have deemed it to be my duty to engage in the school so long as shall be mutually agreed upon.
"Second. I was induced to enter the school believing that the embarrassed state of the funds of the American Board and the prospect of this Mission would not warrant my remaining and drawing from the funds of the Board what might be deemed necessary for the support of myself and family.
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"Third. I am fully of opinion that a boarding school under religious influences in this country is second to no object in it and therefore feel it to be my duty cheerfully to give up my connection with this Mission and the Board, and enter the school as above intimated. I would therefore respectfully request that this Mission sanction the following request to the A. B. C. F. M.
"Resolve. That we approve Mr. Gray's engaging in the school as above intimated.
"Resolve. That we sanction his request to withdraw from his connection with the A. B. C. F. M. in view of the object above specified.
"Respectfully yours,
"W. H. GRAY."
"Dr. Whitman seconded the first resolution (in the paper presented by Mr. Gray), and with certain explanations made by himself was in favor of passing it.
"Mr. Gray claimed the privilege of voting in favor of the resolution. Messrs. Spalding and Eells were opposed to it. The Moderator decided against passing the resolution. The meeting was adjourned to meet at the call of the Moderator, and closed with prayer.
"Attest: "E. WALKER, Moderator.
"CUSHING EELLS, Scribe."
The above is every word there is in the Official Report of that Special Meeting, but on the following morning, viz.:--September 28, 1842--they, without, as it appears, calling any meeting, and without attempting to incorporate the proceedings in this report, as an appendix, or in any other way, passed the following two resolutions :
"Resolved, That we approve of the withdrawal and removal of Mr. W. H. Gray and wife from this Mission, in order to become the Secular Agent of and General Superintendent of the Oregon Institute, to be located in the Willamette Valley, as set forth in a prospectus for the same.
(Dated) "Wailatpu, September 28, 1842.
(Signed) "E. WALKER, Moderator. "CUSHING EELLS, Scribe. "H. H. SPALDING. "MARCUS WHITMAN."
This resolution is in a letter of W. H. Gray to Rev. D. Greene, dated "Wailatpu, October 3, 1842," and endorsed "Recd. March 30, 1843," and as this letter was taken by Whitman, that settles the date when Whitman reached Boston.
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The second resolution is the only document that Whitman carried with him to Boston from the men who remained associated with him in the Mission, and is No. 10 of same Vol. 138, of A. B. C. F. M. MSS., and is also endorsed "Recd. March 30, 1843, D. G."
It reads as follows:
"Resolved, That if arrangements can be made to continue the operations of this station that Dr. Whitman be at liberty and advised to visit the United States as soon as practicable, to confer with the committee of the A. B. C. F. M. in regard to the interests of this Mission.
"B. WALKER, Moderator. "CUSHING EELLS, Scribe. "H. H. SPALDING." "Wailatpu, September 28, 1842."
Not only is neither of these resolutions contained in the report of the special meeting, but neither of them is copied anywhere else in Eells' fourteen-page letter of October 3, 1842, nor in Walker's sixteen-page letter of the same date, but Eells mentions the Gray resolution as follows:
"The Mission felt perplexed and in doubt, not knowing what course the American Board would have us pursue. Whether or not we ought to approve of Mr. Gray's leaving and how much property he should be allowed to take. Mr. Walker and myself at last signed a paper which Mr. Gray will doubtless forward to the Prudential Committee, and advising that he have leave to take a part of the property belonging to the station he has left, not however as much as would be required to carry himself and family to the United States."
But neither letter mentions the resolution authorizing Whitman's going to the States, as a resolution signed by them; but Walker's letter of October 3, 1842, endorsed by Rev. C. Eells mentions Whitman's proposition, and the permission given, as we shall soon see.
So far as known Rev. E. Walker was the only one of these people who kept a journal at this time, and the following extracts from it include all in it that bears in any way on the purpose of this Special Meeting of September 26-27, and its proceedings:
"Tuesday, September 20, 1842. Just as we were about to sit down to breakfast the long looked for express came, with some letters from the Doctor and from Mr. Greene. It was stated in Mr. Greene's letter that it was decided that the southern part of tMa Mission was to be given up, and all called home except the Doctor, and he was to be connected with the northern branch. The Doctor sent Mr. Spalding's letter to us, and we felt it was wrong in him
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not to forward it. The Doctor requested us to come down immediately. Mr. Gray had left to look out a place for himself and family. We felt that we ought to go. Our wives urged us on. We accordingly made prepartions to leave.
"Wednesday, September 21. After brief account of their journey and camping for the night he says 'Have felt very much encouraged that the Mission would not be given up.'
"Thursday, 22. ... Much conversation of the state of the Mission.
"Friday, 23. Merely brief account of their journey.
"Saturday, 24. After four lines about their journey he goes on: 'Have had some very strong feelings today in regard to the Mission. I could not bring my mind to think that any part was to be abandoned.'
"Monday, 26. .... Reached the station of Dr. Whitman about 10 and found Mr. Spalding there. Did nothing of business till evening and then had rather a session discussing Mr. Gray's case.
"Tuesday, 27. We did not do much today. The Doctor preferred some charges against myself and Mr. Eells which we did not admit and held him to the talk I had with him last Summer.
"Wednesday, 28. Rose this morning with the determination to leave, and found Mr. Spalding had the same view, and was making preparations to leave as he felt that nothing could be done. At breakfast the Doctor let out what was his plan in view of the state of things. We persuaded them to get together and talk matters over.
"I think they felt some better afterwards. Then the question was submitted to us of the Doctor's going home, which we felt that it was one of too much importance to be decided in a moment, but finally came to the conclusion that if he could put things in such a state that it would be safe we could consent to his going, and with that left them and made a start for home."
Medorem Crawford's Journal, published by Oregon Historical Society, states that Spalding was just before this time forty-five miles down the Columbia from Fort Walla Walla as follows: "September 20. Mr. Spalding and lady overtook us at noon. . . . Mr. Gray called at camp on his return from Vancouver.
"September 21. Started at 10 o'clock and parted with Mr. and Mrs. Spalding, who in consequence of some intelligence from Mr. Gray resolved to return."
I have never been able to learn why Spalding was there at this time, but probably Whitman knew he was away from home and so sent his letters to Eells and Walker thinking he might be there.
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Eells' letter of October 3, 1842, in all its fourteen pages, does not so much as mention Whitman's going to the States for any purpose whatever, but all of it after the report of this special meeting is taken up with a bitter criticism of Gray's course in leaving the Mission, beginning:
"It appears to me that duty to the American Board as well as to this Mission requires that a more particular statement of the conduct of Mr. Gray, and the action of the Mission with reference to him be made, than is to be found in the minutes of the meeting,
"Several years ago Mr. Gray appeared to be dissatisfied with the relation he sustained to this Mission. Sometime during 1840 he had conversation with gentlemen of the Hudson's Bay Company in relation to a school lor the benefit of their children. Mr. Cornelius Rogers has said Jas. Douglas, Esq., told him they would not give Mr. Gray a hearing because of the want of evidence that the Mission approved of such an arrangement being made."
Farther on he wrote: "During the last Annual Meeting no one was more forward than Mr. Gray in making arrangements for future operations. I do not recollect to have heard any intimation that he was dissatisfied with his relations to this Mission. The resolution advising that Dr. Whitman and Mr. Spalding make a temporary exchange of stations was presented by Mr. Gray and strongly urged by him. Others stated reasons for and against the change. I think it safe to say a rather hesitating assent was given to the resolution. After returning to his station Mr. Spalding committed an error (and perhaps in consequence, though it is doubtful), two white men living near that station made a threat which caused some fear that it might not be safe for Dr. Whitman to remove to Lapwai. In July Mr. Walker went to Wailatpu for Vancouver supplies, and met Mr. Spalding at that place. Of the four brethren then together all were in doubt as to the expediency of the exchange of stations except Mr. Gray. He strongly urged it be made even if the life of Dr. Whitman should be endangered, also expressed a regret that he was connected with a Mission which had not courage to carry out such a vote. .... Soon after the Special Meeting was opened a resolution was presented, stating that Mr. Gray, in pursuing the course he had done, had virtually withdrawn from the Mission. He then said he should consider it unkind to pass such a resolution without first giving him an opportunity to make some statements.
"The resolution was withdrawn, and the one passed 'That in compliance, etc.' It will be seen that the statements communicated do not at all meet the resolution. I have no evidence that many of the reasons now urged by Mr. Gray for leaving the mis-
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sion were ever named by him until after he had fully decided to leave." ....
This letter has the following endorsement: "I may say that I was present at the last meeting when the statements of Mr. Gray were made setting forth the reasons why he left the Mission, and can cheerfully add as far as I understand the case the remarks of Mr. Eells upon his proceedings do not present the case more unfavorably to Mr. Gray than it appeared to me at the time, and my views have not undergone any change since.
(Signed.) "E. WALKER."
But though Eells' fourteen-page letter, endorsed by Walker, says nothing about Whitman's going to the States, when we turn to the sixteen-page letter which Walker, living at the same mission station began on this same third day of October, 1842, and finished October 8, 1842, to the same Rev. D. Greene, Secretary, and which letter was endorsed by Eells, we find it beginning as follows: "It is with no ordinary feelings that I address you at this time. The reception of your letters dated February, 1842, has placed us in a situation which we feel demands from us a full and candid statement of the affairs of the Mission."
He then argues at length the greater relative importance of the south branch of the Mission, declaring that "If necessity demanded that one branch of the Mission should be abandoned, the north part could have been given up with far less disastrous consequences both as respects white settlers and the natives, and with little or no sacrifice of property. . . . The south branch cannot be given up without great injury being done to this part. It was said by the members of this part that it could not be sustained if the other part was abandoned. . . . You will readily perceive what course we felt authorized to pursue when you receive the letter addressed to you by the Committee of the Mission appointed to answer your communication, stating that the difficulties were settled, and that if any action had been taken on any previous communication received from members of this Mission we ought to wait until we could receive an answer to the letter of the Committee. (This the letter of June 8, 1842, quoted on pp. 112-13 ante.) You will doubtless receive the doings of the Mission from its stated scribe, as far as there was any definite action taken. . . . You will see why we were so unwilling to abandon the south branch, as it seemed to us by giving that up we were giving up the whole Mission.
"Notwithstanding we thought that the object of your letter had been accomplished by the reconciliation which had taken place, still we felt ourselves placed in a trying situation. We hardly
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knew what course to pursue, and concluded to wait until we could receive an answer to (the letter of) the Committee of the Mission stating that the difficulties of the Mission were settled. We found too that there was a difficulty in sustaining the Mission, as so many had withdrawn, and as the reinforcement had stopped at the Islands. After considerable consultation, without coming to any definite conclusion, and as we were about starting for our place, a proposition was made by Dr. Whitman for him to return to the States this Winter, and confer with the Prudential Committee, and conduct a reinforcement out next summer, if it was thought best to continue the Mission. At least something definite could be decided upon. The proposition on being presented just as we were on the eve of leaving, we felt at first that we could not then give a decided answer to it. We wanted time to think and pray over it and proposed to return and send in writing our conclusion. But we were told that there was no time to be lost. After some more consultation, we stated that if the station could be put in condition which would render it safe to be left, and other proper arrangements could be made, we would consent to Dr. Whitman's going to the States. We do not approve of the hasty manner in which this question was decided. Nothing it seemed to us but stern necessity induced us to decide in the manner we did. It seemed death to put the proposition in force, and worse than death to remain as we were. I have no doubt if his plan succeeds it will be one of great good to the Mission and country. It is to be expected that a Romish influence will come in and, being under the control of the priests, it will be scattered throughout the country wherever there are Indians, and near the stations of the Mission to meet this influence, a few religious settlers around a station would be invaluable. Furthermore we need a good reinforcement especially of laymen, which would add much to our efficiency.
"With our present number we can hardly hold our own, as we have so much secular labor to perform. We need mechanics and farmers. We want those who are willing to be such all their days, and not feel as soon as they get to the field that they can be more useful in some other department of labor." (These last two sentences are plainly aimed at W. H. Gray.--W. I. M.)
The 14th page of this letter was left blank by Mr. Walker and on that page Mr. Eells wrote the following: "Through mistake this page was omitted. I am happy to say the subjects of this letter have been frequently discussed of late by Mr. Walker and myself. I do not now recollect that there has been any important difference in the conclusions arrived at, and I do most cheerfully add, that considering the short time allowed for writing the letter, I think it well done and consider the statements very
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just. . . . The general plan of the letter was mutually agreed upon, and after hearing the whole of it read once, and parts of it more than once, I have observed nothing of importance to which I cannot give a full assent.
(Signed) "CUSHING EELLS."
Yet this is the same Cushing Eells who, on May 28, 1866, in a long, carefully written and tediously verbose letter (published in Missionary Herald, December, 18C6, pp. 370-72), wrote that this meeting was called to consider an unyielding purpose of Whitman to go to the States to Save Oregon, and continues: "According to the understanding of the members of the Mission, the single object of Dr. Whitman in attempting to cross the continent in the Winter of 1842-43 . . . was to make a desperate effort to save this country to the United States."
It is true that in a later statement in 1878 (Cf. Seattle Intelligencer, May 27, 1881), Mr. Eells changed this "single" to "all controlling," and followed it by the statement: "It was expected that the opportunity would be improved for the transaction of business relating to the Mission," but never, to the day of his death, did he in any statement give the least intimation that there was anything urgent in the way of missionary business impelling Whitman to make that ride; much less that the very existence of the Mission depended upon his making it.
February 28, 1843, Rev. E. Walker wrote a letter to D. Greene, Secretary, covering twenty-two pages of large sized letter paper, from which the following are extracts: "I wrote you very fully last October with the intention that it shoTild go by the hand of Dr. Whitman whom you doubtless will see before the duplicate that was sent by the Islands will reach you.
"You will be surprised to see him without letters from the Mission but you will be no more so than we were that he should go without them. We sent our letters at the time agreed upon and when our express returned found out by the couriers that there was no one at Wailatpu except a man (of the) Hudson's Bay Company. We were not able to learn whether the Doctor had left for the States or had not returned from the lower country. Some time afterwards we received a letter from Mrs. Whitman stating that the Doctor left for the States on the 3d of October, soon after we left. You will perceive by the letters sent by the Islands, if they reach you, that it was with reluctance that permission was given for his visiting the States. It was only as it was considered as an extreme case, and that something needed to be done without delay. It is with trembling that we hope something may be done to advance and strengthen the Mission. I regret that the letters
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designed to go by Dr. Whitman did not go, as they, I think, contained representations which the committee would judge important at this state of the Mission. I think had the committee been fully enlightened on the whole state of the field they would not have come to some of the conclusions they did. Of this however I can say nothing stronger than I think, and it may yet prove the wisest course that could be pursued. It may be that the Mission erred. They acted according to their best opinion by the movements of Providence in the case. We think the only thing that saved the Mission from utter destruction was the want of an opportunity to send your communications to this Mission as early as you could wish, for had they reached us prior to our meeting in May last I am not able to see in what way the Mission could have stood. . . . It is still hoped that the Committee will be able to obtain information from Dr. Whitman that will enable them to come to some important conclusion to promote the interest of the Mission. It is hoped (and for which daily prayer is made) that Dr. Whitman will have grace and wisdom given him equal to the importance of his undertaking and that the Committee will be able to send a reinforcement or take some other measure that will make the path of duty plain before us." . . .
Among Rev. Elkanah Walker's papers now in the possession of the Oregon Historical Society is an unsigned letter in his handwriting which is evidently the first draft of this letter of February 28, 1843.
It begins as follows:
"Cimakain, January 23, 1843. "Rev. David Greene:--
"Dear Sir:--I wrote you last October very fully, and I suppose that before this reaches you, you will have received that, and will see Dr. Whitman. Perhaps you were surprised to see him without letters from the Mission. You can be no more surprised than we were that he should go without them. We thought the arrangement was made when our letters should be at his place. We were punctual at the time, unless one day in advance of the time specified would be considered to be sufficient to destroy our punctuality. We sent an express on purpose to take the letters down, and it was so much expense incurred for nothing. You will readily perceive by the letter sent by the Island, a duplicate of the one designed to go by Dr. Whitman, that it was with reluctance that we gave our consent. It was only as it was an extreme case, I might say a desperate case, that consent was given. We have but little hope of success, as it is not to be expected that such hasty and prayerless undertakings will receive the blessing of God. When we were getting ready to start from Whitman's for Walker's,
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something was said about his leaving immediately. He was told that he could not, that we could not get our letters ready, and that he must not start until he had secured the services of a good and faithful man to go with him, and that it would not be safe for him to go without going to the Willamette and securing a good guide. This seemed to satisfy him that he must go to the Willamette first, and the last words I said to him, or about the last, was, 'Doctor, do not start until you are sure you are ready.' I suppose I shall have to bear my part of the responsibility of bis going. Let it be received as it may by the Committee, I am conscious that I had no motive in giving my consent except the good of the Mission. If it fails of that, it must be viewed as one of the events which Providence sees not as man sees. I thought that if he would wait two or three weeks longer that there would be more time to deliberate upon it and to pray over it. In the letter that I wrote to Dr. Whitman at the time the express was sent, I stated to him that we prayed he might go, and we prayed he might not, giving him to understand at least that we were in doubt of the expediency of the thing, and showing that we hoped that Providence would overrule all things as should be best. But it is not necessary that I should say more at this time on this subject. I regret much that my letter did not go by the Doctor, as I think the information it contains would be of service to the Committee, and it would second perhaps the exertions of Dr. Whitman in inducing the Committee to send a reinforcement to this field or take some measures in regard to it." . . .
Yet when Mrs. Victor, in an article in the Oregonian of November 7, 1884, after stating that Whitman did not wait as he had agreed to do for the letters of Eells and Walker continued: "What did he fear in the reports of Walker and Eells that he thus gave them the slip?" Rev. Myron Eells, replying to her (in an article in the Oregonian of January 11, 1885, reprinted in the pamphlet "The Whitman Controversy," Portland, Ore., 1885), wrote: "Dr. Eells has never complained that Dr. Whitman gave him the slip. Only Mrs. Victor thus complains. I asked Dr. Eells if his letters arrived at Dr. Whitman's before the Doctor started, and his reply was 'yes.' His courier reached Walla Walla 'seasonably'--before the 3d--and Dr. Whitman did not give him the slip."
There is not (prior to Whitman's letter from St. Louis, May 12, 1843, when on his return to Oregon), in any of the correspondence of these missionaries either the official with the American Board, or the personal with friends, or in the diaries of any of them, or in the records of the meetings of the Mission so much as one sentence expressing the least interest in or concern about the political destiny of any part of the Oregon Territory, or anything
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that implies that any one of them even knew that there was any question of boundary between the United States and Great Britain, except the following from an undated letter of W. H. Gray (No. 136, Vol. 138, Am. Bd. archives), plainly written after October, 1839, and probably in November or December, 1839:
"Dr. McLoughlin said to me that it was his wish that our people should occupy that place, and gave as a reason that then our people would be all together, and have nobody to meddle with us, and in case the boundary line should be the Columbia River and the Fort was to be removed he should like to have us there, both on account of the influence we might exert on the Indians and men of the Fort. He did not wish to answer all my questions about the country because it would imply a claim to the country, which they had none except what their forts now occupied; he would say that he thought we had just as good a right to occupy any place as they had."
Surely nothing further ought to be needed to convince even the most ardent devotee of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story that Whitman's Ride was undertaken solely on missionary business; but if anything further is required to convince such people, it will be found in the other strictly contemporaneous evidence in the next chapter.
THE OTHER CONTEMPORANEOUS EVIDENCE AS TO THE ORIGIN AND PURPOSE OF WHITMAN'S RIDE, VIZ.:
(a) Mrs. Whitman's letters of September 29, and September 30, 1842, March 11, 1843, April 14, 1843, (all in Trans. Or. Pioneer Asscn., 1893,) and May 18, 1843, in Prof. Bourne's "Legend of Marcus Whitman," (1901).
(b) The first account ever printed, and also the official account, of the origin and purpose of Whitman's ride, in the Missionary Herald, for September, 1843.
(c) The second account ever printed of the origin and purpose of Whitman's ride, also official, being in the Missionary Herald, for July, 1848.
While this evidence has been in print as above stated, no book or magazine, or newspaper article advocating the Whitman Saved Oregon Story has ever printed any of it, nor has any one of them ever given any information about this evidence that would enable their readers to look it up for themselves.
Six persons knew of their own knowledge exactly what caused Whitman's Ride, viz.: Revs. H. H. Spalding, Cushing Eells and Elkanah Walker, Mr. W. H. Gray, and Dr. and Mrs. Whitman.
Whether Mrs. Eells, Mrs. Walker and Mrs. Spalding did or not we cannot tell, but nothing in the way of contemporaneous evidence is known to exist in any letters or diaries kept by any one of them. Not a sentence has ever been produced from Walker's pen endorsing any form of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story.
For the first time the public has now an opportunity in the last two chapters to compare what Eells and Spalding thought they remembered about this matter from twenty-three to forty years after the event, with what they wrote at and just before the time Whitman started to the States. So far as known, except his letters quoted in the last chapter, Gray wrote nothing contemporaneously about the origin and purpose of Whitman's ride (as, having deserted the Mission, he did not sign the Resolve of September 28, 1842), and we can only compare his statements from 1865-6 to 1885 with what he must have known about the matter in September and October, 1842.
In an article in the Oregonian of February 1, 1885, (reprinted in a pamphlet "The Whitman Controversy." Portland, Or., 1885. p. 36) Gray says: "He was at the Whitman Station in June of
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that year (1842), and a member of that Mission, and at that meeting was honorably permitted to leave its service and go where he pleased with his family." (p. 37) "As to the claim that Whitman's purpose in going to the States was to secure a rescission by the A. B. C. F. M. of the order of February, 1841, to abandon the southern stations, Gray says: "Of this object I have no personal knowledge, nor of its being talked about at the time."
He makes the same assertion more definitely in a pamphlet issued by himself, undated, but plainly issued about 1883 to 188,5, and entitled "Circular Number Eight," in which, (p. 5) he says: "The order to abandon the Mission I confess is new to me." . . . This order which Mr. Gray claims "is new to him" in 1885 included as we shall soon see an order for Rev. H. H. Spalding and Mr. W. H. Gray to return to the States.
Dr. Whitman's claims made in several letters as to the results of his ride, and in one letter only as to two purposes he had in making it, we will consider in a separate chapter.
(a) MRS. WHITMAN'S LETTERS.
Mrs. Whitman it is absolutely certain knew exactly what was the origin and purpose of Whitman's ride. September 29, 1842, (the next day after her husband first proposed the journey,) she wrote as follows to her brother at Quincy, Illinois: "My beloved husband has about concluded to start next Monday to go to the United States. ... If you are still in Quincy you may not see him until his return, as his business requires great haste. He wishes to reach Boston as early as possible so as to make arrangements to return next summer if prospered."
"The interests of the missionary cause in this country calls him home." September 30, 1842, she wrote to "My Beloved Parents, Brothers and Sisters:--You will be surprised if this letter reaches you to learn that the bearer is my dear husband, and that you will after a few days have the pleasure of seeing him. May you have a joyful meeting. He goes upon important business as connected with the missionary cause, the cause of Christ, in this land, which I will leave for him to explain when you see him because I have not time to enlarge. He has but yesterday fully made up his mind to go, and he wishes to start Monday and this is Friday. . . . He has for a companion Mr. Lovejoy, a respectable, intelligent man and a lawyer, but not a Christian, who expects to accompany him all the way to Boston as his friends are in that region, and perhaps to Washington. . . . He goes with the advice and entire confidence of his brethren in the Mission, and who value him not only as an associate, but as their physician, and feel as much as I do, that they know not how to spare him; but the interest of the cause
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demands the sacrifice on our part; and could you know all the circumstances in the case you would see more clearly how much our hearts are identified in the salvation of the Indians and the interests of the cause generally in this country." (Tr. Or. Pi. Asscn., 1893, pp. 165-9.) March 11,1843, she wrote to her sister Harriet, and, descanting on the pain of being "so widely and for so long a time" separated from her husband, continued, "For what would you be willing to make such a sacrifice? Is there anything in this lower world that would tempt you to it? I presume not; at least I can see no earthly inducement sufficiently paramount to cause me voluntarily to take upon myself such a painful trial. Painful, I say? Yes, painful in the extreme to the natural heart But there is one object, our blessed Saviour, for whose sake, I trust both you as well as we are willing if called to it, to suffer all things. It was for Him, for the advancement of His cause, that I could say to my beloved husband, 'Go, take all the time necessary to accomplish His work; and the Lord go with and bless you.'" (Transactions Oregon Pioneer Association, 1893, p. 155).
April 14, 1843, she wrote to her brother Jonas as follows: "Husband's presence is needed very much at this juncture. A great loss is sustained by his going to the States, I mean a present loss to the station and Indians, but hope and expect a greater good will be accomplished by it. There was no other way for us to do.
"We felt that we could not remain as we was without more help, and we are so far off that to send by letter and get returns was too slow a way for the present emergency." (Idem, p. 161). May 18, 1843, she wrote to her husband a letter which followed him to Boston, and reaching there September 6, 1843, when he was six day's journey west of Fort Hall on his return trip, this letter (which was directed on the outside to Dr. Whitman or Rev. David Greene), was retained there, and is No. 106, of Vol. 138 of the Correspondence of the American Board. In it she wrote "wishing you, my dear husband, as speedy a return to the bosom of your family as the business of the Lord upon which you have gone will admit of." So far as known these five letters are the only ones which Mrs. Whitman ever wrote which stated the origin and purpose of his ride, and I have quoted all they contain on those points.
These letters of themselves are decisive of the question, but no reader of the books, magazine and newspaper articles advocating the Whitman Legend finds therein any information of their existence.
Rev. M. Eells has certainly known about the first four of these letters for at least ten years past, and the fifth was quoted by Prof. Bourne. But Mr. Eells, protesting in his "Reply to Prof. Bourne," that he is earnestly "Seeking for the truth of history
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wherever it can be found," is careful to give his reader no more information about these letters than the following ("Reply," p. 35). "He" (i. e., Prof. Bourne) "can find from her letters that before the Doctor started East he intended to go to Washington."
(b) THE FIRST ACCOUNT EVER PRINTED AS TO THE ORIGIN AND PURPOSE OF WHITMAN'S RIDE.
The next "original source" for the origin and purpose of Whitman's ride to which the reader's attention is invited is the first account of it ever printed which stated anything about its origin and purpose, being the official account in the monthly organ of the American Board--the Missionary Herald, for September, 1843. If based only on the correspondence of the Mission, this, and the second account in the Missionary Herald, July, 1.848, could not properly be treated as strictly "original sources," since that correspondence still exists.
But as they doubtless were also based on Whitman's verbal statements to the Board, while in Boston, March 30-April 8, 1843, they may properly be considered as "original sources."
(The endorsement of D. Greene, Secy., on Eells' letter of October 3, 1842, endorsed by Walker and containing the records of the Seventh Annual Meeting of the Mission, May 11-June 8, 1842, and of the Special Meeting of September 26-27, 1842, and also on Walker's letter of October 8, 1842, endorsed by Eells is, "Received May 3, 1843, Acted, July 21, D. G.," and on Spalding's twenty-five page letter of defense and justification of October 15, 1842, D. Greene's endorsement is "Received May 5, 1843, Acted July 21, 1843," and on E. Walker's letter of February 28, 1843, (quoted on p. 133 ante) is "Recd. August 9, Acted April 12, 1844.")
With this complete written information in his office about the call for and the doings of the Special Meeting of September 26-27, in addition to his recollection of what Whitman himself told about it, this is the account which he published in the September, 1843, Missionary Herald:
"It was stated in the last Annual Report that the Southern Branch of this Mission, embracing the stations at Wailatpu (near Walla Walla), and Clear Water, and Kamiah, higher up on the waters of Snake River, had been discontinued, but at a special meeting of the Mission held last October, to consider this decision, it was thought advisable that Dr. Whitman should personally communicate the condition and prospects of these stations to the Prudential Committee. After a long and toilsome journey, he reached Boston, early in the Spring; and, upon hearing the representations which he made, it was resolved to sustain the operations of the Mission without any material change. Another object of
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Dr. Whitman in making the above mentioned journey was to procure additional laborers. He desired also to induce Christian families to emigrate and settle in the vicinity of the different stations, that they might relieve the missionary of his secular responsibilities, and also contribute directly in various ways to the social and moral improvement of the Indians. How far his wishes in those particulars will be responded to is uncertain."
"The last Anmial Report," above referred to is the one for 1842, and on page 103 of that Report is the following: "In February last the Committee, owing to the character of the communications recently received from the several missionaries, made a careful examination of the difficulties which seemed to be impeding the success of the Mission. . . . Some of the missionaries appeared to be much disheartened in their labors, and expressed a strong desire to leave the field of labor. There were also indications of an unhappy disagreement among some of them relative to the manner of conducting their labors. Under these circumstances the Committee deemed it advisable to discontinue the southern branch of the Mission, embracing the stations of Wailatpu, near Walla Walla, and Clear Water and Kamiah, higher up on the waters of the Snake River. In carrying this into effect, it was thought best that Rev. H. H. Spalding and Mr. W. H. Gray should return to the United States."
This is the exact truth about the origin, and also about the purpose of Whitman's Ride, except the trifling mistake of saying that the special meeting was "held last October," instead of "last September," and that it observes a reticence which was natural and then, perhaps, excusable as to the quarrels of the missionaries.
(c) THE SECOND OFFICIAL ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGIN AND PURPOSE OF WHITMAN'S RIDE.
The second account ever printed of the origin and purpose of Whitman's ride was also, in the official organ of the American Board, the Missionary Herald, for July, 1848, in the very brief biographical sketch of Dr. Whitman (consisting of only 162 words), which prefaced the account of the dreadful massacre begun November 29, 1847, in which he and Mrs. Whitman and twelve others were murdered, and is as follows: "He made a visit to Atlantic States in the Spring of 1843, being called hither by the business of the Mission."
This was published two years after the treaty of 1846 had settled the boundary of Oregon at forty-nine degrees, and the editors of the Missionary Herald knew that in chronicling the massacre they were also chronicling the final destruction of their Oregon Mission. Who can doubt that with the memory of Whit-
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man's visit only five years before fresh in their minds, and with all the correspondence of the Mission, and the records of the action of the Board thereon open to their inspection, they knew, and in this short sentence stated exactly what caused his ride, and who can doubt that if they could honestly have claimed that that ride had any political significance, or had saved any, even the smallest, part of Oregon to the nation, they would then have stated it, when the whole country was stirred with sympathetic sorrow over the bloody tragedy which had destroyed their Oregon Mission?
No advocate of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story has ever quoted a single line from either of these two official accounts of the origin and purpose of Whitman's ride, and but one of them, M. Eells in his "Reply to Prof. Bourne" (p. 41), has ever admitted the existence of either of them.
M. Eells says: "In Missionary Herald for September, 1843, it was stated by the editor that such a meeting was held, but he said that it was 'last October.' This was scientific, but it was not the truth." Not a particle of information is there about this, the first account ever printed as to the origin and purpose of Whitman's ride, from title page to finis in this "Reply," except this quibble over the petty mistake of the editor in writing "Last October," when, as a fact, the meeting was held September 26 and 27.
Mr. Eells' statement that this trivial error was "scientific" is nonsense. Scientific history, according to his own imperfect definition of it ("Reply," p. 37), is "The facts written at or near the time they occurred," and "last October" was not "a fact," but a blunder of the editor.
But'as the record of that Special Meeting in C. Eells' letter begins: "A special meeting of the Oregon Mission was called on the 26th. of September, 1842," it is plain that the editor of the Missionary Herald, did not refer to that official record for the date, but assumed that because the two letters were dated October 3, 1842, that the meeting was held "last October." Scientific history is history honestly, carefully, and accurately written by candid and competent persons, from the very best authorities obtainable, which means, always from the original sources when they are existent and accessible. As the official record of that meeting, stating that it was called to order September 26, and closed September 27, 1842, was in the office of the Secretary of the American Board, it was not "scientific" for him, instead of referring to it and giving the correct date, to write "last October."
Mr. Eells' treatment of this matter is a perfectly fair illustration of his curious ideas of fairness and candor in presenting evidence, which pervade the whole of his "Reply to Prof. Bourne," and of his equally curious notions about scientific history.
THE DECADENCE OF THE AMERICAN BOARD MISSION
AFTER 1839.
It being an essential postulate of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story that the Whitman-Spalding-Eells Mission was in a highly successful and flourishing state when, unexpectedly to all, on November 27, 1847, the Whitman Massacre (claimed by Spalding and Gray to be solely due to an alleged conspiracy between the Hudson's Bay Company and the Catholics) destroyed the Mission, scarcely a sentence of the contemporaneous evidence in this chapter from the letters of Whitman, Eells, Walker and Spalding and the diaries of Walker and Spalding has ever been printed.
As we have seen the Methodist, and the Presbyterian, and the Independent Missions to the Oregon Indians resulted from the "high wrought" and "incorrect" account of the visit of the four Flatheads to St. Louis, in 1831, which was printed in the "New York Christian Advocate" in March, 1833.
For a short time after their missions were established the experience of the Presbyterians and Congregationalists in Oregon was the exact counterpart of that of the Jesuits nearly two centuries earlier in Canada, as stated by Parkman, on page XLVIII. of the Introduction of his "The Jesuits in North America," as follows: "This intractable race were in certain external respects the most pliant and complaisant of mankind. The early missionaries were charmed by the docile acquiescence with which their dogmas were received, but they soon discovered that their facile auditors neither believed nor understood that to which they so promptly assented. They assented from a kind of courtesy, which, while it vexed the priests, tended greatly to keep the Indians in mutual accord."
All these missionaries to the Oregon Indians were totally ignorant of the language of those whom they sought to convert to Christianity and induce to abandon the wild and indolent life they had always led, and which all the traditions of their tribes inculcated as the only proper life for warriors to lead, and adopt in its stead the regular habits and steady, hard work of the white farmer, and they were equally destitute of any experience of all the distinguishing features of Indian life and character.
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Their missions, as we have seen, were founded under the most kindly and cordial sympathy and assistance of the Hudson's Bay Company, to whom all the tribes among whom their stations were located looked up, and upon whom their very existence depended, since they had become so accustomed to the white man's weapons and tools that they could not, as of old, depend on the bow and arrow, and the stone hatchets and knives.
Under such circumstances all these tribes, who are described by Lewis and Clark, and Bonneville, and Wyeth (before any missionaries went to them), as very much superior in religious character and conduct to other Indians, would for a few years, while the novelty of the situation lasted, be on their best behavior, the more especially as they hoped the missionaries would be rivals in trade with the Hudson's Bay Company, and so raise the price of furs.
Witness the following: Whitman to Rev. D. Greene, Secretary, "Wailatpu, May 7, 1837 (p. 4 of an eight-page foolscap letter), "The Cayuse show a strong desire to be taught, and the only thing which has given me trouble among them is their wish for me to become an opposition trader among them.
"They have seen a little of opposition in trade, which has caused them to think more of large prices for their beaver and horses than anything else" (Am. Bd. MSB., Vol. 138).
We shall see abundant proof later in this chapter that as Rev. J. S. Griffin wrote, January 3, 1848, from Tualitin Plains, Oregon, to the Secretaries of the American Board. "The Indians' interest in the missions has always been more for gain than the gospel."
No sooner, however, was the novelty gone than the fickle nature of the savage began to assert itself, and a steadily growing opposition to changing religion and habits of life spread rapidly through all the tribes.
None of those tribes had ever come into conflict with the whites, but those parts of these tribes which went yearly to hunt the buffalo in the upper part of the valleys of the Snake River and Green River, or across the Continental Divide in the valleys of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers, had often been allies with small bands of white fur traders, in battles with "the Ishmaelites of the Far West"--the ever dreaded Blackfeet.
I think it is an indisputable fact that since the first white settlement began on our Atlantic Coast, there is no instance of any powerful tribe of Indians--except the Flat Heads--really accepting and attempting to practice any form of Christianity, until after either itself or some closely allied tribe had been thoroughly beaten in battle by the whites.
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Not receiving speedily the material benefits that they had expected from praying to the white man's God, and submitting to the irksome confinement of the school, and trying to learn reading and writing therein, the reaction had already begun in 1839-40, and the decadence of the whole Mission progressed very rapidly after 1840, so that without any Whitman massacre in 1847 its abandonment would have been inevitable soon after that time, as will be evident to any one who will read the following long concealed evidence. Rev. H. H. Spalding's Diary, November 27, 1839. "Mr. Rogers arrived from Kamiah, Asimalkian attempted to drive Mr. Smith (Rev. A. B. Smith, one of the 1838 reinforcement,) from this country, or rather to frighten him to pay property, but when he found Mr. Smith ready to go he very willingly gave him the land.
"March 21, 1840. Some trouble with Indians today. Oh when will these benighted ones exhibit tokens of gratitude to God for his goodness to them in sending them the gospel and the means of civilization ?
"March 22,1840. Sabbath. By reason of the mocking of sacred things yesterday I suspend the school today. At evening give a description of the treatment Jesus received from the Jews during his last days."
This was at the time that Spalding was working hard, building a rude grist mill so that the grain raised by him and by the Indians might be ground there, as the nearest other mills were at Whitman's Station, 125 miles west, and at Fort Colvile, nearly 200 miles northwest.
"October 9, 1840. A most disgraceful circumstance today. Two young painted (Indians) rode up to the door of the school house as Mrs. Spalding was about to open the school with prayer. She requested them to turn away. They came the nearer and glanced their hellish look directly at her. She moved to another part of the room. They moved their position so as to look her in the face. She then put a blanket at the door.
"They then commenced their savage talk. Mrs. S. sent for me. I requested them to leave. They refused. I sent for old James, as they belonged to his lodge. He refused to come. I went to him and found to my great surprise and sore grief that he countenanced the evil doers. Mark George, and the whole camp joined the heathen party. Red Wolf turned away from me and the two or three who discountenanced the deed/ and joined the heathen party. Timothy, The Eagle and Conner's father-in-law were the only three who openly discountenanced the evil doers.
"October 14, 1840. An express arrived from Mr. Smith re questing my presence immediately as there is trouble with the
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Indians. The Blue Cap has ordered Mr. Smith to leave the country. But I cannot go today as the people are digging my potatoes.
"Friday, January 1, 1841. . . . The people in some respects seem to be back of the place they occupied last year at this time.
"January 8, 1841. Mr. Rogers returns from Mr. Smith's. Mr. S. writes very discouraging as to the people, is inclined to consider them given up of God and devoted to destruction.
"February 3, 1841. Today Indians from Old James' band are busy demolishing the mill-dam.
"Sunday, February 4, 1841. I speak again to the people of scenes of the judgment, from the words of Solomon that God will bring every work into judgment with every secret thing. After I closed Timothy spoke feelingly.
"Old James rose after him, and said I had made the people miserable and was ruining them, that he learned this from his son-in-law Craig, who tells the people that if I was a true teacher I would not think about the earth, much less build houses, look after wood, water, fish, cattle, and cultivate the land.
"That I could sit still and keep my heart in heaven till the bell called me to my meals.
"April 4, Sabbath. After being scoffed at and abused by several reckless fellows, I ride up and speak to the people at Joseph's lodge. He had repaired the dam after the Indians tore it down on February 3, but
"April 3, 1841. Last night the same fellows tore away the dam, took off the gate from the head of the ditch.
"August 10, 1841. Talk to two young fellows on the subject of gambling. They return soon with fire and attempt to burn the house. I take one and with the assistance of Mr. Smith bring him into the house, and after our prayer meeting propose to whip him, but some of his friends help him out, and he escapes by plunging into the river.
"September 27th and 28th. Dr. Whitman and Mr. Gray have had trouble with the Indians.
"October 7, 1841. Letter from Dr. Whitman. Has been treated basely, life endangered, door broken in; goods are packing up; requests me to meet him at Walla Walla, to which place he and Mr. Gray expected to retreat last Tuesday.
"February 22, 1843. Interest among the people seems to abate, considerable talk about painting faces. In the prayer meeting Three Feathers said he will give up his book rather than disobey E, (i. e., Ellis, the Nez Perces head chief) and not paint in school.
"February 23, 1843. Express arrives from Wailatpu. . . . Mr. Geiger has some trouble with the people (i. e., at Wailatpu) ; some are glad the mill is burned, some threaten to burn the house."
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Spalding's diary was kept pretty regularly from November 26, 1838, to April 22, 1842, then there were no more entries till February 13, 1843, and then it was kept only till March 7, 1843, so that for the rest of his experiences with the Indians we must turn to his letters, of which the most important are pretty fully quoted later in this chapter.
Rev. Elkanah Walker seems to have kept a diary pretty constantly, but only fragments of it appear to have been preserved by his children and turned over a few years since to the Oregon Historical Society as follows:
September 10 to October 10, 1838, all of 1841, and 1842 up to November 20. There were but few Indians in the region where their station was located, and being 165 miles north from Whitman's Station, and that much away from the line of travel from the States, they were much less excited by fear that the constantly increasing throng of whites would soon fill the "lower country," and then seek to occupy their land.
When Messrs. Eells and Walker had been at Tshimakain nearly two years, this is what Walker wrote in his diary: "Wednesday. January 20, 1841. Last evening the Indians played medicine. Their principal medicine man had many spirits appear to him, and unless these were caught many would die in the course of the winter. I believe all the absent spirits were caught, and so, of course, they feel secure against death.
"Friday, January 22. The people played medicine all night and through the day. They appear more heathenish than they have since we have been in the country.
"Saturday, January 25. The Indians were playing most of the night last night, and were making preparations through the day to play this eve, and are now at it in full force. I hardly know what to think of it, nor what to do. It seems in vain to say anything to them on the subject, as it is so deeply fixed in their minds that they are full of faith in it. They do not appear to have any idea that it is sin against God, or that it is opposed to the worship of God, and if we should assail it, it would only make them mad.
"Went out this eve to see or rather hear them; and they came into the lodge where I was sitting talking with the chief. When they came in he joined in the dance with them for a moment, and then sat down and called for his pipe. He seemed to have some peculiar feelings, neither of shame or remorse. Some who came in the train seemed ashamed, and did not join in the dance when they saw me. Some of those sitting in the lodge joined in the dance, and others laughed at them. The Indians have appeared more heathenish the few days past then they have since we have been in the country.
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"Sunday, January 24th. The Indians continued to play till a quite late hour last evening, but were still through the day. Gave them the Ten Commandments and some of the circumstances connected with the giving of them to Moses on Mt. Sinai. Endeavored to impress upon their minds the greatness of God, and that all things are ordered by him, but think it did but little good. It seems to me that they are more heathenish than ever, and that truth makes less impression upon their minds.
"Monday, January 25. The Indians continued their play last night.
"Tuesday, January 26. About sunset the Indians commenced again their dance, more loud and fierce than ever. Hope they will not continue it much longer.
"Wednesday, January 27th. The Indians continued their play last night, and were uncommonly loud, and I believe finally wound it up with a feast and with taking hot stones in their hands.
"Saturday, January 30, 1841. Had worship with the Indians and did not teach till about noon. Had the old chief in to see me. Quite unwell all day; felt as though I could do nothing. Read some in the Herald. Engaged an Indian to go with me to Colvile. Felt quite down, and thought we were doing next to nothing for the Indians, and that one good man would do more than both of us.
"I fear we are dear missionaries to the Board and that others might be sent who would do much more at the same expense.
"Sunday, January 31, 1841. Had worship with the people in the morning and gave them to understand the destruction of Sodom was a warning lest we should be cast off. Fear the people get but a few correct ideas from our instruction. ... I hope Mr. Eells will wake up about the language.
"Sunday, February 22. ... I live in constant fear lest the Indians should turn upon us, and destroy us altogether.
"Saturday, April 17,1841. Oh! the stupidity of the people! How little anxiety they feel in regard to their souls' concern, if we judge them by their actions. All they seem to think about is to gain something of this world; and if they cannot get this we are of no use to them.
"Friday, October 29th. Mr. Eells came (i. e., from Whitman's station). He brings sad news from below. They have had hard times with the Indians at Wailatpu and the Doctor came very near losing his life. Things are now quiet, and hope they will continue so."
This was the trouble at Whitman's Station referred to in Spalding's Diary under dates of September 27-28 and October 7, 1841. It is pretty fully described by Whitman in a letter to D. Greene, Secretary, covering twenty-one pages of large-sized letter paper,
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and dated November 11, 1841, and Mrs. Whitman copied this letter of her husband's in hers of November 18, 1841, to her father, and it was printed in Transactions Oregon Pioneer Association, 1891, pp. 154-162.
It being thus accessible in print, while the rest of the contemporaneous evidence quoted in this chapter is not so accessible, I feel that I cannot spare space to quote it in full, but must summarize part of it, and quote a little of it here, having already quoted part of it in Chapter VII. of Part I., to which much of it properly belongs.
The trouble seems to have extended over some two weeks, since he says part of it began when Mr. Hale, of Lieut. Wilkes' Expedition, was there, which was about the middle of September, 1841, and the difficulty was not settled till October 5, 1841. I have been unable to discover the precise date when Hale was at Wailatpu, but E. Walker's diary says he arrived at Tshimakain September 25, 1841, which would indicate that he left Whitman's about September 20. It was an attempt by the Indians to extort property, and its beginning is thus stated: "The Indians at this station have been very quiet for the last year and a half, but from various causes which have been operating upon them they were prepared for agitation, thinking this the best way to obtain property. I-a-tin, an Indian who had been to the Willamette settlement, undertook to embarrass Mr. G. in his building operations, forbidding him to cut timber without pay, and others joined him in talking of charging us for firewood. There has often been talk of causing us to pay for the land we occupy. I-a-tin said he was told while at the Willamette that if any one came on the white man's land and he refused to go off he was kicked off."
Another Indian turned his horses into the mission grain field, and when Whitman remonstrated the Indian struck him "twice severely on the breast."
Then followed another trouble with I-a-tin, which resulted in his threatening to burn the mill.
Soon after Gray put an Indian out of doors who had refused to go when requested, which resulted in a number of the Indians ordering Gray "to stop building and remove the next day." This resulted in one of the Indians assaulting Whitman as follows: "I told him also, that if Indians came into Mr. G.'s or my house and refused to do as we desired, it was right for us to put them out. He then took hold of my ear and pulled it and struck me on the breast, ordering me to hear, as much as to say we must let them do as they pleased about our houses. When he let go I turned the other to him and he pulled that, and in this way I let him pull first one and then the other until he gave over and took my hat
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and threw it into the mud. I called on the Indians who were at work for Mr. G. to give it to me, and I put it on my head--when he took it off again and threw it in the same place. Again the Indians gave it to me and I put it on. With more violence he took it off and threw it in the mud and water, of which it dipped plentifully. Once more the Indians gave it back to me, and I put it on, all mud as it was and said to him, 'Perhaps you are playing.' At this he left us. A day or two after this McKay, another Indian, made a violent speech and forbid all the Indians to labor for us,
"Soon after on being denied admission to Whitman's house through a door which the family wished to keep for their private use, one Indian took a hammer and another an ax, by which means they broke the kitchen door, and a horde of lawless savages filled the house. The Indians then attacked Whitman and Gray with the hammer and ax, and with a club, but on these being taken away without bloodshed, one of the Indians struck Whitman with his fist and tore his clothes and another leveled a gun at him. Wap-tash-tak-mal next said that there was property in the house, and that they were accustomed to have it given them when they had a difficulty. I told them they would not get the value of a single awl or pin for their bad conduct, and if they wanted property in that way they must steal it. ... The next day was the Sabbath and it was a sad day to us. Many stayed away from worship and some went to the fort carrying their arms. Others were insolent and reckless of evil. They did many violent acts, such as breaking our windows and troubling our animals. We now felt that we had showed the example of non-resistance as long as it was called for, and as we went to bed we put ourselves in a state of defense, should anything occur at the fort, and the Indians return upon us. We also resolved to go to the fort and take our families and stay for a time, until we could either arrange to go away or return, as might seem best"
What happened Monday, October 4, and Tuesday, October 5, is stated in Chapter VII. of Part I., where McKinlay's letter of October 4, 1841, to Whitman is quoted.
Returning now to Walker's Diary:
"Sunday, November 21, 1841. The Indians are less interested than they appeared to be formerly.
"Wednesday, December 22, 1841. Commenced teaching the Indian children. They do not appear very anxious to attend, and I expect they will not be very punctual."
February 28, 1843, Rev. E. Walker wrote to Rev. D. Greene, Secretary, and after stating that their school was a very small one, he goes on: "It is very evident that they care less and less for instruction. My fears and expectations with regard to them are
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being manifest that it is not us but ours they want, and when they found that they could not obtain that, they would manifest but very little regard for us. ... I have no doubt but if all their wants, which are few indeed, could be supplied, they would leave us altogether or drive us off."
As early as November 9, 1843, Rev. G. Eells wrote to Rev. D. Qreene, Secretary:
"As might be expected when those to whom we have been sent become satisfied that there is no particular charm connected with attending worship conducted in a Christian manner, it is hardly to be expected that they will make any particular effort to be present at such service." October 11, 1844, id. to id. "For some time past there has been a great increase of gambling, fighting and unlawful intercourse. Also a revival of former superstitions and heathenish practices. This, however, requires a little explanation. Before Divine truth was communicated the pernicious practices just named were followed without restraint. But when told by religious teachers of the awful consequences of sin, and of a way of escape, a great external reformation followed. And with little exception it was only external. The foundation of evil remained unchanged. And the temporary restraint was like the stopping of water for a time only, to break forth with increased power and fury. . . . The disposition to pilfer is increasing, and I may add it has an effect to discourage cultivation."
March 3, 1846, id. to id. "It is with pain I feel obliged to state our effort at teaching school has amounted to very little. . . . Only eight gave heed to the call of the bell for school, while at the same moment many times that number were collected about the gambling ground, distant only a few rods. . . . They complain as though they were disappointed because the school has not exerted a transforming influence over those who have enjoyed the benefit of it."
April 3, 1844. Dr. Whitman wrote to D. Greene, Secretary, as follows: "Some of the emigrants wintered with us, and Mr. Looney was anxious to stay until June or September, if he could either get work in breaking land for the Indians and take his pay in horses, or if he could get land to plant for himself in peace. But they would not pay him for breaking land, inasmuch as it was their own land, and their jealousy would not permit him to plant for himself, as they fear the Americans are going to overrun the country. They also forbid me to break a new field as I desired, lest I should make money out of their lands by supplying emigrants."
Wailatpu, May 20, 1845. Dr. Whitman to D, Greene, Secretary:
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"At a meeting of the mission held at this place, at which all the members were present except Mr. Spalding, and which adjourned on the 14th inst, I was directed to write a letter giving a present view of the state of the mission, the harmony of its members, its state and prosperity. . . . The state of the mission is such as to give no very decided prospect of permanency or of much good.
"A Delaware Indian of considerable talent (with a Nez Perces wife), who has been in the mountains with the Nez Perces and Wailatpu Indians, who either live there or resort there for buffalo from year to year, exerts a strong influence against all whites, but most especially against us as missionaries. All the experience of the Indians on the border of the States is brought to bear so as to influence them for evil." (This was Tom Hill, a graduate of Dartmouth College, who, according to Spalding's article No. 7, in the Pacific for July 6, 1865, arrived in Oregon in 1838. "And told them that they had better kill Dr. Whitman and myself, as Americans would follow in our track and they would lose their country.")
"The result of the visit of the party to California in the death of Elijah Hedding, as mentioned in my last by way of Montreal, has given much trouble since their return in February. He had been educated by the Methodist Mission and was the son of a Walla Walla chief. He was killed at Captain Butter's Fort in Upper California by an American. The Indians all acknowledge that the father induced his son's death, still they cannot be reconciled to it.
"It was indeed a barbarous act, if we may credit the report of the Indians which alone we have, for even if they had done any wrong they were in the fort, and might easily have been humbled without resort to capital punishment. While most of the Indians have been for peace on their part, some have urged that as Elijah was educated and was a leader in religious worship and learning, and so in revenge one of the same grade must be killed of the Americans, and Mr. Spalding or myself were proposed as suitable victims.
"This subject is not yet settled. . . . When the Mission were all together we told the chiefs that if we were to be held as hostages in such cases as that of Elijah we would leave at once, for no doubt such and such acts would ensue if continued that the individuals would be killed, perhaps to their surprise.
"At the same time I referred to the idea prevailing among them that I was a sorcerer. One of the principal chiefs, a Papist, said, 'Can you deny that you have a medicine that is a poison which you are capable of using to kill people?' Other than this remark we might have thought that good would follow from our talk. Mr. Spalding has been annoyed by being ordered to remove as soon as
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he was done planting, and also told in the hearing of his children, 'If we should tie you and torture you with knives, or kill you what could you do for your family?'
"Notwithstanding these discouragements we do not think we are authorized to feel we are in danger so as to warrant us to leave our posts at present. ... At Lapwai a great falling off of interest for school instruction has been apparent. Perhaps nothing will create a new interest unless it be the teaching English, which we may try."
Id. to Id. September 8, 1846. "I have engaged Mr. Geiger to teach eight or ten weeks. Mr. Spalding expects to send two of his children, and we expect Mr. Walker will also. Mr. Walker of the Methodist Mission at The Dalles gave encouragement of sending two. . . . This you will see is for white children. At present I do not see as a school for Indians would succeed." This the reader will bear in mind was when Whitman had been there ten years that "a school for Indians would not succeed."
April I, 1847, dated at Fort Vancouver. Idem to Idem. "As we live at all times in a most precarious state, not knowing whether to stay or go, nor at what time. Whether it may be demanded by the Indians or the Board, I think in the course of the ensuing Summer I shall locate a claim for land in this lower country to be ready in case of retirement."
Rev. H. H. Spalding to D. Greene, Secretary, dated Clear Water, February 3, 1847. This letter covers twenty-four pages foolscap closely written. It is a full and very discouraging report on the state of the Mission, which he says he writes after a full discussion of the whole matter with Dr. Whitman, who had visited him the preceding December.
(On page 2) "We have now entered upon our eleventh year among this people, and our prospects for usefulness are less encouraging now than they were on our first arrival. The large school which in the Winter' of 1842-43 had increased to 234 quite regular attendants who manifested the greatest solicitude to be instructed, and put forth most commendable efforts to learn to read and print has entirely disappeared.
"There is no school at this station this Winter and there is not the least probability that there ever will be one here again." He goes on to say that the two preceding winters he took charge of the school himself hoping to revive interest in it, and as the natives complained that they were not taught English he tried teaching that, but, "With one or two exceptions the whole school seemed like dumb idols. ... I prepared and had printed a (p. 3) small book in Native and English, but it was labor thrown away. I have in a former letter stated that the number did not
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exceed over twenty-five, who with but five or six exceptions, attended very irregularly, coming one day and staying away three, coming at a late hour and remaining but a few minutes, coming in great disorder mingling with the multitude without who assembled every day for no other purpose than to disturb. The attendance of these last named was much more regular than of those who pretended to be members of the school.
"They collected daily with or without horses painted with every horrible figure, stood around the doors and windows, took advantage of every door that might be opened to slide in and steal, threw stones at the house, windows, etc., entered the school room holding with one hand the rope of their horse and in the other some hideous object with a view to create confusion, in order to induce me to say or do something to restore order, which would give them an excuse to use their whips or cords on my person, spitting in at the doors and windows, and in various ways insulting myself, my wife and children whenever we passed from one room to another, ridiculing the school, the book, etc. Not an individual raised a finger to restore order. In fact there were but two individuals of any influence in the school, and they were persecuted for their attachment to the school.
"Two years before, when an individual, great or small without or within showed any disposition to disturb the school he was immediately taken in hand by one of the chiefs, who were careful to keep the strictest order. Then there was no occasion to hold out inducements to attend school for all, old and young, seemed to account it the highest privilege, and flocked with the greatest eagerness, and with great regularity to be instructed, coming early and remaining till dark when their reading was transferred to their lodges and continued by fire-light till late.
"Many came with their families (p. 4) bringing provisions, and remaining through the Winter. Our highest hopes were raised and I thought an interest which had gone on increasing for eight years without the least appearance of insincerity would never abate. Mrs. Spalding and myself put forth every effort in our power, and beyond our strength in the school and the weaving room, built a large school house, prepared a weaving room, employed a teacher and printer, had our wood prepared and other work arranged before Winter commenced that our whole time might be devoted to the people.
"But now how changed. Our hopes are blasted. The windows in the school house have all been broken out by those who wished to show their contempt of the school, the weaving room like the school room is deserted. Not a finger raised to protect the windows.
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"Those who should be prompt in punishing the evil doers either countenance them, or remain silent, so that there is no security for anything. I have two or three times brought the subject of the destruction of the windows before the people. The cutting reply is 'Of course the windows are broken as the result of your school, it has been done by those who have attended your school whom you love. Had they never been in school they would never have done such things. It is not any of our concern.' . . Formerly nearly the whole tribe collected at this place every Fall and Spring and for weeks the Sabbath congregation (p. 5) numbered from 1000 to 2000, and the spirit of God was often in our midst causing the stony hearted savage to cry out in view of his'sins.
"From 500 to 800 remained through the Winter filling the large house to overflowing, and often numbers could not get in. But a mere fraction now remain attendants on the Sabbath worship, and those are camped five miles distant, from which place a horse is sent every Sunday for me to ride up. ... I know not that there has been a conversion for the last two years. . . . The Sabbath which was very strictly observed is now very generally desecrated. . . .
"Gambling and licentiousness have been renewed to a fearful extent. But sorcery, for many years held somewhat in check by the influence of the Mission, like a mountain torrent which has broken through a dam seems likely to sweep away every vestige of hope for the people, and even to endanger our own lives. The settlement (i. e. of Indians) which I had hoped would spring up in this valley, and in a few years furnish a permanent school and congregation, with abundance of provisions yearly raised is evidently broken up. The band who belong to this valley, most of whom have become Catholics, are becoming unwilling that persons from other valleys should cultivate here. Many small farms have already been seized by this band and their owners obliged to go to their own countries, and of course out of reach of the school and the Sabbath privileges; and I have but little doubt but that this will be the fate of the 60 or 70 families (p. 6) from other bands who still cultivate in this valley. Not that the land is needed for this band for not one-fourth of the land in the valley has yet been occupied by all who have cultivated here, and if they are driven away the land must remain vacant, but this is the most effective way to bzeak up the station. . . . The people of this band feel that the people from other bands are living upon the fruits of their soil, burning their wood, killing game upon their hunting grounds, and they are sore. . . . Several disorderly meetings including a greater or less number of the people have been held within the last two years, both at this place and at
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Wailatpu, when our leaving the country on account of our being thieves and robbers, and a nuisance to the people has been urged. But in one or two instances when they saw we were taking steps to obey their order, they have immediately set about preventing. . . . Last Spring, in the midst of high water, the head of the mill race was filled up with earth, and the mill stopped. Waiting some eight or ten days for their rage to subside, Mr. Gilbert and myself took measures to clean the race and start the mill as the water (p. 8) was fast passing away, and our supply of flour unground. Immediately on learning this some eight or ten assembled at my house, and here the Indian came out in colors which I never before witnessed."
He then goes on for nearly two pages to describe a most vehement speech delivered at this meeting by a young Indian who had been put forward for the purpose, and at the bottom of page 9 he says: "The listener would have been led to look upon Mrs. Spalding and myself as the basest characters that ever lived. The English language is too weak to set forth the characteristics given us. We were liars, thieves, robbers, and the authors of every evil. I was the greatest gambler that had ever been in their country, had swindled them out of very many thousand dollars, and an unknown amount of property, and had reduced the nation to the most extreme wretchedness.
"Another explained, and it referred to flour which I had sold, produced with my own hands and expense upon soil which till that time, from the day it came from the hand of the Creator, lay useless, as many thousands of acres in that country does yet; but the wheat was raised in his country, and ground in a mill built of his timber, and turned by his water . . . (p. 9). It resulted in not only withholding the water, but seizing upon the place and its buildings, and an order for me to leave with the soul comforting remark from the principal speaker that it would not be manly in me to shed tears, for whenever he had borrowed a gun or a horse for a long time, and the owner came for it, he always (p. 10) gave it up with a smile. I immediately employed an Indian to go to Wailatpu with a letter preparatory to leaving. But on learning that they were not only not going to obtain property, which was the object of filling up the race, of seizing upon the place, and the well managed speech, and of a hundred like annoyances and outrages which occur almost every day, but that I was able to take them at their word, and so they would lose all chance of property in the future, they gave up the farm and water the same evening, and the next day several of them assisted Mr. Gilbert in clearing out the race, and the mill was started. But this same thing has been done so often I have every reason to
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believe the same will be acted over again. The wood work of the mill needs repairing, and cannot possibly endure longer than the coming Spring, but I have no heart to make the attempt. The timber after I have cut it may be taken back, or a great amount of property extorted. The race may be filled up again, the dam broken, the place seized and ourselves driven away.
(P. 12) "What heart have I to replace the windows and repair the roof to the meeting house, when it is almost certain that the windows will be immediately broken out again. But unless the roof is repaired the walls will soon be ruined. I cannot employ help and make arrangements to go about any piece of work with the least assurance but that it will be interrupted, and so more or less time and money thrown away.
"If I build a good fence it is with the probability that it will be burnt up by those who may camp near it, or by night gamblers, or thrown down in forty places by every one Avho may pass by. But I cannot raise crops without a fence." On page 13 he says they needed a barn badly, having no place to thresh except on the ground. He got the consent of the band of Indians to cut timber for it, and sent his brother-in-law and another young man to cut it, and when they had worked a week the band refused to allow them to raft the timber, and so he cannot build a barn and he continues: "It is not certain that I shall be allowed to get timber at any place above, or even to get any more fire wood. We are now called upon to pay for the water we use, the wood we burn, the trails we travel in, and the air we breathe."
(P. 14) He declares that "With but few exceptions there is no appearance of gratitude but the Indians deem him their debtor because he is allowed to live in their country, and eat things grown in their ground," and continues "Medicine and care for the sick is another source of trouble, and perhaps of more real danger to our persons than any other. We often see it stated that a knowledge of medicine in the missionary, and attention to the sick go far to secure the favor of a heathen people. Strange as it may appear the reverse is the case with these tribes. Dr. Whitman (p. 15) is a skillful and most attentive physician, spending very much of his time in attending upon their sick, sometimes riding 30 miles, neglecting important business at home, spending much, in the purchase and much time in the preparation of medicines, yet it is looked upon with a jealous eye and regarded as coming from a sinister motive, yet claimed as a debt due from us. If we fail to have the medicine desired it is impossible to imagine the abuse heaped upon us. We are pronounced great gamblers and robbers, i. e. we withhold from them what is their just due, i. e. medicine. Medicine is made by white people, therefore it is due to them, and
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it is our duty to have it on hand at all times in sufficient quantities to supply their demands. If any one article fails, not being to be had in the lower country, or the supply running out, we ought to be reproached and shall be for in that case we compel the sorcerers to resume their sorceries, and compel the people to resort to them.
"This was publicly stated at a full meeting of the chiefs, sorcerers, and people last Spring at this place. Dr. Whitman is regarded as the cause of many or all the deaths in that vicinity, and his life has been frequently threatened.
"I know not that my life has been threatened, but it is very frequently proclaimed publicly that I am the cause of the numerous deaths which have occurred among this people the last two years. . . . Your readers will of course contrast the present with former representations of the people, and our prospects."
In this Mr. Spalding was entirely mistaken. The readers of the Missionary Herald have never had a chance to this day to do this "contrasting," for while the former "glowing reports" of the apparent great prosperity of this Mission were promptly printed in that journal, its columns seem always to have been too crowded with like "glowing reports" of the successes of other missions to allow any space for a single sentence of these reports of the decadence of the Mission to the Oregon Indians.
"But they cannot be more disappointed than the writer. In fact I find it most difficult to believe what my eyes see and my ears hear. It was hinted by a person some time ago, that the novelty might pass away, and with it the interest of this people. But I could not believe that their profound reverence for the Sabbath, the Bible, and its instructions, their deep interest in the school, and their unwearied efforts prolonged for eight years, to be instructed were assumed.
"I thought that hypocrisy among our untutored people would naturally be short lived. But the change has come. It is great, almost entire, and can only be realized by those who witnessed this people three years ago, and will become acquainted with their present conduct.
"But where the cause lies I know not, whether entirely in the duplicity of the Indian, or whether it is in part to be sought elsewhere." He then goes on to give what he says the Indians themselves assign as the causes, very naturally, from the intensity of his opposition to the Catholics, assigning the first place to the papal influence, from their stations among the Flatheads several hundred miles to the northeast, and in the Willamette, some 400 miles to the southwest, but (on p. 17) he continues "That such
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notions are put into the heads of this people by the Papists I do not say.
"It is the Indian report of the matter. Besides, I have the testimony of Mr. McDonald, a gentleman of the Hudson's Bay Company, whose word may be relied on, that one of the principal priests in the upper country told him that whatever property they had in their possession was free to the Indians whenever they called for it. I know but little of the policy of the Papal missionaries, but I know enough of Indians to know that they will never preach such doctrines to a tribe with whom they are immediately located, and by the same knowledge I know that such pretensions are most directly calculated to cripple the efforts of others. It has cost us much trouble. Perhaps one-fourth of this tribe have turned Papists, and are very bitter against the Protestant religion. Villages, lodges and even families have separated." ... (p. 18) "Among other things they are told (or say they are), that we are killing them off, and but for the few who are Papists the deaths would be much more frequent than they are. Another cause is said to be the influence exerted by a Shawnee Indian (this was Tom Hill, a graduate of Dartmouth College.--W. I. M.) of basest infidel principles who has been some years among the Nez Perces. He is an enemy to all religion.
"He tells the people that our purpose is not to benefit them, as we pretend, but to prepare the way for whites to come in and seize upon their country, and destroy the people. He advises that they cut off the whites before they become too numerous. Perhaps half of this tribe may be said to be his followers so far as despising religion and school are concerned. Many are jealous of the whites, and a few apparently would rejoice in an opportunity to engage in a war with them.
(P. 19) "Had a war between England and the United States grown out of the Oregon question the natives on this side of the mountains would probably without a single exception have joined the English. . . . This universal preference of the English to the Americans among the tribes on this side of the mountains is the result of the great amount of property given every year to the chiefs and the principal men of most of the tribes by the Hudson's Bay Company, consisting of coats, shirts, blankets, ammunition, knives, tobacco, etc., amounting in some instances to $30 or $35. All the chiefs in the vicinity of Walla Walla (i. e, those who call themselves chiefs and it cannot fall far short of 50), receive their monthly supplies of tobacco by merely going or sending for it. The strength of this cord of attachment no one can fully know who is not acquainted with Indian character. An Indian regards every man as good or bad according to the amount of property he
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gives. . . . Individuals in the immigration of 1844 either undesignedly or otherwise put notions into the heads of this people which seem to have done more to prejudice them against us than everything else put together. It appears they were told that if we were good people and (p. 20) honestly desired to do them good, we would have taught them to read and speak the good language, that is the English, by which language alone do people obtain property, and which God understands better than any other.
"But our teaching them in the native is the same as building an impassable wall around them to prevent them from having intercourse with the whites, and from getting property. How much of the Indian there is in this I leave for you to judge. Some of it, at least, is to be charged to this account. Ellis, the principal chief, visited the Willamette and laid the subject before Dr. White, the Indian Agent, who, without waiting to be properly informed, and in a very injudicious manner replied to Ellis that the talk these white men gave to the Nez Perces was straight, and that therefore he would immediately commence himself an English school in their country. This is the account Ellis gave of the matter on his return at a full meeting, where the excitement against me was so great that I was not allowed to answer for myself, a thing which has never before occurred. Dr. White wrote to Dr. Whitman and myself to cooperate with him in establishing the school. For two very good reasons we declined.
"First, we believe we have pursued the most advisable course in our plan of education and religious instruction, that is to learn the native ourselves, reduce it to writing, translate the Scriptures into it for the benefit of the present generation, commence our schools in it aud as the children become able to read a little introduce the English. How could we have taught the English till we first acquired the native? And second, as the matter stood before the people, to have complied would have been to confirm the statements made by the immigrants, and pronounced ourselves false teachers and worthy to be driven from the country.
"A principal cause has perhaps lately come out. It has been frequently hinted by those who have left the school and joined the Papists, that the interest manifested for the school was not genuine. At a full meeting at a feast last Fall, I called upon the people to say whether (p. 21) I might expect them to return to the school, and what were their reasons for leaving. They attempted to leave without giving an answer. But they finally confessed that what had been hinted was true. It was said by the principal men, and confirmed by all present, as it has been frequently by others since, that the great numbers who once flocked
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to the school and manifested such an interest were influenced by the hope of gain.
"They confidently expected that at no distant period they would receive each a large amount of property, but becoming convinced of their mistake, they had left the school with disgust, and returned to their gambling, and sorcery, etc. ... I will mention sorcery as one probable cause. For several years after our arrival it seemed to be on the decline, but for the last two or three years it has gained strength, and seems likely to sweep away the last hope for the people. Scarcely a death occurs but what is induced by some man or woman.
"If a man is killed by a fall from a horse, or by a bear, or drowned, some medicine man has spoken to the bear, the horse, the water, etc., etc. If a gun shoots amiss, it is attributed to some medicine man. If one medicine man fails to cure the sick it is because another medicine man or woman is causing the sickness. . . . These sorcerers are supposed to have power not only over life and death, but over the elements, the winds, the clouds." He then goes on to narrate how in the unprecedently cold weather of that winter a sorcerer was employed to send the cold away and bring warm weather again, and among those who solicited him were "Many who are regular attendants at our Sabbath meetings," and he goes on to tell how he reproved one of them. "And when I reproved him for his great sin in turning away from the true God to another God, a creature, he became angry, and asked if I did not love my cattle and horses.
"In reply I asked if the old sorcerer was the creator of them. He replied no, but he was the creator of cold and heat, the clouds and winds. For having reproved the people for this glaring sin of turning away from God to a creature when they should have resorted to Him by prayer and fasting, it is said I must leave next spring, as they shall call a Papal priest to occupy this place." . . . .(p. 23) He speaks of the extreme cold of the winter and says "Many persons have frozen their feet, and one man frozen to death. Very many horses and cattle have died, and are still dying. This is our eleventh winter in this country, and never before have we needed fodder for our cattle and horses.
(P. 24) "This people raised about the same quantity of grain last year as the year before, and made great additions to the number of their cattle by purchases at the Willamette, and of the immigrants. Many of them, however, are dying this winter. Great numbers of this people died last Summer, among whom were two members of our church."
Idem to idem, April 2, 1847. "Since writing the last there kas been no change in the prospects of the people. The spring is open-
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ing, and the people are returning from their winter quarters to commence their labors on their farms, as also their depredations on my fence, the mill race, etc., etc. Since the people in my absence shamefully abused the man with whom I left the mill in charge last spring, I have made no effort to protect it, and they have virtually had possession of it.
"While it continued in a situation to grind, the people very often turned on the water, and did their own grinding without saying anything to me, but now that it has become useless in their destructive hands they come to me to start it for them. .... Yesterday there was a marked case which will show something what Indians are, and what they are not. One of the principal chiefs, and one of the first who united with our church, and one who has ever been considered among the best Indians in the country, came yesterday to get wheat ground. He knew that the people had rendered the mill useless, that they had broken the ditch in several places and consequently that there was no water, and therefore his request was unreasonable to say the least. But I did not notice his unreasonableness, but answered him kindly that I could not grind for myself, as the mill was rendered useless by the people. I took occasion to refer to the fact that I had made two attempts to repair the mill, but had been prevented by the people taking the water for the land, etc., etc., that I could make no further attempt till the chiefs made some show of protecting the station, that the present old mill could not be repaired so as to run any longer than this spring, and that I could not even do that till the water was so high as to be beyond the control of the people.
"I urged him most earnestly and affectionately to take measures in connection with the other chiefs to put a stop to these depredations, as they would certainly result in the ruin of the people. Instead of even deploring the state of things he was offended because I 'would not' grind for him. He said if I had lost my wife (his had lately died,) he would have ground for me. And as he left the room he said he should go home free from shame, as he had said nothing bad, but it was very different with me. I had great cause for shame, as I had refused to grind, and he so represented it to his people on arriving home. ... I have put in a few acres of (wheat?) and expect to put in a small piece of corn, all the grain I shall cultivate, as I shall be obliged to obtain my flour from Dr. Whitman hereafter, unless this people take some measures to protect the mill, but there is but little hope of this. . . . I seldom employ an Indian now, as they have become very difficult to pay." Same letter under date of April 19th: "A most violent outrage has been committed upon the mill, and upon my person by the same person who committed the outrage last year and the
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year before. Under the most solemn pretensions of friendship and good will on the part of the people, and especially of this desperado, Mr. Craig and myself repaired the mill and the breaches in the race, and Mr. Craig ground his grain. I told the people as they loved their grain they might work for me while their grain was grinding. The old chief of this place named this to his people, and came over the next morning with some of his people to help me plant corn.
"The desperado alone refused to, replied to the old men that he was not going to work, or even to ask for the use of the mill, and would go next morning and grind himself, and if I came to stop him he would throw me into the water. Accordingly the next morning, as I was planting, he came, shut the gates purposely, filled the dam with water, which soon broke with a great break on the side next the house, and the water made its way into the garden. At this time I saw it from the field, and came to learn the cause. As I stepped into the mill to raise the gates, I was seized by this fellow, handled very roughly, but made no resistance.
"As I have before observed, they are at liberty to do what they please with my person, tie, whip or kill, while I remain among them. But I cannot, while I have life and liberty, allow them to take that liberty with my wife and children. He prevented me from raising the gates and turning off the water, said the mill, water and land were his, and ordered me to leave the country. I went to the field, dismissed those who were planting, turned out the team. The water continued to flow through the garden, found its way into the cellar and did considerable damage. The desperado took away some of the irons pertaining to the mill and threw them into the water. Some days after nearly all the chiefs of the nation met at this place and talked over the situation and their prospects, and although I was absent by request, so far as I can learn they made a greater show of attempting to arrest their downward course than they have for many years.
They unanimously censured the practice of their young men of taking back horses after they are sold; pronounced the conduct of the fellow who seized the mill very bad, and some of them proposed to whip him, but he had too many friends, and all they did was to ascertain where he hid the irons, and some of them have been brought back. For the first time during several of the past years through all the meetings, continued for three days, they unanimously spoke in the highest terms of my efforts among them, and urged the importance of correcting the young men who were constantly baffling those efforts. I need not say that this expression of feeling is most encouraging to me. Of course I would greatly prefer to see more efficient means used to correct their evil-doers than words; but I am certainly disposed to thank the Lord for this
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shadow of good things. Judging from the past the mill nor myself will not again be disturbed this year should I put it in repair to do my grinding and that of the people, but I believe the same will be acted over again next year in a worse shape, and so continue till help comes from abroad. . . . The last has been the severest winter ever known in this country by the oldest natives. . . . This is my eleventh winter in this country, and never before have I needed fodder for cattle and horses.
"But this year I needed it, and for want of it five cows and five calves belonging to this station died, with four or five horses. At Wailatpu about ten head of sheep died, with many calves, and a few cows and horses belonging to the station. At Tshimakain, although the snow has been much deeper and continued longer than at these stations, they have lost no more of cattle and horses than we have. At Fort Colvile, out of the Company's herd of 300 horses but 54 remain. Their cattle have suffered in like manner. But the poor natives have been the great sufferers from all parts of the country from which I have heard. Three entire tribes, the Colvile, the Pointed Hearts and the Hanging Ears, are said to have lost every horse. The Spokanes, Sapniels and Okanakan have lost about nine-tenths. For example, one man had 60 sheep, but six left. The same man lost 20 cows out of 30.
"This people, Nez Perees, have lost perhaps one-half of their cattle. One man lost 40 out of 80 head. Many having but one or two have lost all. The destruction among the horses has been very great. . . . 20th. The chiefs have just given me a call. They are about to return to their respective countries. The visit is most encouraging. I have not for a long time witnessed such apparently genuine friendship. They say the infidel party are too strong for them to manage. If they make any attempt they immediately arm themselves for defense. They express the strongest wish that I should remain, and they hope our Government will send on an agent to help them. It appears now to be my duty to remain, but I think it best to send away the property, except a few cows for milk and a few horses for traveling. You will see from the statement that we consider the Cayuse in a far more encouraging state at present than the Nez Perces, and from what I have seen the past two years I think they are advancing as fast as could be expected, while this people are retrograding." (Yet only seven months and nine days after this date these Cayuses massacred Dr. and Mrs. Whitman and twelve others and took fifty-three others, mostly women and children, prisoners, and subjected many of them to horribly barbarous treatment--W. I. M.) "The Cayuses seldom now take back a horse after selling. It has become very dangerous to purchase a horse of this people. The Cayuse are having respectable farms broken and
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fenced, and are paying Dr. Whitman in horses for the labor. This people, on the other hand, if I lend them a plow will not bring it home again without pay.
"If I plow for them with my own team and hands, instead of paying, which I do not expect, the same person will abuse me or my family, perhaps the same night. I am sorry to see but little preparation to plant this spring, but great preparation to go and fight the Crow Indians."
Idem to idem, a letter covering sixteen pages closely written foolscap, dated August 3, 1847. (p. 2) "Last summer, while I was absent at the Willamette, a number of Indians demanded of Mrs. Spalding property, pretending that the cattle had destroyed their corn.
"Because she refused to pay till I came home and the damage be ascertained, they talked about killing her and her child, and burning the house over their dead bodies. She told them to proceed to do what they pleased, she should give them no property, and shut the door in their faces and left them in the hall.
"Mrs. Spalding has ever been perfectly contented and reconciled to her lot, and never had the least desire to leave. And although for a year or two past we seem to he doing nothing, and the people seem to be putting themselves beyond the possibility of our doing any good, still, after taking up the subject and praying over it, we invariably come to the conclusion that our field of labor is among this ungrateful people. ... A few minutes before your letter arrived one of my oxen came up in great agony, both ears cut off close to the head, and his tail off. Soon after another came up with his tail and one ear off. It was done by an Indian pretending to be very friendly, and who is brother-in-law to Craig, the white man living in this valley. To prevent the cattle from troubling the people, who are too reckless to raft down timber and build good fences, and by the advice of the Mission, I have given Craig $100 to take care of the cattle and horses and keep them away from the Indian fields and in the vicinity of his own place, which is ten miles from this. But for some (p. 3) reason most of them have been back for a week or more. But now is the only dangerous time. Gambling and devil dancing have been going on at the lodge of this Indian for several days and nights. But he is very regular in family worship. Last Sabbath I was particularly plain on the sins of gambling and sorcery, and attempted to be plain with persons who indulged in these things through the night, and then mocked God with prayer in the morning, flattering themselves that they were in the way to heaven. I told them they must make up their minds that they were in the road to hell.
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"This Indian, with many other gamblers and sorcerers who observed daily prayer in their lodges, was present.
"I think it is more on account of this sermon than the oxen were in his corn that they have lost their ears.
"It was a particular friend of this Indian who seized the mill, threw me out of it, kept my field open more than twenty days, exposed to cattle and horses, also his boys rendered a little pasture for calves and horses occasionally entirely useless by throwing down the fence, and in this way his own cattle have done great injury to my crops every year. . . . (p. 4) The mill continues in the same position as when I last wrote. But the Indians have been greatly disappointed on all hands. Those who seized upon the mill and used violence upon my person thought I would prefer to give property to have the mill and water restored than to forego grinding.
"What we may consider the better portion, that is the chiefs and most of the church, thought (p. 5) the necessity of having bread to eat would compel me to recover the mill by some means other than their interference, and so they were sure of having their grain ground, and so they were constantly urging me to grind. But in the end, when they found the mill remained where they left it in the hands of the robber, that the season of grinding was past and that their grain remained unground, they commenced heaping all manner of reproaches upon me. In June, having proceeded one day on a journey to visit a large collection at a root ground and preach to them, I was so violently threatened on the subject of the mill that I thought it advisable to turn back next morning and forego the opportunity of spending a week with perhaps two-thirds of the tribe on the eve of leaving for the buffalo country. The speech was made after the camp had retired to rest. I was laying near, but not asleep. This is a common practice among this people. If any one has anything of importance to communicate to the people, he waits till night, when all are at rest, then steps out and delivers his speech seemingly to the winds, not a person in sight, but all in hearing.
"His whole discourse was directed to me. Much was said about my sending the people away with their grain unground; not a word said, however, about tlieir own savage conduct which had prevented me from grinding not only the grain of the people but my own. Much was said about the violence I might expect to meet at the root ground, etc.
"After a long speech he retired to rest Of course there was
no reply. Next morning no one came near me, but all showed a
marked coldness. Without saying a word, when about half the
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camp was under way, I mounted my horse, turning her head towards home, leading my pack.
"I took this step not to save my life, for I do not think they will ever proceed so far as to kill me. But I judged if I went on most of the week would be taken up with abusive speeches from the chiefs, and perhaps they would have thrown and kicked me about, a work with which they became quite (p. 6) familiar. . . . (p. 9) The pea and corn crop of the natives is very good. But there have not been as many planted this year as usual, partly from the increasing thirst for gambling, partly from tlie war spirit, partly from a disposition manifested by this band to seize upon the cultivated fields in this valley of those who belong in other districts, and partly from the destruction occasioned by the large black cricket."
Yet the Rev. H. H. Spalding, who wrote these letters recording the dismal failure of their efforts to civilize and Christianize these Nez Perces, is the same H. H. Spalding who, in 1865, when he had determined to launch the Whitman Saved Oregon Story, wrote as follows, under the title of "History of Indian Affairs Among the Nez Perces," being the first of eleven articles he published in the Pacifio (the San Francisco organ of the Congregationalists), beginning May 25, 1865, and ending with the Whitman Saved Oregon Story, in the tenth and eleventh articles, October 19 and November 9,1865:
"At the end of eleven years our labors ceased. We were forced to leave by the hostility of the surrounding tribes, who had determind to kill all the Americans on this coast. But our work remained to be seen and read of all men. I am reluctant to speak of it, as it looks like boasting, but the cause of my Master demands it. The late slanders of the character of my lamented wife by one of your blood-stained fanatics, high in office, and the interests of my country, demand it. When we arrived, the nation was exceedingly miserable, filthy, and insolent; not a foot of their land in cultivation, without a hoe, plow, or cow; depending upon roots, fish and game; without letters, without law, or a knowledge of the Sabbath, or redemption. When we were driven away by fanatics" (i. e., in December, 1847--W. I. M.), "we never abandoned our home--we left one flour mill, one saw mill, two long and commodious ditches for the mills and for purposes of irrigation, and ten or fifteen through the country, dug by the Indians for that service; a large bearing orchard at the station, and several among the Indians, remnants .of which are yet remaining; a large church and schoolhouse, Indian room, printing office, flour house, weaving and spinning rooms, granary, workshop, blacksmith shop, store room and storehouse, woodhouse, eating and sleeping rooms for children,
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a large and commodious dwelling house, in all eleven fireplaces, a large farm, well fenced and irrigated, with six hundred bushels of corn, and forty head of horses for packing and riding, as I had to send grain to Wailatpu till next harvest, as the starving emigrants needed everything Dr. Whitman could raise every fall, about forty head of cattle."
Spalding's letters of February 3, April 2 and August 3, 1847, (herein printed for the first time), show that it was only the wreck of a Hour mill (or rather a very rude grist mill--W. I. M.) that he had to leave in December, 1847, while the following extract shows that there had been no saw mill at Spalding's station since the spring of 1845, at which time Whitman built his saw mill, as stated in his letter to D. Greene of April 8, 1845. Palmer visited Spalding's Station in the early spring of 1846. "At Mr. Spalding's is an excuse for a grist mill, which answers to chip up the grain, but they have no bolting cloth; in place of which they use a sieve. The meal makes very good bread. There was formerly a saw mill, but the irons have been taken and used in a mill which Dr. Whitman has recently built about twenty miles from his dwelling at the foot of the Blue Mountains. The Catholics have several missionary establishments upon the upper waters of the Columbia." (Cf. "Palmer's Journal," p. 131.)
Returning now to Spalding's letter in the Pacific of May 25, 1865:
"The Nez Perces natives understandingly and happily work on their little farms all through their country, and are pretty well supplied with hoes and plows (many wooded with my own hands), also with cows (at first from my own little herd of five), which we drove over the mountains--the first to cross the Rocky Mountains, and finally by my advice, from the Willamette, and the yearly emigration, paid for, of course, as we came to teach them how to live as well as how to die--not be beggars. The year we left they raised over 30,000 bushels of grain. (This 30,000 bushels of grain is doubtless as wild an exaggeration as the other items in this article. There is not the least reason to suppose from his letters of 1847 that the Indians raised one-tenth of 30,000 bushels of grain--W. I. M.)
"I reduced their language to a written state, printed a first book in 1839, on a press donated by the native Christians of Honolulu, Sandwich Islands, brought and set up by Mr. Hall, of the Sandwich Island Mission; the first press and printing on this Pacific Slope.
"In 1842 a code of laws, and a treaty of peace and perpetual friendship was entered into between the Government of the United States, through its agent, Dr. White, and this people, in council
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assembled at this place, and printed on the press the first treaty made by the Government with any tribe on this coast."
(Note.--This is an excellent sample of the facility with which Mr. Spalding's fancy evolved what he dashed down as facts. Dr. White had no authority to make and never did make a treaty with the Nez Perces or any other Indian tribe while in Oregon as sub-Indian agent. The full report of this meeting by Dr. White to the Secretary of War, dated April 1, 1843, does not contain the word treaty, nor anything that can be twisted into any claim that he had made or had assumed any power to make a treaty with these or any other Indians--W. I. M.)
"Later, I prepared and printed a native hymn book, a small primer of native and English, and in 1845 translated and printed the Gospel of Matthew. We left a native church of twenty-five, and some forty ready to be received into church membership, a school of two hundred and thirty-four of most enthusiastic scholars; at their work by daylight in the morning, and pushing it till 10 o'clock at night, by pitch light, half of them good readers and one-third good with the pen; a large class of girls taught the use of the needle, knitting needle, to card, spin and weave; over two hundred yards good flannel woven. The whole nation, with the exception of one small camp, are a Sabbath observing and church-going people, making their adopted religion an open and earnest business; patriarchal worship night and morning universal. Drunkenness unknown; only one harlot in the nation, seldom a theft, and gambling almost broken up. The whole nation supplied with good medicines, and taught their use."
Is any other proof needed that Rev. H. H. Spalding was an irresponsible monomaniac after the Whitman massacre than the comparing of these three letters of his written February 3, 1847, April 2-19-20, 1847, and August 3, 1847, and never before printed descriptive of the total demoralization of the Nez Perces near the end of his eleven years of missionarying among them, and this article in the Pacific of May 25, 1865, under the title of ''History of Indian Affairs Among the Nez Perces," preparing the way for the launching of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story and the rehabilitating of himself as a successful Indian missionary?
If he is not to be excused from moral responsibility as a lunatic, then certainly he was a phenomenal liar, and as I prefer always to take the most charitable view possible of the actions of my fellow men, and as Dr. Whitman, speaking as a physician, as early as September, 1840, had declared that Spalding was suffering from a disease of the head which was liable to make him insane, "especially if excited by external circumstances," I have for many years been convinced that Spalding was an irresponsible monomaniac
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after his narrow escape from death at the time of the Whitman massacre rather than a conscienceless liar.
His pamphlet, otherwise known as Ex. Doc. No. 37, 41st Cong., 3d Sess., contains a great number of illustrations of either his lunacy or his unbounded mendacity, but space only permits calling attention to a few of them.
In his account of the origin and purpose and results of Whitman's ride (pp. 20-22) are more than forty misstatements, more than one-half of which, if he was sane, he knew to be pure fictions of his own fancy.
(P. 42) In bis own "Memorial" he not only repeats the patriotic origin and purpose of Whitman's ride (in condensed form), but declares that the Whitman massacre was "commenced by the above said British monopoly" (i. e., the Hudson's Bay Co.) "for the purpose of breaking up the American settlements and of regaining the territory," and that in that massacre "Dr. Whitman and his wife and her equally heroic associate, Mrs. Spalding, together with seventeen other emigrants who had stopped to winter there, were brutally destroyed in 1847."
But the truth is that instead of "Dr. and Mrs. Whitman, Mrs. Spalding and seventeen others," in all twenty persons, the entire number massacred was "Dr. and Mrs. Whitman and twelve others," in all fourteen persons, as Rev. H. H. Spalding himself stated in each of two letters to Rev. D. Greene, Secretary, one dated Fort Vancouver, January 8, 1848, and the second dated Oregon City, January 24, 1848, and also in a letter to Mrs. Whitman's parents dated Oregon City, April 6, 1848, and published in Transactions Oregon Pioneer Association, 1893, p. 93.
Furthermore, Mrs. Spalding was not only not among the slain, but she was 124 miles east from the scene of the massacre, and lived more than three years and a month after that event, and died peacefully in her bed, January 7, 1851, in the Willamette Valley, nearly 400 miles west of the scene of the massacre. (Cf. "Rev. and Mrs. H. H. Spalding--Their Life and Work," p. 133 of the August, 1897, number of The Church at Home and, Abroad, published by the Presbyterian Board of Publication and Sunday School Work, also p. 115, Transactions Oregon Pioneer Association, 1897.)
How reckless Spalding was in his writings may be seen from the two deliberate forgeries--if, indeed, anything from his disordered mind can he called deliberate--which he inserted within three-quarters of a page in a quotation from the before-mentioned report of Dr. E. White, the sub-Indian agent (dated April 1, 1843, and to be found in Gray's "History of Oregon" (p. 225), in White's
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"Ten Years in Oregon" (pp. 185-191) and as Doc. 2, Vol. L, H. of R. Docs., 28th Cong., 1st Sess.)
It is in an account of a meeting which White held with the Indians at Spalding's Station December 5, 1842, and of another at Whitman's Station a few days later, Spalding pretends to quote the speech of Non-son-ki-oon, a chief not less than ninety years old, who said, as reported by White: "Clark pointed to this day, to you, and to this occasion. We have long waited in expectation; sent three of our sons to Red River School to prepare for it; two of them sleep with their fathers; the other is here and can be ears, mouth and pen for us."
But the school at the Red River Settlement at the time alluded to was a Catholic school, and so, desiring not only to deprive the Catholics of any credit for having benefited the Indians, but also to support the wholly improbable Protestant version of the mission of the four Flat Heads to St. Louis, that those half-naked savages . went there "to get the Bible," instead of the much more reasonable and much better sustained Catholic version of that journey of the four Flat Heads, that they went (at the suggestion of the Catholic Iroquois who had settled among and intermarried with them) to get "black robes" or Catholic priests, Spalding coolly changed this to read "sent three of our sons to the rising sun to obtain the Book from Heaven."
A few sentences farther on, after quoting correctly from Tawatowe, a chief of the Gayuses, an admission that Whitman's mill (which was burned about a month after he had started to the States) "was burnt purposely by some disaffected persons towards Dr. Whitman," Spalding goes on, "The mill, lumber and a great quantity of grain was burned by Catholic Indians, instigated by Romanists, to break up the Protestant mission and prevent supplies to the oncoming emigration by Dr. Whitman," not a word of which, nor anything that can be tortured into the remotest resemblance to it, or to any other accusation vs. the Catholics, or to any allusion to an emigration led by Dr. Whitman, is to be found either in this or in any other of his reports as Indian agent, though White had been a Methodist missionary and continued a Protestant till his death in 1877.
Concerning this "Senate Ex. Doc. No. 37," which is often quoted by the advocates of the Whitman Legend, as if the fact that it is a Government document makes it true, we should note, first: That it was not the report of any Government officer nor any committee of Congress, but a document for whose preparation Spalding was mainly if not wholly responsible, and which it is understood was printed by the Senate through the influence of W. E. Dodge of New York City (who was for some time a Vice-President of the
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A. B. C. F. M.), and that it is packed full of absurdly false statements--like all the other publications advocating the "Whitman Saved Oregon Legend"; and, second, that, as George Bancroft pointed out in his argument to Emperor William against admitting as of any authority on the Oregon Question "Preuss' Map" in "Fremont's Report," the fact that anything is issued as a Government document does not necessarily give it authority. On that point Bancroft says (in "Berlin Arbitration," p. 128), "In representative governments each branch of the legislature may order printed what it will; but the order gives no sanction to what is printed. Last winter, for example, the German Diet printed at the public cost that the German Constitution was not worth the paper it was written on."
It is surprising that the Presbyterians and the Congregationalists, in their anxiety to combat the controversial statements of Father Brouillet's pamphlet on "Protestantism in Oregon" (which had been unwisely printed in connection with the report of J. Ross Browne, Special Agent of the Treasury Department, on the causes of the Indian war in Oregon as "Ex. Doc. No. 38, H. of R., 35th Cong., 1st Sess."), should have accepted this mass of rubbish that Spalding's bigoted and crazy brain had thrown together, and it is equally surprising that the Senate ever allowed this ridiculous collection of fabrications, exaggerations and flat-footed contradictions of some of the best known facts in our national history to appear as a Senate document.
Perhaps quite as surprising as anything else about this pamphlet is the assertion made by Nixon (p. 237), Craighead (p. 89), and Mowry (p. 144) that it had "mysteriously disappeared" and but few copies of its edition of 40,000--Nixon says less than fifty copies --ever reached the public.
Nothing more preposterous was ever penned than that this document "disappeared," either "mysteriously" or otherwise.
It was bound in with every set of Senate Executive Documents of that session of Congress, of which 1,500 copies were distributed to public libraries in all parts of the country, so that instead of being difficult of access by historical students, as Mowry represents, it can be found by any of them without difficulty.
I had no trouble in obtaining a copy of the pamphlet edition in an old book store in Washington three years after the time when Dr. Mowry says a United States Senator assured him that he had obtained for him the "only copy I can find in Washington," nor was there the least intimation from the old book store man that it was or had been rare, nor did the price indicate any such thing.
In 1899 or 1900--I am not sure which year and have mislaid the catalogue--Robert Clarke & Co. of Cincinnati, who know the
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value of old books and pamphlets (and what of Americana are rare) as well as any firm in the country, advertised in their catalogue of Americana a copy of this Doc. 37 for 50 cents. January 15, 1903, the Senate ordered 2,500 copies of this document reprinted.
It would have been a highly commendable and a very meritorious act, if some level-headed Congregationalist or Presbyterian had prevented the appearance of this jumble of misinformation, and misstatement. and pure fiction, and engaged some fair-minded and sane man to reply--if reply seemed best--to Father Brouillet's pamphlet as far as it was erroneous, and to have frankly admitted the accuracy of such of its statements about the decadence of the Whitman-Spalding-Eells-Walker Mission as are indisputably shown to be true by the evidence of the letters and diaries of the missionaries themselves, which are herein first published, after having been carefully suppressed for more than half a century.
It is true that to the uncritical reader with no special knowledge of the history of the development of the Rocky Mountain and Pacific Coast regions in general, and the old Oregon Territory in particular, Spalding's pamphlet seems to have some authority because of the great number of names of men prominent in the Oregon Territory that he has printed as endorsing certain statements, and answering certain questions, but when we remember how boldly he altered such a well-known public document as White's Report of April 1,1843, which had been in print for a quarter of a century and more when he drew up his pamphlet, and how he increased by more than forty per cent, the number of victims of the Whitman massacre and put his own wife in the list, we certainly have strong grounds for believing that he altered any and all of these documents after they came into his hands to make them suit his own notions of what the writers ought to have put into them.
The greater part of the "Resolutions" of various "Conferences," "Associations" and "Presbyteries" in the Oregon Territory which are in the pamphlet were evidently either written by Mr. Spalding, and adopted by those bodies without any careful investigation of the facts, or else were altered by him to suit his insane fancies, as White's report was.
Returning to the Decadence of the Mission, March 3, 1846, Rev. C. Eells wrote to D. Greene, Secretary: "It is with pain I feel obliged to state our effort at teaching school has amounted to very little. . . . Only eight gave heed to the call of the bell for school, while at the same moment many times that number were collected about the gambling ground, distant only a few rods. . . They complain as though they were disappointed because the school
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has not exerted a transforming influence over those who have enjoyed the benefit of it."
April 20, 1848, Rev. E. Walker wrote to Mr. Hill, Treasurer of the American Board, as follows: . • - "We have been among them nine years, and yet I know of no one in this tribe who can be considered pious. There are those who talk, and pray, and pretend to be religious. But we know of none who are honest, or who are children that will not lie. They try to behave well when they perceive any temporal advantage to be gained. . . . Possibly some may be converted, and perhaps some have been already. But I have not known of any, even at Mr. Spalding's Station, who could be called consistent Christians. But I forbear to dwell on this forbidding topic. Of the horrid massacre of Dr. and Mrs. Whitman and others you will doubtless have been informed before you receive this. To you this was probably very unexpected intelligence. But to us the aspect of things had long seemed portentous."
ALL THAT WHITMAN EVER CLAIMED ABOUT HIS RIDE IN HIS LETTERS AFTER HIS RETURN TO OREGON.
While the various advocates of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story have printed the "Statements" of many people, most of them probably honest, about what they thought they remembered (from twenty-three to fifty-nine years after the event), that Whitman told them about the origin, and purpose, and results of his ride, not one of them from Spalding in 1865-6 to M. Eells, Penrose, Mrs. Dye, and Mowry in 1900-1901 has ever quoted what Whitman himself claimed about it, in his various letters after he returned to Oregon, and no one of all the people on whose "Statements" they depend has ever been able to produce any letter, diary, or other written or printed memorandum about this wonderful story ante-dating the first publication of it (by Clarke in the Sacramento Union, November 16, 1864), except the two letters of Rev. Geo. H. Atkinson (hereinbefore quoted pp. 44-9, part 2, and never before printed), and he never saw Whitman, and his statements were avowedly derived from Spalding and C. Eells.
In this chapter every claim he himself made is accurately quoted from his letters, and they are compared with the indisputable facts in the case, that the public may have a chance to judge for itself how much weight should be given to his own claims.
The Spalding-Whitman Mission had been established seven years, 1836-1843, during which time, so far as has yet been found, neither Whitman nor any other member of it had in letter or diary written so much as one short sentence which expressed any interest whatever in or concern about the political destinies of any part of the Oregon Territory, or even any sentence (except the following from a letter of Gray's), which indicated that any of them knew that there was any question of boundary between the United States and Great Britain.
I could scarcely believe the evidence of my own eyes on this point, and on the wagon road question, when I came to examine the American Board MSS., and the personal correspondence of Whitman and Mrs. Whitman, and the diaries of other members of the Mission, for such constant claims of Whitman's intense patriotism and ardent desire to make known the feasibility of reaching Oregon
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with wagons had been made in Spalding's articles in the Pacific and in his pamphlet, and Barrows' "Oregon," and Gray's History, and in various articles in the Missionary Herald in 1869, 1870 and February and September, 1885, and in M. Eells' "Indian Missions," and in numerous newspaper and magazine articles, that, although convinced before obtaining access to these letters and diaries that he did not save any part of Oregon, or exercise any appreciable influence on its destinies, I supposed that I should find abundant evidence that he was intensely interested in these topics, and that they were often discussed with his associates, and written about by him to the American Board and in letters to his and his wife's family.
W. H. Gray to D. Greene, Secy., (No. 136, Vol. 138, Am. Bd. MSS., undated but plainly written some time late in 1839, or in the winter of 1839-40): "Dr. McLoughlin said to me that it was his wish that our people should occupy that place and gave as a reason that then our people would be all together and have nobody to meddle with us, and in case the boundary line should be the Columbia River, and the fort was to be removed, he should like to have us there, both on account of the influence we might exert on the Indians and men of the fort. He did not wish to answer all my questions about the country because it would imply a claim to the country, which they had none, except what their forts now occupied; he would say that he thought we had just as good a right to occupy any place as they had."
While this extract is the nearest to anything in their own handwriting that I have found expressing any interest in, or even knowledge of any dispute between Great Britain and the United States about the Oregon boundary, Mr. Thos. J. Farnham, in his "Travels on the Great Western Prairies, the Anahuac and Rocky Mountains and in the Oregon Territory, Poughkeepsie, 1841" (p. 181), gives us the following contemporary quotation from Rev. H. H. Spalding, that shows what was evidently not only his opinion, but that of Dr. Whitman as well, up to the winter of 1845-6, as to not only the amount of territory really in'dispute between the two governments, but also as to its worthlessness. "Mr. Spalding, an American missionary, made a journey across this valley" (i. e., Spokane valley) "to Fort Colville, in March of 1837. . . . The same gentleman, speaking of this valley and of the country generally lying north of the Columbia and claimed by the United States and Great Britain, says: 'It is probably not worth half the money and time that will be spent talking about it.'" The reader who will refer to the extract from Spalding's letter of April 7, 1846, edited by Whitman and published in Palmer's "Journal of Travels," etc. (p. 259, infra), will find that even two and a half years after
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Whitman's return from the States he had no special knowledge of the value of "North Oregon," i. e., that part north and west of the Columbia.
After Whitman had been to the States, and had found the whole country aflame on the Oregon question--though not from anything he or his associates had done--he began to express some interest in the political destiny of Oregon, but that interest was no other than nor greater than what any ordinarily patriotic American ought to have felt, and expressed and exercised no more influence on the destiny of Oregon than the opinion on that subject of any one of hundreds of thousands of other Americans.
Though several of Whitman's earlier letters express great fear lest the Catholics should succeed in holding the whole Pacific Coast, the first letter of his which expressed any interest in the political destiny of Oregon and made any claim to having affected it, was one to D. Greene, Secretary, dated Fort Walla Walla, November 1, 1843.
In Chapter V. of Part I. has been quoted that part of this letter which more appropriately belonged to the subject of that chapter. He continued as follows: "There can be no doubt but settlers will soon settle in this upper country, and what we very much want is good men to settle two, three or four in a place, and secure a good location, and hold a good influence over the Indians, and sustain religious institutions as a nucleus for society, and keep back papacy. Through your agents an influence to favor this could go through New England and New York without at all becoming a source of sectarian jealousy, or exciting the papists to greater effort." . . . "Unless the Board get a special grant of the land the Mission occupies it will be likely to be taken from the Mission by pre-emption, whenever Congress takes possession of the country and grants land to settlers. I regret much that I was obliged so soon to return to this country. But nothing was more evidently my duty.
"Great inconvenience had occurred, and expense, by my absence, as well as my expense, yet I do not regret having visited the States, for I feel that this country must either be American or else foreign and mostly papal. If I never do more than to have been one of the first to take white women across the mountains, and prevent the disaster and reaction which would have occurred by the breaking up of the present emigration, and establishing the first wagon road across to the border of the Columbia River, I am satisfied. I cannot feel that we can look on and see foreign and papal influence making its greatest efforts, and we hold ourselves as expatriated and neutral. I am determined to exert myself for my country."
(Id. to Id.) April 8, 1844: "It is important that you lay the case of the Mission before Congress and obtain a grant of land for
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each station, for, if the bill passes giving land to settlers, the stations we occupy may at once be located beneath us. Rev. Jason Lee has gone home, mostly to obtain grants for their Mission.
"Perhaps in some way, as we have so eminently aided the Government by being among the first to cross the mountains and the first to bring white women over, and last but not the least, as I brought the late emigration on to the shores of the Columbia with their wagons, contrary to all former assertions of the impossibility of the route, we may be allowed the rights of private citizens by taking lands in the country. As the tenour" (query, tenure) "of our missionary operations is so uncertain, it may be well for the Board for us to exercise the rights of citizens in case of the Government's occupying the country." . . .
May 18, 1844 (Id. to Id.): "The only way the Mission can hold land will be for the use of the Mission, which is worth comparatively nothing at all. For as soon as the Mission becomes in the way of settlers they will get rid of it. I have no hope that the interest of the Mission can be so reconciled as to stand long after settlers coine into this part of the country." . . . "I do not want to abandon the Indian, but I am well assured when the Mission ceases, as hitherto, to be beneficial to settlers it cannot remain in peace. The only way we can stay will be to take the relation of settlers also. Men and things that stand in the way of the interest of such men as are settling this country will and must be got out of the way. As the Board can hold no claim to lands, and in view of the probability of such changes as soon to alter the situation of the missionary, I think it may become his duty to embrace the opportunity of locating lands, even if he has to withdraw from the Board in order to make a legal claim." . . . "Although the Indians are advancing in knowledge, still it cannot be hoped that a settlement will be so delayed as to give time for the advance to be made so that they can stand before a white settlement. For when has it been known that an ignorant, indolent man has stood against money, intelligence and enterprise?"
July 22, 1844, (Id. to Id.} (about the migration of 1843) : "No one but myself was present to give them the assurance of getting through which was so necessary, both to keep up their spirits and to counteract opposite reports which were destined to meet and dishearten them at every stage of the journey." ... "I have more than once alluded to the system of bounty in lands contemplated by Government for this country. For the most they are likely to do is to give the right of occupying for the specific purpose of missions, so that in order to get the lands it will become an object to get rid of the Mission."
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October 25, 1844 (Id. to Id.) : "I shall be able to supply flour and meal, which I do at $5.00 for unbolted and $6.00 for bolted flour, per cwt, and $4.00 for unsifted, and fo.OO for sifted meal. I have also from fifteen to seventeen beeves that I can sell, which I do at six cents a pound. Out of this I hope to very much reduce my draft upon the Board, although my expenses have been increased by extra labor in raising the crop and rebuilding the mill." . . . "The prospect now seems to be that all the tribes in the interior of the continent will fall under the influence of Romanism, as they are now so strong as to take probably the entire rear of our missions."
The prices given by Whitman himself in this letter as those for which he supplied immigrants with flour and beef utterly disprove the claims of unbounded generosity and philanthropy made for him by Spalding (p. 22, Sen. Ex. Doc. 37, 41st Cong.,' 3d Sess.), M. Eells, "Indian Missions" (p. 182), Rev. J. G. Craighead, "Story of Marcus Whitman" (p. 129). Spalding says: "But what he had in the way of grain, garden vegetables and cattle be gladly furnished the needy immigrants at the very low figure of Willamette prices, which was six hundred per cent, lower than what they had been compelled to pay at Forts Hall and Boise." Of course, "600 per cent, lower" is ridiculous--what Spalding doubtless meant was for one-sixth the price, which is 83 1-3 per cent, lower. But, as a matter of fact, when we compare the Willamette prices as given in a letter of Peter H. Burnett, dated Fort Vancouver, November 10, 1843, of beef five to six cents a pound, flour $4.00 a hundred, and in Palmer's Journal (p. 120), March 5, 1846, beef four to six cents a pound, and flour f 3.50 a hundred, and remember that this flour was made in mills equal to the average in the States, and was well bolted, while "Palmer's Journal" (p. 131) says: "At Spalding's Station there is an excuse for a grist mill, which answers to chip up the grain; but they have no bolting cloth, in place of which they use a sieve. The meal makes a very good bread," and (Id., p. 145) "At Dr. Whitman's stations flour can be bought for $5.00 per hundred, corn meal at $4.00, beef at six and seven cents a pound. It is proper to observe that the flour at Spalding's and Whitman's stations will be unbolted." It is evident that, considering the relative values of well-bolted flour and a sifted wheat meal, the prices charged by Whitman and Spalding were very considerably, probably fully forty per cent, higher than Willamette prices.
My criticism is not that the prices were exorbitant, but only that when they showed an ability and a willingness to obtain a good stiff price for their products, they should not be also held up as models of generosity and philanthropy for selling their surplus
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produce at full market prices, and prices that paid a good profit on cost of production.
April 8,1845 (Id. to Id.): "Some of the Indians are hiring land broken by those who have skill, which is done at the rate of three to five acres for an inferior horse. Ploughs are in great demand. I have sold even my last cast plough from the States, as they were the ones preferred by the Indians. Will you please send the castings without wood for twenty-five ploughs of a small and middle size pattern, and the same number next year, or, if more convenient, fifty at once, as I have no doubt all will be taken in one year. A horse is given for a plough, and the horses are sold for from $10.00 to $15.00." . . . "Situated as we are necessity compels us to become suppliers to immigrants, and we may as well make the best of it we can. I mean to get payment for my expenses, but I do not want to make gain." . . .
April 12, 1846 (Id. to Id): "The expense of the Mission to be paid in Boston will be 303 pounds, 1 shilling, 4 pence sterling. I think it will be far less next year, for in this bill, as well as in the last, arrearages from the year'I went home and the following have had to be paid."
September 8, 1846 (Id. to Id,.): "I wrote you upon the subject of our stations being located away from under us. At the time when that spirit was abroad in the land an effort was making by Mr. Craig, a neighbor of Mr. Spalding's, to get his claim so recorded as to cover the station improvements at Lapwai. A more consistent state of things is now in exercise, but still you should recollect that we cannot hold the stations as our own property, and laws regulating claims may not recognize the right of the Mission in case the stations may be taken from us by unprincipled men. At present we could make claim by paying f 5.00 a year into the treasury of Oregon. But I do not think it best for us to take claims in that way just now." And yet this is the man that Spalding, Barrows, C. Eells, M. Eells, Nixon, Mowry et al. would have us believe to be fairly consumed with burning patriotism and desire to establish and support an American Government in Oregon!
For the support of that Provisional Government, now three and a half years after it was established--he never having done a thing to aid its establishment--he now avows himself unwilling to contribute the munificent sum of $5.00 a year, for each station, though he would thereby secure its endorsement of the validity of his claim to the land of the Mission Station.
As a matter of fact every land claim that the Provisional Government endorsed was recognized and allowed by the National Government when a Territorial Government was established by Congress, so that twenty dollars a year and the filing of a record of
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the claims as provided by the law of the Provisional Government would have secured to the Messrs. Whitman, Spalding, Eells and Walker the title to a square mile of land at each of the four stations of Wailatpu, Lapwai, Tshimakain and The Dalles, which they could easily enough have held for the use of the Mission.
"I think we ought not, however, to let the opportunity pass in case the line becomes settled with England and Congress opens the way for us to share with our countrymen. But you must be aware that it will require the consent of the Board for us to make claims in case either time or money are required to make improvements in order to hold them, as all our time belongs to the Board, as well as all of the property in our hands."
April 1, 1847 (Id. to Id.): (Dated at Fort Vancouver): "The disaster was great again last year to those who left the track which I made for them in 1843, as it has been in every attempt to improve it. Not that it cannot be improved, but it shows what it requires to complete a safe passage and may not fail to demonstrate what I did in making my way to the States in the winter of '42 and '43, after the 3d of October. It was to open a practical route and safe passage, and to secure a favorable report of the journey from emigrants, which, in connection with other objects, caused me to leave my family and brave the toils and dangers of the journey; which carried me on, notwithstanding I was forced out of my direct track, and notwithstanding the unusual severity of the winter and great depth of snow.
"In connection with this let me say the other great object for which I went was to save the Mission from being broken up just then, which it must have been, as you will see by a reference to the doings of the committee which confirmed the recall of Mr. Spalding only two weeks before my arrival in Boston. I often reflect upon the fact that you told me you were sorry I came. It did not at that time nor has it since altered my views nor changed my opinion on the matter nor towards yourself.
"American interests acquired in the country, which the success of the immigration of '43 alone has and could have secured, have become the foundation and cause of the late treaty with England and the United States in regard to Oregon. For it may be easily seen what would have become of the American interest in this country so far as then acquired by her citizens who were located and residing here would have been concerned, had the success of that immigration been as disastrous as the two attempts, the one in 1845 and the other in 1846, to alter the route have been. Any one may see that American interests as now acquired and existing in the country on one part, and British interests in the same way existing on the other hand, have had more to do with bringing
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about and forming the treaty than original rights belonging to either party. From the year 1835 to this time it has been apparent that there was to be a choice only of two things; one of the increase and continuation of British interest here to the easy exclusion of all other acquired rights in the country, or the establishment of American interests by citizens.
"In connection with the former papacy was deep rooting and founding herself in security." . . . "In the fall of '42 I pointed out to our Mission the arrangements of the Papists to settle in our vicinity, and that it only required those measures to be completed for us to be obliged to close out mission operations. This was urged as a reason for me to return home and try to bring those to carry on the affairs of the Mission stations and to settle in the country who would stand on the footing of citizens and not as missionaries. It may not be inappropriate to observe that at that moment the Methodist Mission as well as our own was on the point of dissolution." . . . "As we live at all times in a most precarious state, not knowing whether to stay or go, nor at what time, nor how soon. Whether it may be demanded by the Indians or by the Board. I think in the course of the ensuing summer I shall locate a claim for land in this lower country to be ready in case of retirement."
May 12, 1847 (Id. to Id.) : "At this moment the Papists are making great exertion to obtain a request for them to locate on the TJtilla, about 25 miles from us. But I do not think it will be made unless they take the wish of a few and disregard that of most of the people. I have been ploughing new land for them with two large ploughs with strong ox teams for three weeks, and shall continue for about two weeks more. For one week I had three ploughs employed for them. They are able and ready to pay me for breaking these lands. TMs is a point towards which I have steadily aimed and to which I have alluded in former letters in which I told you the greatest obstacle to aiding the Indians in farming, etc., was the thought that we were under obligations, probably by receiving our support from the Board, to do these things for them for nothing. A great change has been effected in this particular and in regard to all we do for them and all they receive from us."
October 18,1847 (Id. to Id.): "I will not repeat what Mr. Rogers has written about the Papists further than that all are Jesuits who are to labor among the Indians. A Bishop is set over this part of the work, whose seat, as the name indicates, will be at Walla Walla. He, I understand, is styled Bishop of Walla Walla. It will be well for you to know that from what we can learn their object will be to colonize around them. I cannot blame myself that the plan I laid down when I was in Boston was not carried out. If we could
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have had good families, say two or three together, to have placed in selected spots among the Indians, the present crisis, which I feared, would not have come. Two things, and it is true those which were the most important, were accomplished by my return to the States.
"By means of the establishment of the wagon road, which is due to that effort alone, the emigration was secured and saved from disaster in the fall of '43. Upon that event the present acquired rights of the United States by her citizens hung. And not less certain is it that upon the result of emigration to this country the present existence of this Mission and of Protestantism in general hung also."
At some time very soon after he returned to Oregon, probably in November or December, 1843, Dr. Whitman wrote a letter, undated, to the Secretary of War, enclosing the draft of a proposed bill. In this letter he says: "The Government will now doubtless for the first time be apprised, through you and by means of this communication, of the immense migration of families to Oregon which has taken place this year. I have, since our interview, heen instrumental in piloting across the route described in the accompanying bill, and which is the only eligible wagon road, no less than 300 families, consisting of one thousand persons of both sexes, with their wagons, amounting in all to more than one hundred and twenty, six hundred and ninety-four oxen, and seven hundred and seventy-three loose cattle." . . . "As pioneers these people have undergone incredible hardships, and having now safely passed the Blue Mountain range with their wagons and effects, have established a durable road from Missouri to Oregon, which will serve to mark permanently the route for larger numbers each succeeding year, while they have practically demonstrated that wagons drawn by horses or oxen can crpss the Rocky Mountains to the Columbia River, contrary to all the sinister assertions of all those who pretended it to be impossible."
I have had a manuscript copy of these documents since 1888, but they were first printed in Transactions Oregon Pioneer Association for" 1891 (pp. 67-78), and were reprinted by Nixon (pp. 315-332), and Mowry (pp. 274-84), and have been repeatedly referred to by the leading advocates of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story as if they were of immense consequence, and full of statesmanlike recommendations and important information, and exerted immense influence on the destinies of Oregon.
Thus Nixon (p. 172), after stating that President Polk in his first annual message, December, 1845, had recommended the giving of the twelve months' notice required for the abrogation of the Treaty of 1827, the extension of the civil and criminal laws of the
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United States over the whole of Oregon, and the establishment of a line of military posts from the States to the Pacific, continues: "If the reader will take the pains to read the paper which Dr. Whitman, by request, sent to the Secretary of War in 1843, republished in the appendix of this volume, he will find in it just the recommendations now two years later made by the President. The great misfortune was that it was not complied with promptly."
But when the reader takes the pains to read Whitman's paper he does not find in it any mention of the abrogation of the treaty, no mention of any extension of the civil and criminal laws of the United States over the whole or any part of Oregon, and no recommendation for the establishment of any military posts.
What Whitman recommended was the establishment of a line of farming stations, and in the letter accompanying the bill he explicitly declares that, "For the purpose they need not, or ought not, to be military establishments."
Nixon also invents a title for this bill, viz., "A bill to be laid before Congress for the organization of Oregon." But the bill had nothing to say about the "Organization of Oregon," and contained no recommendations which our Government would not have had a right to enact without any abrogation of the treaty of 1827, which abrogation was an indispensable pre-requisite of any right on our part to legislate for the "Organization of Oregon."
The letter was filed in the War Department with the following endorsement, "Marcus Whitman, inclosing synopsis of a bill, with his views in reference to importance of the Oregon Territory, War, 382--received June 22, 1844," and so far as appears from the records of the Government it was never even read by any one except the Secretary of War, or, more likely, not by him but by a clerk, nor ever seen by any other mortal except his filing clerk for more than forty years, when it was unearthed by those advocates of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story, who sought, and sought in vain, for some evidence at Washington of Whitman's influence in determining the political destiny of Oregon. Two more inconsequential documents than this letter and draft of a bill it would be difficult to imagine.
The letter contained absolutely no information about the value of Oregon which was not already in the possession of the Government, and it did not even first inform the Government of the safe arrival of the 1843 migration, as the Government was apprised of that event two months before this letter was received at the War Department, and as to the practicability of a wagon road over the Blue Mountains, Farnham's "Travels" had announced that in its first edition in 1841 and in two more editions in 1843 in New York, and one in London, and the evidence hereinbefore printed in Chap-
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ter V. of Part I. is enough to satisfy any candid mind that if Whitman had not been with this migration it would have experienced no considerable difficulty in going through with its wagons.
In the brief extracts which I have quoted from this letter are at least three quite important errors, viz: (1) "The route described in the accompanying bill" was by no means "the only eligible route." (2) "No less than 300 families." J. W. Nesmith, the orderly sergeant of the party, with the duties of adjutant, read the roll of the males above sixteen in the party at the 1875 meeting of the Oregon Pioneer Association, and it contained 295 names, but it goes without saying that many families had boys between sixteen and twenty-one, so that it is probable that the number of families was somewhere between 230 and 250, and certainly it was considerable less than 300. (3) They did not suffer "incredible hardships" nor any serious hardships.
They were nowhere attacked nor threatened with attack by the Indians, nor did they suffer from any epidemic, nor were there any more deaths on the way than would ordinarily happen among the same number of people remaining at home, and that they were not worn out, as they would have been if they had suffered even severe, let alone "incredible hardships," is evident from the letter of Tallamadge B. Wood, who was second in command of one of the divisions of the party. Writing about April, 1844, (as is determinable from the letter, which is without date,) he says: "Although the emigrants were so much exposed during the journey there has been but two deaths since our arrival." (Cf. "Oregon Historical Quarterly," December, 1902, p. 397.)
Furthermore, we have unquestionable contemporary evidence that the hardships of the journey were not severe in the following extract from Peter H. Burnett's letter to the New York Herald, published in that paper January 6, 1845, and reprinted in Wilkes' "History of Oregon." "The proper outfit for emigrants is a matter of very great importance, as upon it depends the ease of the journey. As little as we know about the matter, we were well enough prepared to get here, all safe, and without much suffering on the road. I would even be most willing to travel the same road twice over again, had I the means to purchase cattle in the States; and Mrs. B. (who performed as much labor on the road as any other woman) would most gladly undertake the trip again. There is a good deal of labor to perform on the road, but the weather is so dry and the air so pure and pleasant, and your appetite so good, that the labor becomes easy."
(Cf. "Oregon Historical Quarterly," December, 1902, p. 416; also George Wilkes' "History of Oregon," p. 83). As to the draft of a bill, it was so thoroughly unpractical that not a single thing it
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recommended was ever enacted into law, nor, so far as can be determined, was ever even submitted to the consideration of a committee of either house of Congress, and this seems to be a perfectly fair sample of the extent to which Whitman's efforts influenced the policy of the National Government in any direction on the Oregon question.
That Whitman should go to Washintgon to see the Secretary of War was a very natural proceeding, and quite in the line of his duty as an Indian missionary, and not in the least degree indicative of any special interest in or desire to influence the political destinies of Oregon.
The Indians at that time, and for several years after, were not, as now, in charge of the Interior Department, but were in charge of the War Department, and every zealous Indian missionary, when in the East, ought to have visited Washington and consulted the Secretary of War if he could possibly do so, especially when he had plans, as Whitman had, for inducing the Government to change its usual procedure so far as to furnish the Indians sheep and stock instead of money, when it should make a treaty with them. (Cf. Whitman to Greene, May 30, 1843. "I intend to try and have the Government give them sheep instead of money." Cf. American Board MSS., Vol. 138, No. 99). Also Whitman to Galusha Prentiss, May 28, 1843, "I mean to impress the Secretary of War that sheep are more important to Oregon's interest than soldiers. We want to get sheep and stock from the Government for Indians instead of money for their lands." (Transactions Oregon Pioneer Association, 189i, p. 179.)
In this letter to the Secretary of War it will be noticed that all Whitman claims is, not that he had anything to do with originating, or organizing the 1843 migration, nor that he led it, but that he was ''instrumental in piloting it."
That term is very indefinite, and doubtless the most determined opponent of the Saving Oregon Story will not at all question that he was "instrumental in piloting" that migration, and if he, .and, long after his death, his very unwise friends, had never made any greater claims about it, there would have been no question about Whitman worth discussing.
There are no letters from Mrs. Whitman which made any claim that Whitman's ride was on other than missionary business, and as we have seen she explicitly declared in her letters of September 29 and 30, 1842, that he went on missionary business, and no other inference is warranted from her letters of March 11, 1843, April 14, 1843, and May 18, 1843, hereinbefore quoted.
These eleven letters to D. Greene, and the one to the Secretary of War are all which Whitman wrote, so far as yet appears, in which
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he makes any claim of services rendered the Government, except a letter to Rev. L. P. Judson (published in Transactions Oregon Pioneer Association, 1893, pp. 198-203), in which he claims to have led out the 1843 migration, but says nothing as to what his purpose was in making his ride to the States, and a letter to his brother, Augustus Whitman, dated May 21, 1844. I have been unable to learn anything as to this letter other than the statements made about it by Prof. H. W. Parker (one of the wildest advocates of the Whitman Legend), in the Homiletic Review for July, 1901 (p. 93), where he quotes from it as follows:
"After this you will see why I came home in hopes to get good men to speck the country with settlements and aid the Providence of God indicated by supporting religion and education both for the colonists and the Indians, and no less to do all these by commerce and manufacture by extending a salutary influence over and across the Pacific." Assuming this to be a correct quotation, it is only a repetition of what was explicitly avowed in E. Walker's letter •of October 3, 1842, endorsed by C. Eells as correct as Whitman's plan, as follows:
(After stating how they consented to his going as the only means of saving the Mission from destruction), "It seemed death to put the proposition" (i. e., to discontinue the southern branch of the Mission) "in force, and worse than death to remain as we were. I have no doubt if his plan succeeds it will be one of great good to the Mission and country. It is to be expected that a Romish influence will come in, and being under the control of the priests, it will be scattered throughout the country wherever there are Indians, and near the station of the Mission to meet this influence a few religious settlers would be invaluable." It is also precisely the same idea advanced by Whitman in his letters to D. Greene, Secretary, of November 1, 1843, an October 18, 1847. (Cf. pp. 177-183, ante.)
I have quoted very fully from these letters, that none might claim that anything has been omitted in my quotations which had any bearing on the questions in dispute about the purpose, origin or results of Whitman's ride.
The first observation to be made on these claims (extravagant and unwarranted as all but one of them will herein be shown to have been), is, that he does not in these (nor in any other letters) claim--as he certainly would have done had there been any foundation for it--that he had printed anything in newspapers or in pamphlets about Oregon, or about the easy road to it, or that he had held any public meetings, or addressed any such meetings held by others for the purpose of inciting migration to Oregon, or that he had done anything to induce any one to migrate to Oregon, or
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that he had had any interviews with President Tyler or Secretary Webster, or had given them any valuable information, or received any promise from either of them that the destiny of Oregon should in any manner be affected by or dependent on the movements, or the success, of the migration of 1843.
Whether the claims he does make of great services are well warranted or not must be determined, as in the case of any other man's claims, not by assuming that all his claims are correct, but by comparing them with the indisputably established facts relating to the matters in question.
In examining his claims also and their steady growth from his modest and perfectly allowable claim in his letter of November or December, 1843, to the Secretary of War, of having been "instrumental in piloting" the migration of 1843, down to his claims in his letters to D. Greene, Secretary, of April 1 and October 18, 1847, that not only had he led it through, and thereby established the wagon road to the Columbia, but that upon that event "the rights of the United States in Oregon" had finally depended, and that the success of the migration of '43 in getting through with wagons (for which he claims the entire credit), was "the foundation and cause of the treaty of 1846" fixing the boundary at forty-nine degrees to the Coast, we must remember that the steady decadence of the Mission, begun as early as 1839, and not stopped, as he had fondly hoped it would be, by his bringing back a strong clerical and lay reenforcement to the Mission, had gone on with increasing rapidity, and that the expenses resulting from his ride were troubling him in his settlements with the Board as late as 1845 to 1846, and that the Secretary had received him coldly in Boston, and told him that he was sorry he had come, and that the American Board had not sent a single reeinforcement through to Oregon to aid in sustaining the Mission, although in almost every letter he had implored the sending of such reenforcements if the Mission was to be preserved. All these things served as a strong temptation to Whitman to exaggerate the importance of his ride, and to strive to convince the Secretary that his expensive disobedience of the order of the Board in making that ride, instead of discontinuing his station and going to Tshimakain to reside with Eells and Walker --(as directed by the destructive order of February, 1842)--had in some way been justified by its results, and that though it must be confessed the Mission was steadily going to the bad, yet its results in otherwise benefiting Oregon, and, as he finally claimed, in saving Oregon, would fully justify his ride and the consequent continued expenditure of money on his Mission.
His claims are (1) That his party were among the first to cross the mountains. (2) That they were the first to bring white women
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to Oregon. (3) That "I brought the late emigration onto the shores of the Columbia with their wagons, contrary to all former assertions of the impossibility of the route." (4) "By the establishment of the wagon road due to that effort alone" (i. e. to his ride to the States in 1842-43) "the emigration was saved from disaster in 1843." (5) That one of the purposes of his winter's ride was "to open a practical route and safe passage and secure a favorable report of the journey from the emigrants." (6) That "the success of the migration of 1843 was the foundation and cause of the treaty of 1846." (7) "Upon the results of emigration to this country the existence of this Mission and of Protestantism in general hung also."
His first claim is ridiculous. The first to cross, and recross the mountains, were the Lewis and Clark party of 1805-6, when Whitman was a baby not yet out of dresses, and they discovered a route into Oregon over Clark's or Gibbon's Pass practicable for wagons "by felling a few trees and grading about four miles on one mountain"--improvements that would not have required f 1,0 00 expenditure--and their report had been published in 1814 in this country and three editions of it in London, one in Dublin, one in Holland and one in Germany before 1818. The second party to cross and recross the mountains was the Astoria party in 1810-12, and they suffered vastly more hardships than all the missionaries that ever went to Oregon did put together prior to the Whitman massacre, and the return part of the expedition discovered the South Pass in 1812.
It will never be possible to determine exactly how many Americans had crossed the mountains before Whitman, but I think it was very considerably more than 1,000, and quite likely as many as 2,000 to 2,500 and they were really the discoverers and explorers of every important pass, and river valley, and mountain range, and other natural feature of the Continental Divide and of the country beyond to the Pacific; while neither Whitman nor any of his associates, nor any other missionary to the Oregon Indians--Protestant or Catholic--ever discovered anything, nor really explored any thing except to see where it would be best to locate their mission stations, and in that (as their own letters show), they were advised and guided entirely by the Hudson's Bay Company officers. Barrows, with his usual ignorance of or contemptuous disregard for the facts in the case says, on p. 250 "Fremont has been justly and honorably called the Pathfinder, but in this instance he followed a trail, in its most difficult section, which Whitman had beaten out by several trips."
Whitman had "beaten out" no trail at any point--"difficult" or otherwise--but had always traveled in a trail made broad and
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deep by the fur traders' yearly pack trains of from 80 to 100 or 150 men and 300 to 500 horses and mules, which had been going over the route to the vicinity of Fort Hall for eleven years before Whitman first went across the Rockies in 1835, and twelve years before he went beyond Green River and through to the Columbia in 1836, and in smaller parties from the vicinity of Fort Hall westward to the Sierras and across them into California and northwest to the Columbia. Every mile of the way in 1835 and 1836 Whitman was conveyed and protected by the fur companies--by the American Fur Co. to and from the Rendezvous in Green River valley in 1835, and to the Rendezvous in 1836, and by the Hudson's Bay Co.'s chief traders, McKay and McLeod, from the Rendezvous to Fort Vancouver in 1836. Even on his ride, in the winter of 1842-43, he "beat out no trail," but followed the regular fur traders' trail to Fort Hall, and there took a guide and followed Ashley's trail till it intersected the Spanish trail, and then that he might not lose that till he struck the Santa Fe trail, he took another guide, and then that he might not lose that till he reached the Missouri frontier, he traveled with a party of American fur traders from Bent's Fort to Missouri.
His second claim, "the first to bring white women over them," is correct, and is the only claim he makes which has any real foundation in fact, and the women, Mrs. Whitman and Mrs. Spalding, deserve to be held in high honor for venturing to undertake a journey involving so much discomfort, though it did not involve any real danger, as they were all the time under the protection of dauntless and vigilant fur traders.
July 16, 1836, Dr. Whitman wrote a letter from "Encampment of Messrs. McLeod and McKay, ten miles from Rendezvous" (from which nothing has yet been published), as follows: "I see no reason to regret <nir choice of a journey by land." ... "I have seen nothing to change my opinion that it is one of the best trips that can be made for invalids, such as dyspeptics, liver, spleen or scrofulous affections, all of which I believe will be greatly relieved, if not permanently cured." . . . "In my case and Mrs. Whitman's, we are more than compensated for the journey by the improvement of health."
All of which shows that the journey was its own sufficient reward, as tens of thousands of people have since found the overland journey by saddle animals or wagon train to be.
Undoubtedly Congress, in recognition of the fact that these two women had been the first to cross the continent, would have donated them each a square mile of land in Oregon, on proper representation of the facts, had it been possible for Congress to grant land in Oregon prior to the treaty of 1846. But the final outcome of every
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attempt at making such grants by Congress, either to individuals or associations working to colonize Oregon, or to actual settlers there, was the conclusion that while the treaty of 1827 remained in force neither our Government nor Great Britain had any right to assume any jurisdiction over Oregon, or grant any land to anybody for any purpose, and both governments refrained from assuming any jurisdiction over any part of Oregon or granting any land there to anybody while that treaty continued in force.
When the treaty of 1846 was ratified, and our Government had an undoubted right to grant land in Oregon, the Mexican War was in progress and so engrossed public attention that no thought was given to Oregon matters, and before that war ended the dreadful Whitman massacre had slain Mrs. Whitman (who left no children), and caxised the abandonment of the other Mission stations, and Spalding's crazy course after a few months, in accusing the Hudson's Bay Co. and the Catholics of instigating that outbreak of savage ferocity, excited antagonisms which prevented any attempt at securing such a grant for Mrs. Spalding, though there was no reason in the world why the Spaldings could not have taken up a square mile under the Donation Act, as many of the Methodist missionaries did.
His third claim, "and last but not least, as I brought the late emigration to the shores of the Columbia with their wagons, contrary to all former assertions of the impossibility of the route," is a wholly unwarranted one, and one that does little credit to his character for veracity.
The facts about the easy practicability of the wagon road and the general knowledge concerning it in the States, and concerning Whitman's relation to the migration of 1843, have been fully stated in Chapter V. of Part I.
His fourth claim is essentially the same as the third, and is overthrown by the same evidence.
Regarding the fifth claim, it ought to be added that if he had really wished to lead out the 1843 migration he would not have stayed as he did at the Shawnee Indian Mission, ten miles from where the migration was gathering, during all the time it was gathering and for nine days after it had started, but would have camped with it and have striven to become acquainted with its membership, and certainly if be had felt any responsibility about it he would never have written such letters as his of May 27, 28 and 30, 1843, hereinbefore quoted. (Cf. Part I., pp. 95-7), and further, he could have remained at his Mission station till June 1, 1843, and then have ridden in perfect safety as far as Fort Hall, or even South Pass, or Fort Laramie, in the long days of summer, and met the migration, and have done all and very much more than all that he
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did do for it, without any of the hardships and dangers of his winter's journey.
In short, according to his own positive statement, the Mission "would have been broken up just then" if he had not made, the journey, while it is certain that without any of its hardships and dangers he could have done all and more than all that he really did for the migration (which his letter of May 12, 1842, hereinbefore quoted--Part I., p. 95--shows he then expected would come in 1843, though he was not then enough interested in it to write one word of advice or direction for it).
His sixth claim, that the success of the migration of 1843 was the foundation and cause of the treaty of 1846, shows his ignorance of the tenacity with which every administration from 1814 down to 1846 had insisted on nothing south of forty-nine degrees, as "our ultimatum" for the northern boundary of Oregon, and of the reason why Ashburton and Webster did not include the Oregon boundary in the Ashburton treaty, and of Webster's positive declarations hereinbefore quoted in January and February, 1843, that "He had never made, nor entertained, nor meditated, any proposition to accept of the Columbia River, or any other line south of the forty-ninth degree, as a negotiable boundary line for the United States." There is no probability that Whitman ever in his life read so much of the official documents on the Oregon question as the record of any one of the three great negotiations with Great Britain in 1818, 1823-24 and 1826-27, or the one with Russia in 1823-24, and did not know--and not a single advocate of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story seems even yet to have learned--that in the opinions of the diplomats of both nations the terms of the treaties of 1818 and 1827 explicitly provided that neither nation could by making settlements or establishing trading posts, while those treaties remained in force, in the least degree strengthen its own claims or impair the claims of the other to the territory; nor is there the least reason to suppose that he had ever read so much as the full report of any one of the great debates on Oregon in Congress, in 1822-23, or 1824-25, or 1828-29, or 1842-43, for surely if he had read any of these things he would not have ventured to assert that the claims of the United States to Oregon rested on any such flimsy foundation as that of the success or failure of the 1843 migration in driving loaded wagons over 1,700 miles of road, not one rod of which had ever been surveyed, let alone worked in any manner by the National Government or by any State or Territorial Government.
The completest refutation of his fifth claim is to be found in the letters (herein for the first time made public in Chapters IV. and V. of Part II.), written by Gray, Whitman, A. B. Smith, C.
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Rogers, C. Eells and E. Walker between March, 1840, and February 28, 1843 (together with Mrs. Whitman's), about the difficulties of the Mission and about the reasons which started Whitman on that journey, and the accounts of the origin and purposes of that journey given in the Missionary Herald in September, 1843, and July, 1848, and the very brief and perfunctory notice of Whitman's journey given by the Secretary of the American Board in the Boston Recorder in May, 1843.
Whitman hoped that the Board would not only rescind that destructive order of February 15-22, 1842, which had catised his ride, but also furnish him with a reinforcement, clerical and lay, for the Mission, and also induce "a few pious settlers of our own denomination to go and settle, two or three families in a place, in the vicinity of the several stations of the Mission" (a project which if it had been carried out would simply have hastened the time and greatly enhanced the horrors of the Whitman massacre), but the coldness of his reception at the Mission House--the Secretary himself telling him that "he was sorry he came"--dashed these hopes, and though it would seem from some expressions in his letters that he had tried himself to get these religious settlers and failed, nothing is more evident from his own letters of May 27, 28 and 30, 1843 (only the last of which was written to Rev. D. Greene, Secretary), that he was troubling himself very little about the organization or movements of the migration which Barrows and several other advocates of the Whitman myth claim was originated, organized and led by him.
His sixth claim merely shows his ignorance of the strength of the American claim to Oregon, and the unswerving tenacity with which it had been asserted from the time he was a boy of twelve; and those astute diplomats, J. Q. Adams, Albert Gallatin, Henry Clay, J. Bayard and Jonathan Russell, in negotiating the Treaty of Ghent, in accordance with the positive instructions of President Madison and Secretary of State Monroe took care to secure the restoration of Astoria. That many other Oregon pioneers, besides Whitman, have claimed that the migrations of 1843 and 1844 exercised a determining influence on the settlement of the Oregon question is true, but it is also undoubtedly true that each and all of them were very ignorant of the diplomacy of the subject, many of them doubtless as ignorant of the subject as Whitman was.
Whitman repeatedly writes as though "disaster" to that migration would have stopped the settlement of Oregon, the "disaster" being the leaving of part of their wagons and other belongings, with probably some sickness, and suffering, and deaths as a consequence.
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But no such "disasters"--and they were many in the settlement of all the vast region between the Alleghanies and the Great Plains --had stopped, or even materially slackened, the resistless westward movement of our population, nor is there the slightest reason for supposing it would have done so in the case of Oregon, much less have caused our Government (which as early as 1826, when we had not a single settlement or even trading post at any place in the old Oregon Territory, and when all Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin and everything west of them was a wilderness inhabited only by Indians and a few fur traders, had instructed Albert Gallatin, our Minister to England, to notify the British Government that "forty-nine degrees to the Pacific was our ultimatum"), to accept of any line south of forty-nine degrees, especially after Lieutenant Slacum's report in 1837, and Lieutenant Wilkes' explorations in 1841, and his various dispatches and especially his special report of June 15, 1842.
His seventh claim furnishes a melancholy illustration of his lack of foresight in matters vitally concerning himself, and his narrowness of mind. It was written only forty days before he and his wife and twelve others connected with the Mission were brutally murdered by the Indians--among whom he had been missionarying for eleven years--and the Mission completely destroyed.
This, as will be demonstrated in the next chapter, was to a very large extent due to the ravages of contagious diseases, especially measles, communicated to the Indians by these migrations, so that instead of Whitman's statement that "upon the results of emigration to this country the existence of this Mission hung," it would have been much more nearly correct for him to have written that "one of the results of emigration to this country will speedily be the destruction of this Mission."
If by "and of Protestantism in general hung also" he meant anything more than Protestantism in Oregon, the statement was fully as inane as Gray's in that first letter of complaint to D. Greene, Secretary, on March 20, 1840, which eventuated in Whitman's Ride, that "I fear the death blow to this Mission is already struck, and I fear with its burial will sink the whole Indian race." (Cf. p. 106, Part II., ante), while if he limited it to Oregon, he certainly paid a very poor compliment to the capacity, zeal, industry and efficiency of the Protestant missionaries in Oregon, who (without including their wives, many of whom were much more efficient missionaries than their husbands), even as late as the date of this letter far outnumbered the Catholic missionaries there, and had been established in Oregon four years before any Catholic priests went there, and who had already, when this letter was written, a population of about 8,000 to 10,000 Americans to minister to in
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Oregon, fully four-fifths of whom were Protestants, and who had known for eleven months, when this letter was written, that the boundary line was settled at forty-nine degrees, and that therefore the Hudson's Bay Co.'s stay in the country would be brief, and that American interests and policies would inevitably dominate Oregon.
In his letter of November 1, 1843, he wrote, "I feel that this country must either be American or else foreign and mostly papal." That "it must either be American or foreign" is the most commonplace of self-evident propositions, but why "mostly papal" if it should be finally yielded to Great Britain? England has not generally been regarded as a very strong "papal" country since the time of Henry the Eighth.
But I think the most effective criticism after all on these extravagant claims of Whitman of services rendered to the nation and patriotic motives (never before manifested, but, as he would have us believe), impelling him to that winter's ride, is found in the simple fact that, with all these letters before them and some 2,000 pages more of correspondence from the Oregon Mission and the full record of the Mission, and of their interviews with Whitman (March 30-April 8, 1843,) fresh in their memories, Revs. D. Greene and S. B. Treat, Secretaries of the A. B. C. F. M., when the news of the Whitman massacre reached them, published the following brief sketch of Whitman's life, containing only 162 words, as a preface to the account of the massacre (on p. 237 of the Missionary Herald for July, 1848) :
"Doctor Whitman was born in Rushville, in the State of New York, September 4, 1802. He joined the church in that place in January, 1824, though he dated his conversion from a revival in Plainfield, Massachusetts, in 1819. He gave himself to the missionary work in 1834. In February, 1835, he went to Oregon for the first time. Having returned the same year, he was married in February, 1836; and in the following month he set out a second time for his chosen field of labor. He made a visit to the Atlantic States in the spring of 1843, being called hither by the business of the mission. He was a diligent and self-denying laborer in the work to which he consecrated his. time and energies. In the last letter received from him he described at considerable length his plans and hopes in regard to the Indians, showing his interest not only to the Cayuses, but in more distant tribes."
There can be no question of the exact accuracy of this brief biography of Whitman written by those who knew him best. That he was a "diligent and self-denying" missionary all will admit, but that he was in any sense of the term a great, or a wise, or a prudent, or a successful, or a specially patriotic missionary, the Missionary Herald could not truthfully affirm in 1848, and it was no
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more true when, in an evil hour, Secretary Treat listened to Rev. Geo. H. Atkinson's unwise and ill-informed enthusiasm in 1865, when he told him that the Whitman Saved Oregon Story would be "for the honor of God in your missions in Oregon and for the encouragement of the churches," and so proceeded to get Rev. Cushing Eells' ingenious and wholly fictitious version of that tale, and then by publishing and endorsing it in the December, 1866, Missionary SeralA, committed the American Board to its support.
How far Rev. G. H. Atkinson's zeal sometimes overstepped the bounds of reasonable prudence, and how far it was from being altogether inspired by a disinterested and philanthropic desire to benefit the Indians, appears from his action in getting the Oregon Congregational Association in 1855 (when Eells and Walker were not present), to vote in favor of re-establishing the Nez Perces Mission, but owing to the opposition of Eells and Walker when they heard of it, it was never done, they denouncing it as not only inexpedient but so dangerous that it ought not to be even considered.
October 19, 1857, Atkinson wrote from Oregon City to Rev. S. B. Treat, Secretary, and after urging that Gray be allowed to buy the Mission land claim at Wailatpu (to which Eells and Walker were opposed), he continues: "I have an increasing conviction also that the Board will never get its large claim of the Government" (i. e., for the destruction of the property of the Mission resulting from the Whitman massacre--W. I. M.) "unless it renews the Mission. But if you renew it, you will probably get that, and also get the place of Government teacher among those Indians, and the pay for that." . . . "That claim, according to Mr. Spalding's estimate, is not less than f 30,000. When treaties shall be ratified with the Cayuses, as they must be soon, your claim ought to be deducted from the payments to these Indians."
Surely if these men, Rev. D. Greene and Rev. S. B. Treat, who knew all the story of the Oregon Mission (especially Greene, who had been Secretary of the Board since 1832), had attached any importance to Whitman's labored attempts to show that he had had some other important object, besides the business of the Mission, impelling him to his heroic winter's journey, or if they had supposed that it had been of any importance in determining the political destiny of Oregon, and still more, if they believed it had saved Oregon, or any part of Oregon to the nation, it is utterly incredible that they would not then--when the whole country was full of sympathizing regret at his cruel death--have published something about it. From the time this brief and accurate biography of Whitman was published in the July, 1848, Missionary Herald, that publication had not one word of commendation for
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Marcus Whitman, till, in its December, 1866, issue it printed Rev. C. Eells' letter of May 28, 1866, containing his ingenious but entirely fictitious version of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story.
In 1861 the American Board issued a "Memorial Volume" commemorative of their first half-century's existence.
In this, though they were by no means backward in claiming every good result that could by any possibility he attributed to their missions anywhere on earth, they had only this to say (on p. 379) of their Oregon Mission: "Rev. Samuel Parker's exploring tour beyond the Rocky Mountains, under the direction of the Board in 1835-36-37, brought to light no field for a great and successful mission, but it added much to the science of geography, and is remarkable as having made known a practicable route for a railroad from the Mississippi to the Pacific."
But not only is there no hint in all its 464 pages that Whitman made his ride to Save Oregon, or that the Oregon Mission of the American Board as a whole had anything whatever to do with Saving Oregon, but Whitman's name even is not once mentioned in the whole book, and the brief extract above given is all that is said in any way, shape or form concerning that mission.
Well would it have been for Whitman's reputation, and for the reputation of his associates in the Oregon mission, and for their own good names and that of the American Board, if the Secretaries of the Board had never departed from this wise policy of silence about Whitman and their Oregon Mission, and had never added one word to the 162 of truthful biography they printed about him in the Missionary Herald for July, 1848.
Not a single advocate of the Whitman Legend has ever ventured to claim that Whitman could by any possibility have influenced the Oregon policy of any President but Tyler (except that both Gray and Spalding at first "recollected" that it was President Fillmore with whom Whitman told them he had his interviews, and who overruled Secretary Webster).
Fortunately for the establishment of the truth of history there are three letters of President Tyler to his son Robert, which prove, beyond a shadow of doubt, that as late as December, 1845, and January, 1846 (i. e., more than two and one-half years after Whitman started back, to Oregon), neither Whitman nor any one else had in the least degree changed his ideas as to the best policy to pursue on the Oregon and California acquisition problem, and that precisely what his correspondence shows was in his mind in 1842-3, as a "dream of policy never embodied" still seemed to him, in 1845-6, the precise policy that he thought Polk should adopt.
These letters are printed on pp. 447, 448 and 449 of Vol. II. of "Letters and Times of the Tylers."
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The first is dated December 11, 1845, and after commenting on President Folk's discussion of the Oregon question in his first annual message, continues: "I looked exclusively to an adjustment by the forty-ninth parallel, and never dreamed for a moment of surrendering the free navigation of the Columbia." ... "I never dreamed of ceding this country, unless for the greater equivalent of California, which I fancied Great Britain might be able to obtain for us through her influence with Mexico; and this was but a dream of policy which was never embodied. I confess that throughout the whole of this business I have been firmly impressed with the belief that our true policy was to let things take their natural course, under an improved treaty of joint policy."
The second was dated December 23, 1845, and again discussing the Oregon question and Folk's message thereon, he wrote: "I think it would be a high stroke of policy to interest Great Britain in our negotiations with Mexico, so as to lead her to concede California, and thus to bring about a tripartite treaty, according to Great Britain the line she offers" (i. e., forty-nine degrees to the most northeasterly branch of the Columbia, and thence the river to the Pacific), "and we take California, Great Britain to pay so much towards our purchase. It would require great skill to bring this about"
If it would have required "great skill" for Polk, fresh from a triumphant election by the people, and with a good working majority in both Houses of Congress eager to support him, to carry out this "dream of policy," the reader can see how utterly impossible it would have been for Tyler, hated by the Whig leaders, and distrusted by the most influential Democrats, and only half supported part of the time by discordant factions of both parties, to ever have "embodied" his "dream of policy" about Oregon in a treaty that would have had any chance of securing one-third, let alone, the needful two-thirds of the Senate in favor of its ratification.
The third was dated January 1, 1846, and after expressing his objections to war with Mexico and England, if it can honorably be avoided, he continues, "The United States requires still a peace of twenty years, and then they hold in their hands the destiny of the human race. But if war does come, we shall fight on the side of right. Our claim to Oregon to the 49th degree is clear; what lies beyond is attended with colorable title on the part of Great Britain by the exploration of Frazer's river by McKenzie; but it is only colorable."
THE WHITMAN MASSACRE AND ITS TRUE CAUSES.
The Whitman massacre began November 29, 1847, and resulted in the murder of Dr. and Mrs. Whitman, and twelve other men, of whom nine seem to have been killed on November 29, one on November 30, and two on December 7. Fifty-three people were taken captive, and held till December 31, when they were delivered to the Hudson's Bay Co.'s officers, under leadership of Peter Skeen Ogden, at Fort Walla Walla, with the exception of two children who had died in captivity. Of these captives seven were men, a fact important to remember when we examine Spalding's and Gray's accusations against the Hudson's Bay Co. and the Catholics as the causes of the massacre, and forty-six were women and children, and several of the women were subjected to most brutal treatment by the savages.
It was merely a no more and no less cruel, and, from the white man's standpoint wholly inexcusable outbreak of barbarous brutality, than has happened in hundreds of other cases since Europeans began the settlement of America.
The first account of the dreadful event which was published in the Missionary Herald, for July, 1848, was prefaced by the editor with sundry "Remarks" from which the following are extracts: "In regard to the causes of this deplorable event which has so unexpectedly darkened the prospects of the Mission Mr. Spalding, it will be seen gives no opinion." . . . "While there is no reason to suppose that the Romanists have had any direct agency in the massacre of Mr. and Mrs. Whitman, it is at least possible that they have said or done that which has had an unforeseen and undesigned connection with this melancholy event."
The reader's attention is invited to the malignant ingenuity of the religious bigotry displayed in thus at first, exonerating the Catholics from responsibility for this deed of blood, and then, instead of dismissing that phase of the subject with a devout expression of thanks to God that it was so, seeking by innuendo to make them responsible for it by saying that "It is at least possible that they have said or done that which has had an unforeseen and undesigned connection with this melancholy event."
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Spalding's letter (No. 138, Vol 248, Am. Bd. MSB.), reads as follows:
"Fort Vancouver, Jan. 8, 1848."
"To Rev. David Greene, Secy, of A. B. C. F. M.:
"My Dear Sir: It has become my painful duty to inform you of a most melancholy providence. I have, however, but a short time to write as the express leaves this place tomorrow morning for the States. I can now only state the awful fact, leaving the details for a future communication. Our dear brother and sister Whitman have been massacred by their Indians. With them were murdered twelve other persons, viz.: Mr. Rogers, who has been two years preparing for the ministry with a view to join our Mission; John and Francis Sager, the two eldest boys of the orphan children; Messrs. Kimball of Indiana, Saunders, Hall, Marsh, Hoffman of Elmyra, N. T., Gillam, Young, Sails and Bulee (Bewley) of the late immigration who had stopped at the station to winter. The three first have left large families. The massacre took place on the 29th of November. Mr. Smith and family were at the saw mill, twenty miles distant at the time, also Mr. Young, wife and three sons. Next day one of the latter came to the station for provisions and was killed.
"The others were sent for nine days after the horrible deed and their lives preserved to regulate and turn the flour mill. But the women and children to the number of 48, including my oldest daughter, who was at the station at the time, were made slaves by the murderers and treated in the most cruel and brutal manner. Eight days after the first massacre Messrs. Sails and Bewley, young men who were sick, were dragged from their beds, butchered and cut to pieces in the most horrible manner in the presence of the women and children and their dead bodies lay near the door for forty-eight hours rolled in mud and blood, and the captives, and among them was a sister of Bewley, were compelled to pass over them for their wood and water. No one was allowed to wash and bury them till two Nez Perces arrived.
"Dr. Whitman had just returned from burying an Indian child, was engaged in reading. An Indian to divert his attention was in the act of soliciting medicine while another came behind him and with a tomahawk struck him on the top of the head. A second blow on the top of the head laid him lifeless on the floor. Then Tilaukaikt, a principal chief, and who has ever received unnumbered favors of the Doctor and who was about to be received into the church, fell upon the dead body and mangled it horribly, cutting the face and head, ripping it open and taking out the heart, etc., etc., and scattering them in the mud. Other bodies
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were treated in the same brutal, savage manner. The little captive girls were compelled to pass over the bodies frequently, to torment them. They lay forty-eight hours, that is from Monday till Wednesday, scattered about the premises. None were allowed to gather them up and bury them. Even the distracted widows were not allowed to go outside and sooth the last moments of their dying husbands, some of whom lingered till late in the agonies of death. "Mrs. Whitman flew upstairs, where she received a wound in the breast, through the window. Mr. Rogers followed her, but they were induced to come down by the Indians promising not to kill them, but they were immediately taken to the door and shot. Mrs. Whitman died immediately, but Mr. Rogers lingered a long time. Mr. Osborn, who was sick, and who with his sick family hid themselves under the floor, heard him as he lay wallowing in the mud and blood, frequently say 'Lord Jesus, come quickly' till his voice failed. Mr. Hall fled from the Indians, reached Walla Walla, crossed the Columbia, and proceeded to this place; but he has not yet arrived and Indian reports say he was killed on his route. Mr. Canfield fled wounded, secreted himself in an upper room till dark, then fled some eight miles and hid himself in some hushes through Tuesday. During the day he heard several guns, and as I was expected to return that day from the Utilla, he took it for granted that I had fallen. At night he took the direction of my station and, although a stranger, reached it through the interposing hand of God on Saturday, and communicated the terrible news, stating that I was probably killed and that my daughter was of course among the captives. Mrs. Spalding immediately sent an Indian to rescue Eliza if possible. Mr. Osborn and sick family fled that night about three miles and hid themselves in the bushes. Next night they traveled about five miles, when Mrs. Osborn gave out. Mr. Osborn took one child, and leaving Mrs. Osborn and two children reached Walla Walla, where he obtained horses and a friendly Indian and after wandering and searching long they reached the Fort Friday night, Mrs. Osborn and the children having had nothing to eat through the whole time. Mr. Stanley, a painter, returning from Tshimakain to Wailatpu, when in about two miles of the bloody scene on Wednesday was informed by a little girl that all were dead at that place. He escaped to Walla Walla. A Nez Perces who was present and witnessed the terrible scene left on Friday, and reached Clear Water on Sunday, and gave the intelligence that I had escaped the Indians and had taken the direction of the Willamette. My safe arrival through the interposing hand of God, however, on Monday night, removed the "dreadful suspense from the mind of Mrs. S. The account of my own escape is too long for this letter and almost every word speaks of the inter-
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posing hand of God in a most wonderful manner. I was at the Utilla. twenty miles west of Wailatpu, at the time of the massacre and remained there visiting the sick and preaching to the Indians till Wednesday morning, and left for the station. When in about three miles" (i. e. of Whitman's station), "I met a Catholic priest, his interpreter and a Cayuse. After some conversation had together the Indian wheeled and with great speed proceeded back toward the house, when the priest informed me of what had taken place. He informed me that he had arrived there the night before, that he had that morning baptized the children of the murderers while the hands of their parents were still wet with the warm blood of their devoted Protestant teachers, after which he had assisted two friendly Indians in burying the slain. He said ten men and Mrs. Whitman had been killed, that a Frenchman in the employ of the Doctor had been spared as also the women and children, that no Frenchman or Hudson's Bay Co.'s men should be harmed, but only Americans. This he received from the chief. I requested him to take charge of my pack horse, took some provision which he had prepared for the night and gave myself into the hands of God, and my horse to the plains. In the meantime the Indian returned back to reload his pistol and wait for me to come along. He had started with the priest with a view to kill me, but stopping to smoke had accidentally discharged his pistol in lighting his pipe, and had neglected to reload. After waiting awhile he wheeled again on his track and pursued the priest, who had providentially made great speed and reached some ten miles before the Indian overtook him.
"Not finding me here nor learning from the interpreter what direction I took he returned to the point of meeting and took my track, but darkness soon coming on he was stopped for the night. Suffice it to say that the Lord delivered me from my pursuer. I traveled nights and lay concealed days. The second night my horse left me and I had now ninety miles to walk without food, and must leave everything, even my boots, as they were small. But praised be the name of God the fourth night I reached home without great suffering. A despatch was sent immediately from Walla Walla to this place. Mr. Ogden with two boats and a great amount of property proceeded with great haste to Walla Walla, sent an order for myself and family and the Americans at my place to join him without delay, a request to the Nez Perces Indians to deliver me up with the promise of property. In forty-eight hours we were under way with considerable of our property. Considerable has been left, considerable plundered by the Indians and some given to appease them. We reached Walla Walla in about four days escorted by about forty Nez Perces to protect us from
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the Gayuse, who required a large amount of property which was furnished at the Fort. Here we found the captives from Wailatpu rescued by the very prompt and judicious efforts of Mr. Ogden. He paid fifty blankets to the Cayuse for the captives with a large amount of other property. To the Nez Perces he paid twelve blankets with other property. My party swelled the number of the rescued to sixty, and the next day we were in three boats and on our way to this place. God gave us the very best of weather for the season and we reached here today. On the 10th we proceed to Oregon City, where Mr. Ogden will deliver us to the Government "Too much praise cannot be credited to the Hudson's Bay Co. and especially to Mr. Ogden for his timely, prompt, judicious, and Christian efforts in our behalf. We owe it under kind heaven to the efforts of Mr. Ogden and Mr. Douglas that we are alive and at this place today. May the God of heaven abundantly reward them. The property at Wailatpu had all been plundered and the buildings demolished. Four hundred troops have already collected and are on their way to take possession of the Cayuse country and to punish the guilty. Messrs. Eells and Walker have been advised to flee to Colvile. God in mercy direct us. "Yours in haste and affliction,
(Signed) "H. H. SPALDING."
It will be noted that in this letter he gives the number of the victims correctly as fourteen, and the names he gives tally with that number. On January 24, 1848, he wrote another letter nearly twice as long to Rev. D. Greene about the massacre, on the first page of which he again said that those murdered were "Dr. and Mrs. Whitman and twelve other Americans," and on the second page he gave the same list of names as quoted about in his letter of January 8, 1848.
April 6, 1848, he wrote a letter to the parents of Mrs. Whitman (published in Transactions Oregon Pioneer Association, 1893, pp. 93-103), in which (p. 95), he says "Fourteen persons were murdered first and last," and follows this with the same list of names as given in his of January 8 and January 24, but as we have seen in his "Memorial" (pp. 41-43 of his pamphlet, Sen. Ex. Doc. 37, 41st Cong., 3d Sess.), he states the parties slain in this massacre as follows: "Dr. and Mrs. Whitman, Mrs. Spalding" (who was 125 miles away from the scene of the massacre, and was rescued by the Hudson's Bay Co., and died peaceably in her bed in the Willamette Valley, January 7, 1851, more than three years after the massacre), and seventeen others," or twenty in all, while in the same pamphlet (p. 79), the Presbytery of Steuben, N. Y. (after reciting the Whit-
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man Saved Oregon Story briefly), said that in the Whitman massacre, Dr. Whitman and nineteen others were slain, and the Old School Presbytery of Oregon quoted by Mowry ("Marcus Whitman" 225), and endorsed by Mowry with the statement that the report "Was adopted after a full investigation," gives the Whitman Saved Oregon Story, and says that in the Whitman massacre "twenty lives were destroyed," (though Mowry prints it "twenty-five").
Besides these three accounts of the massacre by Spalding, I have the accounts given by Stanley the artist in a letter to Messrs. Walker and Eells, Fort Walla Walla, December 2, 1847, and which Rev. C. Eells copied in a letter to Rev. D. Greene, Secy., dated Tshimakain, 10th December, 1847, and also the accounts given by Rev. Harvey Clark in two letters to Rev. D. Greene, Secy., dated December 23, 1847, and April 6, 1848, and one from Rev. J. S. Griffin dated January 3, 1848.
As the shocking details of the murders do not vary materially it surely will be better to examine the contemporary evidence that will enlighten us as to the escape of those who were not killed, including the Spaldings, and as to the real causes of the catastrophe than to print over and over again the sad story of the cruel tragedy. Turning to Spalding's letter of January 24, 1848. . . . "Mr. Canfield escaped wounded, and hid himself till night in the upper loft of the large building where four families were living. At night he took a buffalo robe, a little provision and started for my station, and although a stranger to the route, reached my house on Saturday evening and communicated the astounding intelligence to Mrs. Spalding, aggravated by the probability that her husband was numbered with the slain, and the fact that her daughter Eliza was among the captives, having accompanied me to Wailatpu the week before. Mrs. S. dispatched two Nez Perces immediately to rescue her daughter, and to learn if possible whether I had escaped. I may here say that the Cayuse would not give up Eliza, and threatened if the two Nez Perces attempted to take her away they would follow and kill her. The day after the arrival of Mr. Canfield at Clear Water the Nez Perces arrived, with the intelligence that I had escaped the Cayuse on a swift horse, and had probably fled to the Willamette. On Monday a large number of Nez Perces collected at my station with a view to plunder it and strip Mrs. Spalding and her children and leave them to perish on the plains, or make them slaves. Most of these murderers were from the camp of Joseph who, you will recollect, was one of the two first received into our church, and who, up to this event, has sustained a good Christian character. One of the number was his own brother-in-law and from his lodge. But the great majority of the Nez Perces showed themselves friendly, protected the house
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from plunder to a great extent, assisted in removing Mrs. Spalding to Mr. Craig's, ten miles up the valley, and one of the chiefs guarded the house till we left with much of our valuable property. Considerable, however, was plundered, more was forced in the wav of payment or gifts, and all the heavy articles we were obliged to leave for want of time and means to convey them to Fort Walla Walla.
"The young women were dragged out by night, beaten and basely treated, three of them made wives by the savages, and, heart-rending to relate, one by Hezekiah the principal Cayuse chief and one often mentioned in my letters as one of our most diligent scholars, three winters in our school at Clear Water, and a member of our church. Immediately after the massacre the house was plundered of its property, its furniture destroyed, the wood work demolished. The great amount of property you sent last year had been brought up a few weeks before, was yet undivided, and was lost, i. e. plundered by the Indians. The cattle, horses, and sheep have been taken. Whether the troops will recover any of them or not remains yet to be learned.
"At the time of the massacre which was on Monday, I was at the Utilla, twenty miles west of Wailatpu. I remained there till Wednesday morning, when I started for Wailatpu, and was within two miles of the station when I met a Catholic priest, his interpreter and a Cayuse Indian. This Indian had accompanied the priest with a view to shoot me on meeting, as they expected me that day. Providentially he had stopped to smoke, and in lighting his pipe had accidentally discharged his pistol. The hand of the Lord prevented him from reloading and in this situation he met me. He wheeled to reload in a secret place and wait my coming up. In the mean time the priest informed me of the massacre. He said the Indian had accompanied him for the purpose of killing me and that he feared for me. He said that he had camped at the Indian village, one mile from the station, the night before. He had baptized the children of the murderers that morning, after which he went to the house to see the women and children and to assist in burying the dead. He said that my daughter was alive, that the chief had assured him that the women and children should not be lulled, that all Frenchmen, Hudson's Bay men and Catholics should not be hurt, that only Protestants or Americans should be destroyed. I asked him to take charge of my three horses, one packed, and also asked him to look after my daughter and the women and children. He furnished me with a little food, and I started for the plains.
"In the meantime the Indian waited for me to come along. At length he mounted and pursued after the priest, thinking that I
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had returned with him; but not finding me with him he was obliged to return to the place of our meeting before he could take my track, which he followed, but the thick darkness came on before he could overtake me. I fled all night, changing my course from the Willamette to the Nez Perces country and my own home, crossed the Walla Walla, kept the high ground where the Indian the next day lost my trail, followed the Tusha in its windings till light, and then lay next day. Next night continued up the Tusha, struck the trail from Walla Walla to my place, slept a few moments and proceeded. Soon after I heard the tramp of horses coming direct in the track from the station of Messrs. Walker and Eells to Wailatpu. This, I thought, is no other than a band of Cayuse Indians returning from the murder of these brethren, doubtless all are cut off at my station also and I am alone in the Indian country. I turned my horse from the trail, lay flat, and seized him by the nose to prevent him from calling out to the passing horses. Darkness prevented them from seeing me. What that band was I know not. It is certain they had not been to Brothers Walker and Eells. About light I stopped to bait my horse and he escaped, leaving me to perform the rest of my journey, ninety miles, on foot, without food.
"I was obliged to leave my blankets, even my boots, as they were too small for traveling. I have not time to give the interesting events of the remaining part of the route. Suffice it to say that lying by days, on Monday night, the sixth of my flight, I entered an Indian lodge near my house which had been vacated that day by Mrs. Spalding, and the news went to her that I had arrived. The Nez Perces received me kindly and treated us with friendship while we remained. They said they would protect us from harm from the Cayuse, if we would protect them from harm from the Americans. This we agreed to do if they would keep their hands clean from blood and plunder. There were with us my brother-in-law and Messrs. Craig, Jackson and Canfleld and two Frenchmen. We built a log building to protect ourselves, not knowing when we could leave the country, as it was plain we should not be able to depart unless by the interposition of the Hudson's Bay Co. In fact it was certain that should the Cayuse Indians learn that the Americans were coming up to avenge the death of the slain, they would immediately fall upon the captives at Wailatpu, fifty-two in all, and cut them off, and would also be likely to make an attack upon the stations of Clear Water and Tshimakain." . . . "Three hundred volunteers have already reached The Dalles, under Gen. Gillin, of the Florida war, to punish the perpetrators of this horrid deed, as also to defend the country. But we have evidently a growing army to meet as the Walla
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Walla and the tribes north are uniting and concentrating upon these settlements. May the Lord spare His infant colony from universal massacre for the clouds are gathering fast. We have men, but are in want of funds and munitions of war. For this end the Governor wishes to dispatch a messenger to California forthwith to solicit of Commodore Shubrick two or three vessels of war to be sent immediately to our relief, but he needs the means. I feel it to be my duty to supply them, and have therefore offered $500 to be paid on Vancouver on the return of the messenger, and to come into the bill of next year. In doing it I throw myself upon the patriotism of those churches who contribute to the funds of our Board."
Turning now to Spalding's letter of April 6, 1848, (Cf. Transactions Oregon Pioneer Association, 1893, pp. 93-103) written when he had had over four months to reflect upon it, we find the following: "They were inhumanly butchered by their own, up to the last moment, beloved Indians, for whom their warm Christian hearts had prayed for eleven years, and their unwearied hands had administered to their every want in sickness and in distress, and had bestowed unnumbered blessings; who claimed to be, and were considered, in a high state of civilization and Christianity. Some of them were members of our church; others candidates for admission; some of them adherents of the Catholic church-- all praying Indians. They were, doubtless, urged on to the dreadful deed by foreign influences, which we have felt coming in upon us like a devastating flood for the last three or four years; and we have begged the authors, with tears in our eyes, to desist, not so much on account of our own lives and property, but for the salke of those coming, and the safety of those already in the country. But the authors thought none would be injured but the hated missionaries--the devoted heretics--and the work of hell was urged on, and was ended, not only in the death of three missionaries, the ruin of our Mission, but in a bloody war with the settlements, which may end in the massacre of every family."
On p. 95 he says: "Fourteen persons were murdered first and last," and he follows this with the same list as in his letters of January 8 and January 24." . . . "The young women were dragged from the house by night and beastly treated. Three of them became wives to the murderers. One, the daughter of Mrs. Kimball, became the wife of him who killed her father--often told her of it. One, Miss Bewley, was taken twenty miles to the tltilla and became the wife of Hezekiah. a principal chief and member of our church who, up till that time, had exhibited a good character."
On p. 97, "The captives were delivered by the prompt interposition and judicious management of Mr. Ogden, chief factor of the
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Hudson's Bay Co., to whom too much praise cannot be awarded. He arrived at Walla Walla December 12. (Should be December 19th in the evening.--W. I. M.) In about two weeks he succeeded in ransoming all the captives for blankets, shirts, guns, ammunition, tobacco, to the amount of some five hundred dollars. They were brought into the Fort on December 30th. Myself and those with me arrived on the first of January.
"For some time previous to the massacre the measles, followed by the dystentery, had been raging in the country. The families at Wailatpu had been great sufferers. I arrived at Wailatpu the 22d of November; eight days before the dreadful deed. All the doctor's family had been sick, but were recovering; three of the children were yet dangerously sick, besides Mr. Osborn and three children were dangerous; one of their children died during the week. A young man, Mr. Bewley, was also very sick. The doctor's hands were more than full among the Indians; three and sometimes five died in a day."
On p. 98, "Monday morning the doctor assisted in burying an Indian; returned to the house and was reading--several Indians, as usual were in the house; one sat down by him to attract his attention by asking for medicine; another came behind him with tomahawk concealed under his blanket and with two blows in the back of the head, brought him to the floor senseless, probably, but not lifeless; soon after Telaukaikt, a candidate for admission in our church and who was receiving unnumbered favors every day from Brother and Sister Whitman, came in and took particular pains to cut and beat his face and cut his throat; but he still lingered till near night."
From this long letter of April 6, 1848, Mr. Spalding omits all mention of his meeting with the priest, and the other details of his escape. Let us examine now the account which this priest gave of the affair.
As we have already seen, Mr. Spalding, in the very first account he gave of the massacre, in the letter of January 8, 1848, began the accusation against the Catholics in connection with the massacre, by saying that the priest whom he met about three miles from Dr. Whitman's told him "That he had that morning baptized the children of the murderers while the hands of their parents were yet wet with the warm blood of their devoted Protestant teachers," and we shall see later to what farther extremes of accusation against the Catholics and the Hudson's Bay Co. Mr. Spalding and Mr. Gray proceeded,
The priest whom he met, and to whom, as his own letters conclusively show, he owed the preservation of his life, was Rev. J. B. A. Brouillet, who had been in Oregon less than three months.
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and was of course entirely ignorant of the language of the Indians, and well knew that the history of the Catholic Missions among the Iroquois and the Algonquins, in Canada and New York, furnished the most abundant proof that when the rage of the savage is aroused, he butchers Catholic priests and laymen, as freely and with as cruel tortures as he does Protestant clergymen and laymen. Father Brouillet was an amiable man of unblemished character and when, a few months later, Spalding's lunacy went to the extent of accusing the Catholic missionaries of inciting the Whitman massacre, he very naturally resented the charge, and wrote a pamphlet which, however, was not published till 1853, appearing first in the "New York Freeman's Journal."
Considering the ingratitude and maliciousness of Mr. Spalding's accusation, Father Brouillet's reply was temperate, and would have attracted but little attention outside Catholic circles had not some one in the office of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, attached the pamphlet to J. Ross Browne's report, dated San Francisco, December 4, 1857, in such a way that it was printed as a part of the report (Ex. Doc. No. 38, H. of R. 35th Cong., 1st session), though it is plain from the paragraph on page 3, in which Mr. Browne mentions the pamphlet, that he had no intention of making it a part of his report, but merely forwarded it for the information of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs.
It is altogether probable that had Father Brouillet had access to the correspondence of the American Board and found Rev. A. B. Smith's letter of September 28, 1840, hereinbefore quoted, with the opinion of Dr. Whitman that Mr. Spalding was likely to become deranged "Especially if excited by external circumstances," he would have dismissed Mr. Spalding's wild talk with the pitying remark, that no one should pay any attention to the talk of a crazy man, and so there would have been no Brouillet's pamphlet nor any Spalding's pamphlet in attempted reply to it.
The statements in Brouillet's pamphlet about the decadence of the American Board Mission long before he arrived in the country (Cf. pp. 16 and 17 of H. of R. Ex. Doc. No. 38, 35th Cong., 1st session), are fully confirmed by the letters herein for the first time published, but with those letters carefully concealed, the advocate of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story, accepting Gray and Spalding for authorities, have for fifty years past denied the statements of Father Brouillet on this point, and ridiculed the only witnesses he could produce for many of them, because they were "French Canadian Catholics, and half breeds."
While I think the "French Canadian Catholics and half breeds" Gervais, Thos. McKay, Toupin, Augustin Raymond, and the Ponjades were quite as careful to tell what they thought was the
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truth as Rev. H. H. Spalding, Rev. C. Eells and Mr. W. H. Gray, I, having copied the contemporary correspondence and diaries of the Whitmans, H. H. Spalding, C. Eells, E. Walker, A. B. Smith, and W. H. Gray, am not under the necessity of using the statements of Father Brouillet's witnesses about the decadence of the Mission, and shall quote little from his pamphlet, except his statements of his own actions.
Let us examine first his statement of the meeting with Spalding, and of the circumstance which caused him to write that statement (Sen. Ex. Doc. 38, pp. 14-15), "A certain gentleman, moved on by religious fanaticism, and ashamed of owing his life and that of his family and friends to some priests, began to insinuate false suspicions about the true causes of the disaster, proceeded, by degrees, to make more open accusations, and finally declared publicly that the Bishop of Walla Walla and his clergy were the first cause and the great movers of all the evil. That gentleman is the Rev. H. H. Spalding, whose life had been saved from the Indians by a priest, at the peril of his own.
"His first insinuations were so malicious, and their meaning so well understood, that Colonel Gilliam and his troops, about starting for the purpose of chastising the murderers at Wailatpu, said publicly that the priests, missionaries of the Cayuses, were deserving death, and they would shoot or hang the first one of them they should meet. A letter, however, written to Colonel Gilliam by the Bishop of Walla Walla, and some explanations given by a priest to him and to the commissary general, J. Palmer, before they started for the upper country, satisfied them, and the colonel declared then that "Mr. Spalding could not have spoken so without being crazy," and Mr. Palmer said that "he ought not to be allowed any more to go among the Indians." A relation of the principal circumstances of the awful deed, which Colonel Gilliam himself had asked of one of the missionaries of the Cayuses, dissipated completely his prejudices against the priests, and from that moment to his death he did not cease to be one of their best and most sincere friends."
Idem (p. 35): The following is the substance of the letter which I addressed to Colonel Gilliam containing a relation of the event which immediately followed our arrival (i. e. in Oregon) :
"Fort Walla Walla, March 2, 1848.
"Dear Sir: I have the honor to reply to the request which you have been pleased to make me lately. It affords me great satisfaction to be able to oblige you by giving you a detailed account of the facts relative to the terrible event of the 29th November, which happened within my knowledge.
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"You know, sir, that eight Catholic missionaries, at the head of whom was the bishop, A. M. A. Blanchet, arrived at Fort Walla Walla at the beginning of last autumn, with the intention of devoting themselves to the instruction of the various tribes of Indians in this part of Oregon. Some were located north of the Columbia, and it was decided that the others should pass the winter with the Cayuses, at the camp of the Young Chief, because this chief had not ceased for several years to ask for priests, and had offered his house for their accommodation. But when we arrived at the fort he was away on a hunting expedition, from which he did not return till late in the fall, and for that reason the commencement of our mission was retarded until the 27th of November.
"During our stay at the Fort we saw Dr. Whitman several times, and though at first he seemed violently opposed to us, telling the bishop frankly that he would do all he could against him, yet, upon further acquaintance, he seemed to regard us with a more favorable eye; and when the care of the Cayuse mission was given to me by the bishop, I indulged the hope of being able to live upon good terms with the Doctor.
"The day before our departure from the Fort for the Umatilla, we dined with Mr. Spalding and Mr. Rogers, and I assure you that it was a satisfaction to me to have the acquaintance of those gentlemen. I then indulged the hope more strongly than ever of living in peace with them all, which was in perfect accordance with my natural feelings; for those who are acquainted with me know that I have nothing more at heart than to live in peace with all men, and that, exempt from prejudices, I am disposed to look with an equal eye upon the members of all religious denominations --to do all I can for the good of all, without regard to the name by which they may be called.
"On Saturday, November 27th, I left the Fort, in company with the bishop and his secretary, for our mission on the Umatilld, twenty-five miles from Dr. Whitman's. We had scarcely arrived in the evening, when, on going to see a sick person, I learned that Dr. Whitman and Mr. Spalding were en route for my mission, Dr. Whitman having been called to attend to the sick.
"The next day, being Sunday, we were visited by Dr. Whitman, who remained but a few minutes at the house, and appeared to be much agitated. Being invited to dine, he refused, saying that he feared it would be too late, as he had twenty-five miles to go. and wished to reach home before night. On parting, he entreated me not to fail to visit him when I would pass by his mission, which I very cordially promised to do. On Monday, 29th, Mr. Spalding took supper with us, and appeared quite gay. During
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the conversation he happened to say that the Doctor was unquiet; that the Indians were displeased with him on account of the sickness, and that even he had been informed that the murderer (an Indian) intended to kill him. But he seemed not to believe this, and suspected as little as we did what was taking place at the mission of the Doctor.
"Before leaving Fort Walla Walla it had been decided that after visiting the sick people of my mission on the Umatilla, I should go and visit those of Tilokaikt's camp, for the purpose of baptizing the infants and such dying adults as might desire this favor; and the Doctor and Mr. Spalding having informed me that there were many sick persons at their mission, I was confirmed in this resolution, and made preparations to go as soon as possible.
"After having finished baptizing the infants and dying adults of my mission, I left on Tuesday, the 30th of November, late in the afternoon, for Tilokaikt's camp, where I arrived between seven and eight o'clock in the evening. It is impossible to conceive my surprise and consternation, when, upon my arrival, I learned that the Indians the day before had massacred the Doctor and his wife, with the greater part of the Americans at the mission. I passed the night without scarcely closing my eyes.
"Early the next morning I baptized three sick children, two of whom died soon after, and then hastened to the scene of death to offer to the widows and orphans, all the assistance in my power. I found five or six women and over thirty children in a situation deplorable beyond description. Some had just lost their husbands, and the others their fathers, whom they had seen massacred before their eyes, and were expecting every moment to share the same fate. The sight of those persons caused me to shed tears, which, however, I was obliged to conceal, for I was the greater part of the day in the presence of the murderers, and closely watched by them, and if I had shown too marked an interest in behalf of the sufferers, it would only have endangered their lives and mine; these, therefore, entreated me to be upon my guard. After the first few words that could be exchanged under the circumstances, I inquired after the victims, and was told that they were yet unburied. Joseph Stanfleld, a Frenchman, who was in the service of Dr. Whitman, and had been spared by the Indians, was engaged in washing the corpses, but, being alone, he was unable to bury them. I resolved to go and assist him, so as to render to those unfortunate victims the last service in my power to offer them. What a sight did I then behold! Ten dead bodies lying here and there; covered with blood, and bearing the marks of the most atrocious cruelty; some pierced with balls, others more or less gashed by the hatchet. Dr. Whitman had received three
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gashes on the face. Three others had their skulls crushed so that their brains were oozing out.
"It was on the 29th of November, between two and three o'clock in the afternoon, while all the people at the Doctor's house were busy, that the Indians, with their arms concealed beneath their blankets, introduced themselves successively into the yard, and in an instant executed their horrible butchery. Three or four men (Americans) only were able to escape.
"The ravages which the sickness had made in their midst, together with the conviction which a half-breed, named Joseph Lewis, had succeeded in fixing upon their minds, that Doctor Whitman had poisoned them, were the only motives I could discover which could have prompted them to this act of murder. This half-breed had imagined a conversation between Doctor Whitman, his wife, and Mr. Spalding, in which he made them say that it was necessary to hasten the death of the Indians in order to get possession of their horses and lands. 'If you do not kill the Doctor,' said he, 'you will all be dead in the spring.'
"I assure you, sir, that during the time I was occupied in burying the victims of this disaster, I was far from feeling safe, being obliged to go here and there gathering up the dead bodies, in the midst of assassins, whose hands were still stained with blood, and who, by their manners, their countenances, and the arms which they still carried, sufficiently announced that their thirst for blood was yet unsatisfied. Assuming as composed a manner as possible, I cast more than one glance aside and behind at the knives, pistols, and guns, in order to assure myself whether there were not some of them directed towards me.
"The bodies were all deposited in a common grave, which had been dug the day previous by Joseph Stanfield; and before leaving I saw that they were covered with earth. But I have since learned that the grave, not having been soon enough enclosed, had been molested by the wolves, and that some of the corpses had been devoured by them.
"Having buried the dead, I hastened to prepare for my return to my mission, in order to acquaint Mr. Spalding of the danger which threatened him; because on Monday evening, when he supped with us, he said that it was his intention to return to Doctor Whitman's on the following Wednesday or Thursday; and I wished to meet him in time to give him a chance to escape.
"This I repeated several times to the xmfortunate widows of the slain, and expressed to them my desire of being able to save Mr. Spalding. Before leaving the women and children, I spoke to the son of Tilokaikt, who seemed to be acting in the place of his father, asking him to promise me that they should not be hurt,
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and that he would take care of them. 'Say to them,' said he, 'that they need fear nothing; they shall be taken care of and well treated.' I then left them, after saying what I could to encourage them, although I was not myself entirely exempt from fear on their account.
"On leaving the Doctor's house I perceived that the son of Tilokaikt followed, in company with my interpreter, who himself was an Indian, his friend and his relative by his wife. I did not think that he had the intention of coming far with us; I believed that he was merely coming to the river to point out some new place for crossing, and that he would afterwards return. But when, after having crossed the river, he still continued going on with us, I began strongly to fear for Mr. Spalding. I knew that the Indians were angry with all Americans, and more enraged against Mr. Spalding than any other. But what could I do in such a circumstance? I saw no remedy; I could not tell the Indian to go back, because he would have suspected something, and it would have been worse; I could not start ahead of him, because he had a much better horse than mine. I resolved, then, to leave all in the hands of Providence. Fortunately, a few minutes after crossing the river, the interpreter asked Tilokaikt's son for a smoke. They prepared the calumet, but when the moment came for lighting it there was nothing to make fire. 'You have a pistol,' said the interpreter, 'fire it, and we will light.' Accordingly, without stopping, he fired his pistol, reloaded it, and fired it again. He then commenced smoking with the interpreter, without thinking of reloading his pistol. A few minutes after, while they were thus engaged in smoking, I saw Mr. Spalding come galloping towards me. In a moment he was at my side, taking me by the hand, and asking for news. 'Have you been to the Doctor's?' he inquired. 'Yes,' I replied. 'What news?' 'Sad news.' 'Is any person dead?' 'Yes, sir.' 'Who is dead? Is it one of the Doctor's children?' (He had left two of them very sick.) 'No,' I replied. 'Who, then, is dead?' I hestitated to tell him. 'Wait a moment,' said I, 'I cannot tell you now.' While Mr. Spalding was asking me those different questions, I had spoken to my interpreter, telling him to entreat the Indian, in my name, not to kill Mr. Spalding; which I begged of him as a special favor, and hoped that he would not refuse it to me. I was waiting for his answer, and did not wish to relate the disaster to Mr. Spalding before getting it, for fear that he might, by his manner, discover to the Indian what I had told him; for the least motion like flight would have cost him his life, and probably exposed mine also. The son of Tilokaikt, after hesitating some moments, replied that he could not take it upon himself to save Mr. Spalding, but that
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he would go back and consult the other Indians; and so he started back immediately to his camp, I then availed myself of his absence to satisfy the anxiety of Mr. Spalding. I related to him what has passed. 'The Doctor is dead,' said I; 'the Indians have killed him, together with his wife and eight other Americans, on Monday last, the 29th, and I have buried them before leaving today.' 'The Indians have killed the Doctor!' cried Mr. Spalding; 'they will kill me also, if I go to the camp!' 'I fear it very much,' said I. 'What, then, shall I do?' 'I know not; I have told you what has happened; decide now for yourself what you had best do; I have no advice to give you in regard to that.' 'Why has that Indian started back?' he inquired. 'I begged him to spare your life,' said I, 'and he answered me that he could not take it upon himself to do so, but that he would go and take the advice of the other Indians about it; that is the reason why he started back.' Mr. Spalding seemed frightened and discouraged. 'Is it possible! Is it possible!' he repeated several times; 'they will certainly kill me;' and he was unable to come to any decision. 'But what could have prompted the Indians to this?' he inquired. 'I know not,' said I; "but be quick to take a decision; you have no time to lose. If the Indians should resolve not to spare your life, they will be here very soon, as we are only about three miles from their camp.' 'But where shall I go?' 'I know not; you know the country better than I; all I know is, that the Indians say the order to kill Americans has been sent in all directions.' Mr. Spalding then resolved to fly. He asked me if I was willing to take charge of some loose horses that he was driving before him. I told him that I could not, for fear of becoming suspicious to the Indians. I told him, however, that if the interpreter was willing to take them under his charge at his own risk, he was perfectly at liberty to do so. To this the interpreter agreed.
"I gave Mr. Spalding what provisions I had left, and hastened to take leave of him, wishing him, with all my heart, a happy escape, and promising to pray for him. In quitting him I was so much terrified at the thought of the danger with which he was threatened, that I trembled in every limb, and could scarcely hold myself upon my horse. I left him with my interpreter, to whom he again put many questions, and who pointed out to him a by-road which he would be able to follow with most safety. I thought he advised him to go to The Dalles, but I am not certain. Mr. Spalding still continued to ask new questions; and hesitating to leave, the interpreter advised him to hasten his flight, and he left him a moment before he had decided to quit the road. The interpreter had not left Mr. Spalding more than twenty minutes when he saw three armed Cayuses riding hastily towards. him,
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who were in pursuit of Mr. Spalding. Upon coming up to the interpreter, they seemed much displeased that I had warned Mr. Spalding of their intentions, and thereby furnished him with an opportunity to escape. 'The priest ought to have attended to his own business, and not to have interfered with ours,' they said, in an angry tone, and started immediately in pursuit of him. And they must inevitably have overtaken him, had not the approaching darkness of the night and a heavy fog that happened to fall down prevented them from discovering his trail, and forced them to return.
"I had continued my route quite slowly, so that it was dark when I reached the spring on Marron's fork. I dismounted for a moment to drink, and, on mounting my horse, was somewhat alarmed to hear a horseman coming at full speed in our rear. I called to the interpreter, and told him to speak and inform him who we were. The Indian recognized the name of the interpreter, approached him, and spoke amicably to him, and fired out his pistol. It was the son of Tilokaikt, the same who had returned to camp to consult the Indians about the fate of Mr. Spalding. He continued to accompany us until we reached the camp of Camaspelo, on the Umatilla river, and there I learned from the interpreter that he had come to inform Camaspelo of the horrible event.
"After six days of danger, privations, and fatigue, Mr. Spalding was enabled to reach his family at his mission among the Nez Perces, as you have seen from his letter to the Bishop of Walla Walla, since published in the Oregon Spectator. I was truly happy to learn that Mr. Spalding was out of danger, and I thanked God sincerely for having made me instrumental in saving the life of a fellow-creature, at the peril of my own.
"Some days after an express reached us from the fort, informing us that our lives were in danger from a portion of the Indians, who could not pardon me for having deprived them of their victim; and this was the only reason which prevented me from fulfilling the promise I had made to the widows and orphans of returning to see them, and obliged me to be contented with sending my interpreter.
"You are acquainted, sir, with the events which followed; the murder of two sick men, who were brutally torn from their beds and had their throats cut; the murder of a young American when returning from the mill; the good fortune of the other Americans at the mill, who owed their escape to a single Indian (Tintinmitsi), while the others wished to kill them; the violation of three young girls; the letter of Mr. Spalding, which occasioned the assembling
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of the chiefs at the Catholic mission, and their asking for peace • the arrival of Mr. Ogden, and the delivery of the captives.
"Such are, sir, the facts and circumstances relative to this deplorable event, the relation of which I thought was of a nature to interest you. I am pleased with the confidence you have shown me by asking this relation at my hands, and thank you sincerely for the same. I thank you, more especially, for the opportunity yon have given me of presenting to you a full and candid exposition of my conduct and intentions in the circumstances so dangerous and so delicate in which I accidentally found myself involved.
"With sentiments of the highest consideration and respect I have the honor to be, sir, your most obedient, humble servant,
"J. B. A. BROUILLET, "Priest, Vicar General of Walla Walla. "Colonel Gilliam."
The letter of Mr. Spalding, to which Father Brouillet refers, is found on pp. 41-43 of this document, and I also found it in the Oregon Spectator (a four-page semi-monthly paper published at Oregon City, and then the only paper published in English, at any point west of the Missouri River), for January 20, 1848, of which the only file I have ever seen is in the San Francisco public library. Having compared the copy in the Spectator with the copy in Brouillet's pamphlet, and found them identical, I will quote from Ex. Doc. 38 (p. 41) : "On the 16" (of December), "two Nez Perces chiefs, Inimilpip and Tipialanakeikt, brought us the following letter from Mr. Spalding:
"Clear Water, December 10, 1847.
"Reverend and Dear Friend: This hasty note may inform you that I am yet alive through the astonishing mercy of God. The hand of the merciful God brought me to my family after six days and nights from the time my dear friend furnished me with provisions and I escaped from the Indians. My daughter is yet a captive, I fear, but in the hands of our merciful Heavenly Father. Two Indians have gone for her. My object in writing is principally to give information, through you, to the Gayuses that it is our wish to have peace; that we do not wish the Americans to come from below to avenge the wrong; we hope the Cayuses and the Americans will be on friendly terms; that Americans will no more come in their country unless they wish it. As soon as these men return, I hope, if alive, to send them to the Governor to prevent Americans from coming up to molest the Cayuses for what is done. I know that you will do all in your power for the relief of the captives, women and children, at Wailatpu, you will spare no pains
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to appease and quiet the Indians. There are five Americans here, my wife and three children, one young woman, and two Frenchmen. We cannot leave the country without help. Our help, under God, is in your hands, and in the hands of the Hudson's Bay Company. Can help come from that source? Ask their advice, and let me know. I am certain that, if the Americans should attempt to come, it would be likely to prove the ruin of us all in this upper country, and would involve the country in war. God grant that they may not attempt it. At this moment I have obtained permission of the Indians to write more, but I have but a moment. Please send this, or copy, to Governor Abernethy. The Nez Perces held a meeting yesterday. They pledged themselves to protect us from the Cayuses, if we would prevent the Americans from coming up to avenge the murders. This we have pledged to do, and for this we beg for the sake of our lives at this place and at Mr. Walker's. By all means keep quiet, and send no war reports; send nothing but proposals for peace. They say they have buried the death of the Walla Walla chief's son, killed in California. They wish us to bury this offense. I hope to write soon to Governor Abernethy, but, as yet, the Indians are not willing, but are willing that I should send those hints through you. I hope you will send by all means, and with all speed, to keep quiet in Willamette. Could Mr. Grant come this way, it would be a great favor to us and do good to the Indians. I just learn that these Indians wish us to remain in the country as hostages of peace. They wish the communications for Americans to be kept open. We are willing to remain so, if peace can be secured. It does not seem safe for us to attempt to leave the country in any way at present. May the God of Heaven protect us, and finally bring peace. These two men go to make peace; and when they return, if successful with the Cayuses, they will go to the Willamette. We have learned that one man escaped to Walla Walla; crossed over the river and went below. He would naturally suppose that all were killed.
"Besides myself, another white man escaped, wounded, and reached my place three days before I did.
"Late Indian reports say that no women, except Mrs. Whitman, or children, were killed, but all are in captivity. These people, if the Cayuses consent, will bring them all to this place.
"I have traveled only nights, and hid myself days, most of the way on foot, as my horse escaped from me; suffered some days from hunger and cold and sore feet; had no shoes, as I threw my hoots away, not being able to wear them, and also left blankets. God in mercy brought me here. From the white man who escaped, and from the Indians, we learn that an Indian from the States,
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who was in the employ of Dr. Whitman, was at the head of the bloody affair, and helped to demolish the windows and take the property. We think the Cayuses have been urged into the dreadful deed. God in His mercy forgive them, for they know not what they do. Perhaps those men can bring my horses and things. Please give all the particulars you have been able to learn, and what news has gone below. How do the women and children fare? How extensive is the war? In giving this information, and sending this letter below to Governor Abernethy, you will oblige your afflicted friend. I would write directly to the Governor, but the Indians wish me to rest till they return.
"Yours, in affection, and with the best wishes,
"H. H. SPALDING. "To the Bishop of Walla Walla,
"Or either of the Catholic Priests."
It will be noticed that in both this letter and the one to Mr. McBean, hereinafter quoted, when his own life and that of his wife and daughter, and of the other captives depended on not further exciting the Indians with the prospect of war, Mr. Spalding was very urgent for peace, and that nothing should be done that would excite the war spirit; but no sooner was he with the rest of the captives safe in the Willamette, than he was clamorous for a war of vengeance, and subscribed $500 of the funds of the American Board for military uses (Cf. his letter of January 24, 1848, p. 206 ante).
When Mr. Ogden furnished the Oregon Spectator with this letter of Spalding's of December 10, 1847, to the Bishop of Walla Walla together with an account of his rescue of the captives and other documents, "The editors of the Spectator wished to publish but a part of Mr. Spalding's letter, but Mr. Ogden insisted that either the whole of Spalding's letter should be printed, or else no part of what he had given them for that purpose; and then they consented reluctantly to publish the whole" (Cf. Brouillefs pamphlet in Ex. Doc. 38, p. 48).
The immediate result of Spalding's letter of December 10, to the Bishop of Walla Walla, was that a meeting of the chiefs of the Cayuse tribe was called, to be held at the Catholic Mission on the Umatilla, some twenty-five miles from Whitman's station, to see if by some means war could not be averted, and on December 20, 1847, the results of the deliberations of this council were embodied in a paper signed by the four principal chiefs, which was forwarded to Governor Abernethy with a letter from the Bishop, and which was also printed in same issue of the Spec-
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tator (Cf. 43-6 Ex. Doc. 38 for the report of this council, and this document).
Spalding wrote another latter on December 10, 1847, which was among the documents furnished to the editor of the Oregon Spectator, and printed in this same issue of January 20, 1848, as follows:
"Clear Water, December 10, 1847. "Mr. McBean.
"My Dear Sir: Will you have the kindness to lend me four blankets? Give two of them to these men, one to each. The five you had the kindness to let me have were among the goods plundered at Wailatpu. Please to send also ten shirts, ten pounds of tobacco, twelve scalpers and twenty awls. I am in great need of these things to pay for moving my property and family up the valley, some ten miles where the Nez Perces are camped. I reached home on foot, traveling six nights, suffering from hunger, cold and sore feet. Mr. Canfield escaped wounded and reached this place three days before me. There are here five Americans, two Frenchmen and my family except my daughter, who is yet at Wailatpu. Please let me know about the women and children, and give other information. These people have pledged to protect us if we will do all we can to make peace to prevent the Americans from coming up to avenge the late deaths. We have agreed to do so and hope you will have the goodness to send to Governor Abernethy and request for the sake of our lives that they will keep quiet. Should the Americans come up I think it would prove our ruin and involve the country in war. We beg you to keep quiet. The Nez Perces wish to have peace continued. Could Mr. Grant come to see us it would be a great relief.
"May the God of peace protect us and stay the work of blood. "Yours in love,
"H. H. SPALDING."
The Mr. Grant, whose coming in both this letter and the one to the Bishop of Walla Walla, Spalding desires, was the same Richard Grant who was in charge of Fort Hall during 1842 to 1851, and who has been denounced by all the advocates of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story, and especially by Spalding, Gray, Barrows, Nixon, Craighead, M. Eells and Mrs. Dye, as opposing Americans going to Oregon to settle; though, as has been hereinbefore shown all the contemporaneous evidence of those same Americans is that Grant was kind, and received them hospitably, and aided them in every way.
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Of Mr. Grant's treatment of them at Fort Hall no American spoke disparagingly until after the invention of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story made it necessary to falsify the facts about the reception and treatment of Americans at Fort Hall. McBean has been abused, almost as much as Gapt. Richard Grant, and especially by Spalding and Gray.
As yet no news had been received from the Willamette. by the Cayuses, or the Catholic missionaries, or by the little garrison at Fort Walla Walla as to what the Provisional Government intended to do. No sooner did the news of the massacre reach Fort Vancouver, on December 6, 1847, than James Douglas and Peter Skeen Ogden, knowing from their long experience with Indians that it was of the utmost importance to rescue the captives before the Indians should be able to learn of the intentions of the Americana to send troops against them, organized a rescue party under Ogden, and took a large stock of goods, and proceeded up the Columbia with utmost haste to Fort Walla Walla, arriving there on the 19th of December, late in the evening and the reader will be pleased to read Mr. Ogden's own report of the entire success of his wisely planned, and admirably executed movement.
"Extract from a letter from P. S. Ogden, Esq., to Rev. E. Walker, dated Walla Walla, December 31, 1847.
"Dear Sir: Mr. Stanley has promised to give you a recital of the melancholy massacre of the worthy Doctor and his wife and nearly all the inmates of the Mission. On receiving this account at Vancouver and that many unfortunate individuals were still surviving, the following day I started with sixteen men and reached this, on the 19th inst. Since that period have been employed in securing the captives, and have succeeded in obtaining all that were taken prisoners and shall take my departure for Vancouver tomorrow. In effecting this humane object I have endured many an anxious hour, and for the last two nights have not closed my eyes. But thanks to the Almighty I have succeeded. During the captivity of the prisoners they have suffered every indignity but fortunately were well provided with food. I have been enabled to effect my object without compromising myself or others, and it now remains with the American Government to take what measures they deem most beneficial to restore tranquillity to this part of the country. This I apprehend cannot be finally effected without blood being shed freely.
"So as not to compromise either party I have made a heavy sacrifice in goods, but these are indeed of trifling value compared to the unfortunate beings I have rescued from these murderous wretches, and I feel truly happy.
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"On my arrival at The Dalles I was consulted by Mr. Hinman on the propriety of his staying or moving from that place. I advised him to remove leaving a trusty Indian in charge. I think this arrangement will meet with your approbation. Under existing circumstances I could not certainly give any other advice.
"Yours truly,
(Signed) "P. S. OGDEN."
A letter from Cushing Eells, dated Tshimakain, 29th January, 1848, contains the speech of Ogden to the Indians and the reply of three of the Indian chiefs, as follows:
"Mr. Chief Factor Ogden's address to the most influential chiefs in behalf of the American families kept as hostages and prisoners by them:
" 'I regret that all the chiefs I asked for are not present, two being absent. I expect the words I am about addressing you will be reported to them and your young men on your return to your camp.
" 'It is now thirty years since we have been among you. During this long period we have never had any instance of blood being spilt until the inhuman massacre which has so recently taken place. We are traders and a different nation from the Americans; but recollect we supply you with ammunition not to kill the Americans. They are of the same color as ourselves, speak the same language, children of the same God, and humanity makes our hearts bleed when we behold you using them so cruelly.
" 'Besides this revolting butchery, have not the Indians pillaged, ill treated and insulted their women when peaceably making their way to the Willamette? As chiefs ought you to have connived at such conduct on the part of your young men ? Was it not rather your duty to use your influence to prevent it? You tell me the young men committed these deeds without your knowledge. Why do we make you chiefs if you have no control over your young men, if you allow them to govern you? You are a set of Hermaphrodites and unworthy of the appellation of men or chiefs. You young hot-headed men, I know you pride yourselves upon your bravery and think no one can match you. Do not deceive yourselves. If you get the Americans to commence once you will repent it, and war will -not end until every one of you is cut off from the face of the earth. I am aware that a good many of your friends and relatives have died through sickness. The Indians of other places have shared the same fate. It is not Dr. Whitamn that has poisoned them, but God has commanded they should die. We are weak mortals and must submit, and I trust you will avail yourselves of the opportunity, by so doing. It may prove advantageous
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to you, but at the same time remember that you alone will be responsible for the consequences. It is merely advice I give you. We have nothing to do with it I have not come here to make you promises or hold out assistance. We have nothing to do with your quarrels. We remain neutral. On my return if you wish it, I shall do all I can for you, but I do not promise you to prevent war. If you deliver me up all the prisoners I shall pay you for them on their being delivered, but let it not be said among you afterwards that I deceived you.'
" 'I and Mr. Douglas represent the company. But I tell you once more we promise you nothing. We sympathize with these poor people and wish to return them to their friends and relatives by paying you for them. My request in behalf of the families concerns you, so decide for yourselves.'
"The Young Chief's (Tawatne) Reply:
" 'I arise to thank you for your words. You white chiefs command obedience with those that have to do with you. It is not so with us. Our young men are strong headed and foolish. Formerly we had experienced good chiefs. These are laid in the dust. The descendants of my father were the only good chiefs. Though we made war with other tribes yet we always looked and ever will look upon the whites as our brothers. Our blood is mixed with yours. My heart bleeds for the death of so many good chiefs I have known. For the demand made by you the old chief Toloquwet is here. Speak to him. As regards myself I am willing to give up the families.'
"Toloquwet's reply:
" 'I have listened to your words. Young men do not forget them. As for war we have seen little of it. But our fathers have seen something of it. We know the whites to be our best friends, who have all along prevented us from killing each other. That is the reason why we avoid getting into a war with them, and why we do not wish to be separated from them. Beside the tie of blood, the whites have shown us convincing proof of tmeir attachment to us by burying their dead long side of ours. Chief, yowr words are weighty, your hairs are gray. We have known you a long time, you have had an unpleasant trip to this place. I cannot, therefore, keep these families back. I make them over to yon, which I would not do to another younger than yourself.'
"Serpant James' reply:
" 'I have nothing to say. I know the Americans to be changeable, still I am of opinion as the younger chief. The white are our friends and we follow your advice. I consent to your taking the families.'
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"Mr. Ogden here addressed two Nez Perces chiefs in behalf of Rev. Mr. Spalding and party, that they should be delivered to him on being paid, and spoke to them at length. The result was that both chiefs (James and Itimimlpelp) promised to bring them provided they were willing to come, and immediately started to effect the same, having a letter from Mr. Ogden to Mr. Spalding."
The same number of the Oregon Spectator also contained the following letter from Mr. Spalding to Mr. P. S. Ogden:
"Clear Water, December 25, 1847. "To Peter Ogden, Esq.:
"My Dear Sir: Your kind favor of 20th inst. came to hand this evening.
"It gives us great joy to learn that you are about to rescue the captives at Wailatpu. May the Lord enable you to land them safely at Vancouver. This people are unwilling that I should leave their country and I have promised to return and live with them provided the melancholy affair at Wailatpu can be settled, and the Nez Perces continue friendly to the whites, and keep their hands clean from blood and plunder. I shall make all expedition to collect my horses, pack up and be off. God willing I hope to be at Walla Walla next Saturday. Mr. Craig and two Frenchmen stop in the country. Our company therefore will consist of Mrs. Spalding, and myself, and three children, Miss Johnson, Messrs. Hart, Jackson and Canfield.
"I hope our little daughter has recovered her health and that through the interposing mercy of God we shall yet meet in the land of the living. Should you find it to be your duty to leave before we can come I desire that she may remain at the fort. "Tour obedient servant,
"H. H. SPALDING."
"P. S.--I have just learned from the two who returned" (i. e. his Nez Perces messengers) "that the Cayuse have resolved should they learn that the Americans purpose to come up to arrange" (avenge) "the death of those who have been massacred, that they will immediately fall upon myself and family and the other Americans in the country and kill all. If it is possible for you to delay till we can arrive, it may be the means of saving our lives. Should you leave before, they may feel no restraint. Moreover if a few of your men could come and meet us we should deem it a great favor and it would be a great protection. We throw ourselves upon your good judgment. May the God of peace protect and deliver us all in safety at your fort.
"Yours very truly,
"H. H. SPALDING."
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Not a single advocate of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story has ever quoted from or even alluded to the existence of any one of these three letters of Spalding to the Bishop of Walla Walla, to Mr. McBean and to Mr. Ogden, nor to his subscribing $500 of the funds of the American Board to carry on the war against the Cayuses, which in these letters he had urged should not be begun.
The captives from Wailatpu were delivered to Mr. Ogden at Fort Walla Walla December 30, 1847, and the Spalding party arrived January 1, 1848.
The Spectator of January 20, 1848, also contains the following "List of Property Expended out of Nez Perees Outfit to recover the American families, etc.:
"62 blankets, 3 points. "63 common cotton shirts. "12 common guns. "COO loads ammunition. "37 Ibs. tobacco. "12 flints.
"Received from Toloquoit appertaining to the Mission for the use of the captives:
"7 oxen large and small. "16 bags coarse flour.
"E. E.
"W. McBEAN."
The same number of the Spectator contains also the following: "Letter of Thanks.--The following very appropriate letter of thanks to Mr. Ogden for his important services in rescuing the survivors of the massacre will be read with much pleasure, a public expression of gratification was given in the salutes which he received at Portland and upon his arrival here:
'"Oregon City, January 17, 1848.
" 'Sir: I feel it a duty as well as a pleasure to tender you my sincere thanks, and the thanks of this community for your exertions in behalf of the widows and orphans that were left in the hands of the Cayuse Indians. Their state was a deploraWe one subject to the caprice of savages, exposed to their insults, compelled to labor for them, and remaining constantly in dread lest they should be butchered as their husbands and fathers had been.
" 'From this state I am fully satisfied we could not relieve them. A small party of Americans would have been looked upon by them with contempt, a large party would have been the signal for a general massacre. Tour immediate departure from Vancouver on
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receipt of the intelligence from Wailatpu enabling you to arrive at Walla Walla before the news of the American party having started from this reached them, together with your influence over the Indians accomplished the desirable object of relieving the distress.
" 'Your exertions in behalf of the prisoners will no doubt cause a feeling of pleasure to you through life, but this does not relieve them nor us from the obligations we are under to you. You have also laid the American Government under obligations to you, for their citizens were the subjects of the massacre, and their widows and orphans are the relieved ones. With a sincere prayer that the widows' God, and the Father of the Fatherless may reward you for your kindness.
" 'I have the honor to remain, sir,
" 'Your obedient servant,
" 'GEORGE ABERNETHY, " 'Governor of Oregon Territory.
" 'To Peter Skeen Ogden, Esq.,
" 'Chief Factor, Honorable H. B. Co., Vancouver.'"
It is doubtful if the annals of Indian warfare contains a single other example of the ransom of so large a number of captives from any tribe of Indians, within so short a time after a massacre, with no fighting and with no overwhelming military force menacing the Indians, and, as clearly stated in Governor Abernethy's letter, no other agency could have rescued them, and it is altogether likely that even Mr. Ogden's great influence over the Indians would not have sufficed had he delayed starting even a week, so that the news of the starting of the American forces might have reached the Cayuses, before they had delivered up the captives.
Not only was this expedition undertaken entirely on the initiative of Messrs. Douglas and Ogden, without taking time for any consultation with the American settlers or the Provisional Government, but no bill was ever rendered to the Government of the United States or to the State of Oregon for any part of the expense of the rescue--neither for the value of the goods, nor for the services of the sixteen men engaged for a month in the work--nor was any compensation ever paid them by either the United States Government or the State of Oregon. (Cf. on this H. B. Co. vs. IT. S., Vol. 6, p. 505.)
To any sane mind these letters from Spalding to Father Brouillet, Mr. Ogden, Mr. McBean, Rev. P. Greene and the parents of Mrs. Whitman; from Father Brouillet to Colonel Gilliam; from Mr. Ogden to Messrs. Walker and Eells; and from Governor Aber-
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nethy to Mr. Ogden are sufficient to demonstrate beyond any question, that neither the Catholics nor the Hudson's Bay Co. had any share in inciting the Whitman massacre; yet in the summer of 1848, in articles in the Oregon American and, Evangelical Unionist, a semi-monthly sheet edited by Rev. J. S. Griffin, Spalding's disordered mind accused the Catholics of inciting that massacre, and some years later both he and W. H. Gray united in accusing the Hudson's Bay Co. and the Catholics of being the instigators of that massacre, and the consequent destruction of the A. B. C. F. M. Mission, or, as they stated it, "all the Protestant missions in Oregon."
In what year they first made this shamefully false accusation I am unable to say, but the eleven articles in the Pacific, by Spalding, beginning May 23, 1865, and ending with the two articles containing the first publication of the Spalding-Gray version of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story on October 19 and November 9, 1865, are the first places where I have found it, though rather vaguely stated.
Gray, in his testimony in the case of the Hudson's Bay Co. vs. the United States, hereinbefore quoted, and in which he cut such a sorry figure, makes the accusation (Cf. pp. 80-3 ante) and in his "History of Oregon," and in various newspaper articles and pamphlets repeats the charge, in various forms many times, and under date of January 20, 1885, in a letter published in the Daily Oregonian of February 1, 1885, he repeated these accusations as follows: "The lives of Dr. Whitman, his wife, and several other Americans with him were sacrificed as a last spiteful effort to appease the Hudson's Bay Co. and the Jesuits." . . . "What is called the Honorable Hudson's Bay Co. were the prime cause of the Whitman massacre."
Spalding also in his pamphlet (Sen. Ex. Doc. 37), several times repeats it in the following form (though with slight variations of phraseology in some cases, p. 66): "The true causes of the massacre may be found in the policy and course pursued by the Hudson's Bay Co., which was an embodiment of the British Government at that time in the country, to exclude American settlers from the land, and the efforts of Roman priests, directed against the establishment of Protestantism in the country, which they hoped to accomplish by preventing its settlement by American citizens" (Cf. also Idem pp. 42, 52, 53, 54, 63, 70, 71, 76, 79).
The first issue of that very short lived aad most intensely bigoted paper, the Oregon American and Evangelical Unionist contained the following letter from Mr. Spalding. This isswe was undated but plainly printed early in June, 1848, as the second number was dated June 21, 1848:
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The reader can judge from it how justly his associates had for years charged that "Duplicity was a marked trait in his character," and also how plainly evident it was that the lunacy predicted by Dr. Whitman in September, 1840, as likely to attack him at any time "especially if excited by external circumstances" had developed within forty days after his rescue by the Hudson's Bay Co. No advocate of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story has ever quoted this letter and I think no one of them has even alluded to its existence:
"Oregon City, February 8th, 1848.
"To the Editor of the Oregon Spectator:
"My Dear Sir: Permit me through your paper to notice a communication which appeared in the last number of the last volume of the Spectator. I refer to a letter written by myself to the Bishop of Walla Walla. (This is Spalding's letter of December 10, 1847, quoted on pp. 217-19 ante.) "I take this method of noticing this letter not so much on account of the letter itself, as on account of the circumstances and the time when it was given to the public. The circumstances in which I was placed and those captives for whom I plead when I wrote that letter, differed widely from the circumstances in which God in his infinite mercy had placed me and my fellow sufferers the day before this letter left Walla Walla to come to this country for publication. When I wrote that letter only three days had elapsed since my arrival at Clear Water, having been delivered by the interposing hand of God from the bloody massacre of the fatal 29th of November at Wailatpu; having been six days and nights by a circuitous route, in reaching home, most of that time on foot, my horse having escaped, and without boots which I had thrown away, being too small for traveling, almost entirely without food, traveling only by nights, secreting myself by day. Myself, family, rather hostages, held by the Nez Perces--and those, with us, were really captives. Most of them treated us kindly, and doubtless would not only not have injured us themselves, but would have defended us from the Cayuse. But they would not hear a word to our leaving the country, and we were obliged to avoid every word and feeling which indicated a determination to do so. I had offered two cows and some ten dollars in property for an express to Fort Colvile via Messrs. Walker's and Eells', requesting Mr. Lewis at any expense and with the least possible delay, to send to Vancouver and to Governor Abernethey. That express was stopped--the two Nez Perces chiefs who were about starting for Wailatpu to confer with the Cayuse also refused to take any communication from me designed for the lower country. I was positively enjoined by the
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Nez Perces in council, as a condition of their protection, that I should not write and send below, till the two chiefs should return. But every hour of those dreadful days was more than filled up with the deepest anxiety, forty-eight women and children were held captives at Wailatpu by those whose hands were still dripping with the warm blood of their murdered husbands and fathers, the victims of their brutal passions, the sport of their savage cruelties--held, moreover, as a safeguard to their own guilty deeds. The captives would be spared provided the Americans came not up to avenge the murders. But the first appearance of an American force would be the signal for a universal massacre of all the captives at Wailatpu, and of a final if not an immediate ruin to us at Clear Water.
"Indian report had informed us at Clear Water that a white man, probably Mr. Hall, had escaped to Fort Walla Walla, was refused protection, and had started on the north side of the river for the lower country. Should this man escape the hands of the robbers on the Columbia, and reach Fort Vancouver, from the tried character of the Hudson's Bay Co., I knew that the gentlemen at Vancouver would not lose a moment in flying to our immediate relief, with ample means to effect it. On the other hand, should he pass Vancouver and reach the Willamette first, I knew that my countrymen would be equally prompt in attempting our deliverance. But as the murderers had the captives in their hands, and myself and those with me shut in the Nez Perces country, the attempt would have proved our ruin, at least so we felt The Cayuse had vowed destruction to all Protestants or Americans. They use the same term for both, meaning in most cases however, for the last two years, Protestant.
"On the other hand, from eleven years' observation, I have gained the feeling that the Hudson's Bay Co. have the entire confidence of all the Indian tribes in those regions, exert an unparalleled influence over them, and when that influence remains unmolested by foreign influences, it has been and is salutary. Their word is law among these tribes.
"Such was our critical situation and such my views of the Hudson's Bay Co. influence in the country, as also of the Aawfean or Protestant, which I had seen prostrated at the feet of a third influence, when I wrote the letter above referred to. I obtained the permission of the Indians as follows: I told the two chiefs I had no means of paying them, I must write to Walla Walla for blankets. Also that the Catholic priest at the XJtflla would not deliver up the horses I had committed to his charge without a letter, and through these letters I wished to say to my countrymen in the Willamette 'keep quiet.' They assented. It has been
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said by some of my friends in this country that they felt greatly mortified to see me in the dust, at the Bishop's feet begging my life. A moment's review of history will show that not a strange thing has happened. This is not the first time that the Protestants (i. e. heretics) have lain prostrate at the feet of the Pope of Rome. I saw my life, under God, in the hands of the Bishop and his priests, I had a right to ask it again. I seemed to see the hands of these priests wet with the blood of my murdered associates, communicated by the hands of the murderers, as they stepped forward with the bloody tomahawk in one hand, and with the other delivered their children for the sacred ordinance of baptism--the dead bodies of the slain yet scattered about unburied, the prey of the ravens of the air, wolves of the plains, the sport of the savage murderers whose acts had been approved, according to the ideas of Indians, by this sacred ordinance of baptism. I had met one of the priests riding side by side with one of the murderers who was riding with him for the avowed intention of killing me, but whose pistol had a few moments before been discharged by the interposing hand of God. And while the Indian returned to an unobserved place, to reload, the priest apprised me of my danger, gave me his meat and bread, and God delivered me from the murderer. I saw the Bishop and his followers moving at pleasure through the country, and residing among the murderers unmolested. They seemed to feel themselves secure, were making preparations to commence new stations and to prosecute their newly begun labors with renewed efforts. The Indians had declared that the Protestants should be murdered, but the Catholics spared. Was it unchristian to ask my life at their hands? I asked it not in exchange for any Christian principle. But I scarcely thought of myself. Forty-eight women and children were captives at Wailatpu, and with them four men, all that remained of their husbands and fathers. At my place there were nine besides myself, in all sixty-two souls. I stopped not to ask whose hand placed the Bishop's foot on my neck; the lives of so many human beings were worth a struggle. I made the only one in my power; which was to beg of the Bishop to send a copy of the letter to Governor Abernethey, which would make known our situation, and consequently prevent any movement on the part of the citizens of this country, to avenge the murders until the captives were delivered, and to ask him to unite with the Hudson's Bay Company in effecting our deliverance. I also appealed to his humanity, as well as Christianity, to do all he could for the poor captive women and children, but I am sorry to be compelled to say that neither the Bishop nor either of his priests went near the captives after the baptism of the families of the murderers. Danger from the Indians may be given as a
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reason for their neglect. But how then could they ride side by side with the murderers, pass and repass through the country at pleasure, and continue to reside at the Utilla, and above all how could they venture to take up their abode at Wailatpu immediately on the departure of the captives?
"Moreover, I begged of the Bishop, as also of Mr. McBean, to give me all the information concerning my daughter and the other captives in their power. Neither of them deigned to answer my letter.
"It has been observed that after the phrases 'by all means keep quiet,' 'send no war reports/ 'send nothing but proposals of peace,' etc., I should have added, 'until we are rescued.' I hoped this would be understood. At all events, we were unanimous at my place in believing that the phrase could not safely be added lest it should be given to the Indians.
"But to return to the circumstances in which God had placed all for whom the letter was intended the day before it left Walla Walla for publication. The object of the letter was solely to gain time for the Hudson's Bay Company to reach Walla Walla and secure our deliverance, before the Indians should discover any movement on the part of the Americans. Mr. Ogden arrived at Walla Walla December 12th. (This a mistake. Ogden's own letter--Cf. p. 221 ante--says he reached Walla Walla December 19.-- W. I. M.) The captives from Wailatpu reached the same fort the 30th. Myself and those from Clear Water with me arrived January 1st. Oh! what a meeting! Remnants of once large and happy families. But our tears of grief were mingled with tears of joy too great for utterance. All the captives were delivered. Myself and family were safe within the walls of the fort. We had not flattered ourselves with the hope that deliverance could come so soon and so complete. Too much praise cannot be awarded the Hudson's Bay Company, and especially to Mr. Ogden, for his prompt and Christian efforts in flying to our relief and for his judicious and indefatigable labors in securing it so speedily.
"But the moment we were all safe within the gates of Walla Walla, the object of the letter to the Bishop was entirely attained. To illustrate; I send a messenger for a third person, but on reaching the door, he meets the person entering my room, of course the messenger goes no further; so with the letter, it met our deliverer before it started, and I had not the least thought that the Bishop, who came in the same boats with us, was bringing the letter for publication. Had I known it, I should have tried to have prevented it. If the request in my letter to the Bishop, asking a letter of information (to be forwarded by the bearers of my letter to him, on their return to me), touching the condition of my captive
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daughter and of the captive family of Mr. Canfield, who had escaped to my place, and touching the extent of the massacre, did not merit notice from him, why should so much pains be taken to give it to the public after its object had been entirely attained?
"We are therefore compelled to seek another object from the original one, for the publication of this letter. Let me say here, I not only feel injured myself to some degree, but I felt anxious for the consequences that might result to the Catholic religion in this country, from the Bishop's giving this letter to the public after we were all at liberty. I can conceive of no other object than a desire of the Bishop to show the worth of the influence which the Bishop supposes that he possesses in the Indian country. The language of the act sounds to me as follows: 'Behold ye inhabitants of Oregon, especially ye adherents of the Catholic church, how speedy and complete is my victory. Arrived but yesterday, today you see a missionary of the heretics, who has been eleven years in the country, at my feet, begging his life and the life of his countrymen, held as slaves by the Indians. He feels my power and acknowledges it in this letter. The -Indians feel and acknowledge it, and while they are hewing down the heretics all around us, and feeding their flesh to the fowls of the air, they bid me and my priests fear not. They allow us to move and dwell in peace among them. And while their hands are yet dripping with the warm blood of the slain Doctor Whitman and his lady, to show how highly they esteem us, they allow my priests to baptize their children and to commence missionary labors at the very station where the dead bodies of the heretics yet lay unburied. Our success is complete, the field is cleared for us. Who will doubt the religion of the holy Catholic church!'
"The day we left, Mr. Ogden was delayed some time by the ordination of two priests, designed, as I was informed, for the station at Clear Water, which I left. I was also informed that a priest took his station at Wailatpu the day the captives left.
"The same morning, one of the priests enquired of me concerning supplies of corn, peas, potatoes, horses, cows, books (native), etc., at the two stations, and asked if a bill of such things as they might need, sent to me, would answer. This confirmed, in my mind, the above information.
"H. H. SPALDING."
"(The above letter of Rev. Mr. Spalding's appears before the public at this late date as it could not appear in the Spectator at the time it was written.--Ed.)"
Just when Spalding began to slander Win. McBean and charge him with inhumanity to Mr. Hall and to Mr. Osborne and family,
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who had fled from Wailatpu to Walla Walla at the time of the massacre, I have been unable to learn, but the first place where I have found these accusations stated in detail, though in the above letter he seems to have laid a foundation for his later slanders by stating that according to Indian reports Mr. Hall was refused protection at Fort Walla Walla (p. 229 ante) is in a series of nine long articles beginning February 9,1866, in the Walla, Walla Statesman under the title "Lectures by Rev. H. H. Spalding. Early Oregon Missions--Their Importance in Securing the Country to Americans."
They are as hysterical, as verbose, and as full of false statements as his articles in the Pacific in 1865.
Mr. William McBean was then and for some years before and after a resident of the Walla Walla valley and he promptly resented these accusations in the following frank and dignified letter, which every advocate of the Whitman Legend has refrained from quoting or even alluding to:
"THE WHITMAN MASSAGEE.
"Editor Statesman: In your last issue I notice Mr. Spalding has given public palpable misrepresentations in regard to the unfortunate person, Mr. Hall, who escaped the bloody massacre at Wailatpu, on the 29th of November, 1847; doing me thereby injustice, and reflecting against my character, and which I consider incumbent on me to rectify; the more so, as some of your readers may not know the particulars, not only in regard to this man, hut also Mr. and Mrs. Osborne and child.
"To commence: The gentleman asserts that 'Mr. Hall that night found his way to Fort Walla Walla, but was turned out, put over the Columbia river, and has never been heard from since. It is said he was immediately killed by the Indians. There were in the fort, beside the gentleman in charge, about twenty white men, including some ten Catholic priests. It is reported that the children of Mr. Hall, after their arrival at the fort, saw the pants, cap and sash of their father.' I am not ashamed to own that I was the person in charge. Instead of twenty men, I had but fire including the linguist; and instead of ten Catholic priests, there was not a single one when Mr. Hall arrived and departed. The above slanderous charges leave the public to infer that we (self, men and priests), were accessory to the crime. Each and every accusation, as above stated, I do solemnly aver to be uncharitably false, malicious and without foundation. The plain fact of the case is simply as follows: Mr. Hall arrived on the morning following the massacre, with only his pants, shirt and cap, having no coat and being dripping wet. He is the person who gave me
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the first intimation of what had taken place at Wailatpu. As soon as he had made his appearance at the establishment, far from refusing him admittance, I took him into my private room, and observing blood on his face, I asked him if he was wounded. He replied in the negative, but said that as he got into the brush when escaping, the Indians fired upon him, the ball striking some branches, pieces of which struck him in the face. He appeared much excited and uneasy. After he had washed himself and taken some refreshment he requested me to allow him to hide himself in the garret, remarking that he was afraid the Indians would kill him if discovered. I told him he might do so, but was sure to be safe with us. He finally resolved to leave and make for The Dalles. I remarked to him that it was rash and imprudent, that I expected shortly reinforcements from Vancouver. The fort being enclosed, doors locked day and night, and fortified with two bastions, he would be safer in it than he would be on the open plain. My arguments had no force. I then asked him if he had left a wife and children at the Mission. He replied he had, but supposed them all killed. I observed that it was only a supposition--they might still be living, and that it was wrong to leave them without ascertaining their fate. With tears in his eyes, he begged and entreated me to let him go, being sure to reach The Dalles. Finding he was determined, I provided him with a coat, shirt, provisions and other necessaries for his voyage, and advised him to take the route less frequented by the Indians (across the Columbia river), and to travel only during the night, when he would have a better chance of evading any camp by noticing their fire. I saw him safely across, and the last tidings I had of him was that he had safely reached within a few miles of the Deschutes; but unfortunately having taken a canoe from the Indians and being near a rapid, he run down and was drowned. The above facts were communicated to the Commissioners, Messrs. Lee, Palmer and Newell (who accompanied Col. Gilliam's force), on their arrival at Fort Walla Walla, which appeared to give them satisfaction. The unfortunate met with his premature death by not taking my advice. He could have been saved by remaining in the fort, as I wished him to do, as were Mr. Osborne and his family. Now, the question will naturally arise, how came the pants, cap and sash of the deceased to be inside of the fort? This is an enigma, which I shall leave to Mr. Spalding and his informers to solve. This I know, that he left with the same clothing he had when he arrived, and that he never to my knowledge returned to the fort; and although on the spot, I never heard that he had been killed by the Indians or others. Eighteen years have elapsed, and for the first time Mr. Spalding comes out with the discovery.
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"The next who came for protection was Mr. Osborne, carrying a child on his back. I received him with the same hospitality as I had received Mr. Hall--gave him medicines, provisions (such as I used myself) and such clothing as he requested. Learning that he had left his wife with a babe half way to Wauiletpu, I requested him to go back for them; that I would provide him with a faithful guide and horses, after he should have eaten and taken a rest. What was my surprise when he declined doing so! he remarking that 'she must be dead by this time.' It was only by dint of argument that I prevailed. I instructed the guide to protect him at the risk of his life should he fall in with any hostile Indians, and on no account to turn back without the wife and child. They had proceeded some distance, when again Mr. Osborne's heart failed him, and he requested the guide to return, who positively refused-- alleging that I had instructed him not to do so without the wife and child. The guide then told him to remain where he was, and he would go ahead in search of them. He had not gone more than a couple of miles--riding at good speed, right and left, among the sage-brush--when the poor, helpless woman involuntarily screamed, which brought the guide to her. He pacified her, assuring her that he was her friend, and that her husband was close by. He brought the three safe and sound to the fort. It afforded me great pleasure to restore to Mr. Osborne his wife and infant, which must have been inevitably lost if I had listened to him. But this man, among others, has shown himself ungrateful for my services.
"I may also add, without exaggeration, whatever others may have done with the same view and intention, that I gave a material help to the captives--women and children--kept by the Indians at Wauiletpu, among whom was Mr. Spalding's own daughter, and saved them from a horrible massacre. Having been apprised that on a certain day these helpless women and children were to be inhumanly butchered, I immediately ordered the interpreter, accompanied by an Indian, to repair to Wauiletpu with all dispatch, and tell the chief, Telequeit, that his young men had already gone too far by killing Dr. Whitman, his lady and the rest; that they had acted a cruel and cowardly part, and that I wanted him to spare the poor women and children. When my messenger arrived, Indian women, armed with knives and other implements of war, were already assembled near the house where the captives were, awaiting the order of the chief, Telequiet, who was present OB being informed of my request, he hung down his head and paused; then with a wave of his hand peremptorily ordered the women away-- these abusing him and calling him a coward. For each and all of these services I am this day handsomely rewarded. Such is the way of man!
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"In conclusion, permit me, Mr. Editor, to apologize for having trespassed at such length on your valuable time, and accept my thanks for your indulgence. Yours,
"WILLIAM McBEAN.
"Walla Walla River, March 12, 1866."
Nothing more preposterous than the claim that the Hudson's Bay Co. at any time sought to exclude American settlers from Oregon was ever penned, as is proved beyond any possibility of dispute by the evidence herein presented (much of it for the first time), in Chapter VII. of Part I., on The Truth About the Relation of the Hudson's Bay Co. to the American Exploration, Occupation and Settlement of Oregon; but ridiculously contrary to all the contemporary evidence as that accusation is with regard to their conduct prior to 1846, what but insanity could have prompted such an accusation as to their conduct in November, 1847?
By the terms of Articles 3 and 4 of the Treaty of June 6, 1846, faring the north boundary of Oregon at forty-nine degrees to the coast, "the possessory rights of the Hudson's Bay Co. and of all British subjects in occupation of land or other property in the territory shall be respected, and the farms, land and other property of every description belonging to the Puget's Sound Agricultural Co." . . . "shall be confirmed to that company."
These rights were deemed worth many hundreds of thousands of dollars by the company, and finally after one of the most careful and thorough judicial trials that any case ever received, our Government, by judgment rendered September 10, 1869, paid $650,000 to these two companies for those rights. Yet nothing is more evident than that any action by the officers of the Hudson's Bay Co. after that treaty was made towards inciting Indian hostilities, or in any other way interfering with or trying to prevent American settlement, or to destroy American settlements already formed, would have been sufficient grounds for our Government to refuse them any compensation whatever for those rights.
The news of the ratification of this treaty was received in Oregon and published in an "extra" of the Oregon Spectator, on November 4, 1846, a year and twenty-five days before the Whitman massacre, and even if the Hudson's Bay Co. officers had been as wicked as Gray and Spalding charged them with being, it is simply inconceivable to any sane mind that such very shrewd business men as their whole careers showed them to be would, by any opposition to American settlement after that time, have destroyed all prospect of ever receiving any compensation from the United States for their possessory rights in the Oregon Territory. Not the least attempt was made by Hon. Caleb Cushing, the counsel for the United
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States in the trial of that case, to show that the Hudson's Bay Co. were in any way, shape or form responsible for the Whitman massacre, or that they had opposed American settlements in Oregon. No witness but Gray testified to any such stuff, and Cushing utterly ignored all that Gray said on those points.
Part of Mr. Spalding's letters published in the Oregon American (which was a very short-lived journal, most intensely sectarian, and bitterly anti-Catholic), were answered by Hon. Peter H. Burnett, but when the news of the discovery of gold in California reached Oregon he went to the mines without finishing the discussion (Cf. "Old Pioneer," p. 251.)
Father Brouillet's pamphlet was written in the autumn of 1848, as stated on its third page (being p. 15 of Ross Browne's Report), and its Chapter III. is headed: "Summary of the principal accusations made against the Catholic clergy of Walla Walla, by Mr. Spalding, the Oregon American, and others, with an answer to each of them."
This is followed by sixteen of the accusations, and that by his answers.
Space will only allow me to quote the following accusations and the answers:
(2) "That the priests baptized the children and families of the murderers, and the murderers themselves, immediately after the massacre, as they had their hands still dripping with the warm blood of the murdered, and so approved the massacre.
(15) "That one of the priests had been met by Mr. Spaldiag in company with an Indian who had the avowed intention to kill him, and that the Indian, whose pistol was unloaded, retired to an unobserved place to reload it; and insinuated that the intention of that priest was to have had him killed by that Indian."
Father Brouillet's answers are as follows:
(2) "We never baptized any of the murderers, nor their families. Such an assertion has been a shameful slander brought upon us like many others. The only thing done in the matter of baptism connected with that circumstance is what follows: As stated in my relation of the affair to Colonel Gilliam, I had gone to Tilokaikt's camp, without being aware of what had passed ia its vicinity, for the purpose of baptizing the sick children and the dying adults whom I could dispose for baptism. On the morning I was there, when about starting to pay a visit to the widows and orphans of the mission, and to bury the corpses, I inquired after the Indians who were dangerously sick and expected to die. None were found in the camp but three young children, whom I baptized, and two of them died soon after; two of the three were slaves, and I did not learn to whom the other child belonged. Nothing more was doae.
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"Now, no sensible person could suspect that I intended to approve of the murderous deed by baptizing those children, if they only knew what the principles and practice of the Catholic church are in regard to baptism of infants, The church teaches that baptism is of absolute necessity to the salvation of infants, as well as adults; and holding not children responsible for the faults of their parents or others, she commands her ministers always to baptize them, whatever may be the circumstances, in any case of necessity or danger of death. Besides, those children were not offered to me for baptism by their fathers with their hands dripping with blood, and asking for an approval of their deed, as has been said; but it was upon my own request, and repeatedly made, that their owners (two of them were slaves from other tribes), reluctantly consented to allow them to be baptized.
(15) "When Mr. Spalding said that he had met a priest in company with an Indian who had the avowed intention to kill him. I am inclined to say that he could have done something better, and more worthy a noble and grateful heart, than to advance so heinous a slander against the best friend he ever had. I am the priest whom Mr. Spalding met in company with one of the murderers. When he met me I had just started from the Doctor's establishment, where I had buried with my own hands the dead bodies of the unfortunate victims of the disaster, as before stated--where I had consoled, in the best manner I could, the widows and the orphans, and obtained from that same Indian the promise that they would do them no harm and treat them well, and expressed, repeatedly, my anxiety for Mr. Spalding, my fear that he should come too soon, and would fall, perhaps, into the hands of the Indians, and my ardent desire of meeting him in time to give him a chance to escape. For a proof of that, I refer to the captives who were then at the Doctor's establishment. At the moment of my departure that Indian had joined my interpreter and was coming in company with me, against my will and without my knowing of his intention. His presence caused me great uneasiness on Mr. Spalding's account. I had wished to find an opportunity to send him back, to escape from him, but in vain; when Mr. Spalding suddenly met me, and placed me in the most critical situation in which I ever found myself, and where I had the good fortune to save his life at the evident peril of my own.
"Now, is it not ungenerous and inconsistent, on the part of Mr. Spalding, to throw a doubt upon any intentions in that circumstance? If I had entertained bad intentions against him, if I had wished to have him killed, as he insinuated, would I have warned him of the danger that threatened him? Would I have given him my provisions and advised him to fly without delay, as he says himself I did? Strange reasoning this! 'The priest told me that the
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Indians intended to kill me'; that, in order to escape from their hands, 'I had better to run off instantly,' and, so as to furnish me with the means of doing so, 'he gave me his meat and bread, and God delivered me from the murderers'; then it is evident that the priest intended to cause me to be killed!!! And this is, nevertheless, Mr. Spalding's reasoning, word for word.
"It is not correct to say that the Indian was in my company 'with the avowed intention of killing' Mr. Spalding. He had, as well as the other Indians, the general intention of killing him at the first opportunity, it is true; but such was not the reason that had caused him to come with me, because he did not know nor think that Mr. Spalding would come on that day. His intention, as I knew after, was to inform his uncle, Camaspelo, the military chief, of the massacre, and receive his orders. Besides, he was accompanying me, at that moment, as other Indians had done during the day, without my knowledge of their immediate intentions, and in such a way as to keep me in continual apprehension and fear.
"It is also untrue to say that that Indian retired to an unobserved place to reload his pistol. Mr. Spalding knew better than that, since I had told him that the Indian had gone back to the camp to consult about his fate. If his intentions had been to reload his pistol, he would not have wanted more than a few minutes to have loaded it and shot Mr. Spalding, as neither my interpreter nor myself could have prevented him, for want of arms and good horses. But he did not return until two or three hours after, when I was on Manon's fork. Moreover, nobody but Mr. Spalding and myself can give a correct account of what passed between us at that time. We were alone, my interpreter being at some distance from us, and not hearing our conversation; and I can bear testimony that then Mr. Spalding was not in a state fit to form a judicious opinion of things or words--the fright and trouble of mind which the knowledge of his danger had produced on him had set him completely beside himself."
Certainly it goes without saying that if Father Brouillet had desired Mr. Spalding's death, he would have done one of two things, either remained quietly in the Indian camp or else have returned to his own Mission station by a route different from the eae on which he knew Mr. Spalding was likely to come that day.
Either one of these two courses would have insured Mr. Spalding's death, without any possibility of any one producing any evidence against Father Brouillet, as having had any connection with it
In Chapter IV., Part II., on "The Long Concealed Facts About the Origin and Purpose of Whitman's Ride," the reader will remember that his associates repeatedly accused Spalding of duplicity,
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and the extracts from their letters written at different times after the Whitman massacre, and after he had accused the Hudson's Bay Co. and the Catholics of causing it, will show what Messrs. Eells and Walker thought of Spalding's character for truth, and also what they thought of Gray.
Rev. E. Walker to Rev. D. Greene, Secretary, dated Oregon City, July 8, 1848, No. 166, V. 248, American Board MSS. This letter is indexed in Vol. 248 as follows under "Letters of Walker, Rev. Elkanah, 1844-1859":
"The massacre not caused by Romish influence No. 166."
As the endorsement on it shows, it was received by the American Board January 15, 1849, but nothing from it has ever yet been published by them, though to the unbiased mind it would seem that they ought promptly to have printed this positive declaration of one of their missionaries explicitly exonerating the Catholics.
"Much might be said which led to this horrid massacre. Some doubtless attach too much blame to the Catholics. I am yet to be convinced that they had any direct agency in it. Their being in that region no doubt might lead the natives to think there would be less danger in killing the whites than they would otherwise have felt. But that they put the natives up to do the deed I do not believe. I have no doubt the great number of whites about the station had an influence to lead the Indians to view the movements of Dr. Whitman with suspicion and more readily believe the reports of Jo. Lewis, who was telling the Indians that the Doctor's intentions were to kill them all off and take their lands and herds. I need not say much on this point, as you have doubtless been fully informed."
Rev. E. Walker to Rev. S. B. Treat, Secretary, dated Forest Grove, Ore., December 7, 1857, (No. 173, Vol. 248) :
"Men unacquainted with Indian character are so apt to misjudge appearances on a short acquaintance with Indians." . . . "The truth is those among the Nez Perces who now manifest so much interest in Christian worship and the Christian Sabbath when I was in their country with Dr. Dart they gave no such evi dence. Timothy, whom report makes the priest of the religious part of the tribe, was one of the wildest in the war dance which was acted out at that time." . . . "The most objectionable part" (i. e., of Rev. G. H. Atkinson's letter to Treat) "or that which appeared most so to me at the time, and which reflection since has made more apparent, was what he said in favor of Mr. Gray occupying the station at Wailatpu. I may say it to you in all faithfulness and frankness that if the station is to be in any way connected with a Mission in that country I could not give my advice for it to go into his hands." . . . "But while I am on the matters of the Mission, and especially its past history, I may speak of the
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letter Mr. Spalding sent you at the time of Mr. Atkinson's. I should judge from the remarks of Mr. A. that he wrote with considerable bitterness, with the feeling that the Board had in some way done Dr. Whitman injustice. The truth is I have thoughts and views on the course pursued at the Wailatpu Station that I have never de veloped to the committee and to very few of my most particular friends.
"His melancholy end seemed such as to bury all his errors and mistakes in the grave with him. The truth was we became alarmed long before the event (p. 3) came which put a stop to all missionary labor in the country.
"What would be the end? That is, how the Mission would extricate itself out of the great whirl of wordly business into which it had engaged? But Providence brought it to pass much sooner than we anticipated. I say this only for the benefit of the committee and not as impugning the motives of Dr. Whitman. Nor do I consider that Mr. Spalding has received so much injustice from the United States Government as he imagines. I am compelled to believe until I have better evidence that Mr. Spalding's publication in regard to Dr. Dart was more with the intention of effecting the removal of him from his office of Superintendent of Indian Affairs in Oregon than because he believed such treaty had been made. My reason for this is in conversation with Mr. Spalding I said I was present, and no such treaty was made excluding Protestant missionaries. He replied, 'I knew it. He could make no such treaty.'" . . . "As you ask the question, 'Would you advise me to send Mr. Spalding to the Nez Perces? I will answer as frankly as you ask the question I would not at present advise it. I deem him wholly unfitted in body and mind.'"
The publication by Spalding to which Walker alludes originated from his rage at Dr. Anson Dart, the Superintendent of Indian Affairs for Oregon, under the following circumstances:
June 24, 1850, Spalding was appointed sub-Indian agent, and Rev. C. Eells, in a letter to Rev. S, L. Pomeroy, D. D., Secretary American Board, dated Forest Grove, Ore., January 1, 1881, wrote: "You have already been informed that Mr. Spalding has been appointed Indian Agent and that he has accepted the appointment. Mr. Walker and myself were consulted on the point of Mi accepting the agency. We considered his natural precipitance a great objection to his being thus employed. But we could not advise him to decline. With deep anxiety we came to the conclusion that it was warrantable for Mr. Spalding to make an effort to discharge the duty of such an office, provided he could obtain a suitable person to accompany him as counselor and assistant at least on his
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first trip east of the Cascade Mountains. He has entered upon the duties of his office, but has not been east of the Cascades.
"Our first solicitude has not abated, but rather increased by the experiment made thus far. I regret the necessity of writing anything to the Prudential Committee of the American Board which will cause them to judge less favorably of one who has been a fellow laborer with me in the missionary field. But if I apprehend correctly my duty to the officers of the A. B. C. F. M., I must say, that in my opinion it is very desirable that the existing relation between Mr. Spalding and the American Board be dissolved without delay. It might avoid the appearance of evil if Mr. Walker and myself should be dismissed at the same time. Should the committee see fit thus to do, Mr. Walker or myself, either or both of us, if desired and authorized, would be just as ready to attend to any unfinished business of the mission as we ever have been. I am unable to state what or how much mission property Mr. Spalding has disposed of and expended the proceeds for the benefit of his family, or how much he now retains in his possession. My impression is that it is greater than Mr. Walker and myself together have taken, and should not be surprised to have it appear that he has more than twice as much. I think he will be able to state definitely."
And January 19, 1851, Rev. B. Walker wrote from West Tualitin Plains, Ore., to Rev. S. B. Treat, Secretary, as follows: "Mr. Spalding, you are aware, has been appointed sub-Indian Agent. His course does not meet the approval of the Superintendent of Indian Affairs and the officers of the Government. The amount of property taken by Mr. Eells is as small as could be expected and is not more than he ought to receive.
"As to the amount Mr. Spalding appropriated to himself I am wholly unable to say, as I have never seen any statement of it. I am of the opinion considerable more than either of us, and perhaps more than both of us. Of this all I say is mere conjecture. Still it may be best to let him keep."
October 30, 1851, Rev. C. Eells wrote from Hillsborough, Ore., to Rev. S. B. Treat, Secretary, a letter covering four pages foolscap, discussing and advising against the attempt to re-establish the Mission among the Spokane Indians, and on p. 3 he wrote: "Mr. Spalding has been suspended in the Indian Agency."
Dr. Dart had asked to have him superseded for neglect of duty (Cf. House Ex. Doc., 32d Cong., 1st Sess., Vol. 2, Part 3, p. 472).
Forthwith, Spalding wrote to the American Home Missionary Society that Dart had made a treaty with the tribes of the Middle District (i. e., that part of Oregon between the Cascades and the Blue Mountains), "An article of which agrees that no American" (i. e., Protestant), "missionary shall ever again enter their conn-
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try." His letter thus states his feelings on hearing of this treaty: "I lifted up my lamentations amid the wild roar of the ocean's waves." ... "I wept for the poor Nez Perces" . . . "as I called to mind the many years of hard labor, etc." . . . "all apparently laid a sacrifice at the bloody shrine of the papacy, by the baptized hands of an American officer, the husband of a Presbyterian wife! The Superintendent was of course influenced to this anti-American step by the same influences which instigated the poor, benighted Indians to butcher their best friends." . . . "Henceforth my field of labor is among my countrymen in this valley. I am now about my Master's business--preaching the Gospel" (Cf. the Home Missionary, April, 1852, p. 276). Dr. Dart chanced to be in New York at the time, and the next number of the Home Missionary (May, 1852, p. 20), contained a letter from him stating "There is no truth in Mr. Spalding's statements in question." No treaties had been made with any of the Middle District tribes, and in the thirteen treaties then in the hands of the President, which had been made with the tribes west of the Cascade Mountains, there was "not one word . . . touching the subject, directly or indirectly, as stated by Mr. Spalding under the head of 'Treaty of Expulsion.'"
Rev. C. Eells to Rev. S. B. Treat, Secretary, Tualitin Academy, Ore., July 22, 1850. He explains why he has had little to do with settling up the affairs of the Mission and goes on: "Previous to my coming down Mr. Spalding almost from necessity had entered fully upon the work of settling the business of the Wailatpu Sta-tion. Any interference on my part would have been considered uncalled for and probably increased rather than diminished difficulty. Mr. Spalding does not possess very largely of a co-operative disposition. I do not recollect to have seen any communication he has made to the American Board since the Mission ceased operations. On my first arrival at Oregon City I said to Messrs. Spalding and Walker that in my opinion we ought to act together.
"That the settling of business matters, the disposition of onr families, etc., should be attended to rather as a Mission than as individuals. At least such was the import of what I said.
"But if I remember correctly it was not heartily responded to, and practically has had very little influence. I do not write this for the purpose of fault finding, but rather as an excuse for my own course."
Rev. C. Eells wrote from Hillsboro, Ore., July 31, 1852, to Rev. S. B. Treat, Secretary, as follows: "You will doubtless regret the largeness of Mr. Spalding's expenditures, but perhaps you will think that as it has irrecoverably gone, the shortest course for the Board is the best, and therefore will let it pass. I am not aware
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that Mr. Spalding asked advice of either Mr. Walker or myself in relation to personal or family expenses. As a little relief in the case I will add that he (Mr. Spalding) has done more than all other persons in Oregon to enable the Board to recover pay for property destroyed."
January 1, 18S5, Rev. C. Eells wrote from Hillsboro, Ore., to Rev. S. B. Treat, Secretary, and after a lengthy discussion of the question of re-establishing the Nez Perces Mission, continues: "I should dislike to bear the responsibility of answering decisively the question which you have proposed in relation to Mr. Spalding. Thus much I may say, he has not been a discreet, prudent missionary-- is often precipitous. He appears to suffer from mental or moral obliquity, which has occasioned much reproach. Mr. Spalding is especially deficient in those qualities which it is very desirable should be possessed in a high degree by a person going to labor as a missionary among the Nez Perces Indians."
August 15, 1857, Rev. C. Eells wrote to Rev. S. B. Treat, Secretary, from Hillsboro, Ore., and says he is surprised to hear that it is proposed to resume missionary efforts among the Nez Perces, and continues: "In reply to the P. S. of your letter, I will say that I cannot advise that Rev. H. H. Spalding be sent to engage in missionary labor among the Nez Perces Indians." And he never was sent by the American Board; but after his visit to the East in the winter of 1870-71 (when he managed to get his pamphlet printed as Sen. Ex. Doc. No. 37), the Presbyterian Board of Missions appointed him and sent him to the Nez Perces.
I find that I omitted to copy Rev. E. Walker's opinion of Mr. Gray, as stated in his letter to Rev. D. Greene, Secretary, dated Tshimakain, February 28, 1843, and before returning to the true causes of the Whitman massacre will insert it here, as it was exactly the opinion that both Eells and Walker continued to entertain about him so long as they lived.
"Judging from what has been done I think had other members of the Mission made correct and impartial statements which they might have made, Mr. Gray would not have had the trouble of withdrawing from the Mission. I mean the course that has been pursued in regard to Mr. Spalding. I should not say this only as Mr. Gray has left the Mission, and I suppose the committee have no more control over him. The Mission gave him a paper stating that they approved of his leaving to take charge of the secular affairs of the school about to be established in the Willamette. I signed that paper as chairman of the Mission, but should not only as it was thought best by the other members. That his course did not meet the approbation of the whole or even a majority of the Mission was made evident at the meeting.
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"There was no member of the Mission that could have been more useful than Mr. Gray, if he had possessed a right disposition, and had been willing to move in the sphere Providence seemed to mark out for him and that which the committee doubtless intended he should." (P. 10) "That Mr. Gray had difficulty with Mr. Spalding I do not doubt. Mr. Spalding must be a very singular man not to have difficulty with him, and that is nothing more than the rest of the members have done. There was not a member of the reinforcement that came out with him that was willing to be located with him on arriving in the country. They were all asked and all refused. If Mr. Spalding had not consented to be associated with him I do not know what would have been done." Speaking of Rev. A. B. Smith and Mr. Gray on p. 3 he goes on: "If I am not mistaken these are the two who have said more about the bad conduct of the members of the Mission and its discouragements than any one else, or all the rest put together, and whose communications did more to lead the committee in their decision to abandon the south branch of the Mission, etc. Where, I would ask, are these two now? Are they in the field laboring for the prosperity of the Mission? Are they not doing, and have they not been doing, all they can to destroy the Mission, both by precept and example?"
In general terms the Whitman massacre--like all the other almost countless Indian massacres that have attended the occupation of America by the whites--was an inevitable result of the irrepressible conflict between civilization and savagery, and had there been no missions to the Oregon Indians some massacres would inevitably have attended the occupation by the pale faces of the lands in the Oregon Territory, over which the Indians had roamed, as has been the case in all other parts of the continent
The particular causes in the irrepressible conflict between savagery and civilization which brought about the general decadence of the Mission that culminated in the Whitman massacre arc beyond any question the following:
(1) The folly of Gray in starting with several Indians to the States in 1837, with quite a large number of horses to be exchanged for cattle. The Indians were all killed and the horses stolen by a war party of Sioux at Ash Hollow, Neb.
(2) The murder of Elijah Hedding, the SOB of a Walk Walla chief, at Butter's Fort in California.
(3) The acts and words of Tom Hill, the Delaware or Shoshone Indian, as stated in Spalding's letter of February 3. 1847, and Whitman's letter of May 20, 1845, and in "a Copy of a Document" by Dr. McLoughlin.
(4) The failure of the Indians to get property from the missionaries in payment for the use of the land occupied by the mis-
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sion stations, and for the lumber and firewood cut on their land by the missionaries.
(5) Their anger at the constantly increasing throng of whites going through their country to settle in the Willamette Valley, and their fear lest the pale faces should speedily fill up that valley, and then, instead of going beyond their lands, should stop there and seize on them, precisely as Tom Hill had assured them they had done, not only to his own tribe, but also to all the many other tribes which formerly lived towards the rising sun, where now he told them the pale faces swarmed in numbers like the leaves on the forests.
(6) The belief of the Indians that the missionaries were growing rich from the produce of their lands.
(7) The belief of the Indians that Whitman was poisoning them, confirmed to their ignorant and superstitious minds by the exceedingly careless way in which strychnine was used at the various stations of the Mission.
(8) The deadly epidemic of measles, complicated with dysentery, which was communicated to the Indians by the migration of 1847.
(9) The terrible severity of the winter of 1846-7--by far the most severe within the memory of the oldest Indian residing in the country, with its enormous destruction of the herds of horses (which were the chief wealth of all the tribes in Middle Oregon), and also of the little flocks of sheep and herds of cattle that a few of the more progressive of the Nez Perces, and Cayuses, and Spokanes, and Walla Wallas had begun to accumulate, with, of course, a corresponding destruction of wild animals, producing a scarcity of game the summer and autumn of 1847--a scarcity which the Indians well knew would continue lor several years, till nature could again stock up the country. Such a winter with its cold, which the Indians in their skin lodges could poorly guard against, and with its inevitable scarcity of food then, and the scarcity of food the following summer and autumn, must have largely lowered the average vitality of the Indians, and so rendered them much more susceptible than usual to the ravages of the diseases which swept off so large a part of the Cayuses and Walla Wallas in the autumn of 1847.
(10) Whitman's unwisdom in continuing to doctor among them as if they were civilized people, in spite of numerous threats by Indians from as early as '1837 that they would kill him if he failed to cure them, and although he well knew that from his first arrival in the country he had had among them the reputation of a great sorcerer or "medicine man," and although he equally well
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knew that it was a very common practice among the Indians to kill their own medicine men when they failed to cure their patients.
As to (1) witness the following:
The Missionary Herald for January, 1839, p. 14, printed the following under "Mission to the Indians in the Oregon Country" :
"Nez Perces, H. H. Spalding, missionary and wife.
"Kayuses, Marcus Whitman, physician and catechist, and wife; Cushing Eells, Asa B. Smith and Elkanah Walker, missionaries, W. H. Gray, physician and mechanic, and their wives.
"Mr. S. and Dr. W. commenced their labors, the former among the Nez Perces and the latter among the Kayuses, near the close of the year 1836, the Indians manifesting the most lively interest in their religious instructions, in the schools which they opened, and in all their endeavors to improve their moral and social condition, engaging with much diligence and perseverance in the various kinds of manual labor proposed, and acquiring knowledge on moral and intellectual subjects and skill in labor with uncommon rapidity. The desire expressed by them and other bands to have additional teachers sent to their country induced the brethren of the Mission to send Mr. Gray, one of their number, to the United States to obtain help, if practicable. Four of the Nez Perces accompanied him, taking with them horses and other property, by the sale of which it was expected that some necessary expenses would be borne. These Indians were, however, murdered by a hostile band and their property seized. Mr. Gray providentially escaped."
No sooner did this reach Dr. Whitman than he wrote, October 22, 1839, to Rev. D. Greene, Secretary, a nine-page letter from which nothing has yet been printed, but from which the following are extracts: "There are several important errors in your last report, 1838, of this Mission. First. The intention of the Indians in taking horses to the States with Mr. Gray in order to assist in paying the expenses of the reinforcement in coming to their country. Their intention was to exchange horses for cows for their own use, an object represented to them in such a light as to induce them to make great effort to obtain them. Some of them have been and are now looking for pay for their horses. One has been paid and I doubt not all will have to be before they will feel easy amd satisfied about their loss.
"Second. Mr. Gray did not go home by my advice, &s my letters which he carried clearly intimated if they did not say so much in words.
"Third. Wm. H. Gray, physician--I cannot conceive tow you have been so much imposed upon as to report him as physician. What can a man learn in sixteen weeks of public lectures (which is barely all he can boast), to entitle him to that distinction? It
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cannot be regarded in any other light in this country than a slur upon the Board and this Mission." . . . (p. 4) "The prospect of benefiting the Indians, to look at outward appearances, is clouded by the recent tour of the Catholic priest who has made the circuit as far as Colvile and so down the river to Walla Walla, at which place he commenced baptizing and told the Indians he would come again in the spring and baptize more." (p. 4) "Dr. McLoughlin on his passage (i. e., down the river on his return from a visit to Canada and England--W. I. M.), wrote me from Walla Walla, giving us every assurance of co-operation in our work, in answer to which I shall thank him for his many favors to us and for the assurance of the continuance of them, and inquire how far the Company wish the Catholics to interfere with the Indians among whom we are located, stating some of the facts of the late visit of the priests. As he is to resume his charge at Vancouver, if he sustains them our work perhaps will be nearly to a close." (p. 5) ... "Dr. McLoughlin, Mr. Pamburn and Mr. Payette are Catholics, but the other gentlemen of the Company are not and are to appearance opposed to them. The servants of the Company are to a great extent Catholics, and it is purely on their account they (i. e., the priests--W. I. M.) were permitted by the committee" (i. e., the Executive Board of the Hudson's Bay Co. in London) "to come. But since they are here they seem inclined to draw in all the Indians possible, for which they have every facility desirable if the Company permit--for at every post interpreters can be had, and generally Catholics." (p. 6) "All the crops were cut off at Colvile, except a little winter wheat, from drought and grasshoppers, so that if Mr. Spalding and myself had not cultivated we should have been brought into distress and perplexity, a fact well worth the remembrance of the Board and the new reinforcement, who can never understand what those do who first came into the field. We are told we have paid too much attention to temporal affairs, and by whom? By the persons whom I fed the first winter they were in the field, and again it was renewed by Mr. Smith this fall, while he is looking for half the crop raised at Wailatpu--which I put in and cultivated by superintending myself, and all the expenses paid by myself except the wages of one Hawaiian from the middle of April to the middle of September, at £17 per annum. I may perhaps agree with them in part when they say we have cultivated too largely, when I reflect it was done to support them in ease and comfort, to devote nearly the whole of their time in studying the language, while they so ungratefully reproach the hands that fed them. Sabbath, June 23, was a day of deep affliction to us" (this was on account of the death of his little daughter by drowning, of which he gives a full account).
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Though this letter was written the same month Farnham visited him he says nothing about him, nor about any newly discovered pass over the Blue Mountains for wagons.
Though this letter was received by the American Board April 27, 1840, the Missionary Herald in the past sixty-four years has not found space to correct any of these errors, except that it did thereafter strike off "Physician" from the name of W. H. Gray, and called him "Mechanic and Catechist," but to this day they leave their readers to suppose that their statement was true that those Indians were so anxious for a reinforcement to the Mission that they had risked and lost their lives in an attempt to drive a band of horses through to the States to dispose of them, and with the proceeds pay the expenses of getting more missionaries to the Oregon Indians; whereas the simple truth was that what they wanted was to trade horses for cattle for their own use.
As to (2) we have not only the positive statements of Whitman in his letter of May 20, 1845, hereinbefore quoted (Cf. pp. 152-3 ante for this) that before that time the Indians had proposed to kill either him or Mr. Spalding in revenge for the death of Elijah Hedding, but another account of the affair in a letter of Whitman's to D. Greene, Secretary, dated April 8, 1845, as follows: "Last year a small party of Wailatpu and Walla Walla Indians and one Spokane went to California to explore the way and prepare to get cattle by bringing a few. By some imprudence of theirs, and probably intemperance and haste of Capt. Sutter and some Americans who live in his possessions, Elijah Hedding, a fine young man, son of the Walla Walla chief, was killed, being shot down while in the fort without arms and with but four companions. Elijah was educated by the Methodist Mission, and was hopefully pious and well behaved towards the whites. This occasioned the return of the party, leaving the cattle they had bought, and bringing the horses and mules about which the dispute arose that caused the death of the young man. Upon their return we had a great deal (p. 6) of excitement and rumors. But they have shown much forbearance to the whites, and are likely to continue at peace with them. It is now a trying era in their history, for their intercourse with Americans is increasing and with it their temptations to avarice."
Indian Sub-Agent Elijah White, in a report to the Secretary of War, dated April 4, 1845, after a lengthy account of the murder of Elijah Hedding, and the resulting excitement among the Indiana in the vicinity of Walla Walla, and of their sending Ellis, the head chief of the Nez Perces to see him about it, continues: "Ellis arrived at my residence in Willamette about the first instant. Haying a short time before got a hasty communication, written in excitement, by Dr. Whitman, who was under serious apprehensions that
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it might be avenged upon some of the whites of the upper country, be assured I was happy to see this, my most faithful friend and interpreter." . . . "Learning from Dr. Whitman, who resides in their midst, how much they were all excited by reason of the treacherous and violent death of this educated and accomplished young chief, and perhaps more especially by the loss they had sustained" (i. e., of horses and cattle they were obliged to leave behind in California, when they fled after the murder of Elijah Hedding--W. I. M.), . . . "I apprehended there might be much danger in adjusting it, particularly as they lay much stress upon the restless, disaffected scamps late from Willamette to California loading them with the vile epithets of 'dogs,' 'thieves,' etc., etc., from which they believed, or affected to, that the slanderous reports of our citizens caused all their loss and disasters, and therefore held us responsible. He assured me that the Walla Wallas, Kayuse, Nez Perces, Spokanes, Ponderays and Snakes were all on terms of amity, and that a portion of the aggrieved party were for raising about two thousand warriors of these formidable tribes and march to California at once, and nobly revenge themselves on the inhabitants by capture and plunder, and enrich themselves upon the spoils; others, not indisposed to the enterprise, wished first to learn how it would be regarded here, and whether we would remain neutral in the" affair. A third party were for holding us responsible, as Elijah was killed by an American, and the Americans incensed the Spaniards. Ellis reminded me at the same time of the ill success the chiefs met with in trading off their ten dollar drafts for herds with the emigrants; which drafts I had sent up by Mr. Lee, my interpreter, to secure peace and safety while the emigrants were passing through their country, the year before so many having been pillaged and robbed of their effects through the inattention of the chiefs.
"Sir, how this affair will end is difficult to conjecture; the general impression is that it will lead to the most disastrous consequences to the Californians themselves, or to the colony of the Willamette Valley. My principal fear is that it will result in so much jealousy, prejudice and disaffection as to divert their minds from the pursuit of knowledge, agriculture and the means of civilization, which they have been for such a length of time so laudably engaged in obtaining.
"Should this be the case with these numerous, brave and formidble tribes, the results to them, and to us, would be indeed most calamitous. To prevent such a result I wrote, through Ellis, a long, cordial and rather sympathizing letter to the chiefs of these tribes, assuring them that I should at once write to the Governor of California, to Captain Sutter, and to our great chiefs respecting this matter. With a view to divert attention, and promote good feeling,
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I invited all the chiefs to come down in the fall, before the arrival of the emigrants, in company with Dr. Whitman and Mr. Spalding, and confer with me upon this subject; at the same time, as they had been so unfortunate, to bring along their ten dollar drafts and exchange them with me for a cow and calf, each out of my own herds. I likewise wrote them that on condition they would defer going to California till the spring of 1847, and each chief assist me to the amount of two beaver skins, to get a good manual labor literary institution established for the English education of their sons and daughters--a subject they feel the deepest interest in--I would use every measure to get the unhappy affair adjusted; and as a token of my regard for them, would from my private funds, give the chiefs five hundred dollars to assist them in purchasing young cows in California. I likewise proffered, as they were so eager for it, to start the English school next fall, by giving them the services of Mr. Lee, my interpreter, for four months, commencing in November next.
"Ellis more than properly appreciated my motives and proffers, and said he was of the full belief that the chiefs would accede to my proposition; spoke of the importance of the English school and of the strong and general desire to obtain it. He left in high hopes of a continuance of peace and onward prosperity to his people."
This promise of White's of course was never fulfilled, as he left Oregon for the States in August, 1845, but it proved no small embarrassment to the Whitman Mission, as we have already seen from Spalding's letter of February 3, 1847, and as appears also from a letter of Whitman to D. Greene, dated October 26, 1845, which contains the following: "I would desire you to keep a lookout for Dr. White's course in the States, and especially that he does not take up a self-constituted agency to collect funds to establish a Manual Labor School among the Nez Perces, which I have no doubt was a favorite plan of his.
"He went so far as to promise it to the Indians in such a way as to commit this Mission for its fulfillment, or to involve us in its failure." Whether if Dr. White had faithfully performed his promises to these Indians they would have been content to let the death of Elijah Hedding go unavenged according to the Indian custom in such cases can never be known, but what actually happened is stated as follows by Paul Kane, a Canadian artist, who, after spending several years in studying painting in Europe, on his return to Canada determined to go to the Far West to study the characters and habits of the Indians, and to paint their portraits. He left Toronto in May, 1845, and in 1859 published, in London, a book of 455 pages, entitled "Wanderings of an Artist Among the Indians of North America." On p. 281 he says: "Having enjoyed the kind hospital-
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ity of Dr. Whitman and his lady for four days, on July 22, 1847, I left for Walla Walla." . . . "On the day after my arrival at the fort, a boy, one of the sons of Peo-Peo-mox-mox, the chief of the Walla Wallas, arrived at the camp close to the fort. He was a few days in advance of a war party headed by his father, and composed of Walla Walla and Kye-un (Kyuse) Indians, which had been absent 18 months, and had been almost given up by the tribes. This party, numbering 200 men, had started for California for the purpose of revenging the death of another son of the chief, who had been killed by some California emigrants, and the messenger now arrived bringing the most disastrous tidings, not only of the total failure of the expedition, but also of their suffering and detention by sickness. Hearing that a messenger was coming in across the plains I went to the Indian camp and was there at his arrival. No sooner had he dismounted from his horse than the whole camp, men, women and children, surrounded him, eagerly inquiring after their absent friends, as they had hitherto received no intelligence, beyond a report that the party had been cut off by hostile tribes. His downcast looks and silence confirmed the fears that some calamity must have happened, and they set up a tremendous howl, while he stood silent and dejected, with the tears streaming down his face. At length, after much coaxing and entreaty on their part he commenced the recital of their misfortunes. After describing the progress of the journey up to the time of the disease (the measles) making its appearance, during which he was listened to in breathless silence, he began to name its victims one after another.
"On the first name being mentioned a terrific howl ensued, the women loosening their hair and gesticulating in a most violent manner.
"When this had subsided, he, after much persuasion, named a second and a third, until he had named upwards of thirty. The same signs of intense grief followed the mention of each name, presenting a scene which, accustomed as I was to Indian life, I must confess, affected me deeply.
"I stood close by them on a log, with the interpreter of the fort, who explained to me the Indian's statement, which occupied nearly three hours. After this the excitement increased, and apprehensions were entertained at the fort that it might lead to some hostile movement vs. the establishment. This fear, however, was groundless, as the Indians knew the distinction between the Hudson's Bay Co. and the Americans. They immediately sent messengers in every direction on horseback to spread the news of the disaster among all the neighboring tribes, and Mr. McBain and I both considered that Dr. Whitman and his family would be in great danger. I therefore determined to go and warn him of what had occurred.
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It was 6 o'clock in the evening when I started, but I had a good horse and arrived at his house in three hours. I told him of the arrival of the messenger and the excitement of the Indians, and advised him strongly to come to the fort, for a while at least, until the Indians had cooled down; but he said he had lived so long amongst them, and had done so much for them, that he did not apprehend they would injure him. I remained with him only an hour, and hastened back to the fort, where I arrived at 1 o'clock a. m. Not wishing to expose myself unnecessarily to any danger arising from the superstitious notions which the Indians might attach to my having taken some of their likenesses, I remained at Fort Walla Walla four or five days, during which the war party had returned, and I had an opportunity of taking the likeness of the great chief Peo-Peo-mox-mox, or 'The Yellow Serpent,' who exercises great influence, not only over his own people, but also among the neighboring tribes."
To a civilized man nothing seems more senseless than the notion that the natural death, or even the murder of one person, can be in any manner avenged by the murder of some one else in no way responsible for the death of the first, but such an idea seemed perfectly proper to the Indian mind, as witness not only the letter of Whitman to D. Greene of May 20, 1845 (Cf. pp. 152-3 ante), but also the following three incidents from "A Journal of Voyages and Travels in the Interior of North America, Between the Forty-seventh and Fifty-eighth Degrees of North Latitude, Extending from Montreal Nearly to the Pacific Ocean, a Distance of About 5,000 Miles. Including an Account of the Principal Occurrences During a Residence of Nineteen Years in Different Parts of the Country, by Daniel W. Harmon, a Partner in the North West Co. Andover, (Mass.), 1820."
The journal begins April 1, 1800, and ends August 18, 1819.
Harmon was a native of Vermont, and was one of the very few fur traders who were very orthodox Protestant Christians, he being as staunch a Presbyterian as Jedediah S. Smith of the Rocky Mountain Fur Co. was a Methodist.
P. 122, under date of March 23, 1804, Harmon wrote: "I was well received by the greater part of the natives there; but as I have since been informed, one of them had resolved to take my life. And yet this villain invited me to his tent, and I visited it without suspicion. He was prevented from executing his purpose by my host, who was acquainted with his purpose, and told him that he must first despatch him. 'For,' he added, 'Kitch-e-mo-cum-mon (that is Big Knife, which is the name they give me) is my brother, and has taken up his lodging with me, and it therefore becomes me to defend him and his property.' No Indian will suffer a stranger,
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if he be able to defend him, to be injured while in his tent and under his protection.
"Therefore, he who had intended to massacre me thought it best to remain quiet. This hostile Indian had nothing against me but that I was a friend to a person who he considered had injured Mm; and as this person was at a great distance and therefore beyond his reach, he was resolved to avenge the affront upon me. It is the custom of all the savages not to be very particular (p. 123) on whom the punishment of one offense falls, whether the guilty person or a relation or friend of this person.
"The first of these whom he happens to meet becomes the object of his vengeance; and then his wrath is appeased and he will not even lift his hand against the person who has offended him."
Idem, p. 203, "July 21, 1811: Yesterday five Sicaunies came here from McLeod's Lake, who form a small war party. Their leader or war chief desired me to allow them to go where they might think proper; upon which I inquired of them (p. 204) whither they wished to direct their course, and what their business was. The speaker replied that when they left their lands their intention was to go and try to take a scalp or two from the Indians of Frazer's Lake, 'who,' he added, 'have done us no injury. But we have lost a relation, and we must try and revenge his death on some one.'
"This is a custom common to a greater or less extent to all the tribes. I asked him whether he supposed that we supplied them with guns and ammunition to enable them to destroy their fellow creatures, or to kill the beaver, etc. I added, that should they in the fall bring in a hundred scalps, they could not with them all procure a pint of rum or a pipe full of tobacco; but if they would bring beaver skins they would be able to purchase the articles which they would need.
"After reflecting for some time on what I had said, the speaker informed me that they would in compliance with my advice return and hunt the beaver, and proceeded immediately to their own lands." Idem, p. 229, "June 12, 1813: A Sicauny has just arrived, who states that little this side of McLeod's Lake, where he was encamped with his family, an Indian of the same tribe rushed out of the wood and fired upon them and killed his wife.
"Her corpse he immediately burned, upon the spot; and then, with his son and two daughters, he proceeded directly to this place. All the savages who have had a near relation killed are never quiet until they have revenged the death either by killing the murderer or some person nearly related to him. This spirit of revenge has occasioned the death of the old woman above mentioned, and she, undoubtedly, deserved to die; for the last summer she persuaded
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her husband to go and kill the cousin of the murderer, and that merely because her own son had been drowned. The custom which extensively prevails among the Indians of revenging the natural death of a relative by the commission of murder seems to arise from a superstitious notion entertained by them that death, even when it takes place in this manner, has in some mysterious way been occasioned by a fellow creature."
There is no more forcible illustration of the extent to which the belief in not only the rightfulness but the solemn duty of avenging the death of one's relations is "bred-in-the-bone" of an Indian, and of the tenacity with which that belief asserts itself, even after years of profession of Christianity and general conformity to the habits and dress and customs of the whites, than is to be found in the "History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier," by the late Judge Charles E. Flandrau, of St. Paul, Minn., who was a resident of Minnesota for nearly a half century, 1854-1903), and most of that time prominently identified with its affairs. He was Indian agent for the Sioux at the Yellow Medicine Agency in 1857, and (p. 34) describing the labors of various missionaries to the Indians, he says: "Mr. Riggs and Dr. Williamson also established a mission at the Yellow Medicine Agency of the Sioux, in the year 1852, which was about the best equipped of any of them. It consisted of a good house for the missionaries, a large boarding and school house for Indian pupils, a neat little church, with a steeple and a bell, and all the other buildings necessary to a complete mission outfit.
"These good men adopted a new scheme of education and civilization, which promised to be very successful. They organized a government among the Indians, which they called the Hazelwood Republic. To become a member of this civic body it was necessary that the applicant should cut off his long hair and put on white men's clothes, and it was also expected that he should become a member of the church. The republic had a written constitution, a president and other officers. It was in 1856 when I first became acquainted with this institution, and I afterwards used its members to great advantage, in the rescue of captive women and the punishment of one of the leaders of the Spirit Lake massacre, which occurred in the northwestern portion of Iowa in the year 1857, the particulars of which I will relate hereafter. The name of the president was Paul Ma-za-cu-ta-ma-ni, or 'The man who shoots metal as he walks,' and one of its prominent members was John Otherday, called in Sioux An-pay-tu-tok-a-cha, both of whom were the best friends the whites had in the hour of their great danger in the outbreak of 1862. It was these two men who informed the missionaries and other whites at the Yellow Medicine Agency of the
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impending massacre, and assisted sixty-two of them to escape before the fatal blow was struck.
"What I have said proved that much good attended the work of the missionaries in the way of civilizing some of the Indians, but it has always been open to question in my mind if any Sioux Indian ever fully comprehended the basic doctrines of Christianity. I will give an example which had great weight in forming my judgment. There was among the pillars of the mission church at the Yellow Medicine Agency (or, as it was called in Sioux, Pajutazee,) an Indian named Ana-wang-mani, to which the missionaries had prefixed the name of Simon. He was an exceptionally good man, and prominent in all church matters. He prayed and exhorted, and was looked upon by all interested as a fulfillment of the success of both the church and the republic. Imagine the consternation of the worthy missionaries when one day he announced that a man who had killed his cousin some eight years ago had returned from the Missouri and was then in a neighboring camp, and that it was his duty to kill him to avenge his cousin. The missionaries argued with him, quoted the Bible to him, prayed with him--in fact, exhausted every possible means to prevent him carrying out his purpose; but all to no effect. He would admit all they said, assured them that he believed everything they contended for, but he would always end with the assertion that 'He killed my cousin, and I must kill him.' This savage instinct was too deeply imbedded in his nature to be overcome by any teaching of the white man, and the result was that he got a double-barreled shotgun and carried out his purpose, the consequence of which was to nearly destroy the church and the republic. He was, however, true to the whites all through the outbreak of 1862.
"When the Indians rebelled the entire mission outfit at Pajutazee was destroyed, which practically put an end to missionary effort in Minnesota, hut did not in the least lessen the ardor of the missionaries. I remember meeting Dr. Williamson soon after the Sioux were driven out of the State, and supposing, of course, that he had given up all hope of Christianizing them, I asked him where he would settle, and what he would do. He did not hesitate a moment, and said that he would hunt up the remnant of his people and attend to their spiritual wants."
(3) That Tom Hill's words and acts were among the chief causes of the decadence of the Mission is evident from the extracts hereinbefore quoted from Spalding's and Whitman's letters; and from a "Copy of a Document" it is not only certain that Whitman regarded him as a great inciter of all that was bad among the Nez Perces and the neighboring tribes, especially the Cayuses and Walla Wallas, but also that he knew of this as early as 1840, and that
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Tom Hill was constantly striving to stir up the Indians against all the whites, and especially against the missionaries. Spalding, in the seventh of his articles on the "History of Indian Affairs Among the Nez Perces," says that "Tipya-lahna-Kaaripa (Eagle of the Light) has been of that belief" (i. e., a sun worshiper), "since 1838, when a Delaware Indian arrived among them and told them they had better kill Dr. Whitman and myself, as Americans would follow in our track and they would lose their country" (Cf. Pacific of San Francisco, July 6, 1865).
The advocates of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story have all carefully refrained from giving any account of Tom Hill, as he was neither a Catholic nor a Hudson's Bay Co.'s employe, but an Indian educated at, and, it is claimed, graduated from that exceedingly orthodox Protestant institution Dartmouth College, and I suppose there was in the years when Tom Hill was there no Catholic church within 100 miles of Dartmouth. His career vividly realizes the story in the llth Chapter of Luke's gospel of the man out of whom an unclean spirit went, and returning, and finding his former abode swept and garnished, forthwith took unto himself seven other devils each worse than himself and entered into the man, and "the last state of that man was worse than the first." The unclean spirit of barbarism had been temporarily cast out of Tom Hill, but when through Dartmouth, instead of settling among and conforming to the ways of civilized men, he chose to return to the blanket, the breech-clout, the war paint and the medicine dance, and became the bitter enemy of the white man's religion and everything else relating to the whites.
As an Indian, who could tell them of what had happened not only to his own tribe, but to all the tribes far towards the rising sun, and who, knowing the white man's religion despised it, and possessing the knowledge in the white man's books scorned it, and chose to live and die an Indian among Indians, Tom Hill could get much closer to the heart of the Indians than any white missionary ever could do, and influence them vastly more to discard all the white man's words and works and cling to their ancient ways and superstitions; and it is doubtful if any other one influence was as potent as Tom Hill in promoting the decadence of the Spalding-Whitman-Eells Mission, and so bringing on the Whitman massacre.
(4) That the Indians were insistent from very early in the history of the Mission in claiming pay for their lands and everything grown thereon, and angered at their failure to get any pay from any of the American Board Missions, is stated over and over again in the letters published hereinbefore in Part II., Chapter VI., on "The Decadence of the Mission," and in other correspondence not therein quoted.
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For instance, as early as October 6, 1841, Mrs. Whitman, in a letter to her parents (published in Transactions Oregon Pioneer Association for 1891), wrote: "From the commencement of this station until the present time it has constantly been a point with some one or more of them to be urging for property to be given them to keep them in subjection to order. First it was in the person of Um-tip-pi, now dead, and now in his two brothers, Wap-tash-tok-mahl and Li-hich-Kais-Kais" (Cf. Tr., p. 149).
If it is claimed that this anger at not obtaining pay for the use of their land, etc., furnished an insufficient motive for so cruel a deed as the Whitman massacre, it would seem to be a sufficient reply to point to the wholly indisputable fact that even among white people supposed to be civilized and animated by humane impulses, a very large proportion of all the murders that are committed are done in the attempt to get property, and that all barbarians hold human life cheap, and none cheaper than the American Indian.
(5) That the Kayuse and Walla Walla Indians were angered at the ever-increasing throng of Americans, and feared they would soon take their lands away from them, is also so often affirmed in the letters quoted in the chapter on "The Decadence of the Mission" that there seems no necessity of adding much to that evidence, and I will only quote the following. In a letter to his wife's parents, dated May 16, 1844 (published in Transactions Oregon Pioneer Association, 1893, pp. 64-5), Dr. Whitman wrote: "The Indians are anxious about the consequences of settlers among them, but I hope there will be no acts of violence on either hand."
(6) That the Indians thought the missionaries were growing rich is evident from various letters quoted in the chapter on "The Decadence of the Mission," to which may be added the following extract from a letter of Mrs. Whitman to her parents, dated October 6, 1841, and published in Transactions Oregon Pioneer Association, 1891, pp. 145-153:
(P. 149) "It is difficult for them" (i. e., the Indians) "to feel but that we are rich and getting rich by the houses we dwell in, and the clothes we wear and hang out to dry after washing from week to week, and the grain we consume in our families."
(7) That the Indians believed that Whitman was poisoning them is abundantly substantiated by evidence from various sources, and Whitman's letter of May 20, 1845, quoted in the chapter on "The Decadence of the Mission," shows that as early as that time, in a meeting of the chiefs, one of the principal chiefs said to Whitman: "Can you deny that you have a medicine that is a poison, which you are capable of using to kill people?" Of course no white man ever believed that Whitman was capable of even thinking of
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poisoning the Indians, but the question is not what civilized people thought, but what did these savages think?
That Whitman and his associates used strychnine in a very much less prudent manner than it ever ought to be used among such a superstitious and ignorant people is established beyond question by the following contemporaneous evidence:
Rev. E. Walker's Diary, February 12, 1841: "Went in the evening and put out some poison." February 13: "The wolves paid my poison a visit last night, but did not eat it." . . . "The old chief came up." ... "I gave him some poison to put out to the wolves, and be let his dogs get it. One of them is dead and the other is very near it, the last I heard."
H. H. Spalding's Diary, January 5, 1841: "Found a wolf dead from poison this morning."
August 18, 1841. "Experience a most severe affliction today in the loss of the large, white and spotted cows, both American." . . . "The cows evidently were poisoned. In one we found a piece of meat I had given to an Indian containing nux vomica to kill a dog. In the other we could find nothing, but both died of the same cause. I would hope it was put out for the dogs, and being salt the cows ate it, and was not given to them by design."
The appendix to Palmer's "Journal of Travels," pp. 165-177, is a letter from Rev. H. H. Spalding to Palmer, dated Nez Perces Mission, Clear Water River, Oregon Territory, April 7, 1846, describing the country, etc., and stating on what terms Spalding and Whitman would supply flour, etc., to the immigrants from the States to Oregon.
This letter was edited by Whitman, who put four brief notes to it, each signed "M. W."
Describing the grazing capabilities of the country, Spalding wrote: "In this country a single shepherd with his horse and dogs can protect and look after five thousand sheep."
("Note.--At present it will require one man to one thousand in the winter to protect from wolves. But strychnine is a sure poison with which to destroy them--M. W.")
(8) When we remember that the general belief among Indians was that all deadly diseases are caused by the malice of some "medicine man," or sorcerer, and that Whitman had from the very beginning of his residence among them, according to his own letters, the reputation of a greater and more powerful sorcerer than any of their own medicine men, it is evident when an epidemic of measles, accompanied with dysentery, broke out and raged among them with such fury as to sweep off nearly one-half their number (Cf. H. H. Bancroft's "Oregon," V. II., p. 653), they would be wild for revenge.
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Spalding's own account of the ravages of the disease in the Oregon American and Evangelical Unionist for July 19, 1848, is as follows: "It was most distressing to go into a lodge of some ten fires and count twenty or twenty-five, some in the midst of measles, others in the last stages of dysentery, in the midst of every kind of filth, of itself sufficient to cause sickness, with no suitable means to alleviate their inconceivable sufferings, with perhaps one well person to look after the wants of two sick ones."
(9) We have already seen in Spalding's letters of February 3, 1847, and April 2,1847, in the chapter on "The Decadence of the Mission," how severe the winter of 1846-7 was, but all the advocates of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story have carefully refrained from giving the public any information about it.
Whitman wrote thus about it to D. Greene, Secretary, in a letter dated April 1,1847: "The winter has been one of unusual severity throughout the whole country. Many cattle have died in all parts, particularly in the lower country. At our station we have had a heavy loss in sheep, calves and some cattle (old cows), colts and horses. Cattle that were in good condition at the beginning of the winter have done well. I think the loss of cattle and horses must have been entire with Mr. Walker and Eells beyond what they were able to feed."
Rev. C. Eells wrote to D. Greene, Secretary, April 6, 1847, as follows: . . . "The past winter has been the most severe ever known in this immediate vicinity. The oldest persons say they never saw so much snow before.
"It began to fall the first part of November and with little thaw continued to increase till March, when it lay to nearly the depth of four feet. The cold was several times very severe. As might be expected the destruction of horses and cattle has been great.
"The Hudson's Bay Co.'s band of horses at Fort Colvile numbered 270. Three only were alive last week. Another band of more than 80 at the same place are all gone. The same may be said with scarcely an exception of the Indian horses for a long distance in every direction from the Fort. The Indians near us have saved only four or five in 100. In the autumn our chief had 30 head of cattle. Only one bullock is now remaining. The Mission property at this station has sustained very considerable loss, particularly in horned cattle. We fear there will be a lack of milk for family consumption. But for a large quantity of grain given out economically and with great labor we should most likely not have a horse or mule for use at the present time." (p. 4) "I am looking with some anxiety to see what will be the effect of the Providence which has deprived our people of so many useful animals, and in
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some cases objects of strong attachment. If I do not misjudge, a stoical indifference is observable."
(10) The chief cause of the Whitman massacre, beyond doubt, was Dr. Whitman's unwisdom in continuing to practice medicine among the Indians precisely as if they were a civilized people, although he perfectly well knew not only that the Indians were in the habit of killing their own "medicine men" when they failed to cure their patients, but also that they had repeatedly threatened from 1837 on to kill him if his Indian patients died, and also well knew that not even the awe in which they stood of the Hudson's Bay Co. had been sufficient to prevent them from killing two officers of that Company-between 1836 and 1845, because they deemed them responsible for the deaths of Indians whom they had doctored, and although he well knew--and stated in a letter more than three and a half years before the massacre--that this superstition (that the medicine man had the power of life or death) had descended among them from generation to generation and was so ingrained in their natures that they considered the killing of the doctor who failed to cure his patient "as an act of justice in the execution of a wilful murderer," and although he also well knew that even before his arrival his fame as a doctor had been spread abroad by the trappers, so that he had the reputation of a more powerful sorcerer than any of their own "medicine men."
All the irresistible evidence that both Dr. and Mrs. Whitman knew these facts has been carefully suppressed in the discussion of the causes of the Whitman massacre by every advocate of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story--Gray in his "History of Oregon" and numerous newspaper articles, Spalding in his pamphlet, Barrows, Graighead. M. Eells in his "Indian Missions," Nixon, Coffin--are all careful not to so much as allude to the following contemporaneous evidence; while Mowry with equal care avoids any reference to the existence of any of it in the body of his "Marcus Whitman and the Early Days of Oregon," though devoting a whole chapter to "The True Causes of the Whitman Massacre," but in his appendix, where few will read and fewer still note its significance in connection with the Whitman massacre, he prints Whitman's letter of April 7, 1843, and most of his letter of April 8, 1844, both directed to D. Greene, Secretary.
Rev. Samuel Parker, with whom Whitman went on an exploring tour to Oregon in 1835, in his "Journal of an Exploring Tour Beyond the Rocky Mountains," Ithaca, N. Y., 1838, pp. 244-5, in an account of the medicine men, says: "The medicine man stands responsible for the life of his patient, and if "the patient dies not unfrequently his own life is taken by some of the relatives of the deceased."
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Mrs. Whitman wrote a letter to her parents, brothers and sisters, beginning it March 30, 1837, and finishing May 3, 1837, which was published in Transactions Oregon Pioneer Association for 1891, pp. 90-96, from which the following are extracts:
(P. 93) "The Indians here had just begun to break ground planting, when many of them were taken sick with an inflammation of the lungs. This was severe upon them and threw them in great consternation. The old chief Umtippe's wife was quite sick and came near dying. For a season they were satisfied with my husband's attention, and were doing well; but when they would overeat themselves, or go into a relapse from unnecessary exposure, then they must have their te-wat doctors; say that the medicine was bad, and all was bad. Their te-wat is the same species of juggling as practiced by the Pawnees, which Mr. Dunbar describes-- playing the fool over them, and giving no medicine. They employed them over and over again, but they remained the same. Soon they became weary of these, and must have a more noted one. Umtippe got in a rage about his wife, and told my husband, while she was under his care, that if his wife died that night he should kill him. The contest has been sharp between him and the Indians, and husband was nearly sick with the excitement and care of them. The chief sent for the great Walla Walla te-wat for his wife at last, who came, and after going through several incantations and receiving a horse and a blanket or two, pronounced her well; but the next day she was the same again. Now his rage was against the te-wat, said he was bad and ought to be killed. When the te-wats were called, husband had nothing more to do with them. Their sickness commenced about the first of April, and, through the great mercy of God to us, none of them died to whom medicine was administered. Near the last of April the old chief was taken sick, and notwithstanding all his villainy he came to my husband to be doctored. He was very sick, and we thought he would die; but the medicine given him soon relieved him. Last Saturday the war chief died at Walla Walla. He was a Cayuse and a relative of Umtippe; was sick but six days; employed the same Walla Walla te-wat Umtippe sent for, but he died in his hands. The same day Ye-he-kis-kis, a younger brother of Umtippe, went to Walla Walla; arrived about twilight and shot the te-wat dead. Thus they were avenged. Both Umtippe and his brother went from our house on the morning of the same day.
(P. 95) "Monday of this week Stickas, an excellent Indian, came back very sick, and remains here yet. He has been taking medicine and it appears to have relieved him, in a measure; but, because he is not all about immediately, he has become exceedingly uneasy and restless and talks about the te-wats. He, with many
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other sensible ones in the tribe, and men of influence, too, are convinced that it is a deception and not of God, yet no doubt feel a great struggle in their minds to entirely renounce that in which they have so long had implicit confidence. So far they remain firm, and we hope soon to see its entire overthrow.
It has been and still is the case with them when one dies in your care they will hold you responsible for his life, and you are in great danger of being killed. The only way of pacifying them is to pay them well for the good you have endeavored to do them. Brethren Lees have found it so, and others have in this country who have wished to do them good."
October 9, 1839, Mrs. Whitman wrote a letter to her mother (which was published in Transactions Oregon Pioneer Association, 1891, pp. 124-130), in which, after describing the sudden death of two Indian boys, she goes on (p. 128) as follows: "The suddenness of the death of the boy last taken was a great wonder to them-- said perhaps it was the medicine I gave them (which was nothing but a small dose of salts). I had not dared to give them the least thing for fear of the consequences, knowing that they were always ready to take the advantage of everything."
February 2, 1842, Mrs. Whitman began a letter to her sister Jane, which continued under various dates till May 17. It was published in Transactions Oregon Pioneer Association, 1891, pp. 140-145. Under date of February 4 she wrote (p. 141) as follows,: "The Indians are just now returning from their wintering quarters, and some of the Nez Perces have been serving the devil faithfully, especially those who spent their winter on the Columbia river below, in the region of the Des Chutes and Dalles. A young Nez Perces that had been to the Red River school died last summer. A brother of his and three other principal men managed to frighten the river Indians, as being the cause of his death, and compelled them to give many horses and much property as a compensation, to keep them from other acts of violence upon them. Husband, learning of their base conduct, took advantage of their passing on their way to Mr. S.'s station, to reprove them for what they had done. These men are all firm believers in the te-wats, or medicine men. This is a crying sin among them. They believe that the tewat can kill or make alive at his pleasure."
A short letter from Mrs. Whitman addressed "My dear Parents," undated, but plainly written in the spring of 1845, was published in Transactions Oregon Pioneer Association, 1893, pp. 70-71, and in it (p. 71) she wrote as follows: "We have had some serious trials this spring with the Indians. Two important Indians have died and they have ventured to say and intimate that the doctor has killed them by his magical power, in the same way they accuse
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their own sorcerers and kill them for it. Also an important young man has been killed in California by Americans; he was the son of the Walla Walla chief, and went there to get cattle with a few others. This has produced much excitement also."
July 6, 1840, Dr. Whitman wrote to D. Greene a letter, from which I think nothing has yet been published, in which he wrote: "They have been unusually afflicted with sickness for some months past. During the winter and spring there were ten deaths near the station and since they left I have heard of five more. They have shown how deeply they are attached to their superstitions of a mysterious charm or juggling by untiring application to and abundant bestowment of property for such service. Of late they show a wish to receive medicine and abandon the te-wat. But this cannot be relied on any longer than they are in health, for fear revives all their former prejudices."
Though, of course, Whitman never read the account of the murder, in February, 1841, of Mr. Black, the Hudson's Bay Co. chief trader in charge of the Thompson River District, as quoted below from Vol. I. of Sir George Simpson's "Narrative of a Journey Around the World in the Years 1841-1842," since that book was not published till 1847, it is certain that he and all his associates in the Mission knew about the matter soon after its occurrence, as Whitman thus alluded to it in his letter of November 18, 1841, giving an account of the troubles of Mr. Gray and himself with the Cayuses in September and October, 1841, as hereinbefore stated in the chapter on "The Decadence of the Mission," which letter Mrs. Whitman copied in hers of October 18, 1841, which was published in Transactions Oregon Pioneer Association, 1891 (pp. 154-62).
"Mr. McKinlay espoused our cause warmly and sent word that he felt the insult offered to us as offered to himself." . . . "He told them that when Gov. Simpson of the Hudson's Bay Co. heard of the death of Chief Factor Black, who was killed at Thompson River Fort last winter in his own house by an Indian, he felt that it was not to have his people killed that he sent and had forts built and brought the Indians goods" (Cf. Transactions Oregon Pioneer Association, p. 158). Rev. H. H. Spalding's Journal, under date of March 8, 1841, says: "I have heard lately that Mr. Black, Chief Factor of the Hudson's Bay Co., was murdered by Indians in his own fort," and Rev. E. Walker's journal, under date of Friday, February 19, 1841, says: "Just at night a messenger from Colvile came up, bringing us the intelligence that Mr. Black was killed at Thompson's River by an Indian." . . . "I have had many very serious thoughts in regard to the death of Mr. Black, as respects the conduct of the Indians. It may be a starting point, and when it will end no one can tell. We may be called to share the same
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fate." The only detailed account of the murder of Mr. Black, so far as I know, is that by Simpson. as follows: "At Okanagan we were concerned to learn that the Indians of the interior as far back as New Caledonia, principally the Schouswaps, were in a state of considerable excitement.
"The case was as follows: In the month of February last (i. e., February, 1841), a chief of the name of Koothlepat visited Mr. Black, the gentleman in charge of Thompson's River, at his post of Kamloops, when a trivial dispute took place between them. Immediately on returning to his camp, at a place called the Pavilion, Koothlepat sickened and died, enjoining his people with his last breath to keep on good terms with the whites.
"Whether or not the chief's dying injunction was interpreted into an insinuation that he had perished in consequence of having quarreled with his white brother, the Indians came to the conclusion that Koothlepat's death had been caused by Mr. Black's magic or medicine.
"In pursuance of this idea the widow of the deceased worked upon the feelings of her nephew, till he undertook to revenge her husband's untimely fate.
"The avenger of blood forthwith set out for Kamloops; and, when he arrived, both cold and hungry, he was by the orders of his destined victim placed before a good fire and supplied with food. (P. 157) During the whole day Mr. Black, who was a hard student, remained writing in his own apartment; but, having gone out towards evening, he was returning through the room where his guest was sitting, and had just reached the door of his chamber when he fell down dead with the contents of the savage's gun in his back. In the appalling confusion that ensued the murderer was allowed to escape from the fort, betaking himself immediately to the mountains. He was chased from place to place like a wild beast, being obliged to abandon first his horses and lastly his wife and family; but it was not till after eight months of vigilant pursuit that he was finally hunted down on the banks of Frazer's river by some of his own people. As a proof of his comparative estimate of civilization and barbarism, tMs miserable being, with the blood of Mr. Black on his conscience, earnestly begged to be delivered up to the whites; and, on being refused this last boon, he leaped into the stream, swimming away for his life, till he was dispatched just like a sea otter, by arrow after arrow.
"It was in consequence of this event that the excitement of which we heard at Okanagan had gained a footing among the friends of Koothlepat and his nephew, who had now to place two deaths at the white man's door."
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When in Boston, Whitman wrote a paper on Indians West of the Rocky Mountains, which, though not signed by him, was filed as No. 98 among his letters, in Vol. 138, American Board MSB., and endorsed by the secretary of the Board as follows: "Dr. M. Whitman, received April 7, Boston, April 7, 1843." In it is the following: "The superstition of the supernatural agencies of magic, charm and sorcery are universal and by no means easily eradicated. Their legend is that the present race of beasts, birds, reptiles and fish were once a race of men, who inhabited the globe before the present race. That they were doomed to their present state from that of men, but that still their language is retained, and these beasts, birds, reptiles and fish have the power to convey this language to the people into whom they transfix themselves, as they think them able to do. For the very comfort and purpose of obtaining this transfixture boys were required to leave the lodge and repair to the mountains alone, and there to stay for several days without food, in order to be addressed in this manner by some of these supernatural agencies, and receive the transfixing of some one or more beast, bird, reptile or fish into his body. Some returned without any assurance of the kind. Others believe themselves to be addressed and are very free to tell what was said to them, and what beast or bird addressed them, while others profess great secrecy and claim great reverence on account of their magic possession. At these times they profess to be told what is to be their future character, and in what way to secure honor, wealth and long life; how they will be invulnerable, and if wounded, by what means they may recover themselves. This generally consists in directions how to cast off the exhausted blood and then to sit in a stream of water and sing as he so teaches him to do, and he will be cured. In this way they say one person becomes possessed of power to strike or shoot another with an invisible influence or arrow as it may be, so that disease and death will follow. This is the foundation of the system of sorcery as seen in the so-called medicine men, but truly conjurers. Most of their efforts to care for the sick consist in obtaining one medicine man to counteract another, who is supposed to have caused the sickness. This is attempted by calling on one of these sorcerers, who calls to his aid a number of persons to sing and beat upon sticks with a horrible noise, while he goes through with singing, talking, contorting himself and using incoherent expressions, supposed to be repeating what he knows of the language of the former race of men as delivered him by the beast, bird, reptile or fish whose "transfix," which he has in his body, is helping him to conjure. After a sufficient display of this kind and full lecture to his coadjutors about the disease, its cause and cure, he proceeds to extract the evil by
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placing his hands on the diseased or painful spot and extracting, as it were by magic power, and then if successful he casts himself upon the floor with his hands in water, as though what he had extracted burnt bis hands. He then shows what he has drawn out, and afterwards drives it off into the broad space and prognosticates a cure. But when he sees a prospect of death, he often points out some one whom he says is causing the sickness and declares the other to be possessed of a more powerful agent than himself, so that he cannot overcome him. In the event of death in such a case as this, they watch the dying person to see if any expression is made by him to confirm and fix suspicion upon the person named, and all are careful to remember if any hard words had passed or any cause whatever confirms the suspicion. Very "often in cases of this kind nothing can save the conjurer, but one or more conspire to kill him. The number and horror of the deaths of this kind that have come under my observation and knowledge have been great. In the same way individuals arrogate to themselves power over the winds, the clouds and the rain, the snow and the seasons. In short, all and every desire or desirable object is attributed to and looked for from this source; some are losing their confidence in such power, while others are yet strong in the belief."
April 8, 1844, he began a long letter to D. Greene, Secretary, from which the following are extracts: "Last fall there was a difficulty between the Indians on the Chutes river and some of the Snakes. Some of the people from that quarter having gone to trade with the Snake Indians were killed. A party headed by Walaptulikt, a Hains, went to avenge it, and killed several of the Snakes, returned, and danced the triumph of victory over their scalps. Two murders have since occurred. The first was the murder of a sorceress by Makai, the father of a young man that had died suddenly from the superstition that he was killed by her sorcery. The second, which took place in the immediate vicinity of this station, was by a relative of the sorceress, partly from the excitement of her death and partly from a desire to possess himself of some cattle left by one of the Indians that was killed by the Snakes, as mentioned above. Neither of these have been punished by the chiefs, nor is there any prospect of its being done." . . . "13th. Since writing the above a most barbarous murder occurred on the night of the llth instant, a short distance from our door. The murdered was a sorcerer and became a prey to that superstition, being murdered by his intimate friends. A death having taken place in the family of a brother of the murderer, at a distance from this place, a messenger was sent to bring the news and orders for the younger brothers to kill the sorcerer, which was promptly obeyed the same night. It was perpetrated in a public
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gambling scene, and no one attempted to avert the blows, but all fled and left them to complete the work of death, which was done with a sword in the most shocking manner. The impress of this superstition is so strong that it seems impossible for us to make any impression on the native mind to disabuse them from the feeling that their friends are as literally killed by sorcery and with as much malice prepense as in any other case of actual murder. Hence the feeling of justice in killing them as condemned murderers; a practice which has descended from father to son."
A year later, April 8, 1845, he wrote another long letter to D. Greene, Secretary, in which after writing of the murder of Elijah Hedding, the son of the Walla Walla chief, as hereinbefore narrated, he continues: "A cause of much anxiety to me has been in connection with these things and the death of a young man by apoplexy. It is the custom of the Canadians, who are as superstitious as the Indians themselves, to awe them through their superstition of sorcery, by telling them that such and such white men are more largely endowed with supernatural power than even their own Tewats (sorcerers). I have been one, who, even before I was among them, from the time Mr. Parker was here, have been held forth to them as a sorcerer of great power.
"Much of this was well enough intended on account of my medical profession, but ill timed. I imagine partly to test the question and partly from superstition, they have been saying I caused the death of the young man (p. 7) who died of apoplexy, and such like things. An impression of this kind among them, if strengthened by such circumstances, and by the countenance of such men as the Canadians--and perhaps by priests--would make my stay among them useless and dangerous, and might induce me to leave at once. Some very trying remarks have been made also on the occasion of the death of the chief Zaptash-takmahlin. His son came to me as he was dying, and in a passion told me 'I had killed his father, and that it would not be a difficult matter for me to be killed.' You are aware already of their habit to kill their own medicine men, as they are commonly called, when an excuse offers by the death of some of their friends. Two of the gentlemen of the Honorable Hudson's Bay Co. have fallen in this way since we have been in this country."
One of these "gentlemen of the Hudson's Bay Co." was undoubtedly Chief Factor Black, but who the other was I do not know.
Surely no other evidence is needed to satisfy any candid reader as to the true causes of the Whitman massacre, and to convince him that the Hudson's Bay Co. and the Catholics were in no way responsible for it, and that Whitman had most ample warning of his danger years before the blow fell, and that but for that extreme
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obstinacy and unwillingness to follow good advice, which was so marked a feature of his character--an obstinacy which must be charged with a large share of the blame of keeping the senseless quarrel with the Spaldings alive for six years despite repeated reconciliations--it is altogether likely that he would have heeded the earnest counsel of his staunch friends McLoughlin, McKinlay and McKay in the years 1843-1846 and have left the Mission for a time, "till the hearts of the Indians should become good towards him," and so have averted the massacre and the resulting Cayuse War, the first of the long series of Indian wars from which various parts of the old Oregon Territory suffered for much of the thirty years following the deplorable--and all the more deplorable because wholly unnecessary--tragedy of Wailatpu.
AN EXAMINATION OF SOME OF THE "TESTIMONY" GIVEN IN SUPPORT OF THE WHITMAN LEGEND.
Unable to find any contemporaneous evidence that Whitman's ride had any other origin or purpose than an attempt to save the Mission from the destruction which must have befallen it in 1843 if that ride had not been made, the advocates of the Whitman Legend have striven to bolster up the alleged "recollections" of W. H. Gray, Rev. H. H. Spalding and Rev. C. Eells--never recorded in journal, letter or printed article till many years after the event-- by what they are pleased to call the "testimony of many witnesses," though no one of these "witnesses" has ever yet produced a single line of contemporaneous writing supporting their supposed recollections, nor, except in the case of Rev. Geo. H. Atkinson's two entirely variant and both totally false versions of it (for which Cf. pp. 49-56 ante), no one of these "many witnesses" has produced in support of his "recollections" so much as a single sentence written till some years after the publication of the Saving Oregon Story in 1864-5-6.
The legend is so taking, and recites what, if true, would have been such a very extraordinary feat of patriotic heroism that it is utterly incredible that a large number of fairly well educated people should have known of it from 1843 to 1864-5-6, and no one of them (except Rev. G. H. Atkinson) have made a memorandum of it in a note book, or a diary, or mentioned it in a letter, or sent an account of it to some newspaper or magazine for publication.
Undoubtedly most of these "witnesses" have been honest, but they have fallen into the very common error of confounding what they read and heard from 1865 to 1885, about Whitman's ride Saving Oregon, with what they vaguely remembered of earlier conversations.
Though it is a fundamental law of evidence that the infirmities of human memory are such that one can never arrive at the truth regarding any subject without subjecting those who appear as witnesses regarding it to cross-examination, the advocates of the Whitman Legend, as is always customary with myth lovers, have treated any statement made by a well-meaning person--old or young--as valid "testimony," without taking the least trouble to test its cor-
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rectness by any sort of cross-examination, either directly of the witness or by comparing the "testimony" given by the witness with contemporaneous documents, or with other statements relating to the subject made at other times by the same witness, or by others better informed or more likely to be correct.
Let us test the "statements" of several of the best known of these "many witnesses," in one or both of these ways.
The evidence hereinbefore quoted--much of the most important parts of it never before printed--puts it in the power of any readers to cross-examine for themselves the statements of W. H. Gray, and Revs. H. H. Spalding and Cushing Eells, by comparing their statements about the origin and purpose of Whitman's ride made from twenty-three to forty years after the event, with their own letters, diaries and records of the meetings of the Mission, and with the letters and diaries of Dr. and Mrs. Whitman, Mrs. H. H. Spalding, Mrs. C. Eells, and Rev. E. Walker and Mrs. Walker, all written between the summer of 1836 and the spring of 1843.
The only one of these parties ever subjected to a cross-examination before a judicial tribunal on this subject was W. H. Gray, in the case of the Hudson's Bay Co. vs. the United States, and we have quoted in full (pp. 80-3 ante) all of it that bears on the Whitman Legend and on Mr. Gray's qualifications for and methods in writing a "History of Oregon."
Certainly the bitterest enemy that Mr. Gray's quarrelsome disposition, and vindictive nature, and slanderous tongue ever made for him could not have wished that he should be put in a more humiliating position, or be more completely discredited than he was by that cross-examination.
The advocates of the Whitman Legend have claimed of late years that two books--Hines' "History of Oregon" and M. de Saint-Amant's "Voyages en California et Dans L'Oregon," contain passages which prove that the Saving Oregon purpose of that ride was well known in Oregon long before its publication by Spalding, and was chronicled in 1843 by Hines and in 1851-2 by Saint-Amant
In Book I., p. 333, the passage from Hines has been quoted with its context, and a letter from Mrs. Whitman, which show beyond any question that the few lines that the advocates of the Whitman Legend quote from p. 143 of Hines' "Oregon" do not furnish the least support to the claim that he had heard that Whitman's ride was to save Oregon.
Let us examine Saint-Amant's book:
Rev. Dr. J. R. Wilson, of Portland, Oregon, was the first person (so far as yet appears) to bring Saint-Amant's book into the discussion of the Whitman "Saving Oregon" theory of that winter's ride, in an oration at Walla Walla, November 30, 1897, as follows:
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"Nearly fifty years ago, when these graves were yet fresh, a representative of France visited this whole region, studied carefully the course of events here, and the men who had molded them, then returned and published to his countrymen that Whitman, the missionary, was largely instrumental in saving Oregon to the union." (De Saint-Amant, "Voyages en California," 1851-52, Paris, 1854, pp. 226-227).
Cf. Whitman College Quarterly, December, 1897, p. 46).
It will be noticed that he quotes nothing from the book except its title.
Saint-Amant was sent by the ministry of Foreign Affairs of the French Republic to California and Oregon, to examine those countries with the view to extending French commerce. Returning to Paris after eighteen months, his mission was repudiated by the officials of the empire (which had succeeded the republic), and so no official report was ever published of his observations, but instead thereof, in 1854, his 'Voyages en California," etc. (of which no English translation has ever been published as far as I can ascertain).
What he really wrote (on pp. 226-227) is as follows: "The Reverend Mr. Whitman, an American Baptist missionary, came and established himself with his family among the different tribes of Walla Walla almost in the midst of the wilderness. He gained some influence over the Cayuse, the Nez Perces, the Spokanes, etc. Having preceded the taking of possession of the country by his fellow citizens, he had made himself a very active agent of American interests, and had not a little contributed to pushing forward to annexation; but notwithstanding all his merit, he had failed to understand that his worth and his influence would not always resist the effects of the superstition of these savage races. He fell a victim to it, with his family. An epidemic unexpectedly developed, and as the missionary cumulated the art of healing the body with the pretension of saving souls, and that many cases of startling death impaired those sick and feeble minds (that which we have had the shame of also seeing in our civilized countries), doubts (p. 227) arose as to the uprightness of Dr. Whitman's intentions, still more than on the virtue of his science. Briefly, he was massacred, with his family, in November, 1847."
There is not in the whole book the least intimation that Saint-Amant had ever even heard of Whitman's ride, and so this which he does say about Whitman, and which is plainly based on the Indian stories to the effect that he wanted the country filled with emigrants (which was one of the excuses they offered for their lo»ss of confidence in and animosity towards him, resulting in the mas-
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sacre), furnishes no sort of support to a patriotic origin, purpose or result of Whitman's ride.
It must be remembered that there were no white settlers east of the Cascade Mountains when Saint-Amant was in that region. He went as far as a little beyond Fort Boise, and then returned the same route to Fort Vancouver, and thence to San Francisco.
But pray why do the advocates of the Whitman Legend, especially Rev. S. B. Penrose, President of Whitman College, and Rev. Myron Eells need to go "so far afield" as Paris to seek to find support for the "Saving Oregon" theory of Whitman's ride in the writings of a French Catholic traveler, who, as his book shows, had no sympathy with Protestant missions, and who could not have told by what society Whitman's mission was maintained, nor whether it was located in New York or Boston, or Philadelphia, or Podunk, or Oshkosh?
Why do they not refer us to some American publications of an earlier date than October and November, 1865, to support it?
Presumably because, according to their ridiculous theory of a "despised Oregon," and a nation deplorably ignorant about and utterly indifferent concerning it till Whitman illuminated the subject, there was nothing published in this country by anybody as well informed and in as good a position to know the truth as this Catholic French traveler, who evidently had never read a line of the contemporaneous correspondence of the Oregon Mission with the A. B. C. F. M., nor had any special acquaintance with the history of the diplomacy of the Oregon question, nor with the Congressional debates and other Governmental action thereon.
What were the facts as to American publications prior to 1864-1865, in which, if Whitman really "Saved Oregon" or any part of Oregon, we might naturally expect it to be mentioned?
(1) As to strictly Government papers, i. e., committee reports of the Senate or House of Representatives, reports of debates in Congress, and reports of Government exploring expeditions, there is not in all of the hundreds of pages of them between 1843 and 1870 a single sentence intimating that Whitman's ride had any public purpose or in any manner influenced in the least degree the policy of any department of our Government.
(2) As to quasi-Government papers, such as the diaries and unofficial correspondence of men then prominent in our National Government, like President Tyler, Secretary of State Daniel Webster and other Cabinet officers, John Quincy Adams, chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations of the House of Representatives, Thos. H. Benton, always a leader of the "friends of Oregon" in Congress, not a sentence has ever been produced from any of these sources or from the diaries or correspondence of any other
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Government official which even mentions the fact of Whitman's being in the States in the spring of 1843, much less of his then, or at any other time, exercising the least influence on any phase of the policy of the Government with relation to Oregon, while the perfunctory endorsement made on Whitman's letter to Jas. M. Porter, Secretary of War, and the neglect of even an attempt to embody any of the things therein recommended in a bill to be even considered by Congress, shows how little he impressed the only Cabinet officer with whom in any of his letters he ever claimed that he did have an interview when he was in Washington.
(3) Robert Greenhow, for many years before and after 1842-3 the translator and librarian of our State Department--the first edition of whose very valuable "History of Oregon and California" had been unanimously adopted by the Senate Select Committee on Oregon in February, 1840, as its report, and unanimously received and adopted as such by the Senate, and published as herein elsewhere stated--was at this precise time busily engaged in revising the history for the second edition, which was published in 1845.
Diligent, painstaking, industrious and closely connected with Tyler as he would naturally be, as a scholarly Virginian, and certain as he would have been as an indefatigable seeker for knowledge about Oregon to have known of Whitman, if he had interviewed the President or Secretary of State, he has not one word to say about any information derived from Whitman, or about any influence of Whitman on Governmental policy, or on the migration of 1843 (which he mentions on p. 391), and nowhere in the 492 pages of his book makes any other mention of Whitman than the following, in a foot note, on p. 360: "Upon the recommendation of Mr. Parker, Messrs. Spalding, Gray and Whitman were sent out by the Board of Missions in 1836."
(4) Rev. D. Lee was one of the founders of the Methodist Mission in Oregon, and so was there in 1834--six years before Rev. G. Hines, while Rev. J. H. Frost went out with Rev. G. Hines. They certainly knew as much about what took Whitman to the States as Hines did, for Mrs. Whitman had spent November and December, 1842, and January, February and March, 1843, at Waskopum, the Methodist Mission at The Dalles, then in charge of Rev. Daniel Lee, Rev. H. K. W. Perkins and Mr. H. B. Brewer (Cf. her letter, May 18, 1844, Transactions Oregon Pioneer Association, 1893, pp. 176-8, as follows: "I left the station soon after my husband's departure and spent the winter with Messrs. Lee, Perkins and Brewer's families of the Methodist Mission"), and August 11, 1843, she wrote to her parents from Fort George as follows: "I am now at the mouth of the Columbia river. I came down with Rev. Daniel Lee of Waskopum, where I spent last winter, and Mr. Leslie. He and
ACQUISITION OF OREGON 275
his family are expecting to leave in the ship that is now on its way down the river for the States." . . . "Mr. Frost and his family are leaving the missionary field by the same opportunity and going home" (Idem, pp. 156-7).
After Lee and Frost reached the States they published "Ten Years in Oregon," New York, 1844, and on page 213 they say: "In 1842 Dr. Whitman visited the United States to obtain further assistance in order to strengthen the efforts that had already been made." . . . "In 1843 Dr. Whitman returned again to Oregon and resumed his labors."
"Only this, and nothing more," is their version of Whitman's Ride.
(5) Rev. S. Parker went out with Whitman in 1835 to explore for the Mission, and spent the winter of '35-6 and the spring of '36 as the guest of the Hudson's Bay Co., exploring to determine the best site for a Mission, and then was given them free passage to the Sandwich Islands, whence he returned round Cape Horn, and published in 1838, in Ithaca, N. Y., his "Journal of an Exploring Tour Beyond the Rocky Mountains Under the Direction of the A. B. C. F. M.," which was a popular book, and the fourth edition of which, printed in 1844, has a preface which says: "Since the publication of the first edition the whole work has been attentively revised, corrected and enlarged," but it contains nowhere any mention of Whitman's ride--in a foot note or otherwise, though he certainly must have known about it.
(6) Dr. Elijah White, who led out the first large migration in 1842, and whose services in that matter, and whose interviews with President Tyler, Secretaries Webster, Upshur and Spencer, Senator Linn and various members of Congress in the winter of 1841-42 (which are perfectly well established by contemporaneous documents), have unquestionably been transferred by the advocates of this myth to Dr. Whitman, published after his return to the States a book which he called "Ten Years in Oregon: Travels and Adventures of Dr. E. White and Lady, West of the Rocky Mountains, Ithaca, N. Y., 1848," but in all its 399 pages he has nothing to say about Whitman's ride having "Saved Oregon," though had he known of any such claim he certainly would have stated it then, when the whole country was shocked by the news of the Whitman massacre, in November, 1847, which he mentions in a foot note on p. 176.
Dr. White, it must be remembered, had been a medical missionary attached to the Methodist Mission in the Willamette Valley from 1838 to 1840, and from 1842 to 1845 was Sub-Indian Agent for Oregon, the first (and till 1849 the only) United States official residing in the Oregon Territory.
As such Indian Agent it was he who took Hines, when they went
276 ACQUISITION OF OREGON
to quiet the Indians about Spalding's and Whitman's stations in the spring of 1843, and from The Dalles they took with them Rev. H. K. W. Perkins.
Mrs. Whitman had gone to Wailatpu to assist them in quieting the Indians, and between Revs. D. Lee and H. K. W. Perkins, with whom Mrs. Whitman had been visiting since the preceding November, and Mrs. Whitman herself, who helped them several days at Wailatpu, it is certain that if there had been any political significance attached to Whitman's trip it would have been communicated to the only United States Government official then in Oregon.
(7) Lansford W. Hastings was associated with White in leading out the 1842 migration, and in 1845 he published at Cincinnati, O., "Hasting's Emigrants' Guide to Oregon and California," but in it he has nothing whatever to say about Whitman's ride, or about his saving Oregon.
(8) Joel Palmer made the overland journey to Oregon in 1845, and returned to the States in 1846, and later returned to Oregon and became a prominent citizen and spent the rest of his life there.
In 1847 he published in Cincinnati his "Journal" of the trip to and from Oregon and a description of the Territory, and its appendix contains a long letter written by Rev. H. H. Spalding, under date of April 7, 1846, and revised by Whitman, who put four brief notes to it on different pages, signed "M. W.," but in all the 177 pages of the book there is no intimation that Whitman rode to the States to save Oregon, and this, it should be remembered, was published about a year after Palmer knew that the treaty had been made fixing the Oregon boundary, so that it is absurd to say that its publication at that time, had it been true, would have in any manner imperiled Whitman or been in any way otherwise than highly advantageous to him.
(9) The American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions (before its secretaries had unwisely decided to endorse the "Whitman Saved Oregon" legend, for the good and sufficient reason that that fiction had not yet taken shape, even in Spalding's crazy brain), issued in 1861 a "Memorial Volume" commemorative of their first half-century's existence.
In this, though they were by no means "backward in coming forward" to claim every good result that could by any possibility be attributed to their missions anywhere on earth, they had only this to say (on p. 379) of their Oregon Mission: "Rev. Samuel Parker's exploring tour beyond the Rocky Mountains, under the direction of the board, in 1835-36- and 37, brought to light no field for a great and successful mission, but it added much to the science of geography, and is remarkable as having made known a practicable route for a railroad from the Mississippi to the Pacific."
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But not only is there no hint in all its 464 pages that Whitman made his ride to save Oregon, or that the Oregon Mission of the American Board as a whole had anything whatever to do with Saving Oregon, but Whitman's name even is not once mentioned in the whole book, and the brief extract above given is all that is said in any way, shape or form concerning that mission.
(10) The New York Observer, the Great Presbyterian Organ, was a paper whose reception was gratefully acknowledged at various times by the Whitmans in their letters.
The A. B. C. F. M. was the joint Mission Board of the Congregational, Presbyterian and Dutch Reformed churches during all the time the Whitman Mission was in existence, and therefore one in which the Observer would have taken pride if its record had been worthy of special commendation, but in its nearly 1,200 issues between the time Whitman was in New York, March 30, 1843, and October 19, 1865, no one has yet found a single sentence attributing any patriotic origin, purpose or result of Whitman's ride.
(11) During all the years from the time when the Oregon Mission was established down to the time when (in an evil hour) the officers of the American Board decided (in its December, 1866, number), to publish and endorse Rev. C. Eells' ingenious but totally fictitious version of the origin, purpose and results of that ride, the Missionary Herald was published monthly as the official organ of the A. B. C. F. M., but in all the 284 numbers between April, 1843, and December, 1866, there is not a single sentence that even hints at any public purpose of Whitman in making that ride, or any political or "Saving Oregon" design in or result from it.
Twice, however, in that time, to-wit: In the September, 1843, and the July, 1848, issues, the Missionary Herald distinctly stated that Whitman's ride was undertaken on the business of the mission (Cf. the files of the Missionary Herald and of the Annual Reports of the American Board for 1842 and 1843 and 1848), which agrees exactly with the cause of the ride as stated by Rev. G. Eells and Rev. E. Walker in their letters of October 3, 1842, and Mrs. Whitman in her two letters of September 29 and 30, 1842, and her letters of March 11, April 14 and May 18, 1843.
Neither President Penrose nor any other advocate of the Whitman Saved Oregon fiction has ever quoted these accounts from the Missionary Herald, nor these letters of Rev. C. Eells, Rev. E. Walker and Mrs. Whitman.
(12) The Recorder from 1816 to 1867 was a weekly Congregational organ in Boston, and from 1849 on the Congregationalist was a second such weekly organ, till, in 1867, it absorbed the Recorder.
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While Whitman was in Boston, March 30 to April 8, 1843, the Recorder had not a word to say about his being there, but in a report of a monthly missionary meeting four weeks after he left, to-wit: May 4, 1843, the Recorder printed the following most frigidly perfunctory mention of him, but without one word of commendation or of information as to why he had been in Boston, or concerning the bravery of his ride.
"The secretary of the Missionary Society stated that Dr. Whitman of the Oregon Mission was lately in Boston, and had again left to return to his field of labor by an overland route of four thousand miles."
Between May 4, 1843, and October, 1866, when the Congregationalist first endorsed the Whitman Saved Oregon story, these two weekly Congregational organs, published in closest harmony with the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, issued more than two thousand numbers, in no one of which was there one sentence which intimated that Marcus Whitman had saved Oregon, or had made his winter's ride for anything else than missionary business.
Any comment on this plain statement of facts is certainly needless, and it is very evident why President Penrose and Rev. M. Eells were obliged to "go so far away" as Paris in the vain endeavor to find in a book never thought worth translating into English, something in print prior to 1864-1865, which would seem to give some little support to the Whitman Saved Oregon fiction.
Let us turn now to some of the "testimony" put forth after the legend had been fully developed and widely published.
Two persons out of the 875 in the migration of 1843 signed statements that their families were influenced to start for Oregon by a pamphlet which Whitman published, viz.: John Zachary in 1868 and Mrs. C. B. Gary in 1883.
Zachary was a boy of 17 in 1843, and his letter, dated February 7, 1868, was first published on p. 26 of Spalding's pamphlet. (Sen. Ex. Doc. No. 37, 41st Cong., 3d Sess.)
When we remember that, as stated on pp. 171-2 ante, Spalding, on p. 13 of that same pamphlet, inserted two barefaced fabrications--one shamefully slanderous--in a quotation from a report of Indian Agent White to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs (to which I first called public attention in February, 1898, in my address before the Chicago Historical Society), and that on pp. 20-23 of that same pamphlet he gave his purely fictitious account of the origin, purpose and result of Whitman's ride, containing more than twenty statements, each and all of which he must have known to be absolutely false--if a lunatic can know anything about the distinction between truth and falsehood--and that on
ACQUISITION OF OREGON 279
p. 42 of that same pamphlet he stated that the victims of the Whitman massacre numbered 20, and included his wife, though he well knew, and so stated in at least three letters in January, 1848, that the total number who were killed in that massacre (which began Noevmber 29 and ended December 8, 1847,) was fourteen, and though Mrs. Spalding was 125 miles east of the scene of that massacre, and was not even wounded in it, and although she died peacefully in her bed on January 7, 1851, in the Willamette Valley, about 400 miles west of the scene of the massacre, it is evident that any statement in any document prepared or published by him in support of any phase of the Whitman legend is utterly unworthy of credence, unless well supported by trustworthy evidence from some other source.
Zachary's letter in Spalding's pamphlet reads as follows:
"Brownsville, February 7, 1868.
"Dear Sir: In answer to your inquiries, I would say that my father and his family emigrated to Oregon in 1843, from the State of Texas. I was then 17 years old. The occasion of my father starting that season for this country, as also several of our neighbors, was a publication by Dr. Whitman, or from his representations, concerning Oregon, and the route from the States to Oregon. In the pamphlet the doctor described Oregon, the soil, climate and its desirableness for American colonies, and said that (he had crossed the Rocky Mountains that winter principally to take back that season a train of wagons to Oregon). We had been told that wagons could not be taken beyond Fort Hall. But in this pamphlet the doctor assured his countrymen that wagons could be taken through from Fort Hall to the Columbia River, and to The Dalles, and from thence by boats to the Willamette; that (himself and mission party had taken their families, cattle and wagons through to the Columbia six years before) it was this assurance of the missionary that induced my father and several of his neighbors to sell out and start at once for this country.
"The doctor was of great service to the emigrants as physician, and in looking out fords in the Platte and passes in the mountains, (At Fort Hall the officers of the Hudson's Bay Company told ns we could never get our wagons and families through to Oregon; we must go to California.) (The Hudson's Bay Company would not allow Americans to settle in Oregon.) Dr. Whitman told us if we would trust him (he would see that we reached The Dalles by the 20th of September. We did trust him, and most faithfully did he make his word good) and in many ways did he render most invaluable service to the emigration. Agreeable to instructions which the doctor had left with his Indians the year before, Stickus,
280 ACQUISITION OF OREGON
a Cayuse chief, and his young men met the doctor between the Bear River and Fort Hall, and staid with us and were of great service in looking out the route through the Blue Mountains, every foot of which ground these Indians were acquainted with. Stickus would ride down two or three horses in a day looking out the best passes. (These were the first wagons and teams to pass through these mountains.) (Dr. Whitman furnished us with an Indian guide from his mission station to The Dalles without charge.) He advised us all to go on to the Willauiette. (He furnished us with beef and flour at Willamette prices.)
(Signed) "JOHN ZACHARY. "Rev. H. H. Spalding."
The statements I have included in parentheses are absolutely false, and bear the earmarks of Spalding's invention, and it is altogether probable that this letter was altered by Spalding to support his wild theories, as White's report was, and as the list of those massacred at Wailatpu was.
There is not the remotest possibility that a man as poor as Whitman was, and in as great haste to reach, not Washington, but Boston, published any pamphlet about migration to Oregon, for not only has no one ever produced a copy of such a pamphlet, or even described its appearance, or given its title, or when it was printed, but every one of the real leaders of the 1843 migration-- P. H. Burnett, Jesse and Lindsay Applegate, J. M. Shively and J. W. Nesmith, declared that they never saw nor heard of such a pamphlet nor even of any newspaper articles written by Whitman nor of his having held any public meetings or addressed any public meetings held to promote migration to Oregon. Such a pamphlet could not have been circulated without coming to the attention of these men--Shively in St. Louis, Louisville, Cincinnati, Pittsburg and Washington working to promote emigration to Oregon; Burnett holding meetings for the same object in Northwest Missouri, and the Applegates stirring up their neighbors along the Osage Valley in West Central Missouri.
Such a pamphlet also would certainly have received some newspaper notice, at least in Missouri.
In 1888 I employed a competent party to examine the files of the two daily papers then published in St. Louis, which were the only dailies then published west of the Mississippi River, and, receiving a report that Whitman's name even was not mentioned in them during the winter of 1842-3, or the spring of 1843, it seemed to me so incredible that, despite my confidence in the competency of my searcher, I thought there must have been some oversight, and went from Chicago to St. Louis and carefully examined the files myself, only to find that the report made to me was correct.
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Subsequently I spent no small amount of time and money in searching and having searched the files of all newspapers in existence at that time along Whitman's possible lines of travel from the Missouri frontier to Boston, for the months of February, March, April and May, 1843, but could find no mention of him in any newspapers except the very brief and perfunctory notice hereinbefore copied from the Boston Recorder of May 4, 1843, and the following editorial article from the New York Tribune of March 29, 1843, which was copied in several other papers, but which does not give the least intimation of what caused Whitman to make the ride, nor of when nor how he would return to Oregon, nor of his intending to guide any party migrating to Oregon.
"ARRIVAL FROM OREGON.
"We were most agreeably surprised yesterday by a call from Dr. Whitman from Oregon, a member of the American Presbyterian Mission in that Territory. A slight glance at him when he entered our office would have convinced anyone that he had seen all the hardships of a life in the wilderness. He was dressed in an old fur cap that appeared to have seen some ten years' service, faded and nearly destitute of fur; a vest whose natural color tad long since fled, and a shirt--we could not see that he had any--an overcoat, every thread of which could be easily seen, buckskin pants, &c.--the roughest man that we have seen this many a day-- too poor, in 'fact, to get any letter wardrobe! The Doctor is one of those daring and good men who went to Oregon some years ago to teach the Indians religion, agriculture, letters, &c. A noble pioneer do we judge him to be--a man fitted to be a chief in rearing a moral empire among the wild men of the wilderness. We did not learn what success the worthy man had in leading the Indians to embrace the Christian faith, but he very modestly remarked that many of them had begun to cultivate the earth and raise cattle.
"He brings information that the settlers on the Willamette are doing well; that the Americans are building a town at the falls of the Willamette; that a Mr. Moor, of Mr. Farnham's party, some sixty years of age, was occupying one side of the falls, in the hope that the Government would make him wealthy by the passage of a preemption law; that the old man Blair, another member of the same party, was living comfortably a short distance above, as all who have read Mr. F.'s travels will know he deserves to do. Dr. W. left Oregon six months ago; ascended the banks of Snake, or Satpin, River to Fort Hall, and was piloted thence to Santa Fe by way of the Soda Springs, Brown's Hole, Colorado of the West, the Wina, and the waters of the Del Norte. From Santa Fe he eame through the Indians that have been removed from the States
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to Missouri. The Doctor's track among the mountains lay along the western side of the Anahuac range; and he remarks that there is considerable good land in that region.
"We give the hardy and self-denying man a hearty welcome to his native land. We are sorry to say that his first reception, on arriving in our city, was but slightly calculated to give him a favorable impression of the morals of his kinsmen. He fell into the hands of one of our vampire cabmen, who, in connection with a keeper of a tavern house in West Street, three or four doors from the corner near the Battery, fleeced him out of the last few dollars which the poor man had."
Surely if he was troubling himself any about originating or leading out a migration to Oregon, something of it would have appeared in this editorial in the Tribune, which was so much interested in the settlement of all parts of the West; and that he had absolutely no information of importance to communicate either to the Government at Washington or to the public at large, which had not previously been published by the government, has already herein been indisputably demonstrated by quotations from his own letters, and from that part of the special report of Lieut. Wilkes, which was published in "Pendleton's Second Report, January 4, 1843."
Prof. Joseph Schafer, of the University of Oregon, published in Oregon History Quarterly for June, 1903, the following mention of Whitman in the New York Spectator of Wednesday evening, April 5, 1843, as a passenger on the steamer Narragansett, on his way from New York to Boston.
After describing briefly the troubles of the journey, owing to a severe storm which drove them into New Haven Bay at midnight of Monday, March 27. and kept them at anchor there till Wednesday morning, March 29, the correspondent goes on as follows: "We had a very pleasant set of passengers. Among others I may mention the Hon. Robert Rantoul, of Boston. This gentleman is by far the ablest man of the Democratic party in Massachusetts, and unless I could see him embarked for Salt River (which I think must be his final destination), I would rather have him embark on the same boat in which I sail than any other. He is a very interesting, affable man, of great research, and will, I doubt not, yet render good service to the country.
"THE REV. DR. WHITMAN FROM OREGON.
"We also had one who was observed of all--Doctor Whitman, the missionary from Oregon. He is in the service of the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions. Rarely have I seen such a spectacle as he represented. His dress should be preserved
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as a curiosity; it was quite in the style of the old pictures of Philip Quarles and Robinson Crusoe. When he came on board and threw down his traps, one said, "what a loafer!" I made up my mind at a glance that he was either a gentleman traveler or a missionary; that he was every inch a man, and no common one, was clear. The Doctor has been eight years at the Territory, has left his wife there, and started from home on the 1st of October. He has not been in bed since, having made his lodging on buffalo robe and blanket, even on board the boat. He is about thirty-six or seven years of age, I should judge, and has stamped on his brow a great deal of what David Crockett would call 'God Almighty's common sense.' Of course, when he reached Boston he would cast his shell and again stand out a specimen of the 'humans.'
"I greatly question whether such a figure ever passed through the Sound since the days of steam navigation. He is richly fraught with information relative to that most interesting piece of country, and I hope will shortly lay it before the good people of Boston and New York. Could he appear in New York Tabernacle in his traveling costume and lecture on the Northwest coast, I think there would be very few standing places. Much of his route was on foot and occasionally on horse or mule back, with a half-breed guide. To avoid the hostile Indians he had to go off to the Spanish country and thence to Santa Fe. A rascally hackman took him in at New York, and carried him from place to place at his whim and finally put him down near the Battery, close to his starting point, charging him two dollars, and it being midnight, he succeeded in the vile extortion.
"CIVIS."
The Spectator (which long ceased to exist), had a limited circulation and was of little influence, and this account of Whitman, it will be noticed, like the Tribune editorial, and the tMrty-seven words about him in the Boston Recorder of May 4, 1843, gives absolutely no information as to the origin or purpose of his journey or as to where or how he would return, or as to any migration going to Oregon under his leadership.
This mention of him seems not to have received any attention from the press of the country, as no one has found it quoted in other papers.
Certainly if he had been concerning himself about raising and leading a migration to Oregon, he would have given it the widest possible publicity through newspaper notice of it, in St. Loais, Cincinnati, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington and Pittsburg, as he could easily have done through the officers and agents of the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Mis-
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sions, and the leading Presbyterian and Congregational clergymen in those cities.
In Boston the secretaries of the American Board could have procured him almost unlimited space in the leading dailies and a page or two in the Recorder, the Congregationalist organ, if they had desired it, and he could easily have had a page or two in the New York Observer, the great Presbyterian organ.
Why did he thus slip across half the breadth of the continent, from the Missouri frontier to Boston and back again, with no other newspaper notice than is herein quoted, and absolutely no notice that would exercise the least influence in inciting migration to Oregon, or arousing public interest in that region, and in its retention by the United States, when--especially if his ride was for patriotic purposes--he could have easily secured abundant newspaper notice in every city and town along his line of travel, by simply stating what he had done, and why he had done it, and that he was intending to return and would conduct any wishing to migrate to Oregon?
The answer, in view of the evidence herein for the first time published, must be obvious to anyone.
There was then no thought of a patriotic legend about the origin and purpose of his ride, and the true origin of it was so very far from creditable, not to Spalding and Gray alone, but also to Mr. and Mrs. Whitman, that he naturally sought to get to Boston and back again with as little notice and as few inquiries to answer as possible, as to why he had found it needful in the interest of his mission to ride across the continent in winter, since to have attracted much public attention would have forced explanations that he had no wish then to make, and which his associates and the officers of the American Board have carefully avoided making to this day.
A full page of most vigorous denunciations could not more forcibly voice the utter disgust and weariness of the then secretaries of the American Board over the foolish quarrels and general unwisdom of their Oregon Mission, necessitating Whitman's ride, than the icy coldness of the thirty-seven words with which, in the Recorder of May 4, 1843--four weeks after he had left Boston on his return--they made the briefest possible mention of his having been there and having started back, without the faintest word of commendation of him or compliment for the courage and endurance required for the journey. (Cf. p. 278 ante.)
If it were conceivable that Whitman could have published any pamphlet, such as Zachary (twenty-five years after the event and three years after Spalding's publication of the Saving Oregon Story in the Pacific), thought he remembered, he certainly would not
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have put in it the following two statements that he knew to be absolutely false, viz.:
(1) "That he had crossed the Rocky Mountains that winter principally to take back that season a train of wagons to Oregon."
(2) "That himself and mission party had taken their families, cattle and wagons through to the Columbia six years before."
Equally false are the following other statements in Zachary's letter:
(a) That "At Fort Hall, the officers of the Hudson's Bay Company told us we must go to California."
(b) "The Hudson's Bay Company would not allow Americans to settle in Oregon."
(c) "Dr. Whitman told us if we would trust him he would see that we reached The Dalles by 20th of September. We did trust him, and most faithfully did he make his word good."
The fact is. that September 20th they were just leaving Fort Boise, 317 miles east of The Dalles, and they did not reach The Dalles till the very last of October or the first week in November.
(d) "These were the first wagons and teams to pass through these mountains" (i. e., the Blue Mountains). This is not true, because three wagons of Meek, Newell, Wilkins and Ermatinger had passed over those mountains from Fort Hall to Fort Walla Walla in 1840, as hereinbefore stated (Cf. pp. 85-8, Part I., ante.)
(e) "He furnished us with beef and flour at Willamette prices." As we have already seen (Cf. pp. 179-80, Part II., ante), his prices were fully 40 per cent, above Willamette prices, while both the Burnett account in George Wilkes' History of Oregon, and Burnett's "Old Pioneer"--while saying nothing about flour or beef--agree in the statement that he charged them $1 a bushel for wheat, which was 33 1-3 per cent, above Willamette prices at that time.
(f) "Dr. Whitman furnished us with an Indian guide from his Mission station to The Dalles without charge." For the falsity of this (Cf. p. 291 infra,).
As all these fictions were favorites of Spalding, there is every reason to suppose either that the whole Zachary letter was due to his imagination, or that he altered it to suit his own crazy fancies about Whitman's connection with the migration of 1843.
In 1883, Rev. M. Eells wrote to all the 1843 migration whose addresses he knew (though strange to say, he omitted Peter H. Burnett, whose address for many years had been well known to be San Francisco), and every man of them--ten in number--who was an adult in 1843, and so responsible for the movement of a family, replied that he was not influenced in his decision to migrate to Ore-
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gon by anything Dr. Whitman ever said or did, and seven of the ten, including Jesse and Lindsay Applegate, and J. M. Shively, three of the real originators and leaders of the migration, wrote that they did not know that Whitman was in the States till he overtook them on the plains, and a fourth one of its real organizers and leaders, J. W. Nesmith, its Orderly Sergeant, together with two others--S. M. Gilmore and J. W. Dougherty--did not see him till the meeting at Fitzhugh's mill, on May 20, 1843, only two days before the migration started for Oregon.
Two of them--S. M. Gilmore and J. B. McClane--while not themselves influenced by Whitman, thought--forty years after the event, during eighteen of which they had been hearing the Whitman Saved Oregon Story--that he influenced some to go, though neither of them could name a single person who was influenced by Whitman to join the party. (Cf. for these letters, pp. 27-9 of M. Eells' pamphlet, "Did Dr. Whitman Save Oregon?" Portland, Or., 1883, and for Nesinith's letter Cf. pp. 135-6 of Part I., ante.)
To the ordinary mind this evidence would suffice to establish beyond doubt that Whitman's influence in originating, promoting or organizing the 1843 migration was too trivial to be worth considering.
But not so with the myth-loving Rev. M. Eells, for he proceeds (on pp. 30-31), to print the following brief extracts from letters from William Waldo (who was a boy of 10 in 1843), Mrs. C. B. Cary, whose age then is not stated, and John Hobson, who was then a boy of 18, and to quote the first half only of John Zachary's letter of February 7, 1868, from Spalding's pamphlet. (Cf. p. 279-80 ante for the whole of Zachary's letter.)
From William Waldo:
"Salem, Ore., January 21, 1883. "Rev. M. Eells:
"Dear Sir:--Your letter of the 15th inst. has just been received, and in answer I have to say, that Dr. Whitman was in some of the Eastern States in the winter of 1842 and 43, and wrote several newspaper articles in relation to Oregon, and particularly in regard to the health of the country. These letters decided my father to move to this country, as he had already determined to leave Missouri. I first saw him on the Big Blue River. I was then about ten years of age, but I rememebr him very distinctly for the reason that he was a very remarkable man in many respects. . . •
"Yours very truly,
(Signed) "WM. WALDO."
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From Mrs. C. B. Gary:
"Lafayette, Ore., January 23, 1883. "Rev. M. Eells:--
"Your letter was received, and in reply to your questions, I will say it was a pamphlet Dr. Whitman wrote that induced me to come to Oregon. Met him first on the plains.
"Respectfully, (Signed) "MRS. C. B. GARY."
From John Hobson:
"Astoria, January 30, 1883. "Rev. M. Eells:
"Dear Sir:--My father's family came to St. Louis in March, 1843, from England, on our way to Wisconsin, but on account of snow and ice in the river we could not proceed, and while detained there we met the Doctor (Whitman) and several others, who were talking of coming to Oregon; so, by his description of the country, and proffered assistance in getting here free of charge, my father with family, and Miles Eyers and family, Messrs. Thomas Smith, a Mr. Ricord and J. M. Shively, all agreed to come. All came. Mr, Eyers was drowned in Snake River, while crossing above Boise. Thomas Smith went to California in 1847. Mr. Ricord went to the Sandwich Islands and never returned. J. H. Shively resides in Astoria, when at home, but is now in California for his health. The Doctor assisted Eyers and father in purchasing wagons and mules in St. Louis. We went to Westport, through the State of Missouri, to the Rendezvous, and the rest went by river, I do not know whether the Doctor was going or on the return from Washington, but we did not see him any more until we met him at the Indian Mission, a few miles from Westport, in the early part of May, where he assisted us in getting more teams and horses.
"Yours, (Signed) "JOHN HOBSON.
"P. S. All the Hobsons that crossed in '43 are dead but my youngest sister and myself. I was eighteen years old when I came."
Mr. Eells, then, without any pretense of an attempt to verify the accuracy of these recollections, forty years after the event, of people who were children and who had no responsibility for the movements of anyone in the 1843 migration, assumes that their recollections were of equal value with those of the adults, and of the real leaders of the migration, and continues: "It is also plain, from the evidence, that Dr. Whitman did not influence all the emigrants to come, but that other causes were at work--such as Senator Linn's bill, Mr. Shortess' letter and Mr. Shivel/s work.
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"It is also plain, however, that he did Avork to induce people to come, by personal talk, newspaper articles and a pamphlet which reached even to Texas.
"It is also plain that he induced some to come; four of the fourteen witnesses heard from--nearly one-third--stating that they came beca,use of his representations, while two of them speak of several others whom he induced to come."
This method of counting all witnesses of equal value, without regard to age or other opportunities to know the facts, has always been a favorite practice of sophists and special pleaders, but has never been considered admissible by truly candid persons seeking not to support a preconceived theory, or to uphold a ''cause," but only to establish the truth of things.
As soon as my attention was called to these letters, I wrote to Mrs. Gary, enclosing a stamped directed envelope for reply, asking her, First, how old she was in 1843? Second, If she had a copy of the pamphlet written by Dr. Whitman ? Third, If not, if she knew of anyone who had a copy of it? Fourth, If not, if she could give me any description of it, its title, size, etc. ?
Receiving no reply, at the end of three months I wrote to her again, and again enclosed stamped, directed envelope for reply, but never heard anything from her, whence it is evident that she would not submit to any cross-examination on her "testimony," which is enough to pretty thoroughly discredit it.
Not only is William Waldo's statement wholly worthless, because the supposed recollections of any boy of ten, entirely unsupported by any contemporaneous documents, and not written down till forty years afterwards, are not of the slightest evidential value, especially when for eighteen of the forty years he has been hearing and reading a popular legendary account of the things he thinks he recollects, but also because it is wholly irreconcilable with the account •which Almoran Hill gave in the Weekly News, of Portland, on May 17, 1883 (part of which is quoted by Mr. Eells on pp. 27-8 of this pamphlet), though he carefully omits the most significant parts of it.
Daniel Waldo (the father of William), and Mr. Almoran Hill were such close neighbors and warm friends of Jesse and Lindsay Applegate, and they so planned together for migrating to Oregon, that it is simply impossible that Daniel Waldo could have been induced to go to Oregon by anything Whitman said or did, and the two Applegates and Hill not have even heard of Whitman's being in the States till he overtook the migration on the plains, and Lindsay Applegate and A. Hill not have even known of the existence of such a man as Whitman till then.
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There is no question of the honesty of William Waldo, but only whether or not his "testimony" at fifty years of age as to what caused his father forty years before to migrate to Oregon, is of any value.
When my attention was called to this pamphlet of Rev. M. Eells, learning that Mr. Hill (who was not a boy of ten in 1843, but had then been married two years), was still living, I wrote to him March 29, 1887, and April 20, 1887, he replied as follows:
"In 1836, I, as a boy, moved with my father onto the Osage River in Southern Missouri. Nearby, say two miles, lived Daniel Waldo. I lived there till after my marriage, in July, 1841. I then with my wife moved westward up the Osage River a distance of thirty miles.
"Before this I had helped Jesse Applegate survey land in our neighborhood. Robert Shortess was of these surveying parties. Indeed, I did much work with the surveyors. Jesse Applegate carried the compass. On the Upper Osage I resided on a tract of land belonging to Jesse Applegate.
"In the fall or early winter Daniel Waldo paid me a visit, at which time we had a general talk of this new country, and he went back home, knowing that I wanted to go westward. Mr. Waldo's health was not good. It is my recollection that he thought of the move Pacificward in connection with the possibility of the betterment of his health. My recollection in this matter is verified by a conversation I had some months ago with Mrs. Waldo, Dan's widow. She has since died.
"As before stated, Dan W. went home from his visit to me. He doubtless had seen the Robert Shortess letter, as that had been received, I think, in 1842, since Mr. Waldo and the Applegates lived only three or four miles apart. I think the letter was written to Jesse Applegate, though it is claimed by Lindsay Applegate that the letter was to him (Lindsay). But be that as it may, the letter was the neighborhood talk and read of all.
"Mails were few and the circulation of newspapers limited. Mr. Waldo was not a great reader. He was a subscriber to one paper. Jesse Applegate was a subscriber to the Missouri Republican, two or three other families in the neighborhood each "took" a paper, and that was all. Applegates testify that they knew nothing of Dr. Whitman till far on the road west of the Missouri River, in 1843. I am satisfied that Mr. William Waldo is mistaken in this matter and that the Shortess letter had more to do in directing Dan to a healthier climate than anything else.
"In the winter, perhaps in January, '43, Mr. Waldo wrote me, making the proposition to furnish outfits, etc. About the 1st of February, 1843, I left home to perfect the arrangements with him.
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"On the way I stopped to visit Mr. Jesse Applegate, in whose family I had lived for a period of three (3) years, when a boy. There I told of my destination and errand. Mr. Applegate made me the same offer, which I at once embraced. I don't believe Mr. Waldo ever read one of Whitman's articles. If the Missouri Republican, a leading paper of that section, did not publish Whitman's articles, then there is no probability that Mr. Waldo had an opportunity to see them. But our State papers were full of Senator Linn's thoughts. Linn's bill was the neighborhood talk. That was a malarial country, and Shortess' description of the healthfulness of Oregon made the well-to-do Applegates desire to shake the ague, as they had been shaken, and Waldo with them.
"I do not think from all my experience and observation of pioneer life that the services rendered to the emigration of 1843 by Dr. Marcus Whitman were any greater than or other than any energetic and reasonably public-spirited pioneer physician ought to have rendered, or would cheerfully have rendered to an emigrating party largely composed of women and children, with whom he was traveling towards his home. Indeed, we had other examples with us in the person of William Fowler, who was of our party, as well as mountain men met by us from time to time.
"Whitman was undoubtedly an honest, energetic, conscientious man, who did his duty as he saw it. I did not and do not now consider him a great leader of men, though he was a modest person and not by any means a bigot. . . . This, I believe, answers your interrogations, and hoping they will suffice till later on, I remain, etc.
"ALMORAN HILL."
No candid person can doubt that this letter and the total ignorance of Lindsay Applegate and A. Hill of even the existence of any such person as Whitman till he overtook them on the plains, tolally overthrows William Waldo's statement that his father was Induced to go to Oregon by Dr. Whitman.
The following extracts from H. H. Bancroft's "Oregon" are interesting in this connection, as showing what Daniel Waldo himself thought of Whitman, and they also (especially when taken in connection with what Burnett says in the account of this migration, in George Wilkes' "History of Oregon"), effectually dispose of the claim in Zachary's letter that "Dr. Whitman furnished us with an Indian guide from his Mission Station to The Dalles free of charge," a statement repeated by many advocates of the Whitman Legend with no other authority than Zachary.
"The board had not approved of his leaving his station and had sent him back empty-handed--how empty-handed is more than once
ACQUISITION OF OREGON 291
hinted at by the emigrants. Waldo bluntly says: 'He had nothing to start with but a boiled ham. . . After we crossed the Snake River I had to feed him again. I did not like it much; but he was a very energetic man, and I liked him for his perseverance; he had not much judgment, but a great deal of perseverance. He expected the emigrants to feed him, and they did. He was bound to go, and took the chances.' (Critiques, MS., 17.)
"Neither Whitman nor McKinlay at Fort Walla Walla knew anything of the country back from the Columbia River (this is McKinlay's own statement, given in a letter to Elwood Evans, which Evans has kindly sent me), or whether there could be found crossings for the wagons at the John Day and Des Chutes Rivers; and both advised the immigrants to leave their wagons and cattle in the Walla Walla Valley to be brought down in the spring, and to make themselves boats in which to descend the Columbia. One of the arguments used in favor of this plan was that no grass would be likely to be found on the route, as the natives were accustomed at this season of the year to burn it off--a statement which sufficiently proved the Doctor's ignorance of the country, and which was construed to his disadvantage by those who traveled through it. (Says Waldo, who did not take the advice offered: 'Whitman lied like hell. He wanted my cattle, and told me the grass was burnt off between his place and The Dalles. The first night out I found the finest grass I ever saw, and it was good every night.') (Critiques, MS., Id. (Cf. H. H. Bancroft's "Oregon," Vol. 1, pp. 404-405.)
Similarly Burnett, in George Wilkes', says "Most of the residents of the Mission agreed in advising us to leave our cattle and wagons at this point, or if we did take them to The Dalles or Narrows (a point on the Columbia 120 miles in advance) to send them back here to winter. Others told us that we could not reach The Dalles with our teams, as jaded as they were, as we would find no range along the course of the Columbia. Accordingly they set out in squads, on successive days, and before the end of the month all had reached The Dalles in safety. What surprised them most, after the representations which had been made, was the fine pasturage they met with all along the way, and especially at The Dalles, where, we had been led to believe, the cattle could not subsist at all during the winter." (Cf. "George Wilkes' History of Oregon," p. 89.)
Turn now to the letter of John Hobson. a boy of eighteen in 1845, who wrote forty years later to Rev. M. Eells, with no claim that he had any contemporaneous letter or other document as an aid to his memory.
As John Hobson mentioned J. M. Shively as being influenced to go to Oregon by Dr. Whitman, and as I knew that that was not
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so, since newspapers in the winter of 1842-3 showed Shively active in St. Louis, Cincinnati, Louisville, Pittsburg and Washington in arranging for this migration before Whitman on his way East had reached the Missouri frontier, I at once wrote to Mr. Shively, who was then a prominent citizen of Astoria, Or., and his reply is quoted on pp. 131-2, of Part I., ante.
It effectually disproves the "recollections" of John Hobson, not only as to his father's family, but also as to Miles Eyers (or Ayers), and J. M. Shively, and there is not the least reason for supposing his "recollections" to have been any more accurate regarding Mr. Smith, and Mr. Ricord, yet in 1902, Rev. M. Eells in his "Reply to Prof. Bourne" (p. 105), in a list of sixteen members of the migration of 1843 who "as he has learned" were induced to join it by Dr. Whitman, gives the names of John Zachary (though he does not claim to know any more about him than the letter published in Spalding's Pamphlet), Miles Eyers, E. Smith, Mr. Ricord, Wm. Waldo, John Hobson and Mrs. C. B. Gary, but he does not quote or claim to have any other letters from any of these sixteen than those I have herein examined, from William Waldo, Mrs. C. B. Gary, John Zachary and John Hobson. That a very few people with whom Whitman chanced to come personally in contact in his very quiet, almost furtive journey east in the last half of February and the first half of March, 1843, might have been influenced by him to go to Oregon is possible, but it is certain that the number of such persons must have been extremely small, or else some one or more of the five real leaders of the migration, Burnett, Nesmith, Shively and Jesse and Lindsay Applegate would have heard of his being in the states before the migration had gathered and were within a few days of its start, and they would not have been obliged to declare, as they all did in their letters to Rev. M. Eells in 1883, and to me in subsequent years, that they knew of no one that Whitman induced to join that migration.
Let us examine very briefly the "testimony" of certain witnesses who try to explain why the Saving Oregon Story was not published earlier. Rev. Elkanah Walker died November 21, 1877, without ever having written anything which furnishes the least support to any version of the Saving Oregon theory of Whitman's ride or of any other origin for or purpose of it than that of saving the Mission from the destruction which would certainly have overtaken it in 1843, or early in 1844, if he had not made the winter ride to the states.
But June 7,1883, his widow, Mrs. Mary R. Walker, then seventy-two years old, made the following statements in a letter to Rev. M. Eells: ". . . Much was said about that time about the Methodist missionaries coming here, and then leaving their legiti-
ACQUISITION OF OREGON 293
mate missionary calling to make money, and for other purposes, and some disgrace was brought on the missionary cause. Mr. Walker and associates felt that Dr. Whitman, in leaving missionary work, and going on this business, was likely also to bring disgrace on the cause, and were so afraid of it that for a long time they would hardly mention that object of Dr. Whitman's journey publicly. I remember plainly that Mr. Walker often prayed after Dr. Whitman had gone, that if it was right for him to go on this business, he might be preserved, but if not his way might by hedged up. When the statements first began to be made publicly of this political object of Dr. Whitman's journey east, we were then afraid that disgrace would be brought on our Mission."
All that needs to be said about the first part of this is that no one censured, or ever would have censured the Methodists for any disinterested work of patriotism such as the Whitman Legend ascribes to him.
They were critcized severely, and with justice, because after the great reenforcement of 1839-40 reached Oregon they neglected their missionary work for money making schemes, and attempted to monopolize all the lines of profitable business in, and to dictate in all things the policy of the settlement, and sought to rob Dr. McLoughlin of his claim to the site of Oregon City, and not content with securing a square mile of the very best land in the Willamette Valley--the garden of Oregon--for each Mission family that chose to remain in the country, they sought to hold thirty-six square miles for use of the Mission in that valley, and a square mile at The Dalles covering the Dalles City townsite, though neither in law nor equity had they a shadow of right to either the thirty-six miles, or to the Dalles townsite.
As to the last paragraph all that needs to be said is, that these statements of the political purpose of Whitman's ride were never made public till seventeen years after he was dead and the Mission broken up, whereas if they were true, they would have brought honor instead of disgrace to the Mission, if published immediately after his death and the resulting destruction of the Mission.
In the Sunday School Times for December 20, 1902, Mrs. L. A. M. Bosworth, wife of one of the editors of the Chicago Advance-- the Congregationalist organ of the Middle West--after stating that "Several years ago we were living in Forest Grove, Oregon, near neighbors and close friends of the Walkers," (this was 1883-1885) says that with a view of getting at the facts of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story she examined various letters, journals and accounts of the meetings of the Mission in Mr. Walker's handwriting, and continues: "I was greatly disappointed in finding in the records of those Mission meetings no mention of the real purpose of Dr.
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Whitman's proposed journey--a fact which Professor Bourne has used against the story. When I expressed my surprise to Mrs. Walker, she said: 'Why, we didn't dare to put any reference to it in writing. We were in the midst of enemies, and, if any hint of Dr. Whitman's real purpose had fallen into the hands of the Hudson's Bay Company, as any of our papers or letters might have done at any time, it would have been fatal to everything. The only hope of safety or success was in absolute secrecy.' How reasonable!
"People who attempt to revise history after so many years, relying on documentary evidence, must necessarily miss the life of the times, fail to realize the environment, and so lose the heart out of it all. The burning words of the living witnesses, spoken to so many who still survive, are truer testimony than the dead writings, wrapped in the silence of a secrecy upon which the lives of all of them depended."
The "real purpose" of which Mrs. Bosworth found "no mention" was of course the "Saving Oregon" purpose for she could easily have found in Mr. Walker's writings abundant proof that his ride was made to save the Mission from destruction.
It will be noticed that June 7, 1883, it had not occurred to Mrs. Walker to ascribe fear of the Hudson's Bay Company as a reason for not recording the alleged political purpose of Whitman's ride.
That seems to have been the last desperate effort of the myth-loving advocates of the Whitman Legend to break the force of the indisputable fact that no form of the Saving Oregon legend was ever printed till November, 1864, in the Sacramento Union, and no full and detailed form of it till October and November, 1865, in the Pacific, and that not a line of any contemporary letter, or diary, or record of a meeting of the Mission, or record of Whitman's appearance before the American Board in Boston or article in any newspaper or in the Missionary Herald has ever been found which furnishes the least contemporaneous support to any Saving Oregon theory of that ride.
Who first raised the Hudson's Bay Company bogy to account for the long delay in publishing this legend is uncertain, but its originators and leading advocates having slandered and abused that corporation for a whole generation, while carefully suppressing all mention of most of the evidence herein printed (in Ch. VII., Part I.), as to the true relation of that company to the American exploration, occupation and settlement of Oregon, had succeeded in so prejudicing the public against it that any slander of it, no matter how baseless, would find ready credence; and the later advocates of the legend have used this fiction about the antagonism
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of the Hudson's Bay Company to these missionaries, as the reason -why nothing was earlier published about the patriotic origin and purpose of Whitman's ride.
Thus Rev. M. Eells' "Reply to Prof. Bourne" (p. 96). "One reason for not publishing the story earlier is that it would have been very unwise to have done so before the breaking up of the Missions. The Mission was entirely dependent on the Hudson's Bay Company for all its supplies. Far inland as it was, it could not have existed had the company cut off these supplies. On account of this the missionaries were forbidden by the American Board to in any way interfere with the business of the company, 'not even to touch beaver skins' as Dr. Cushing Eells once said. To have proclaimed publicly what Dr. Whitman had done might have so alienated the company that they would have cut off the supplies, for what he did do in bringing the emigration through resulted in taking Oregon from the company."
Mr. Edwin Eells (the older brother of Myron), who was a baby at this time, being only about seven when the Mission was broken up by the Whitman massacre,-writes much more at length to this effect in the Sunday School Times of November 22, 1902.
How ridiculous is all this stuff about a feeling of antagonism towards and fear of the Hudson's Bay Company by these missionaries is evident to any one who will read the evidence hereinbefore printed in Ch. VII. of Part I. on "The Truth About the Relation of the Hudson's Bay Company," etc.
Unspeakably silly as is all this twaddle about these missionaries living in fear of the Hudson's Bay Company and consequently not daring to write in their journals, letters or records of the meetings of their Mission what they actually did, when such, stuff is written by anyone, in view of the absolutely unanswerable evidence of its total falsity in the letters and journals of these missionaries, quoted in Ch. VII. of Part I., its silliness is thrown completely in the shade when written or uttered by Rev. Myron Eells, or his brother Edwin, or by any of the Walker family, by the shameless ingratitude of such an accusation against those to whom not only were they indebted for absolutely indispensable aid in establishing their Mission station, and for constant acts of kindness during the whole existence of the Mission, but also for the preservation of their lives after the Whitman massacre. (Gf. on this pp. 352-3 of Ch. VII. Part I., ante.)
Probably the silliest piece of "testimony" adduced in support of the Saving Oregon Story is the following by Rev, S. B. L. Penrose, President of Whitman College, in an attempt at a "Reply" to Prof. Bourne's Legend of Marcus Whitman and my discussion of it--which having the treasury of Whitman College behind him--
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he procured to be published in daily papers all over the country in January, 1901.
"It is well to remember that Whitman went east in the fall of 1842 against the wishes of most of his fellow missionaries who regarded his errand, to use their own words, 'as a wild goose chase, a mixing of religion and politics.'"
Neither Mr. Penrose nor anybody else has ever produced a single word of contemporaneous evidence in support of this statement, which was never heard of in letter, diary or other writing, and never appeared in print till the legend was fully developed.
Mr. Penrose goes on: "Rev. Mr. Walker was accustomed to pray at family prayers during the following winter that Dr. Whitman might have his life spared, but that he might fail in his purpose. His oldest son remembers this, and told the writer."
In Transactions Oregon Pioneer Association, 1893, pp. 118-23, the reader will find a letter written by Mrs. Whitman, dated May 17, 1839, in which she writes: "In December, just three months after the arrival of the reenforcement, Mrs. Walker gave birth to a fine son here in our house."
Transactions Oregon Pioneer Association, 1877, p. 69, in a biographical sketch of Rev. Elkanah Walker says that Mr. and Mrs. Walker were married March 5, 1838.
As that "oldest" son, therefore, was of the mature age of three years and ten months when Whitman started for the states, and four years and ten months when Whitman returned, any further comment on the silliness of this particular bit of Mr. Penrose's "evidence" seems entirely unnecessary.
Among the many old people who rushed into print with their "recollections" in defense of the Whitman Legend in the Sunday School Times, in 1902, is the following amusing bit of "testimony" (on p. 630. November 22, 1902):
"ANOTHER WHO KNEW WHITMAN.
"Fresno, Gal., October 6, 1902.
"We crossed the plains in 1847 and arrived at Dr. Whitman's in October. My father and Dr. Whitman were warm friends, and talked over the trip which the Doctor had already accomplished in 1843. I was in my tenth year, and, as I have a good memory, I remember his telling my father about hearing Mr. Stanley, the artist, while at Fort Walla Walla, say that the British was then having a treaty with the United States, and that Oregon would belong to them; he said it with a boast, and the Doctor came home and started that very night for Washington.
"PHOEBE L. McKAY."
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"P. S. I may be mistaken about its being that very night, but it was very soon. I know he took two Indians with him."
Doubtless Miss (or Mrs.) Phoebe McKay is honest, but when a woman of sixty-four attempts to support "history" by what she thinks she remembers of a conversation which she overheard fifty-flve years before, she should read up with a little care, so as to get her main statements somewhere near the facts.
She has doubtless read somewhere that Stanley, the artist, was sometime at Fort Walla Walla, and "having a good memory," she remembers that Whitman told her father that in 18-12, he heard Stanley, the artist, at Fort Walla Walla, tell that the British were likely to get Oregon, and that started Whitman to the states. But, unfortunately for Phoebe's "good memory," Stanley, the artist, in 1842, was a matter of 2,000 miles and more east of Fort Walla Walla, and never set foot in Oregon till 1847, and, starting on November 23, 1847, from Tshimakam, where he had spent some weeks with Messrs. Eells and Walker, and painted Rev. E. Walker's portrait (which is now in the Oregon Historical Society's rooms at Portland, Ore.), he narrowly escaped being murdered at the time of the Whitman massacre (Cf. Eells to D. Greene, December 10, 1847, also Mrs. Walker's Diary for November 23, 1847. Stanley reached Tshimakain first on October 24, 1847).
Phoebe is also mistaken in what she asserts that she "knows" in the last sentence of her postscript, for Whitman did not take two Indians or one Indian with him on his return to the states in the autumn of 1842, though in 1835, when he returned from his exploring expedition with Rev. S. Parker, he did take with him two Indian boys from Green River, fully 750 miles east of Fort Walla Walla.
All the "witnesses" whose "testimony" in support of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story has been thus far examined have been either, (1) Members of the American Board Mission in Oregon, or, (2) Relatives of members of that Mission; or, (3) Old people who were among the early settlers in Oregon.
We will close this subject by examining the "testimony" of four "star witnesses" none of whom belong to any one of these categories, and who on that account and from their prominence have been very confidently relied upon by the advocates of the Whitman Legend.
They are "Judge" James Otis of Chicago, Dr. Silas Reed of Boston, Dr. S. J. Parker of Ithaca, N. Y. (son of the Rev. Samuel Parker with whom Whitman went as far as the Fur Trader's ren devous on Green River in 1835), and L. G. Tyler, president of William and Mary College, Virginia.
The first three claimed to have seen Whitman on his visit to the states, and the last having had fullest access to all the diaries
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and correspondence official and unofficial of both his father, President John Tyler, and his half-brother, John Tyler, Jr. (who was private secretary to President John Tyler), and in his "Letters and Times of the Tylers" having given some endorsement to the Saving Oregon theory of Whitman's ride (but without any examination of original sources as to its real origin and purpose), has been hailed by the later advocates of the legend as furnishing strong support to it, though, as we shall see later, he had withdrawn his endorsement of the legend since reading the manuscripts I sent him in 1900.
The "testimony" of the first three when subjected to cross-examination not only proves to be utterly worthless, but shows most impressively the ease with which old people who depend on memory unsupported by contemporary documents, especially when it is not of their own deeds, but of the acts and words of others, go far astray from the actual facts, and also how readily they transfer acts from the one who really did them, to another about whose personality a romantic legend has developed and has been widely circulated, and how they think they remember conversations which they could not have heard, because not having even seen the supposed author of them, but which they have read in the legend about him.
"Judge" James Otis of Chicago:
This witness first appeared in Rev. Dr. Thos. Laurie's article in the Missionary Herald, September, 1885, (pp. 353-4), as follows: "If, now, Dr. Whitman could rise from his martyr grave and give us his testimony, the matter would be settled beyond dispute, and God, who, 'When his people went about from nation to nation, suffered no man to do them wrong; yes, reproved kings for their sakes, saying, 'Touch not mine anointed ones, and do my prophets no harm,' has most wonderfully interposed to vindicate the memory of his servant. Soon after the article appeared in the Herald for February, I received the following letter from Judge James Otis of Chicago: 'In the month of April, 1843, Dr. M. Whitman and myself were at the same hotel in Buffalo, N. Y., waiting for the ice to leave the harbor, so that we could take the steamboat for Cleveland, Ohio. After some four days we took the stage for Dunkirk and thence went by boat to Cleveland. He was a good talker and a man of great observation. He gave me an account of his experience among the western Indians; his trip to Washington; his interview with Webster at Washington, who, he said, listened with much interest to his statements, and then remarked: "I want the President and Cabinet to hear what you have said to me."
"They were called together, and Dr. Whitman spent an evening with the Cabinet, answering their questions and giving them his
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views as to the importance of Oregon and the steps that needed to be taken in order to secure it for this country. Our life together at the hotel and on the boat was intensely interesting. At Cleveland we were told that the boat would not sail under ten hours, so Dr. Whitman proposed that we walk up town and see something of the city. A slight snow had covered the ground, and when we reached the top of the hill the doctor saw a steeple and said: 'Let us go to that church, for there is something about a church that always interests me.' We reached it and walked along its southern side, where the sun had thawed the snow, and the green grass had started up fresh and beautiful. The doctor remarked: 'This green grass by the side of this church is the smile of the Lord on the work to be done by its minister and members for Christ in this growing city.' I quote this last paragraph lest any should charge Judge Otis with lapse of memory. The man who so distinctly remembers that scene at the church in Cleveland can be trusted to recall the words of Dr. Whitman about his visit to Washington." Now, the fact is that Mr. James Otis was never a judge, nor even a lawyer, but a man of very ordinary education, who had accumulated a fortune in real estate, and had his office with his brother, L. B. Otis, who was a lawyer, and had been a judge. As the winter of 1842-3 was an uncommonly severe one, it was evident to me that navigation was not open on Lake Erie as early as March (for the real date of this incident was March, and not April, as the Missionary Herald prints it), and as Whitman was not given to gush, I thought as soon as I read this that it sounded much more like the garrulous, conceited Dr. White than the reticent Dr. Whitman. I therefore wrote to Mr. Otis, asking him if he had any diary or letters or other written documents by which he could determine certainly whether it was 1842 or 1843 when he met a missionary to the Oregon Indians at Buffalo, as stated in his letter to Rev. Dr. Laurie. Under date of Chicago, April 18, 1887, he replied as follows: "At the time I wrote the communication to the Missionary Herald, I was of the opinion that it was in March, 1843, that I met Dr. Whitman. Since then I have found some entries in a memorandum that fixes the date 1842." . . . "We were together most of the month of March at Buffalo and that vicinity. The blockade of ice prevented the arrival of a steamboat to take us to Cleveland." . . . "It was in January or February that the doctor was in Washington." . . . "Have you any data to fix the year that Whitman left Oregon for Washington, D. 0.? Forty-four years is a long time to call up events to a certainty unless one 'has memorandum to refer to." This letter furnishes abundant proof of the correctness of that last sentence, for. as we shall see, Mr. Otis never in his life saw or corresponded with Dr. Whitman; and instead of spending "most of the month of March,"
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1842, with Dr. White, whom he did meet, he could not have spent more than from March 17 to March 23, even if he started with him from Havana, N. Y. (Cf. p. 1, Medorem Crawford's Journal). It also appears from this letter that he wrote "March" in his letter to the Missionary Herald, and that they changed the date to April, as they well knew that Whitman could not have been in Buffalo in March, and so, to have printed it as written would have furnished no "support" to the Whitman Saved Oregon Story. A few months later I called on Mr. Otis in his office, and he repeated this to me and asked me where Whitman was in the spring of 1842, to which I replied that he was in Oregon continuously from the autumn of 1836 to October, 1842, and added, "You must have met at Buffalo not Dr. Marcus Whitman, but Dr. Elijah White, an ex-Methodist missionary to the Oregon Indians, who, in 1842, went via Buffalo and Cleveland to St. Louis, and thence to Independence, Mo., whence he led to Oregon the first large overland migration." Mr. Otis also told me that he never had seen nor corresponded with this Oregon Indian missionary before nor after this meeting with him in the spring of 1842. Having looked the subject up pretty thoroughly, and learned that following the mild winter of 1841-2 navigation on Lake Erie opened March 7, 1842, but that (as occasionally happens), later in the month (from March 18 to 23), floating ice from the upper lakes driven by a strong wind had temporarily blocked the harbor of Buffalo against the weak wooden craft then navigating the Great Lakes, and that March 18 Dr. White and Medorem Crawford and three others arrived in Buffalo, and had precisely the experience that Otis narrates of being detained several days, and finally driving in a wagon to Cattaraugus Creek, twenty miles west of Buffalo and outside of the field of floating ice, and there taking steamer for Erie and Cleveland, I wrote Mr. Otis a courteous letter, setting forth these facts, and further, that as navigation after the uncommonly severe winter of 1842-3 did not open on Lake Erie till May 6, 1843, and as Whitman wrote from St. Louis May 12, 1843, and as the world then was, he could not have gone from Buffalo to St. Louis in six days, it was certain that Whitman did not go to St. Louis via, Buffalo and steamer on Lake Erie, and urging him to make public a correction of his evident error. To this letter he never replied, but, being a very self-opinionated man, and an ardent supporter of the A. B. O. F. M., and, like many another rich old man, unwilling to admit that he had ever made a mistake, he continued to the day of his death (September 14, 1895,)--as I know from a legal friend who had an office in the Otis block--to repeat the story that in March, 1843, he met Marcus Whitman at Buffalo, and spent several days with him at a hotel there, and went on a steamer with him to Cleveland, though it is certain that it was Dr. Elijah White with whom he
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had this experience in March, 1842. My legal friend, who was intimately acquainted with James Otis for many years, said: "You could never find evidence enough to convince James Otis he was wrong in any position he had ever publicly taken." P. B. Whitman, Dr. Whitman's nephew, a boy of thirteen, whom he took back to Oregon in 1843, wrote me (and has written to several other people), that they left Rushville, N. Y., April 20, 1843, and went to Olean on the Allegheny River, and thence by the Allegheny and Ohio, and Mississippi Rivers to St. Louis; and while Perrin B. Whitman's "recollections" of conversation with his uncle and other people are plainly untrustworthy from this youth, his recollection of the route over which he himself went on this, the first long journey he ever made, can be relied upon, especially as it agrees with all the other settled facts of the matter. So, in spite of the pious paean of scriptural quotations with which Dr. Laurie introduced this "witness," it is evident that "God had not most wonderfully interposed to vindicate the memory of his servant," by the statement volunteered by Mr. James Otis.
Dr. Silas Reed:
This "witness" also appeared first in 1885, in a long letter to L. G. Tyler, President of William and Mary College, Virginia. This letter was published in Vol. 2, "Letters and Times of the Tylers," pages 692-9. It is so long that I can only notice part of its errors. Dr. Reed, when he wrote this letter, was within fifty-two days of his seventy-eighth birthday, having been born May 29, 1807, at Deerfield, Mass. (Cf. History of the Reed family by J. W. Reed, Boston, 1861, p. 551), and before my attention was called to it he had died, so that I could not cross-examine him personally, but only cross-examine his statement by comparing it with indisputable public documents, and other printed matter to which Dr. Reed had easy access, but to which he seems not to have thought it worth while to refer for a moment to refresh and correct his memory before writing this long letter, full from beginning to end of errors. (Page 695) Dr. Reed wrote:
"I passed the winter of 1841-2 in Washington City. I had been appointed by President Tyler in the first month of his administration, April, 1841, as Surveyor General of the States of Illinois and Missouri. Shortly afterward Mr. Tyler was unfortunately persuaded by the Clay wing of the Harrison and Tyler party to call an extra session of Congress for the summer of 1841. The Clay men, while I remained at my post in St. Louis, traduced me in the Senate, and in August enforced my rejection. My pride of character would not submit to such wholesale murder by a stab in the dark. Upon the opening of the session of the Senate, in December, 1841, I called upon that body, through their Public
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Land Committee, to furnish me the cause of my rejection. . . . While the Public Land Committee of the Senate were acting upon my case at intervals during the winter, I took every opportunity to press upon the mind of Mr. Tyler the importance of a government expedition to explore a route across the Rocky Mountains to the mouth of the Columbia River, even if no other public benefit were gained than to make known the best line of travel for our emigrants to Oregon, who in large numbers began to pick out their way through the mountain passes into Oregon, the previous year of 1841. My noble friend, Senator Linn of Missouri, Chairman of the Committee on Territories, had about that time introduced a bill to organize Oregon into a Territory of the United States. Colonel Gilpen, afterward Governor of Colorado, returned that winter from a private expedition down and up the Columbia River, and I had the extreme pleasure of listening to his eloquent and fascinating descriptions of that country during many interviews with Senators Linn and Breese, who were collecting material to use before the ' Senate in their discussion upon the merits of the bill, which almost the whole Senate treated with a smile of impatience and indifference whenever the subject was called to their attention. From Dr. Whitman, a missionary to Oregon, much useful information for emigrants and the Senators who had charge of the bill was also obtained at that time."
That Dr. Reed's recollection of what winter it was that he was in Washington is trustworthy is evident from his vigorous and successful effort to obtain the very important and lucrative office of Surveyor General of the two great states of Missouri and Illinois, to which, he informs us further on in the letter, the President renominated him "On the 14th of March, 1842, and on the 17th I was unanimously confirmed" (which we find verified by examination of the Sen. Ex. Journal for that date), but that his recollections as to the other matters in this quotation are wholly erroneous I shall speedily demonstrate.
(1) As to the calling of that special session of Congress-- the first session of the Twenty-seventh Congress--Mr. Tyler had no more to do with that call than "the man in the moon." Though it did not assemble till after his most untimely death, it was called, not by Mr. Tyler "shortly after" Reed's appointment in April, 1841, but on March 17, 1841, by President Harrison--a fact distinctly stated by President Tyler in his message to it (as Dr. Reed could have ascertained by five minutes' examination of the Cong. Globe, 1st Sess., 27th Cong., 1841, p. 7, or "Messages of the Presidents," Vol. IV., p. 21). Dr. Reed's assertion, therefore, that "Mr. Tyler was unfortunately persuaded by the Clay wing of the Harrison and Tyler party to call an extra session of Congress for
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the summer of 1841," is without even a shadow of foundation in fact.
(2) As to the grotesque inaccuracy of Dr. Reed's statement that "Almost the whole Senate treated Linn's bill with a smile of indifference or impatience," it is only necessary to refer the reader to the Congressional Gobe, Twenty-seventh Congress, third session, for the record of the great debate on that bill in the Senate, the report of which covers 165 columns, and in which, of a total membership of fifty, twenty-seven senators took part.
(3) As to "a large number of emigrants to Oregon in 1841." A letter of Mrs. Whitman, dated "Wielatpoo, Oregon Territory, October 1, 1841," and published in Transactions of the Oregon Pioneer Association for 1891, pages 139-145, says (p. 159) : "The emigrants were twenty-four in number--two families, with small children, from Missouri. This company was much larger when they started. About thirty went another route to California. The company of Jesuits were twelve in number."
These Catholic priests went from Fort Hall to the Flathead country, in what is now northwest Montana, without going to Wielatpoo or Wailatpu. That is, counting those who went on to California, the total overland migration to both Oregon and California that year, men, women and children, was sixty-six persons, and to Oregon, counting Catholic missionaries and all, only thirty-six. Surely this was not "large numbers" for a population of 15,000,000 to 17,000,000 people to send out. The first overland migration to Oregon that can properly be called large was that which went in 1842, under Dr. White, which numbered 112 persons.
(4) As to Colonel Gilpin (not Gilpen, as Reed spells it), Dr. Reed writes: "Colonel Gilpen, afterwards Governor of Colorado, returned that winter from a private expedition down and up the Columbia River, and I had the extreme pleasure of listening to his eloquent and fascinating descriptions of that country during many interviews with Senators Linn and Breese, who were collecting material to use before the Senate in their discussions on the merits of the bill" (i. e., Linn's bill for the occupation of Oregon.-- W. I. M.). Now, it should be remembered, when considering these statements, that Gilpin was a very prominent man in the west for half a century after this winter of 1841-42, and a man whom Reed (who was Surveyor General of Missouri and Illinois under President Tyler, and of Wyoming under General Grant) must have met scores of times during his own long residence in official capacities west of the Mississippi, yet it is as certain as that two and two are four that all this which Reed is so positive he recollects about Gilpin in the winter of 1841-42 is totally false. Gilpin did not go to Oregon till 1843, when he accompanied Fremont's second explor-
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ing expedition, but instead of continuing with Fremont on his journey from The Dalles, south along the east base of the Cascade Mountains, in the late autumn of 1843 and the winter of 1843-44, and across the Sierra Nevadas into the Sacramento Valley, he remained in Oregon the winter of 1843-44, and returned to the states via Fort Hall, Fort Bridger and Bent's Fort in the summer and autumn of 1844.
Gilpin, therefore, was certainly never in Washington after he was "down and up the Columbia River" earlier than the winter of 1844-5 (i. e., three years later than Reed "remembers" these many interviews with him and "Senators Linn and Breese"), (Cf. on this (a) Sen. Ex. Doc. 174, 28th Cong., 2d Sess., being reports of Fremont's first and second exploring expeditions, page 107) : "We were joined here" (i. e., at Elm Grove, in what is now Kansas, on May 31, 1843), "by Mr. William Gilpin of Missouri, who, intending this year to visit the settlements in Oregon, had been invited to accompany us, and proved a useful and agreeable addition to the party."
Idem., page 195, describing his return to The Dalles from Fort Vancouver, under date of November 18, 1843. Fremont writes:
"Early in the afternoon we arrived again at The Dalles. My friend Mr. Gilpin had arrived in advance of the party." . . . "On the following day he continued his journey in our returning boats to Vancouver."
(b) "Chronicles of the Builders of the Commonwealth," seven volumes, H. H. Bancroft, San Francisco, 1891, Vol. I, pages 506-66, inclusive, is a biography of William Gilpin, with portrait. In 1840-1-2, instead of traveling "down and up the Columbia River," he was residing in Missouri (p. 522). In June, 1843, he started, for Oregon and joined Fremonfs party.
(P. 528) "On the 10th of April, 1844, he left Fort Vancouver."
(P. 529) "July 4, 1844, they were at Soda Springs" (in what
is now the southeastern part of Idaho, on their return to the states).
(c) Gilpin's testimony in the case of the Hudson's Bay Company and Puget's Sound Agricultural Company vs. the United States, covering pages 330, 339 of Volume 6 of that case and given at Washington, in February, 1867, which states (p. 331) : "I visited and remained several days at Fort Hall, going out to the Pacific Sea in September, 1843, and returned from the Pacific in June, 1844, remaining at this time several weeks at the Fort." (p. 332). "Int. 12: 'How long and when were you at Walla Walla?' Answer. In October, 1843, some eight days; in April and May, 1844, some twenty-five or thirty days." P. 333 "Int. 16: 'When and how long and under what circumstances did you visit Fort Vancouver?' "Answer. 'My recollection is that I visited Van-
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couver in November, 1843; in February, 1844, and April, 1844. I was there about ten days on each occasion, and on the last two occasions was specially the guest of Governor John McLoughlin, and was treated by him with the greatest hospitality and kindness.' "
(5) Furthermore, as Senator Louis F. Linn died October 3, 1843, when Gilpin was with Fremont's party in the Snake River Valley 208 miles west of Fort Hall on the way to and about 275 miles east of the Columbia (Cf. Fremont's Rept, Sen. Ex. Doc. No. 174, p. 170), it is absolutely certain that not only is Dr. Reed entirely mistaken in saying that in the winter of 1841-42, "I had the extreme pleasure of listening to his eloquent and fascinating description of that country" (i. e., Oregon) "during many interviews with Senators Linn and Breese," but that he never during any other winter was present at any interviews between Colonel Gilpin and Senator Linn after Gilpin visited Oregon.
(6) "From Dr. Whitman, a missionary to Oregon, much useful information for emigrants and the Senators who had charge of the bill was also obtained at that time." All that needs to be observed as to the falsity of this is that "at that time," i. e., the winter of 1841-42, Dr. Whitman was by the traveled route more than 2,500 miles, or four to five months' journey from Washington. There can be no doubt but what the Oregon Indian missionary whom Dr. Reed saw in Washington was Dr. Elijah White, who, we know from contemporary sources, was there at that precise time, and had interviews with the President, Secretaries Webster, Upshur and Spencer, Senators Linn and Benton and other friends of Oregon.
(7) As to Fremont's exploring expedition, I shall make no further criticism of the account which Dr. Reed gives of its origin (which want of space forbids quoting), than to say that it squarely contradicts the account that Senator Benton gave many years ago, while Fremont, and Colonel Abert, and President Tyler were all alive, and could have corrected it, if needful, to square with what Reed thought he recollected about it in 1885, when Tyler, and Abert, and Benton were all dead, and Fremont employed in a distant part of the country where he was not likely to see Reed's letter. (Cf. Vol. 2 of Benton's "Thirty Years' Views," published 1854-56, p. 478 et. seq., for Fremont's 1st Expedition, and p. 579 for his 2d Expedition).
But when Dr. Reed comes to speak of what it accomplished, he is exceedingly wide of the mark. He says, "Fremont made ready to start from St. Louis with his expedition as soon as there was green grass to subsist his animals upon, with an outfit of fifty to sixty men, after leaving Independence, Mo., and moved up the Platte River and its north branches to the old South Pass, and
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thence to the headwaters of the Snake (or Lewis) River, and down it and the Columbia River to Astoria, thus avoiding Mexican Territory, but kept close along its northern border after he entered Oregon Territory."
Instead of fifty to sixty men he had twenty-six men and Benton's son, a boy of twelve (Cf. Sen. Ex. Doc. 174, 28th Cong., 2d Sess., pp. 9-10), and instead of "journeying to the Columbia" on this first expedition, Fremont only went to the South Pass, and north from there to Fremont's Peak in the Wind River Mountains, and thence back to Missouri by the same route he went out on, and was never, on that first expedition, within 700 to 800 miles of the Columbia, and not within fifty to seventy-five miles of any tributary of the Lewis or Snake Fork of the Columbia.
On his second expedition, instead of fifty to sixty men, his party consisted of thirty-nine men (Cf. Sen. Ex. Doc. 174, 28th Cong., 2d Sess., pp. 105-6), and instead of "avoiding Mexican Territory," he, like all the other overland travelers at that time, traveled from Green River, about 125 miles in Mexican Territory (Cf. p. 133 of his report, Doc. 174, above mentioned), and then turned aside from the route to Oregon, and spent nearly a month more in Mexican Territory, examining the Great Salt Lake and the country about it, and after he reached the Columbia he did not "go down the Columbia River to Astoria," but only as far as Fort Vancouver, nearly 100 miles up the river from Astoria, and thence he journeyed east up the river again to The Dalles, and thence south on the east side of the Cascade and Sierra Nevadas, and then west across the Sierras to the Sacramento Valley, as Dr. Reed ought to have known, and certainly could have found in an hour's examination of Fremont's Eeport hereinbefore quoted.
On page 19 of the report of his second expedition, under date of November 8-9, 1843, after describing his arrival at Fort Vancouver, and his most hospitable reception by Dr. McLoughlin, the Superintendent of the Hudson's Bay Company's affairs beyond the Rocky Mountains, he says, "In the space of two days our preparations had been completed, and we were ready to set out on our return. It would have been very gratifying to have gone down to the Pacific, and, solely in the interest and the love of geography, to have seen the ocean on the western as the eastern side of the continent, so as to give a satisfactory completeness to the geographical picture which had been formed in our minds; but the rainy season had now regularly set in, and the air was filled with fogs and rain, which left no beauty in any scenery, and obstructed observations. The object of my instructions had been entirely fulfilled in having connected our reconnaissance with the surveys of Captain Wilkes."
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That Reed meant Fremont's first expedition (which was in 1842) is evident from his very next sentence, which is as follows :
"The following winter, 1842-43, Dr. Whitman, the Oregon missionary, returned to the east and furnished valuable data about Oregon and the practicability of a wagon route thereto across the mountains." This sentence, taken in connection with what he has said before about Dr. Whitman having been in Washington, in the winter of 1841-42, shows that he supposed, as late as 1885, that Dr. Whitman, having appeared before Linn and Breese (as we know Dr. White did in January and February, 1842), had gone to Oregon in the summer of 1842, and returned in the winter of 1842-43.
Now, if President Tyler, Colonel Gilpin and Senator Linn were particular friends of Dr. Reed, and his memory played such fantastic tricks as contemporaneous official documents to which he had easy access (to-wit: President Tyler's first message, Fremont's report, and the Congressional Globe for date of Linn's death) prove it did, concerning such well known and important public men and events, as the calling of the special session of Congress, in 1841, the extent of Fremont's explorations in 1842 and 1843, the time of Gilpin's visit to Oregon and the absolute impossiblity of his ever having had any interviews with Linn after his visit to Oregon, of what conceivable value can that memory be about so little known an individual as Dr. Whitman, whom he does not claim ever to have seen after the time he thinks he saw him in the winter of 1841-42, but when, in fact, we know that Dr. Whitman was 2,500 miles distant from him, or, as the world then was, a good 124 to 150 days' journey, and when it is absolutely certain from contemporaneous documents, i. e., "White's Narrative" and Secretary of War Spencer's letter, and White's appointment as Indian Agent, that the Oregon missionary he really saw at that time in Washington was Dr. Elijah White, and not Dr. Marcus Whitman?
Dr. White, ex-missionary to the Oregon Indians, very closely resembled in name and occupation Dr. Whitman, missionary to the Oregon Indians, so that Dr. Reed, and, doubtless, most of the other "numerous witnesses" (whose statements, made many years after the event and wholly unsupported by contemporaneous documents Rev. Dr. Myron Eells depends upon to sustain the Whitman Saved Oregon Story), could very easily confound them and transfer White's acts to Whitman.
But there were no other men in the country with names and occupations so like these of his personal and intimate friends, President Tyler, Colonel Gilpin, Lieutenant Fremont and Senator Linn, that Reed could confound with them, yet see how egregiously he blunders about each of these prominent public men, whose acts at that time had been in print, in easily accessible hooks for more
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than forty years, when Reed wrote this letter in which there are many other errors which want of space will not permit us to examine.
Dr. S. J. Parker:
This "witness" seems first to have appeared in print about 1881 or 1882, in a letter to Hon. Elwood Evans, but I have no copy of the newspaper article in which Evans used the letter and criticized its statements.
On p. 15 of Rev. M. Eells's pamphlet "Marcus Whitman, M. D.," Portland, Ore., 1883, appears the following letter from Dr. Parker:
"Ithaca, Tompkins County, New York, February 16, 1883. "Rev. M. Eells.
"Dear Sir: Your note of inquiry of January 31st is at hand. I reply first I was at home, in the room in which I now write (as I own the old homestead), when Dr. Whitman, in 1843, unexpectedly arrived, in a rather rough, but not as outlandish a dress as some writers say he had on. After the surprise of his arrival was over, he said to my father: 'I have come on a very important errand. We must both go at once to Washington or Oregon is lost, ceded to the English.' My father objected to going, and thought the danger less than Dr. Whitman thought it was. They talked several hours about it. My first memory was, as I wrote to Hon. Elwood Evans, of New Tacoma, Washington Territory, that both went in a day or two to Washington, but in this I may be mistaken as to my father. I know that Dr. Whitman went, either the next day or a day or two after he came to see my father.
Dr. Whitman came to see my father after his return from Washington, and described his interview with the president and others there. At both times the subject of emigration was talked of. Dr. Whitman said many in Illinois and Missouri, etc., were ready to go, and would go in the spring as soon as grass grew. It must liave been February the doctor was here.
"With kind regards, I am, etc.,
(Signed) "S. J. PARKER, M. D."
Dr. Parker represents Whitman as saying that unless he could reach Washington speedily "Oregon is lost ceded to the English," and in the Sunday School Times for August 9, 1902, Rev. Dr. Wm. Elliot Griffis, pastor of a Congregational church in Ithaca, N. Y., and a near neighbor of Dr. Parker, says that Dr. Parker told the story repeatedly, and stated that Whitman said "Oregon may be legislated away any day."
Dr. Parker also "remembered" that "It must have been February the Doctor was here." This was, of course, to allow him to get to Washington in time to influence Congress, which expired by limitation on March 4,1843.
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It ought to go without saying, that, as the world then was, Whitman, arriving at Westport, Mo., on February 15, 1843, with the Missouri River frozen so hard in that uncommonly severe winter that it was not open for navigation till April, could not have reached St. Louis till March 3 to 6, and Ithaca, N. Y. (if he went there) till past the middle of March, and as the 27th Congress had expired by limitation on March 4, and there was no talk even of any special session of the 28th Congress, it was utterly impossible, even if there was any plan to "cede Oregon to Great Britain," or "legislate Oregon away," that the first step even could be taken in that business, till the beginning of the first session of the 28th Congress, in December, 1843, nearly nine months after the earliest date on which Whitman could possibly have reached Ithaca (if he had gone there at all, which as we shall soon see he did not do), while any one who knows even a little about the diplomatic, and congressional, and executive action on the Oregon question, by our government from March, 1814, to March 4, 1843, knows that if any such proposition as the ceding of any part of Oregon south of 49 degrees had been broached, it would have been a matter not of action "any day," but a matter of vigorous debate in Congress for many months, with the certainty that it would be overwhelmingly defeated at the end.
The Intelligence, (?) an (alleged) educational journal published in Chicago, having devoted a page and a half to one of the silliest defences of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story ever printed, in its issue for November 1, 1902, nearly two years after every leading historian in tie land had been satisfied from reading my mamiscripts and from Prof. Bourne's paper on "The Legend of Marcus Whitman," and my discussion of it at the 1900 meeting of the American Historical Association, that the Whitman Saved Oregon Story was fiction, sneering at such men as George Bancroft, John Fiske, J. B. McMaster, H. B. Scudder, W. P. Gordy, Bdw. Eggleston, Edw. G. Bourne, A. McLaughlin, Edw. Channing, Harry P. Judson, Edw. Erie Sparks, and Allen C. Thomas, as "off historians," who had "merely looked up the records," and declaring that its editor, E. O. Vaile, "pinned his faith to Dr. Griffis'" opinions on the Whitman matter, I wrote a criticism of Dr. Griffis' letter to Mr. Vaile, and also of his article in the Sunday School Times, of August 9, 1902, and sent it to Mr. Vaile, with a request that he should publish it in The Intelligence, to which I had been a subscriber for some years.
I had little expectation that he would print it, as his sheet, now defunct, was one of the most notoriously unfair and one-sided papers claiming to be educational ever published anywhere, and has never been known to make a straightforward and honorable retraction of
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any one of the numerous and ridiculous blunders into which the credulity and general cantankerousness of Mr. Vaile has led him.
When he declined to publish it, I sent it to Rev. Dr. Griffls, and, differing entirely from Mr. Vaile in being an honorable, honest, and courteous gentleman, not only willing but anxious to be set right where he has been wrong, and to make public acknowledgment of his change of opinion, that all who have been misled by his former honest mistakes, may also revise their opinions as soon as my letter reached him, at Washington (where he was visiting), he replied as follows:
"1236 llth St., N. W. "Washington, D. 0., July 21, 1904. "Principal Wm. I. Marshall:
"My Dear Sir: Permit me to acknowledge your courtesy in sending me a copy in typescript of your contribution to the discussion of the Marcus Whitman Legend, and also for your letter accompanying the document.
"I have long since disavowed my belief in the legend. Having repeatedly heard from Dr. Samuel Parker, a detailed account of what he professed to have seen, heard, and felt in Ithaca, much of which was corroborated by many people who remembered both Parker senior and Marcus Whitman, I, after some cross-questioning of Parker, out of such materials as I had, wrote an article, by request of the editor of the Sunday School Times. Within a few weeks afterward, I had evidence that led me to believe Samuel Parker's mind was unsettled, and that he had confounded what he had read with his vivid remembrances of his boyhood's experiences with Marcus Whitman and the Indian boys, brought from the far West, with whom he played in the gorges of Ithaca. I spent much time and money in getting hold of the Parker family papers, finding not only no confirmation of Whitman's ever having visited Ithaca after his cross-country ride, but apparent demonstration that Parker, Jr., was in New York at Union Theological Seminary during the winter and spring in which he later alleged he was at his father's home in Ithaca. I at once wrote to Professor Bourne stating my changed views and prepared a brief and clear article for the Sunday School Times, asking its insertion (as a communication, without payment).
"If this has not been published, it is no fault of mine. In every other way possible, present or future, I withdraw or have withdrawn my once honest convictions of this subject.
"With thanks for the time and trouble you have gone to, and trusting you are interested more in the historic worth than in the
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personal elements of the controversy, with leave to use this letter in public, I remain,
"Very truly yours,
"WM. ELLIOT GRIFFIS."
That the reader may understand and just what sort of an educational journal Mr. Vaile edited, I will only say that immediately on receipt of this letter I sent a copy of it to him, with a letter saying that I presumed he would prefer to first publish this letter of Dr. Griffis, rather than to have it appear in some other paper, and that he had my permission to print it in TJie Intelligence either with or without comments, as he might choose.
To that letter he never replied, nor has he given his readers any intimation that the person to whose opinions he "pinned his faith" about the historical value of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story, has long since joined the ranks of the "off historians" at whom he sneered, and by "merely looking up the records" has been compelled as an honest man, to completely change his views, and to repudiate the Whitman Legend, and at the same time to totally discredit the "testimony" of Dr. S. J. Parker.
President L. G. Tyler:
A few moment's examination of "Letters and Times of the Tylers," in 1892, satisfied me that its endorsement of the Whitman Legend was merely another illustration of the malign influence of that most misleading and worthless book, Barrow's "Oregon," and I paid no more attention to it, till Mr. D. H. Montgomery named it to me, and especially Dr. Silas Reed's letter (hereinbefore examined), as furnishing some recently discovered contemporaneous evidence in support of the Whitman Legend, whereupon I examined it carefully and wrote a seventy-nine page criticism of it which satisfied Mr. Montgomery that Reed's letter was as valueless as "Judge" Otis' "testimony," and that the Whitman Legend is not in the least degree supported by the "Letters and Times of the Tylers."
The author, President Lyon G. Tyler of William and Mary College, Williamsburg, Va., is a son of President John Tyler by his second wife, and was born in August, 1853 (Vol. III., pages 216-17), and as his father died in January, 1862, when he was only eight years and five months old, he certainly could have no knowledge of the Whitman matter from any recollections of any conversations with his father, and therefore any special knowledge of it which he may have must be from documents to which he tad access, but which have not been accessible to the general public, or from conversations with his half brother, John Tyler, Jr., who was his father's private secretary while he was president.
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As the Whitman Saved Oregon Story was never printed in any form till November, 1864, and in no detailed form till November, 1865, when L. G. Tyler was twelve years old, and as the legend was little read east of the Pacific Coast States till Barrow's "Oregon" appeared in 1883, it was at once evident to me that there was no probability that L. G. Tyler ever conversed with his half-brother, Gen. John Tyler, about the Whitman Story till 1883, or later and then as a result of reading Barrows' "Oregon."
Not wishing to rest anything on my own inferences, however solid their foundations, if positive evidence could be obtained, on March 22, 1900, I wrote President L. G. Tyler as follows:
"Mr. David H. Montgomery writes me that you remember to have heard your half brother, John Tyler, Jr., Private Secretary to President John Tyler, say that he remembered conversing with Dr. Whitman, in the White House, at Washington.
"Will you please inform me:
"(1) When you first conversed with Private Secretary John Tyler about Dr. Whitman?
"(2) Whether he had any diary or memorandum of a Cabinet meeting, or other contemporaneous document which mentioned Dr. Whitman?
"(3) If he had no such contemporary documents did you find among President John Tyler's papers any such contemporaneous documents which mentions Dr. Marcus Whitman, and if so, what mention does it make of Mm?
"(4) If no such contemporary paper was found among the papers of President John Tyler, or his son John, do you know of any such authentic contemporaneous paper, diary, or other written memorandum, by any one which has anything to say about Dr. Marcus Whitman being in Washington in the spring of 1843, and if so, can you quote what it says about him, or state who now possesses the document?
"(5) It is certain that Elijah White, M. D., who had been a (Methodist) medical missionary to the Oregon Indians in the years 1837-40, and was discharged from that Mission in 1840, and returned to New York in 1841, visited Washington in the winter of 1841-42 (having letters of introduction from Daniel Webster's oldest son to President Tyler, Daniel Webster, Secretary John C. Spencer, Senator Linn and others), arriving there January 25, 1842. He had various interviews with the President, Cabinet officers and Congressmen, and received from Secretary Spencer by your father's instruction a commission as sub-Indian Agent for the Oregon Indians (being the first official ever appointed by our government to reside west of the Rocky Mountains), and was instructed to proceed to Oregon, taking with him as many emigrants as possible,
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and did accordingly start from the Missouri frontier on May 16, 1842, in charge of a party of 112 people and eighteen wagons, being the first large migration to Oregon.
"Are you aware of these facts and are you certain that Private Secretary John Tyler, talking with you many years after the event, did not confound Dr. White with Dr. Whitman, as it is certain many people have done?
"Dr. Silas Reed certainly made that mistake in the statement on page 696 of your interesting and valuable book "Letters and Times of the Tylers," when writing of the winter of 1841-42, he says, 'From Dr. Whitman, a missionary to Oregon, much valuable information for the emigrants and the Senators who had charge of the bill was also obtained at that time.' It is as certain as that two and two are four that 'at that time' Dr. White was in Washington (and knew vastly more about that part of Oregon which was then and for some years after the only part which was settled and to which emigrants would then go, viz: The Willamette Valley, where he had been for three years, than Whitman did, who was stationed more than 300 miles this side of the Willamette (of which he knew nothing from personal observation), and in a region which was not settled to any extent till 1858-60, and it is equally certain that 'at that time' Dr. Whitman was, by the traveled route, more than 2,500 miles, or, as the world then was, from 120 to 150 days' journey away from Washington. What Dr. Reed says about the circumstances which took him to and kept him in Washington that winter shows that his direct personal interest in the matter of his renomination for and confirmation to the very important and lucrative office of Surveyor General of the great states of Illinois and Missouri was so great that there is no doubt of the correctness of his recollection as to what winter it was that he spent in Washington.
"(6) Did you in your conversations with your brother John, about Oregon, hear him mention Dr. Elijah White and his visit to Washington, and his leading out a migration to Oregon?"
To this President L. G. Tyler replied under date of March 24, 1900, as follows:
"In reply to your letter of the 22d, I beg to say that chancing in 1884, while writing the 2d volume of the TJetters and Times' to read Barrows' "Oregon," I talked with Gen. John Tyler about the matter, who stated that he remembered Dr. Whitman in Washington about the time mentioned by Barrows, and spoke of his connection with the Oregon settlement and an interview had by him with the President. When the part of the 2d volume was in print which had reference to Oregon, I received a letter from Dr. Silas Reed that he had just seen my 1st volume in the New Eng-
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land Historical and Genealogical Society in Boston and regretted that he did not know of my intended publication, as he could have assisted me, he thought, on some points especially in connection with the West. I sent him at once the proof of the chapter in the second volume on Oregon and he replied with the letter which is published in my work."
. . . "I have never seen any contemporary account of Whitman's interview with President Tyler." . . "It may be that all you say of Dr. White is true." . . . "My attention, however, was never directed to Dr. White before."
Considering the tremendous series of events which had happened in the forty-one years between 1843 and 1884 (when L. G. Tyler first talked with John Tyler, Jr., about Whitman), the annexation of Texas, the Mexican war and the vast territory which came to us in the Mexican cession, the discovery of gold in California and later in the Rocky Mountain regions, and the resulting changes in and amazing development of the western half of the country, the uncontrollable excitement on the slavery question largely due to the fugitive slave law and the Kansas Nebraska bill, the Civil War with the resulting abolition of slavery, and the reconstruction troubles following the downfall of the confederacy, Private Secretary John Tyler's memory must have been very, very phenomenal if, without any written or printed contemporaneous documents to refresh it, it could have been depended upon to retain any definite recollections about such a very ephemeral matter as the appearance in Washington of Marcus Whitman, who, it is absolutely certain was there but a few days, who had not theretofore done, or said or written anything of the slightest public importance, who it is certain was not in Washington when Congress was in session, and whose personality so little impressed itself on the people of the country along his whole line of travel, from the Missouri frontier to Boston and back via Washington, Pittsburg, Cincinnati, and St. Louis, that he received only the very slight and inconsequential notices hereinbefore quoted from the New York Tribune, and the New York Spectator, and the frigidly perfunctory paragraph in the Boston Recorder.
This thoroughly honorable, straightforward and candid letter of President L. G. Tyler shows that instead of his "Letters and Times of the Tylers," and Dr. Reed's letter therein (Vol. II., pp. 692-99) furnishing any "newly discovered contemporaneous evidence about Whitman's ride," it merely gives us an echo of the misinformation, misquotations and fabrications of Barrows' "Oregon."
Shortly after receiving the foregoing letter from President L. G. Tyler, I sent him for perusal the manuscripts which had satisfied Fiske. McMaster, Gordy, Scudder, Jordan, Sparks, Thomas,
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Thorpe, et al. of the falsity of the whole Whitman Legend, and after he had taken ample time to examine them, he returned them, and wrote me on March 20,1903, as follows: "Dear Mr. Marshall:
"I return your papers by mail and hope they will reach you safely.
"You have done a great work, and I think your case is made out to the extent at any rate of showing that Dr. Whitman does not deserve any overwhelming merit in the Oregon matter.
"I am perfectly satisfied that he never had any determining effect upon President Tyler's policy. My idea has been that he simply facilitated the President's views by his caravan.
"But now you have shown that he did not get up any caravan, nor is there any reason to believe that Mr. Webster entertained a different view from President Tyler. At least there is no proof of it."
The same idea had been stated by President L. G. Tyler in a letter to Prof. Hodder, who quotes it (in his review of Mowry's "Marcus Whitman and the Early Days of Oregon," in the Dial, for January 16, 1902,) as follows: "That Dr. Tyler does not regard it (». e. what Dr. Mowry has quoted from him on pp. 172-3); as sustaining the claim that Whitman influenced the administration, appears from a recent letter to the writer of this review, in which he says, 'I do not believe that Dr. Whitman controlled the policy of President Tyler's administration in any way.'"
This certainly disposes effectually of any support which the "Letters and Times of the Tylers" may have seemed to give to the Whitman Legend, and no one has ever ventured to claim that anything that Whitman ever did or said influenced the Oregon policy of any other administration than that of President Tyler. The very latest attempt to manufacture evidence to support the Whitman Legend--and the boldest and most foolish considering the ease with which its total falsity can be proved beyond any possibility of dispute--is the following:
Whether the responsibility for its rests entirely on Rev. Newell D. Hillis, or should be divided between him and Rev. S. B. Penrose, President of Whitman College, the reader must decide for himself.
November 3, 1904, the Walla Walla, Daily Union (which is in very close relation with Whitman College), published an interview with President Penrose, stating, among other things, that he had attended the ten days' meeting of the Triennial Council of the Congregational Churches of the United States at Des Homes, Iowa, in October 1904, and continued "Whitman Saved Oregon."
"One of the greatest sensations at the Des Moines council was brought out in an address by Dr. Hillis. In speaking of the work
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of Marcus Whitman, Dr. Hillis placed him among the foremost of home missionaries. In regard to the Whitman controversy, he presented evidence that has never before been brought to light. While in Canada, he had had an interview with a Canadian historian, who is president of the Presbyterian college at Winnipeg. This man has had access to the letters of the Hudson's Bay Company, which have hitherto been held in strict secrecy, and which gave positive evidence that Marcus Whitman saved Oregon to the Union. The Hudson's Bay Company was Whitman's bitterest enemy, and sought in every way to forestall his plans. The letters of the company were kept on file, and are now the most valuable material on the entire subject."
The evidence herein presented (in Ch. VII., Part I.) on "The Truth About the Relation of the Hudson's Bay Company to the American Exploration, Occupation and Settlement of the Oregon Territory," demonstrates beyond any question, the absolute falsity of the above statement, that "The Hudson's Bay Company was Whitman's bitterest enemy, and sought in every way to forestall his plans."
Not being able for some weeks after reading this article to get hold of Dr. Hillis' sermon, and not wishing to be in the least degree unjust to him, I promptly wrote him a courteous letter, stating that the Walla Walla Union had stated that he had said in an address at the Des Moines council that he had met a distinguished Canadian historian, who, in gathering material for a history of the Hudson's Bay Company had found among the archives of the Hudson's Bay Company proof positive that Whitman had saved Oregon to the United States and asking him if the Union had correctly reported him, and if so, what is the name and postoffice address of the said Canadian historian. I have sent him during the past ten weeks no less than four copies of this letter, enclosing in each of them a stamped directed envelope for reply, registering one of the letters to make certain that the address was correct, and that he received it, but he has made no reply, though he might have answered my two questions in ten words.
He has also declined to answer similar letters of inquiry from Professor F. H. Hodder of the University of Kansas, who is a well-known member of the American Historical Association.
Dr. Hillis' address at Des Moines was printed in the Some Missionary, for December, 1904, (pp. 275-83) and on pp. 280-81 it reads as follows: "But now open to the pages of the Hudson's Bay Company--those splendid volumes published by Longmans & Green. Call that distinguished historian, their author, into the stand. He will tell you that the Hudson's Bay Company ruled Canada, once called Prince Rupert's land; that they had the power
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of life and death, as well as of making laws, and that they controlled western Canada, by their factors, like old Dr. McLaughlin, who was their great man on the Columbia River, and who watched Whitman and his moves and sent Indian runners with messages to Montreal. Last summer this distinguished historian said to me at a dinner: 'Your President did not understand the importance of Oregon and Washington, your Daniel Webster did not know about the country.
" 'My people thought they had it, and we would have the richest section of the Pacific slope but for that missionary of yours, Marcus Whitman, who crossed the continent in winter, endured the pitiless rains and snows, swam his horse through stream and river midst floating ice, and startled Webster and the President by the story of the resources of the land we coveted.'"
This with what President Penrose said about the Canadian historian being the president of the Presbyterian College at Winnipeg positively identified him as Rev. Geo. Bryce, D. D., LL. D.
Note how adroitly Dr. Hillis conveys the impression, without making the positive assertion, that this historian had obtained from his examination of the Hudson's Bay Company's archives certain proof that Whitman saved Oregon, though when he comes to state what that historian actually said to him, it is nothing from the Hudson's Bay Company's archives, but merely an echo of what that historian or anybody else would acquire from reading and believing Spalding's pamphlet, or Barrows' "Oregon," or Nixon's "How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon," or any one of the many other equally fictitious books, pamphlets, or magazine or newspaper articles advocating the Whitman Legend.
"I at once wrote to Dr. Bryce, calling his attention to the fact that Dr. Hillis, and President Penrose stated that he had discovered in the archives of the Hudson's Bay Company proof that f)r. Marcus Whitman had saved Oregon to the United States, and asking him if he had found any such matter in the archives of the Hudson's Bay Company, and if so, requesting him to send me a transcript of the documents with bill for the same, and I would immediately remit.
Dr. Bryce promptly replied, tinder date of Winnipeg, January 30, 1905, as follows: "I have received several letters about the 'Whitman Controversy.' I am not sure whether Dr. Hillis refers to me or not. I dined with him at the house of a Mend in Winnipeg, but can remember no definite statement made by me in conversation." . . . "However I know nothing of the Whitman matter."
So instead of "positive proof having been found in the archives of the Hudson's Bay Company that Whitman saved Oregon to the
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United States" the distinguished Canadian historian who has searched those archives most extensively for the materials of his "The Remarkable History of the Hudson's Bay Company," not only did not in that book even mention the name of Marcus Whitman, but, on being questioned directly as to whether or not he had found any evidence in those archives about Whitman having saved Oregon to the United States, declares point blank: "I know nothing of the Whitman matter," and any farther comment on the claim that Rev. Dr. Hillis has "brought to light" any evidence that the Hudson's Bay Company's archives furnish support for the Whitman Legend, is certainly unnecessary; while Rev. Dr. Hillis and Rev. S. B. Penrose may be left to crawl out of the awkward position in which they have placed themselves as best they can. I am reliably informed that President Penrose has taken great pains to have this purely bogus "evidence" given very wide circulation.
As showing the amazing density of Dr. Hillis' ignorance on this subject, about which he spoke so glibly and with such an air of authority at Des Mpines, it is proper to remark:
(1) That Longmans and Green have not published any volumes --"splendid" or otherwise--relating to the Hudson's Bay Company, as they inform me by letter dated February 20, 1905.
Two Canadian historians have written histories of the Hudson's Bay Company, viz: Beckles Willson, "The Great Company," published by the Clark-Copp Co., Toronto, Canada, 1899, and Rev. George Bryce, "The Eemarkable History of the Hudson's Bay Co.," published by Sampson Low, Marston & Co., London, 1900. Though both are valuable and interesting books, neither one is, in any proper sense of the term, a "splendid volume," and neither one so much as mentions the name of Dr. Whitman.
(2) The Hudson's Bay Company never "ruled Canada," nor any, even the smallest fraction of Canada.
(3) Canada was never "called Prince Rupert's land." Where Canada ended Prince Rupert's land began.
(4) The Hudson's Bay Company did not "have power of life and death" even in Prince Rupert's land, being expressly forbidden by Act of Parliament even to try any offender, upon any charge or indictment for any felony to which the penalty of capital punishment was attached, or to try any civil suit or action in which the cause of such suit or action exceeded two hundred pounds in value.
All such offenders and civil suits they were compelled to send to Upper Canada (now the Province of Ontaria), for trial; and in any of the cases they were allowed to try, the right of appeal was expressly reserved.
It must also be remembered about this matter, that under the barbarous laws of England at that time no less than 160 offenses
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were felonies to which the penalty of capital punishment was attached, which left the Hudson's Bay Company no authority to try and punish for any offenses graver than what we now should call mere misdemeanors, instead of "having the power of life and death." This Act of Parliament was printed in full by our government more than once, in connection with Congressional discussions and diplomatic negotiations about the Oregon question, and is also to be found in "Greenhow's Oregon and California," edition of 1845, pp. 467-472.
(5) They never for one moment "controlled Western Canada," nor Eastern Canada, nor any part of Canada; but they controlled the region west of Canada, which is a very different thing from "Western Canada."
(6) Whitman made no "moves" which Dr. McLoughlin "watched," or needed to watch,
(7) McLoughlin sent no "Indian runners to Montreal" from Oregon.
Annually in the spring, as soon as navigation was open, the express for Montreal left Fort Vancouver, on the Columbia, going by boats and portages as far up the river as possible, and then on horseback across the Rockies to the head of boat navigation on the Saskatchewan, and thence by boats with many portages by Lake Winnipeg, Rainy Lake, Lake Superior, Georgian Bay, and the Ottawa River, and many smaller lakes, and rivers, and portages, arriving at its destination generally in October.
All of these things to which Dr. Hillis said Dr. Bryce if "called into the stand" would "testify" are thus proven to be merely the vagaries of the ill regulated imagination of an emotional rhetorician, concerning himself not with advancing the cause of truth, but only with turning fine periods, and creating a sensation in a missionary meeting address, and it is absolutely certain that neither "that distinguished Canadian historian," nor any one else even moderately acquainted with the history of the Hudson's Bay Company would "testify" to a single one of them.
In what Dr. Hillis says about Professor Bourne's very scholarly, temperate and just essay on "The Whitman Legend," he is as indifferent to the truth as in his statements about the Hudson's Bay Company, and Canada, and Prince Rupert's Land, and the only charitable view of the matter is, that he has never thought it any more needful to read Professor Bourne's essay carefully before denouncing it, than he did to read Dr. Bryce's "History of the Hudson's Bay Co.," before substituting for its accurate information his own sensational fancies.
If Dr. Hillis will canvass all the professors of American History in all the universities of our country, and in all the colleges
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(except the distinctly Congregational and Presbyterian colleges), he will find that fully nine-tenths of them (and also as large a proportion of the authors of American historical works that have a national or international reputation, who are not professors of history in universities and colleges), endorse Professor Bourne's "Legend of Marcus Whitman" as presenting absolutely irresistible evidence in support of every important conclusion it states against the theory that Marcus Whitman saved all, or any, even the smallest part of the old Oregon Territory to the United States.*
May 20, 1905, after a delay of more than five months, Rev. Dr. Hillis wrote me the following letter, in which the reader will see that he carefully avoids answering either of the two questions I asked him in my four letters. (At the same time Dr. Hillis sent Professor F. H. Hodder identically the same letter as the following one to me.)
"Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, N. Y.
"May 20, 1905. "Mr. William I. Marshall:
"My Dear Sir: Immediately upon the receipt of your letter I wrote the gentleman in Winnipeg who made the statement to me about Whitman. For a long time I had no reply, and when it came he practically said that I misunderstood him; but as he made the statement in the presence of half a dozen gentlemen, and there was the deepest interest in the conversation, I am sure that I quoted him with entire accuracy.
"I am to be in Winnipeg in July, and I am going to see him personally, and have the issue out. I have been overwhelmed with work through the illness and resignation of my assistant pastor, and for weeks at a time have been unable to even read my letters.
"Very truly yours,
"NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS."
Undoubtedly most of the numerous "witnesses" who have rushed into print with "statements" intended to support the Whitman Saved Oregon Story have been perfectly honest, though the "testimony" of all the others (which want of space forbids examining in detail), is as valueless as that of the "witnesses" herein analyzed.
I have been satisfied for a dozen years past that but few, probably not more than eight or ten, of those who have advocated the Whitman Legend have consciously and intentionally deceived the public.
*Note--The foregoing criticism of Rev. Dr. Hillis' address, beginning with "the very latest attempt to manufacture evidence," was published in the Oregonian of March 26, 1905.
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Herein for the first time is made accessible to the public the evidence which is indispensable to the forming of correct judgments as to the culpability of the originators and leading advocates of the fiction, and probably all will agree that while Rev. H. H. Spalding, alike in his original version of the legend in the Pacific, and in his later attempts to support it, and especially in his pamphlet--the notorious Sen. Ex. Doc. No. 37--seemed to be wholly indifferent as to the truth and stated a multitude of things which if he was able to distinguish truth from falsehood he must have known to be totally false, and many of them shamefully slanderous of the Hudson's Bay Company's officers in Oregon, and of the Catholic missionaries in Oregon, there is abundant proof that he was an irresponsible monomaniac after the Whitman massacre, and so should be freed from the charge of wilfully and intentionally lying, though none of his statements about the origin, purpose and results of Whitman's ride, or about his ever having been opposed by the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Hall, or elsewhere, or about the Catholics and the Hudson's Bay Company having instigated, or having been in any way responsible for the Whitman massacre are entitled to the least credence.
It is much to be regretted that no similar excuse can be made for the equally false statements of Mr. W. H. Gray, and Rev. C. Eells, about the origin, purpose and results of Whitman's ride, and that they must be classed as deliberate and wilful falsifiers of history.
Those who have read Gray's testimony in the cases of the Hudson's Bay Company and the P. S. A. Co. vs. the United States (Cf. Pt. I., p. 662, and Pt. II., pp. 122-28), and his various other statements in support of the Whitman Legend, and his shamefully slanderous accusations against the Hudson's Bay Company quoted herein, and have compared them with his own letters about that company, and about the quarrels between Whitman and Spalding while he was connected with the Whitman Mission, and with the official reports of the Seventh Annual Meeting of the Mission May 16-June 8, 1842, and the Special Meeting of September 26-7, 1842, which authorized Whitman's journey to the states, and so much of Rev. C. Eells' letter of October 3, 1842, as discusses Gray's withdrawal from the Mission, and Rev. E. Walker's emphatic endorsement of its correctness have, at length, for the first time, the evidence needed for the formation of a correct judgment of Gray's character, and can decide for themselves as to the accuracy of the following characterizations of him, and of his "History of Oregon," by H. H. Bancroft--
"Gray, that most mendacious missionary" (Cf. Bancroft's "Oregon," Vol. L, p. 196); and "Gray who hates all Episcopal clergymen,
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and all Englishmen, and all Catholics, and almost everybody but Gray;" and "Gray the Great Untruthful"(Cf. Hist, of "N.W. Coast," Vol. 2, pp. 536 and 537), and on pp. 301-302 of his "Oregon," Vol. 1, note 12, "W. H. Gray is responsible for these statements. In 1870 he published a "History of Oregon from 1792 to 1849," a book of 624 pages; sold by subscription in Portland, San Francisco and New York. As a book of reference, when compared with other authorities, the book is valuable, containing many facts and important documents. It has, however, three faults--lack of arrangement, acrimonious partisanship, and disregard of truth. A notable instance of its mendacity is the dramatic account given of Whitman's visit to the United States, its cause and purpose, and the alleged instrumentality of Whitman in raising the emigration of 1843, almost the whole of which must be relegated to the domain of fiction," and on p. 536 of Vol. 2, "N. W. Coast," he declares that "It would require a volume as large as Gray's to correct Gray's mistakes," which, after a careful study of it I am satisfied is a fair criticism.
As to Rev. C. Eells,-as the public is herein for the first time given an opportunity to compare his long suppressed letters while the Mission existed, and subsequently down to his of May 28, 1866, with that letter (which is the first particle of writing ever produced from his pen which so much as mentions any Saving Oregon object or result of Whitman's ride), and with his "statements," in 1878 and 1883, I am perfectly content to leave the public to decide, whether or not my judgment is correct that after May 28, 1866, Rev. C. Eells steadily deceived the public by concealing the true origin .and purpose of Whitman's ride, and publishing a fictitious account thereof.
While by no means a full justification of his course in this matter, it is only fair to state as extenuating circumstances: First, that, as all his writings and those of Whitman, Gray and Spalding show, all these missionaries were densely ignorant of the long and skillful diplomatic struggle for Oregon, wa,ged by many of the most far sighted and brilliant of our statesmen, (as shown fully in Ch. VI., Part I., herein), and of the inflexible determination with which all of them from Madison as President and Monroe as Secretary of State, in instructions to our commissioners to negotiate the Treaty of Ghent, in 1814, down to Tyler as President and Webster as Secretary of State, in negotiating the Ashburton Treaty in 1842, had insisted on no line south of forty-nine degress to the coast as the north boundary of Oregon.
Second, That in 1865-6, Cushing Eells had fully determined to link his name with that of Whitman by founding Whitman Seminary (since developed into Whitman College), and it goes without
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saying that he intended to appeal to the ardent supporters of the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions, and the Presbyterian Board of Missions for funds to support that seminary, and, knowing well that the true story of the origin and purpose, and results of Whitman's ride, and the whole history of the American Board Mission to the Oregon Indians, would not at all stimulate contributions for his cherished project,' he was under very strong temptation to substitute for the truth, which would not aid his plan, the Saving Oregon romance which would greatly aid it, as the results of the last thirty-nine years abundantly show it has done, and still is doing.
Had the Missionary Herald in December, 1866, when it printed C. Eells' letter of May 28, 1866, printed with it the following documents from it own archives, viz: (1) Rev. C. Eells' letter of October 3, 1842, to Rev. D. Greene, Secretary, containing his officials reports as Scribe, of the Seventh Annual Meeting of the Mission, and of the Special Meeting of September 26-27, 1842, with Rev. E. Walker's endorsement of the correctness of Mr. Eells' letter.
(2) The letter of Rev. E. Walker to Rev. D, Greene, Secretary, begun October 3, 1842, and finished according to his journal, October 8), and endorsed by Rev. C. Eells as correct.
(3) The letter of Rev. H. H. Spalding, C. Eells and E. Walker as a committee of the Mission, to Rev. D. Greene, Secretary, dated June 8, 1842, and announcing that after an eight days' effort the members of the Mission had finally settled their quarrels and hoped thenceforth to live in peace with one another.
(4) Rev. H. H. Spalding's letter of defense and justification to D. Greene, Secretary, dated October 15, 1842.
(5) Rev. E. Walker's letter of February 28, 1843.
(6) The article in the Missionary Herald of September, 1843, hereinbefore quoted (Cf. pp. 140-1, Part II., ante)--but never yet quoted by any advocate of the Whitman Legend--giving the first account ever printed of the origin and purpose of Whitman's ride.
(7) The brief biographical sketch of Whitman, containing only 162 words, which prefaced the account of his massacre, in the Missionary Herald of July, 1848, and which, for the second time, explicitly declared that his ride was on the business of the Mission, there is not a shadow of doubt that the Whitman Saved Oregon Story would never have obtained credence, even among, the most ardent supporters of the American Board.
But suppressing all allusion to even the. existence of any of these documents, and printing Eells' ingenious fiction, that Marcus Whitman was so deeply concerned over' the political destiny of the Oregon territory that he summoned his associates to a Special Meeting of the Mission in September, 1842, solely to consider the
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relation of Oregon to the United States, and that after spending part of two days in debating that question, they finally consented to allow Whitman to go to the states, for the "single purpose" of Saving Oregon to the United States, they caused many who never would have accepted the patent improbabilities and impossibilities of the Spalding-Gray version, to accept this equally fictitious tale about the origin, purpose and results of Whitman's ride, with the result that, as in a few years the Spalding-Gray version of the origin of the ride was proved beyond dispute to be false in every detail, the Eells' fiction has been gradually substituted for it, most of the later advocates of the Legend totally ignoring the Spalding-Gray version of the origin of the ride, since the total falsity of the C. Eells' version, though probable, to any one even moderately well acquainted with the history of the Oregon Acquisition could not be proven beyond doubt, without these documents all of which its advocates have constantly declined to put before the public.
As to Rev. G. H. Atkinson:
Herein is also presented for the first time the evidence in his own letters and addresses which is needful to the forming of an intelligent judgment as to whether or not my opinion is correct that Mr. Atkinson must be numbered among the intentional falsifiers of history.
First, His letter of October 19, 1857, to Secretary Treat urging the re-establishment of the Missions to the Nez Perces and the Spokanes (against the judgment of Walker and Eells who had spent nine years in missionarying among the Spokanes), distinctly on the grounds that "The Board will never get its large claim of the Government, unless it renews the Mission. But if you renew it you will probably get that, and also get the place of government teacher among those Indians and the pay for that. The claim according to Mr. Spalding's estimate is not less than $30,000."
Second, His letters of November 20, 1858, and September 7, 1859, as "Recovery Agent" for the American Board Commissioners of Foreign Missions, giving the first two versions ever written (so far as known) of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story, both totally false, and widely variant from each other.
Third, His letter of March 19, 1885, to Rev. M. Eells, containing his own statement of the way in which he had persuaded Rey. S. B. Treat, D. D., (Secretary of the American Board from 1847 and 1877), that it would be "for the honor of God in your Missions in Oregon, and for the encouragement of the churches" if Dr. Treat would write to Rev. C. Eells, and secure an endorsement of the Whitman Saved Oregon Story from him, which resulted in Rev. C. Eells' endorsement of the Legend in his of May 28, 1866.
Fourth, In Mr. Atkinson's repeated use of the Spalding-Gray
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version, for fully ten years after this talk of his with Treat had resulted in the Eells' version, though it is evident at a glance that if the Spalding-Gray version of the origin of the ride is true the Eells' version is wholly false, and vice versa, if the Eells' version is true, the Spalding-Gray version is wholly false.
At the start it is possible that Atkinson, who was a very enthusiastic Congregational Home Missionary, of an imaginative turn of mind, and inclined to extravagance in oratory, was honestly of the opinion that Whitman (whom he never saw or knew personally), had made his ride to save Oregon, and had succeeded in furnishing information of great value to an administration that was ignorant of its value, and hostile or indifferent to its acquisition, and had influenced that administration to change its policy; but in his later years after the subject had been examined by H. H. Bancroft, and quite extensively discussed in the papers of Oregon, it is impossible for me to believe that he was honest in his further advocacy of it.
Nor can I believe that Rev. S. B. Treat, D. D., Secretary of the American Board from 1847 to 1877, did not intentionally falsify history when he endorsed the Whitman Legend, for he had freest access to all the correspondence of the Mission, and must have known of the obituary notice of Whitman in the Missionary Herald for July, 1848, which explicitly declared that Whitman's ride was on the business of the Mission.
He must also have known that in the Jubilee Memorial Volume, issued by the American Board in 1861, their Oregon Mission had received the slightest possible mention, and Whitman's name even had not appeared in the whole volume.
To him also had been addressed Atkinson's two letters of November 20, 1858, and September 7, 1859, with their two variant and both totally false versions of the Whitman Legend, and he had utterly ignored both versions, as he had the Spalding-Gray version, and he had told Atkinson that Spalding was unreliable, yet the Spalding version was used by Atkinson (who spoke at Treat's request), at the meeting of the American Board at Norwich, Conn., and his address was printed in the Missionary Herald for March, 1869 (p. 76), which could not have been done against Dr. Treat's wishes.
Rev. Wm. Barrows must also be numbered among the wilful deceivers of the public, for while by far the greater part of the hundreds of blunders in his Oregon may charitably be ascribed to his phenomenal ignorance of everything of any real importance concerning the geography, the bibliography, the economics, and the history of the Acquisition of Oregon, and though charity may ascribe several of his misquotations to his indolence, causing him
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to accept them at second hand without any attempt at verifying them, it is impossible with utmost exertion to stretch the mantle of charity enough to make it cover his garbled quotations from the lecture of Capt. Wm. Sturgis, and from Benton's speech in the Senate, on March 1, 1825, (as stated on pp. 178-82, Part I., ante) and his, if possible, even worse juggling with articles in the Edinburg Review, and London Examiner (as exposed on pp. 257-61 and 271-4 of Parti., ante).
Practically all the later books, and magazine and newspaper articles (except Mowry's "Marcus Whitman and the Early Days of Oregon"), advocating the Whitman Legend depended very largely if not wholly on Barrows' "Oregon," and, like him, all their various authors (except Mo wry), deemed it wholly unnecessary to spend any of their precious time examining "original sources," either at the office of the American Board in Boston, or in the archives of the Government at Washington.
The most widely known of these later books is Dr. O. W. Nixon's "How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon," Chicago, 1895. Dr. Nixon was the most wildly hysterical of all the advocates of the Whitman Legend and received the degree of L.L.D. from Whitman College in recognition of his services in support of that legend.
If it is within the bounds of possibility to produce a more worthless and misleading book than Barrows' "Oregon," Dr. Nixon has furnished it to us in this volume, and yet I am charitable enough to believe that he has not intentionally and wilfully deceived the public.
Though not personally acquainted with him, many of my friends knew him well, and they tell me that he was a very well intentioned old gentleman, who honestly believed all the innumerable fictions he has written in defense of the Whitman Legend to be true.
For this strange hallucination a sufficient explanation is furnished by Dr. Nixon himself, in the following modest paragraphs from the first page of the preface to his book: "I expect some of my critics will ask, as they have in the past, 'Who is your authority for this fact and that?'
"1 only answer, I don't know unless I am authority. In 1850 and 1851 I was a teacher of the young men and maidens, and bright-eyed boys and girls of the old pioneers of Oregon."
But as those were years when nothing of any great importance in the history of Oregon happened, and four or five years after the treaty had been made fixing the parallel of forty-nine degrees as the northern boundary of Oregon, it is not easily apparent to the common mind, how his brief Oregon sojourn, in two uneventful years of its history, can make him "an authority," about facts that
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not only were not matters in which he had any share, but which had happened from three to sixty years before he was in Oregon. To such a mind as Dr. Nixon's the full conviction that he himself was "authority" for the "facts" he might choose to write in defense of the Whitman Legend, at once greatly simplified his labor as a historian and not only relieved him from the necessity of spending any of his valuable time in the tiresome task of studying "original sources," or "comparing authorities," but also fully justified him in changing the dates of original documents, and altering the texts thereof so that, as amended by him, they would state such "facts" in support of the Whitman Legend as he was desirous to have them state, and pleased to print as "facts" duly vouched for by him as an "authority."
On pp. 183-4, Part II., ante, we have already seen how Dr. Nixon's firm conviction that he is "an authority" for facts has resulted in his not merely furnishing an incorrect title for the inconsequential "Draft of a Bill" which Whitman sent to the Secretary of War, soon after his return to Oregon, but also in his stating that it recommended to the government three things, no one of which was either mentioned or in any way implied in it, and one of which, Whitman himself, in the letter accompanying the bill, explicitly declared was not intended to be in it!
A still more striking and amusing example of the result of being himself "an authority," for facts is seen in his treatment of the letter which Mr. A. L. Lovejoy (who was Whitman's companion from Wailatpu to Fort Bent), wrote about the journey, to Rev. G. H. Atkinson, in 1876.
This letter Dr. Nixon prints in full (in the Appendix pp. 305-12), and on pages 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 118, 119, 120 and 126 he quotes ostensibly from this letter, thus (p. Ill) : "In his diary General Lovejoy says . . . 'Passing over a high mountain near Taos we encountered a terrible snow storm, which compelled us to seek shelter in a dark defile, and although we made several attempts to press on, we were detained some ten days. When we got upon the mountain again we met with another violent snow storm, which almost blinded man and beast. The pelting snow and cold made the dumb brutes well nigh unmanageable.'
"Finally the guide stopped and acknowledged he was lost and would go no farther, and they resolved to return to their camp in the sheltered ravine. But the drifting snow had obliterated every sign of the path by which they had come, and the guide acknowledged that he could not direct the way. In this dire dilemma, says General Lovejoy, 'Dr. Whitman dismounted and upon his knees in the snow commended himself, his distant wife, his
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missionary companions and work, and his Oregon, to the Infinite One for guidance and protection.'
"The lead mule left to himself by the guide, turning his long ears this .way and that, finally started plunging through the snow drifts, his Mexican guide and all the party following instead of guiding, the old guide remarking, 'This mule will find camp if he can live long enough to reach it.' And he did."
But not a word of this is in Lovejoy's letter, nor is anything remotely resembling it in either this letter of Lovejoy's or in his other letter written to W. H. Gray, in 1869, and printed in Gray's History of Oregon (pp. 324-7).
This, however, which makes the saving of the lives of this party and so the Saving of Oregon depend on the drooping of a mule's ear, appears first in Spalding's first version of the Whitman Legend, in the Pacific for September 28, 1865, and is copied on p. 21 of Spalding's pamphlet (Sen. Ex. Doc. 37).
But in that account Spalding says that this was, "On that terrible 13 of January, 1843, when so many in all parts of our country froze to death, the doctor against the advice of his Mexican guide left his camp in a deep gorge of the mountains of New Mexico."
But as Lovejoy assures us that Whitman left Bent's Fort for Missouri on January 7,1843, and as Bent's Fort (which at different times was located in different places) at this time was near where La Junta, Colorado, now is, out on the plains far east of the "mountains of New Mexico," it is certain that "on the 13th of January, 1843, Whitman not only was not in a deep gorge of the mountains," but was so far out on the plains that not the loftiest peak of those mountains showed above the western horizon.
It will be noticed that Mr. Nixon says "In his diary General Loyejoy says," but there is not the remotest probability that any Lovejoy's diary ever existed except in the mind of Dr. Nixon, for not only does Lovejoy himself never allude to any diary or other contemporary notes or memoranda in either of these two letters (written 27 and 34 years after the event), but the expressions he uses show plainly enough that he wrote wholly from memory.
It is much to be regretted that he did not keep a diary, though if he had done so, and had quoted from it with careful exactness, Dr. Nixon as "an authority for the facts" in his book would doubtless have taken the liberty of altering the diary, as freely as he did this letter.
In his letter to Atkinson, Lovejoy writes (as quoted by Nixon in Appendix, p. 310), "I remained at Bent's Fort until spring, and joined the doctor the following July, near Fort Laramie, on his way to Oregon, in company with a train of emigrants and in his
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letter to Gray he wrote: "The doctor left here" (i. e. Bent's Fort) "on the 7th (January, 1843), and I did not meet him again until some time in the month of July, above Fort Laramie, on his way to Oregon with a train of emigrants."
To most people this would seem conclusive as to the whereabouts of Love joy from January to July, 1843, but not so Dr. Nixon.
It seemed necessary to his theories about the Saving of Oregon by Whitman that Love joy should be in Missouri in the early spring of 1843, inducing people to migrate to Oregon, and being himself "authority for the facts" in his book, this is what he states (on pp. 120, 136 and 137) about Lovejoy (p. 120), "General Lovejoy remained at the fort until he entirely recovered from his fatigue, and went on with the next caravan passing eastward to St. Louis. In a letter to Dr. Atkinson, published in full in the Appendix to this volume, General Lovejoy recites many interesting incidents of this journey. Before reaching St. Louis, General Lovejoy immediately began to advertise the emigration for the following May."
(P. 136-7) "But the doctor's mind was westward. He had learned from General Lovejoy that already there was gathering upon the frontier a goodly number of immigrants, and the prospect was excellent for a large caravan. In the absence of Dr. Whitman, General Lovejoy had neglected no opportunity to publish far and wide that Dr. Whitman and himself would, early in the spring, pilot across the plains to Oregon, a body of immigrants." . . . "But it is just as certain that the large immigration to Oregon that year was incited by the movements of Whitman and Lovejoy as any fact could be."
An author who, because he is confident that he is himself "an authority for his facts," will deal in this manner with documents which he himself prints elsewhere in his book in full, may naturally be expected to change dates and alter texts of other documents, from which he only makes brief quotations, as he chooses, and accordingly on pp. 47 and 48, where he copies the shockingly deceptive quotations which Barrows' "Oregon" makes from the British and Foreign Review, and from the London Examiner, he writes "They (i. e. the Hudson's Bay Co.) controlled the English press, and so late as 1840, we read in the British and Foreign Review that 'Upon the whole therefore, the Oregon country holds out no great promise as an agricultural field.'"
"The London Swaminer, in 1843, wonders that 'Ignorant Americans' were disposed to quarrel over a country, the whole in dispute not being worth to either party twenty thousand pounds."
As we have already shown the correct date of this British and Foreign Review article was January, 1844, and of the London Examiner article was July 24, 1847, but as the statement of these
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correct dates would not support that fundamental postulate of the Whitman Legend, that the government at Washington and the people of our country generally were deceived about the value of Oregon by articles in English magazines prior to Whitman's ride, Dr. Nixon exercises his "authority" over "facts" by changing these dates.
Similarly he uses his "authority" to fix the dates of the incoming and outgoing of our national administrations, and the dates and terms of instructions sent to our Minister to England, in the following bewildering fashion:
(P. 130) "If it were true as asserted by Mr. Webster himself, in his instructions to Edward Everett in 1840, then Minister to England, that 'The ownership of Oregon is very likely to follow the greater settlement and larger amount of population,'" etc. On p. 165 he repeats this fact (?) as follows:
"We have noted Webster's letter to the English Minister, dated in 1840," etc., and (p. 166) "Immediately upon the close of the conference," (i. e. the alleged conference between Whitman and Tyler and Webster), "the record shows that Secretary Webster wrote to Minister Everett and said, 'The Government of the United States has never offered any line south of forty-nine and never will, and England must not expect anything south of the forty-ninth degree.'"
"That is a wonderful change. Upon receipt of the news that Dr. Whitman, in June, 'Had started to Oregon with a great caravan numbering nearly one thousand souls/ another letter was sent ta the English Minister, still more pointed and impressive."
(P. 186-7) "Before the man clothed in buckskin left the National Capital a message was on the way to our Minister to England proclaiming 'The United States will consent to give nothing below the latitude of forty-nine degrees.' When it was known that a great caravan of two hundred wagons and one thousand Americans had started for Oregon, a second message was sent to Minister Everett still more pointed and positive, 'The United States will never consent that the boundary line to the Pacific Ocean shall move one foot below the latitude of forty-nine degrees.' "
Doubtless all these "facts" seem to Dr. Nixon abundantly substantiated by his statement of them, since he himself avows that he is "authority" for them, but to.those of us who are modest enough to hold that it is our duty not to make "facts" but to study authorities, and learn what the facts really are, the following conclusions are irresistible, despite the weight of Dr. Nixon's "autority":
(1) During all of 1840 and until March 4, 1841, that staunch Democrat, John Forsyth was Secretary of State, and from April,
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1836, to October, 1841, that other equally staunch Democrat A. Stevenson was Minister to England, Daniel Webster the great Whig leader not having become Secretary of State till March 4,1841, and Edward Everett not having been sent as Minister to England till November, 1841, so that no despatches dated 1840, were sent to Everett, Minister to England, by Webster, or any body else.
(2) All these alleged despatches from Webster to Everett, Minister to England, are bogus, for, on referring to the letter of James Buchanan, Secretary of State, to Louis McLane, Minister to England, dated Washington, July 12, 1845 (in Sen. Ex. Doc. No. 489, 29th Cong., ,1st Sess., pp. 27-31), we find the following: "From the 1st of August, 1831, the date of Mr. Livingston's instructions to Mr. Van Buren, until the 9th of August, 1843, no further notice of the Oregon question was taken in any instructions from this department. On that day Mr. Upshur, then the Secretary of State under Mr. Tyler's administration, addressed instructions to Mr. Everett on the subject."
Who invented these bogus despatches may never be known, but I have never encountered them elsewhere than in Dr. Nixon's "How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon," and doubtless they were by him drawn from that apparently exhaustless store existing in his lively imagination of what he deemed "facts," and for which he jauntily avowed himself to be "authority."
As to the second of these bogus despatches, the reader will find it, not in any despatches to Everett, in 1843, or at any other time, but in Webster's speech on the Oregon question in the United States Senate, March 30, 1846, three years after the date Nixon assigns to it (Cf. Cong. Globe, 29th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 568).
As to the third of these bogus despatches, any one acquainted with the vigorous and dignified English that Webster always used will know at once that he would never have been guilty of writing, in the style of a sloppy and sensational newspaper editor, such stuff as "The United States will never consent that the boundary line to the Pacific Ocean shall move one foot below the latitude of forty-nine degrees."
With one more sample of -the quality of the "facts" for which Dr. Nixon is "authority" we must close our examination of his book.
Probably no other treaty ever made by our government had been more generally and thoroughly discussed, during the sixty-three years preceding the publication of this book by Dr. Nixon, than the Webster-Ashburton treaty, and copies of it were accessible to him not only, in several books in the Chicago Public Library (then located three blocks from the Inter-Ocean office), but also in more than one book in the library of the Inter-Ocean itself (of which Dr. Nixon had been literary editor for many years).
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But, sure that he himself was "authority" for the facts he might choose to put in his book, why should be spend even the ten minutes it would require to read this treaty?
It was so much easier to dash down, as he would an editorial for the daily Inter-Ocean, such "facts" as he wished to vouch for, and so, on page 26 of this book, he says: "With the adoption of the Ashburton treaty, the Hudson's Bay Company was shorn of much of its kingly power and old time grandeur. But it remained a money making organization. Under the terms of the treaty the great corporation was fully protected. This Ashburton treaty was written in England and from English standpoints, and every property and possessory right of this powerful company was strictly guarded. The interests of the company were made English interests.
"Under this treaty the United States agreed to pay all valuations upon Hudson's Bay Company property south of forty-nine degrees; while England was to make a settlement for all above that line.
"The company promptly sent in a bill to the United States for $3,882,036.27, while their dependent company, the Puget Sound Agricultural Company, sent in a more modest demand for fl,168,000.
"These bills were in a state of liquidation until 1864, when the United States made a final settlement, and paid the Hudson's Bay Company $450,000, and the Puget Sound Company $200,000."
There are only ten absolutely false statements in this, as follows r (1) The Hudson's Bay Company was not shorn of anything by the Ashburton treaty, as that treaty did not even allude to the Hudson's Bay Company, nor to anything in which that company was in any way interested, except that Article II. provided that the waters and portages between Lake Superior and the Lake of the Woods should remain free and open to the people of both nations. (2) Therefore the great corporation was not fully protected under the terms of that treaty. (3) This Ashburton treaty was not written in England. (4) Nor from English standpoints. (5) Every property and possessory right was not strictly guarded.
(6)The interests of the company were not made English interests.
(7) The United States did not agree to pay anything to the Hudson's Bay Company. (8) Nor did England agree to make a settlement for all above forty-nine degrees. (9) The company did not send in a bill to the United States promptly, as it was not till April 8, 1865, twenty-three years after the Ashburton treaty was made, that such a bill was rendered (See Vol. 3, H. B. Co. and P. Sd. Agrl. Co. vs. the U. S., pp. I-XIV). (10) They were not paid in 1864, but September 10, 1869, and the settlement was made, not
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in accordance with the terms of the Ashburton treaty, made In 1842, but of the treaty of 1846, fixing the boundary of Oregon, and the treaty of July 1, 1863, for referring the claims to a commission, and even under those treaties there was no provision that England should pay the Hudson's Bay Company anything.
There are about 300 other alleged "facts" (?) in Dr. Nixon's book, including all which pretend to state the origin, purpose or results of Whitman's ride, that are as purely imaginary as those ten about the Ashburton treaty.
An amusing commentary on the "facts" which Dr. Nixon has from his own "authority" furnished the readers of this book ia found on its page 201, as follows: "History at its best is a collection of biographies of the world's great leaders and is best studied in biography. To be of value it must be accurate." (!!)
As to the other three leading advocates of the Legend, Rev. M. Eells, D. D., Rev. J. G. Craighead, D. D., and Dr. W. A. Mowry, I find myself unable to decide whether or not Dr. Craighead should be classed among those who have wilfully and intentionally deceived the public on this matter, though his book "The Story of Marcus Whitman" is not only as worthless and misleading as any of the others as far as giving a correct story of the life of Whitman and its relation to the acquisition of Oregon is concerned, but it is more mischievous than any of the others from its sophistical and disingenuous attempt to show that the Hudson's Bay Company and the Catholics were responsible for the Whitman massacre, and could have prevented that perfectly natural and wholly unpreventable outburst of savage ferocity, if they had wished to do so.
Rev. M. Eells' disingenuousness, his suppression of vital contemporaneous evidence which he has in his possession (e. g. Walker's letter of October 3, 1842, endorsed as correct by his (Eells') father; Spalding's Journal of whose about 25,000 words he has never quoted but sixty-one that give the least information on any matters involved in the Whitman controversy; Walker's Journal; the two first official accounts of the origin and purpose of Whitman's ride in the Missionary Herald for September, 1843, and July, 1848, both declaring that it was made on missionary business; his foggy ideas about scientific history, his ingenious omissions of those really conclusive parts of various documents which he quotes, which demonstrate that the opinions which he seeks to establish by the fragments he quotes from them are directly contrary to what they prove when fairly quoted, and his ignorance of the diplomatic and other governmental action which had secured Oregon south of forty-nine degrees to us in 1826-7, nine years before Whitman and Spalding established their mission in Oregon, and of the absolute proof that neither Whitman nor any one else
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changed the policy of Tyler's administration towards Oregon, either "in the spring of 1843," or at any other time (as appears from three letters of President John Tyler to his son Robert hereinbefore quoted (Cf. Part II., pp. 197-8, ante), dated December 11 and 23, 1845, and January I, 1846, all of which propositions about Rev. Dr. M. Eells' deficiencies are conclusively demonstrated by me in my "History vs. the Whitman Saved Oregon gtory"--all these things make his writings in defense of the Whitman Legend of as little value as Barrows' "Oregon."
Yet, despite the total worthlessness of his various pamphlets and newspaper articles in defense of the Whitman Legend, he probably can be absolved from the charge of intentionally and deliberately deceiving the public on the 'ground of intellectual blindness rather than intellectual dishonesty, for reasons stated by me on pp. 45-6 of that little book, as follows:
* "MR EELLS' NATURAL LIMITATIONS.
"The circumstances of Mr. Eells' life make it impossible to hold him to a very high standard of performance in many respects. Born on the extremest frontier in a log cabin, and living nearly all his life on the frontier (mostly around Indian agencies, which are not generally believed to be places specially stimulating to careful research, accurate statements or candor in discussion), he has had little opportunity to work in any library of even moderate size, and totally lacking scientific training, he seems entirely destitute of any comprehension of the use of scientific methods in historical research, and of what constitutes valid evidence. Naturally, also, as a son of Rev. C. Eells, one of the originators of the "Whitman Saved Oregon" Story, he has the strongest kind of personal and family interest in finding some method of making that story appear to be true.
"But when all allowances have been made for these matters and also for his apparently total lack of any sense of humor, the public had a right to demand of him either that he should not have written at all, or that he should have produced a much more creditable book than he has, since all these deficiencies cannot justify the deliberate concealment or misquotations of such authorities as are perfectly well known to the author."
He was made a D. D. some years since by Whitman College.
Dr. W. A. Mowry's methods of dealing with original sources are also thoroughly exposed on pp. 1 to 43 of my "History vs. the Whitman Saved Oregon Story."
For many years I thought Dr. Mowry to be an honest man, though not by any means a thorough historical student, or an accurate historical writer, and on the Whitman matter as untrust-
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worthy as all the others who have claimed that the "recollections" of Gray, Spalding and C. Eells, from twenty-three to forty years after the event were entitled to credence because they were missionaries, although those recollections were not merely unsupported by, but squarely contradicted by, contemporaneous documents of their own writing.
But when I received his letter to me of December 9, 1898, imploring me not to print the really vital evidence on the subject as hereinbefore quoted (Cf. Introduction, pp. 6-8, I was reluctantly compelled to revise my opinion of his honesty, and to number him "among those who have written in defense of the Whitman Legend with deliberate intention to deceive the public.
It must be remembered that Dr. Mowry is the only one of the advocates of the Legend who claims to have made an extended examination of the archives of the American Board in Boston, and it may be doubted if any other man making any pretensions to being a historian would be willing to write such a letter on the proper limits of histywical investigation and publication, as his to me of December 9, 1898 (for this letter Cf. Part I., Introduction, pp. 6-8).
There are two or three other comparatively unimportant advocates of the Legend, that I am compelled to class among those who have deliberately and intentionally deceived the public, but all the others--clergymen who have used it in Sunday school addresses and missionary sermons, and appeals for Whitman College, newspaper and magazine contributors, compilers of school histories, and of "popular" subscription books, like "Personal Recollections of General Miles" (in which the Legend is printed, though General Miles had no "Personal Recollections" of any kind relating to Whitman), and editors of encyclopaedias and biographical dictionaries, and old people, who knowing nothing of any original documents on the subject, but finding the Legend widely circulated have rushed into print, like "Judge" James Otis, Dr. Silas Reed, and Dr. S. J. Parker with their supposed "recollections" in support of it, have doubtless been honestly mistaken.
HOW THE LEGEND CAME TO BE SO WIDELY CIRCULATED
AND BELIEVED.
Many people, after reading the long suppressed evidence about Whitman and his ride in my manuscripts, have asked, "How could such a fiction as the Whitman Saved Oregon Story be so widely circulated, and impose, not only on so many people with no special historical knowledge, but also on several really eminent historians, and be printed in so many books ?"
The answer is easy.
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Not a trace of it ever appeared in print till after the two statesmen, Daniel Webster and John Tyler, who, of their own knowledge could have instantly annihilated it, were dead, Webster having died October 24, 1852, and Tyler January 18, 1862, and the Legend, as we have seen, not having been printed till 1864-5-6.
Its first appearance was before there was any Pacific railroad, when Oregon was as remote as Central Africa is today, and just at the conclusion of the Civil War, when the whole attention of the nation was centered on Sherman's march to the sea, and Grant's siege of Petersburg, and on the collapse of the Confederacy, and for several years after, on the great problems of reconstruction.
Furthermore, at that precise time, angered by the open sympathy of the English government with the Confederacy in its efforts to destroy the Union, as shown by the building and equipping of the Alabama and the Shenandoah, which so nearly drove our merchant marine from the high seas, the American people were more generally and intensely antagonistic to Great Britain than at any other period of our history when we were not actually at war with her, and so the slanderous fictions of Spalding and Gray, accusing the Hudson's Bay Company of all sorts of wrong doing in opposing Americans getting to Oregon with wagons, and striving to prevent them from establishing missions and founding settlements there, without any investigation of their correctness, received a credence in the prejudiced state of the popular mind against everything British, that would not have been accorded them under other circumstances.
The Spalding-Gray version first appeared in very obscure papers on the Pacific Coast--the Pacific, the San Francisco organ of the Congregationalists, and the Marine Gazette, of the then very small town of Astoria, Oregon, and the Eells' version in the Missionary Herald, which is only perused by the more ardent supporters of the A. B. C. F. M.
Moreover, from the discovery of gold in California in 1848, and the rush thither of the seekers of gold, the attention of the nation, which for thirty years before had been largely given to Oregon, was at once transferred to California, and for full thirty years--a whole generation--thereafter Oregon was very little noticed in the press, was rarely visited by travelers, had little attention in Congress, and received scanty mention in histories.
Thus there existed a combination of circumstances more favorable for the growth of a legend like the Whitman Saved Oregon Story than has ever existed with regard to any other part of our national domain.
So far as yet appears, no thorough investigation as to the truth or falsity of the tale was made by any prominent Eastern historian
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for more than thirty years after its first publication, and although I had thoroughly exposed its falsity in my lectures in the great Peabody Institute course, in Baltimore, in November, 1884, no great historian, except Hon. George Bancroft, took interest enough in it to examine my argument, and when, in 1888, I offered to read a paper on the subject before the American Historical Association nothing came of it except that the chairman of the programme committee advised me to print my evidence, which was very like "adding insult to injury," since I had then spent fully $5,000 in the most thorough investigation the question had ever had, and I simply could not afford to print, while George Bancroft's emphatic endorsement of the correctness of my position ought to have satisfied the programme committee that I had a really important contribution to offer, and they ought to have made a place for the paper, at least to be read by title, and printed in the transactions of the association, which would inevitably have led to a complete exposure of the fiction before it had obtained very wide credence.
The whole situation illustrates the Scriptural statement, "Then while men slept, the enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat," 'for while every eminent historian, except George Bancroft and H. H. Bancroft, was wholly indifferent to this tale, and the amazing falsifications of the history of Oregon which its advocates had found it necessary to invent to bring it within the range of the possible, let alone the probable, immensely powerful agencies found it for their interest to support it, and spread it far and wide, since if credence in it could be extensively established it would certainly prove as it has for about a quarter of a century past--a veritable gold mine for the missionary societies, especially those of the Congregational and Presbyterian Churches, and for Whitman College.
As we have seen W. H. Gray's "History of Oregon," published in 18TO, had printed the Spalding-Gray version of Whitman's ride, and also the most scandalous slanders and abuse of the Hudson's Bay Company and the Catholics, and wholly inexcusable misstatements about the development of the wagon road over the Rocky Mountains and into Oregon as far as Green River, by the American fur traders--Ashley, the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, and Bonneville--before anyone dreamed of going missionarying to the Oregon Indians, and had carefully suppressed all information as to the widespread interest about Oregon among the people of the country generally, from 1821 onwards, and the great amount of attention given to it in Congress, and the numerous unanimous committee reports on it, and instead of information about Lieutenant Wilkes' immensely important and extensive explorations
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of Oregon in 1841, and his special report on it, June 13, 1842, it had only given a wholly baseless slander of him.
But Gray's book never had any extensive circulation, and from its palpable falsity would not have exercised any great influence, either on the general public or on historical writers, not even though reinforced, in 1871, by Spalding's pamphlet (Sen. Ex. Doc. 37, 41st Cong., 3d Sess.).
The Legend had also been mentioned in one or two "religious books" of very limited circulation, and had been frequently printed, more or less fully, in various religious and missionary papers, and magazines, and in some secular newspapers, and had, year by year, between 1865 and 1SS2 been made the subject of an ever increasing number of Sunday school and missionary meeting addresses and sermons, and addresses at meetings to raise money for Whitman Seminary and College.
The unexplainable indifference of our leading historians to the importance of a thorough examination of the question of the Acquisition of Oregon, combined with the value of the Legend to the treasuries of the missionary societies and Whitman College, encouraged the zealous advocates of it to tireless efforts to put it in more permanent form, in more widely circulated books, which could be ranked as historical, and for this purpose they have always had an enormous advantage over those of us who have merely sought to state the exact truth about the Acquisition of Oregon, with no scheme to use it as a means of extracting pennies from Sunday school children, and bequests and contributions from adults; for not only did they have freest use of the columns of the religious and missionary papers and magazines, but they were also able to get access to the treasuries of the various missionary and Sunday school and other organizations .of the Congregational and Presbyterian churches, and obtain funds contributed for the spread of Christianity, with which to pay for the publication of sundry books designed to disseminate the Whitman Saved Oregon Story.
Witness Rev. M. Eells' "Indian Missions," published in 1882, by the American Sunday School Union, Rev. M. Eells' "Life of Father Eells," published by the Congregational Publishing Society, in 1894, Rev. M. Eells' "Reply to Prof. Bourne," published by Whitman College in 1902, and Rev. J. G. Craighead's "Story of Marcus Whitman," published in 1895 by the Presbyterian Board of Missions and Sunday School Work. It is perfectly safe to say that no one of these books would have been published, but for its endorsement of the Whitman Legend.
Rev. Win. Barrows, a Congregational clergyman, had written a series of seven letters which were published December 7 and 21, 1882, and January 4, 11, 18, 25 and February 1, 1883, in the New
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Yor/c Observer, the leading Presbyterian organ of the eastern part of the country, glorifying Whitman as the savior of Oregon to the United States; and these, in 1883, he "threw together," evidently without making any effort to correct their multitudinous errors of fact, and with no careful study of any phase of the subject except how to garble and falsify quotations (as has been heretofore demonstrated), and with some additions (which were fully as worthless as the letters themselves), gave the whole the title "Oregon, The Struggle for Possession," and by some never yet explained hocus pocus succeeded in imposing it on Houghton, Mifflin & Co. as so trustworthy a historical work as to be entitled to a place in their "American Commonwealths' Series," though it is certain that a more totally worthless and wholly misleading book, masquerading as history, never bore the imprint of a reputable publishing house with their endorsement of being accorded a place in a series of their publications supposed to be of high character, and at least reasonably accurate historically.
Though the name of the late Horace E. Scudder appeared on the title page of Barrows' "Oregon," as editor, his connection with it was plainly merely nominal, and although he was so far imposed upon by it as to be the first writer of a Sunday School History that put the Whitman Legend into his books, when, in 1890-1900, he read my type-script criticisms of it, he promptly revised out of both his School Histories every trace of the Whitman Legend, and all mention of Barrows' "Oregon" as an authority, and rewrote the Acquisition of Oregon in both books on precisely the lines I had advised that he should do it; and in a conversation in 1900, with Mr. Wm. M. Payne, of the McKinley High School of Chicago, said "Mr. Marshall appears to think that I am responsible for the publication of Barrows' "Oregon" in the American Commonwealths' Series, but I am not responsible for it, and I am as sorry that it ever appeared in that series as Mr. Marshall is." . The inclusion of this book in the "American Commonwealths' Series" gave the book a reputation which doubtless did more to spread the Whitman fiction, and secure for it credence outside the very fanatical adherents of the Congregational and Presbyterian Missionary Societies, than any other one thing that ever happened-- perhaps as much as all other things put together since that series was in so many public and private libraries all over the land, and was generally regarded as trustworthy.
Yet, in almost every chapter, it contains overwhelming proof that Mr. Barrows was profoundly ignorant alike of the geography, the history, the bibliography and the economics of the subject about which he had inflicted a volume on the public, so that the more one reads and trusts Barrows' "Oregon" the less will he know
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of the real history of the Acquisition of Oregon, and the book fully merits the caustic criticism which Macauley wrote on the margin of his copy of "Milner's History of the Church," as follows: "My quarrel with you is that you are ridicuously credulous; that you wrest everything to your own purpose in defiance of all the rules of sound construction; that you are profoundly ignorant of your subject; that your information is second hand and that your style is nauseous."
His intentionally deceptive quotations from Sturgis' lecture, and from the Edinburgh Review, the British and Foreign Review and the London Examiner have been hereinbefore exposed; and any historian, by a single half day's examination of flies of those reviews and of the "Introduction to the Works of D. Webster" (for the London Eocaminer article), and of Sturgis' lecture in any one of a dozen great libraries in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Pittsburg, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Chicago, and Madison, Wis., could have satisfied himself of the fraudulent and deliberatively deceptive nature of these quotations, which, of themselves are enough to prove the whole book worthless, since an author who deliberately misquotes thereby proclaims himself wholly unworthy of confidence.
How grossly ignorant Mr. Barrows was of so simple and fundamental a thing in historical writing as a knowledge of at least the general and large features of the geography of his subject is evident from the fact, that in his "Oregon," he ten times mentions the boundaries, or the dimensions, or the area of either the whole of the old Oregon Territory (i. e. between 42 degrees and 54 degrees and 40 minutes north latitude), or of the Oregon Territory as acquired by us, and blunders egregiously every time.
If he gives the boundaries correctly, in the same or the next paragraph he gives either the dimensions or the area or both incorrectly.
In no case does he give the area correctly, always omitting the 28,000 square miles in Northwestern Montana, and the 13,000 square miles in Northwestern Wyoming, or an area about as large as Ohio, which was as unquestionably included in the Oregon Territory as were the present states of Oregon, Washington and Idaho.
There are numerous other evidences of his ignorance of the geography of his subject, while the evidence hereinbefore presented must satisfy every candid mind of the utter worthlessness of the book historically. Mr. Barrows was made Financial Agent of Whitman College in 1887, and retained the position till 1891, when be died.
Practically all the books, and magazine and newspaper articles published in defense of the Whitman Legend since Barrows' "Ore-
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gon" appeared, have relied on and quoted it as an authority, and its general acceptance as such without investigation caused the Legend to rapidly appear in biographical dictionaries, encyclopaedias, and school and other histories.
It is true that not all of our historians accepted Barrows' "Oregon," but those who did not failed in their plain duty of denouncing its fraudulent and deceptive teachings--some probably from indifference, thinking its worthlessness so patent that it could never attain a wide circulation or have any extensive credence, and some apparently from fear of antagonizing the powerful interests which were so actively and persistently at work spreading the Whitman Legend.
As early as 1884 I showed the then librarian of the great Athenaeum Library, in Boston, Barrows' intentionally deceptive quotations from English reviews and magazines as hereinbefore exposed, and in 1885, in answer to Dr. W. A. Mowry's question to me "Have you read Barrows' "Oregon"?" I replied by pointing out the same deceptive quotations and other proofs of Barrows' incapacity to write a trustworthy history of the struggle for Oregon, and in 1887, I took some hours to go over the book with my friend, the late Mr. Whelply, librarian of the Cincinnati Public Library, and thinking his name would carry more weight than mine induced him to write to Houghton, Mifflin & Co. his opinion of the book as follows: "As fiction Barrows' "Oregon" is dull, and as history it is so totally worthless and misleading that for the credit of your house you should at once withdraw it from your 'American Commonwealths' Series,' and cease its publication."
But the influences that had imposed it on Houghton, Mifflin & Co. were potent enough to prevent any proofs of its utter falsity from getting a fair hearing from them.
In 1888, when I tried to have the American Historical Association take up this subject, not being a member of the association, nor even in any sense a public man (having, in 1887, retired from the general lecture field and become a partner in a fire insurance firm here in which I continued till December, 1892), I naturally sought to have some prominent member of the association interested in the subject, and having a slight acquaintance with the late Dr. Wm. F. Poole, then librarian of the Newherry Library, in this city, and then also president of the American Historical Association, I first broached the subject to him, and showed him Hon. Geo. Bancroft's emphatic endorsement (in his letter to me hereinbefore quoted), of the unanswerable weight of my argument against the Whitman Saved Oregon Story, in my Peabody Institute lecture.
At first he seemed eager to aid my purpose, but when, on a
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second interview, I denounced Barrows' "Oregon" in the terms in which Mr. Whelpley had characterized it the preceding year in his letter to Houghton, Mifflin & Co., and declared that the credence that book had received, and the extent to which it was being placed in libraries, and quoted and relied upon as an authority on the Acquisition of Oregon was a disgrace to American historical scholarship, and offered to prove to him beyond any possibility of dispute, if he would take time to examine the book with me, that most of its alleged facts were fictions, and that all its quotations on important disputed points were either fabricated or so garbled as to be thoroughly dishonest, he suddenly lost all interest in the matter.
This change of attitude by him was incomprehensible to me till, some time later, I learned that a little while before my conversations with him on the subject, he had published in the Dial a review of Barrows' "Oregon," in which, while sharply criticizing the style of the book, he had endorsed and commended it as correct historically.
But for this there can be no doubt that he would have arranged to have my paper read, at least by title, at the 1888 meeting of the association, and printed in the Transactions; but he could not endure to have a mere layman, with no long string of academic titles, and of no particular prominence, and no special ability (except perhaps for patient industry and perseverance), produce unanswerable proof that the book he had highly commended was only deserving of severest condemnation.
Nevertheless, during all the weary fifteen years from 1884 to 1899, when, except Geo. Bancroft, no leading historian with whom I corresponded would even read the evidence (for I never asked any one to accept my opinions, but only to examine the evidence which I had found, and which I offered to put before them free of charge), and when I was sneered at and abused as an ignoramus who didn't know what he was talking about, and when more than one prominent historical writer would not even answer my courteous letters imploring them not to put the Whitman Saved Oregon Story into their school and other histories, because if they did, they would soon have the mortification of having its total falsity exposed and be compelled to revise it out, I never for one moment doubted that if I only lived long enough I should compel a hearing, and that those who would not then even answer my letters would be forced to write me acknowledgment that they had been mistaken, and that my evidence was irresistible, and would, as I had warned them, be obliged to revise their treatment of the Oregon question on exactly the lines on which I had offered to freely furnish them the evidence.
This came to pass in 1899 and 1900, and I then set myself to the
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task of writing this book, as a duty owed by me to the cause of historic truth, and with no expectation of profit from it, but sure that it will never repay me a dime for every dollar I have spent in the investigation; since I saw clearly, twenty-four years ago, that opposition to so popular a fiction as the Whitman Legend, backed by such powerful institutions as have found it immensely to their pecuniary profit to support it for a generation past, meant financial loss instead of gain.
But from boyhood there have always seemed to me to be things of much more consequence than money.
This book has been written "with malice towards none, and with charity for all," but as absolutely without either fear or favor as any book has ever been written, and with the single purpose of making easily accessible to all who care to read, the more important parts of the evidence needful to a correct understanding of the important and interesting history of our Acquisition of Oregon, and to an intelligent opinion and a just judgment of the character and life of Marcus Whitman, and the unimportance of his career on the political destiny of Oregon.