_Seeds of Christianity sown among the Indians by the Lewis
and Clark Band.--A Deputation of Nez Percés to General Clark,
requesting that the Bible be taught in their Nation.--The
Methodists establish a Mission on the Willamette, but pass by
the Nez Percés.--Interest in the New Field for Explorers and
Missionaries is now awakened.--Marcus Whitman suited by Early
Training to become an Explorer and a Missionary.--Becomes a
Medical Practitioner and afterwards makes a Business Venture in a
Sawmill.--His Character and Physique.--His First Trip to the West,
in Company with Mr. Parker.--The Nez Percés and the Flatheads
receive them gladly.--His Marriage at Prattsburg, N. Y., and
Return to the West.--A Demand for Missionaries and Immigrants that
Oregon may be occupied and held by the United States.--Whitman
goes East to stimulate the Mission Board and to direct Immigration
into Oregon.--Whitman publishes a Pamphlet on the Desirableness of
Oregon for American Colonists.--Numerous Influences that brought
about the Emigration of 1843.--Whitman's Outlook for the Future
Prosperity of the Immigrants.--His Death and that of his Wife in
the Massacre of 1847._
MARCUS WHITMAN: THE HERO OF OREGON
[Illustration]
THERE is probably not another example of the springing to life of the
seeds of Christianity more interesting than in the case of the Lewis
and Clark expedition into that far country where rolls the Oregon. To
what extent the scattering of this seed was performed with any serious
expectation of success is not to be discovered; but it seems that
wherever that strange-looking band of explorers and scientists fared
and was remembered by the aborigines that came under its influence,
so widely had there gone the legend of the white man's Saviour. The
Indians heard that the white man had a "Book from Heaven" which told
them the way to walk in order to know happiness and reach the happy
hunting-grounds; with this race, which lived forever on the verge of
starvation, the expression "happy hunting grounds"--land where there
was always game to be obtained--meant far more than the hackneyed
expression does to us to-day. A book giving explicit directions
for reaching a place where there was always something to eat was a
thing to be sought for desperately and long; they did not appreciate
the argument, once advanced with no little acumen by a Wyandot
Indian, that, since the Indian knew neither the art of writing nor
that of book-making, the Great Spirit could never have meant them
to find the way of life in a book. On the contrary, these western
Indians--Flatheads and Nez Percés--held a great meeting, probably in
the early Spring of 1832, and appointed two old men and two young men
to go back and visit their "Father," General Clark, at St. Louis.
"I came to you," one of them is reported to have said to Clark when
at last they reached St. Louis, "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 open, for more light for my people
who sit in darkness.... 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 my 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 ground. No white men will go with
them and no white man's Book to make the way plain." Two of the four
Indians died in St. Louis, and the surviving two went West in the same
caravan with George Catlin, the famous portrait painter, who included
their portraits, it is said, in his collection,--Numbers 207 and 209 in
the Catlin Collection of the Smithsonian Institution.
The first missionary effort in the Far West was put forth by the
Methodist General Conference, which sent the Rev. Jason Lee westward,
starting overland from Fort Independence in April, 1834. The mission
was located seventy miles up the Willamette River, and, singularly
enough, the Nez Percés, who had sent emissaries to the "men near to
God," who had the "Book from Heaven," were passed by.
In the Spring of the same year the American Board of Commissioners
for Foreign Missions, including then both Congregationalists and
Presbyterians, became interested in the new field for explorers and in
this strange call that had come ringing across the vast prairies and
rugged mountains of the unknown West, as, in a previous study, we have
noticed that the Moravian Brethren became interested in the call that
came half a century before across the Alleghanies from the Delawares
on the Muskingum. Nor was the David Zeisberger, fearless, patient, and
devoted, found to be wanting in the present instance, for the call came
through a channel now difficult to trace to a young man who was able to
endure and dare.
Two years after the beginning of the nineteenth century Marcus Whitman
was born at Rushville, New York, of New England parentage, strong both
morally and intellectually. His early life was spent in a typical
pioneer home, where he knew the toil, the weariness, and the hearty
humble joys of that era,--a home in which independence and general
strength of character were formed and confirmed. The loss of his father
when he was at the age of eight laid upon the shoulders of the growing
lad responsibilities which made him old beyond his years. All this
certainly had its part in preparing him for the sublimely humble work,
as it seemed, that he was to be called upon to do; and little could he
have known that there were to come those days of agony and exhaustion
which demanded all his latent accumulation of iron strength and courage
of steel,--days that would demand all his stores of resourceful
foresight. Whitman's education was probably indifferent,--at least
it was not above the average of the day. Converted at the age of
seventeen, he did not join a church until he was twenty-two, which may
be taken as showing the reticent or, rather, unobtrusive character of
the man. An early purpose to prepare for the ministry was thwarted by
physical weakness, and the young man proceeded to study medicine in
the Berkshire Medical College at Pittsfield, Massachusetts. The first
years of practice were spent in Canada; returning then to New York,
his attention was unexpectedly absorbed in a business venture with his
brother in a sawmill. How difficult it must have been for any one to
read this leading aright, so seemingly adverse was it to the prescribed
course that was customary among practitioners. Yet the same knowledge
of business, perhaps, would not have come to Whitman in any other way,
and it was providentially to stand him in good stead.
"Dr. Whitman was a strong man, earnest, decided, aggressive. He
was sincere and kind, generous to a fault.... He was fearless
of danger, strong in purpose, resolute and unflinching in the
face of difficulties. At times he became animated and earnest in
argument or conversation, but in general he would be called a
man of reticence. He was above medium height, rather spare than
otherwise, had deep blue eyes, a large mouth, and, in middle life,
hair that would be called iron-gray."
Of Miss Prentiss of Prattsburg, New York, who soon became Mrs. Whitman,
Mrs. Martha J. Lamb has said:
"She was a graceful blonde, stately and dignified in her bearing,
without a particle of affectation. When he was preparing to leave
for Oregon, the church held a farewell service and the minister
gave out the well-known hymn:
Yes, my native land, I love thee,
* * * * *
Can I bid you all farewell?
The whole congregation joined heartily in the singing, but
before the hymn was half through, one by one they ceased singing,
and audible sobs were heard in every part of the great audience.
The last stanza was sung by the sweet voice of Mrs. Whitman alone,
clear, musical, and unwavering."
Whitman's first Western trip was a hurried tour of observation made in
company with the Rev. Samuel Parker, a graduate of Williams. Leaving
St. Louis in the Spring of 1835, they reached the country of the Nez
Percés and Flatheads in August. It is interesting to note that these
men crossed the Great Divide by way of the South Pass, concerning which
Mr. Parker made an astounding prophecy, as follows:
"Though there are some elevations and depressions in this valley,
yet, comparatively speaking, it is level, and the summit, where
the waters divide which flow into the Atlantic and into the
Pacific, is about six thousand feet above the level of the ocean.
There would be no difficulty in the way of constructing a railroad
from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. There is no greater
difficulty in the whole distance than has already been overcome
in passing the Green Mountains between Boston and Albany; and
probably the time may not be far distant when trips will be made
across the continent, as they have been made to the Niagara Falls,
to see Nature's wonders."
The interviews with the Indians were uniform in character, and showed
that the missionaries would receive hospitality at the hands of the Nez
Percés and Flatheads. Wrote Mr. Parker:
"We laid before them the object of our appointment, and explained
to them the benevolent desires of Christians concerning them. We
then inquired whether they wished to have teachers come among
them, and instruct them in the knowledge of God, His worship, and
the way to be saved; and what they would do to aid them in their
labors. The oldest chief arose, and said he was old, and did not
expect to know much more; he was deaf and could not hear, but his
heart was made glad, very glad, to see what he had never seen
before, a man near to God,--meaning a minister of the Gospel."
It took only ten days in the country of the Indians to assure the men
of the rich promise offered by the field; whereupon Dr. Whitman turned
his face eastward, to make his report and be ready in the following
Spring to return with reënforcements with a caravan of the American Fur
Company. A great enthusiasm had seized him. He wrote to Miss Prentiss,
"I have a strong desire for that field of labor.... I feel greatly
encouraged to go on in every sense, only, I feel my unfitness for
the work; but I know in whom I have trusted, and with whom are the
fountains of wisdom.... You need not be anxious especially for
your health or safety, but for your usefulness to the cause of
Missions and the souls of our benighted fellow-men."
Dr. Whitman was married early in 1836, and the couple were driven by
sleigh from Elmira, New York, to Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, where
they took a canal-boat over the Alleghany Portage Railway on their
way westward. Their principal companions were the Rev. Henry H.
Spaulding, a graduate of Western Reserve College,--two or three years
Whitman's junior,--and wife, and Mr. William H. Gray; there were also
two teamsters and two Indian boys, whom Dr. Whitman had brought East
with him. Joining the caravan of the American Fur Company at Council
Bluffs, they reached Fort Laramie early in June, and the South Pass on
the following Fourth of July, where six years later Fremont raised an
American flag and gained the immortal name of "Pathfinder."
It is difficult to emphasize sufficiently the historic importance and
significance of the advent of these women into the country beyond the
Great Divide in Whitman's light wagon and cart; true, Ashley, Bridger,
and Bonneville had taken wagons into the Rockies and left them there,
but it was for this sturdy and determined physician to take a woman
across the mountains in 1836, showing at once the practicability of
a wagon road from the Atlantic to the Pacific. But the wagon seemed
hardly less wonderful than the patient women in it. Rough mountaineers
who had come to the rendezvous of the American Fur Company just
westward of the "divide" were dumbfounded at the sight of the first
white women on whom they had laid eyes since they had reached the
States; tears came to the eyes of some of them as they shook hands
with the first white women that ever crossed the Rocky Mountains;
Mrs. Spaulding had been very ill, and the rough devotion of these men
and their Indian wives gave her new hope and courage for the work.
On the other hand, "From that day," one of these men said, "I was a
better man." But it was for an old trapper to see the real national
significance of the advent of these women into that far-flung country.
"There," he said, pointing to the women, "is something which the
honorable Hudson Bay Company cannot get rid of. They cannot send these
women out of the country. They had come to stay."
Dr. Whitman chose his station at Waiilatpu, near Walla Walla,
Washington, while Spaulding went a hundred miles and more eastward
among the Nez Percés of the Clearwater Valley. A quart of wheat brought
with them, cherished as were the twelve potatoes brought around Cape
Horn by the pioneers of Astoria a quarter of a century before, was
planted amid hopes and fears, and yielded, in less than a dozen years,
nearly thirty thousand bushels in a season. Their few cows multiplied
to a herd; gardens and orchards were laid out; a printing press and
sheep were secured from the Hawaiian Islands, and upon the press was
printed a code of laws, differing in no great degree from those issued
in Zeisberger's sweet "Meadow of Light" on the Muskingum half a century
before. Mrs. Spaulding's school numbered five hundred pupils, and a
church had grown to a membership of one hundred.
It is not possible here to trace with faithfulness the brave successes
now achieved, for we are seeking but one of the many lessons to be
found in the Whitman story. There was labor and success for all, and
trial for all as well; there were some differences of opinion among
the workers, to be settled as the field grew large, for these men were
independent thinkers, each one a man among his fellows. And then there
was the rivalry with the missionaries to the northward, the Catholic
priests located at Vancouver and extending their influence wherever
the Hudson Bay Company, in turn, extended its interests. The priests,
it should be observed, had been called in by the Company to take the
place of the missionary of the Church of England, whom the Company had
sent home. We cannot discuss here the tangled Oregon question and the
tactics of America's rivals for that beautiful stretch of country. Two
things stand fairly plain in it all: to be held, Oregon must have a
strong American quota of settlers, and these missionaries were on the
ground when the matter was precipitated.
The conquest of Oregon was to be made, if made at all, at the hands
of an army of men with broadaxes on their shoulders; not elsewhere in
our national annals does this appear more clearly than in the case of
Oregon. In the military sense there was no conquest to be effected; an
enterprising fur company, controlled by men of principle but served
by perfectly unprincipled agents, sought the land for its wealth of
skins, and would not have wished it "opened," in any sense, to the
world. The case is quite parallel to the attitude of England at the
close of the Old French War, described on a previous page[5]; the
proclamation of 1763, permitting no pioneer to erect a cabin beyond
the head-springs of the Atlantic rivers, because, if populated, the
land would not pour its treasures into the coffers of a spendthrift
king, was as idle a selfish dream as was ever conceived with reference
to Oregon by a Hudson Bay Company's _engagé_. In the case of no other
distinct region in our entire domain, perhaps, was it equally plain
that the first people to really occupy would be, in all likelihood,
the people that would control and at last possess it. It was like so
many early military campaigns in America, as, for instance, Forbes's
march on Fort Duquesne and Clark's advance to Vincennes,--to reach the
destination was of itself the chief hardship; for if in the case of
Forbes that great army could be once thrown across the Alleghanies
where lay Braddock's mouldering bones, the capitulation of Fort
Duquesne would be but a commonplace consequent.
What might have been the result had not this fragile missionary
movement into the empire of Oregon (including, of course, Oregon,
Washington, Idaho, and parts of Montana and Wyoming) taken place cannot
now be determined, but the rival interests were hurrying emigrants from
Red River and from Canada in the full belief that to hold would mean to
have. A counter action was that put forth by the American missionaries
of all denominations in Oregon, chief of whom was Marcus Whitman. It
seems as though some writers have believed that there can be a line
drawn between what these first Americans did to promote missionary
success and that done to advance what may be called American political
interests in Oregon; to the present writer this seems impossible.
What helped the one helped the other, whether the motive comprehended
the larger interests at stake or not. That the missionaries desired
that the Americans coming into Oregon should be men of sobriety and
character should not in the least argue that they did not desire
them at the same time to be good patriotic citizens, eager for their
country's welfare. It is hardly fair to imply that these men were poor
patriots in proportion as they were good missionaries; nor can the
proposition be more reasonably entertained that these brave men desired
to promote emigration thither in order to secure more assistance or
success in the missionary work in which they were engaged. In all
these considerations the hope of missionary success was inextricably
bound up with national extension and national growth. Were the mission
stations to be increased, it was of national moment; were they to be
decreased, it was an ominous sign so far as possible American dominion
was concerned.
Unfortunate internal trouble among the missionaries, due to differences
of opinion on policies and ways and means, caused the American Board
to decide to eliminate a portion of the mission stations. Just what
steps were to be taken is not important to us here; the important
thing is the influence of this curtailing of the work of the American
missionary. Was it to strengthen or weaken America's claim to the
empire of Oregon? Was it to hinder or help the occupation of the land
on the part of rival spirits? Those who might hold that the question
was one of missionary policy totally apart from national politics
take a view of the matter in which the present writer cannot share.
These men were Americans; it is difficult to believe that with the
Oregon question to the front these missionaries (who were on the spot)
confined their attention solely to the missionary problem heedless of
the national problem, which must have embraced and included all others
in any analysis.
The missionaries met to consider the order of the American Board late
in the Fall of 1842. Marcus Whitman was granted leave of absence to
visit the East and persuade the officers of the Board to rescind their
action. Wrote one of the missionaries of the Board immediately after
Whitman's departure concerning his plan:
"I have no doubt that 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.... To meet this influence a few
religious settlers around a station would be invaluable."[6]
This contemporary document, written just as Whitman was leaving,
ought to be good evidence, first, that he had a definite errand, and,
secondly, that it concerned new emigrants.
The friends of Whitman have gone very far in an attempt to maintain
that he left Oregon hurriedly on the brave ride he now undertook in
order to reach Washington in time to accomplish a specific political
errand; if nothing more, such a sweeping assertion was sure to be
called into question, and when this was done the querists were likely
to be unable to keep from going to the other extreme of denying that
Whitman ever went to Washington or had any political motive in coming
East.[7]
A brief but careful view of the documents in the case has inclined us
to the view that Whitman came East as he did in order to be in time
to have a part in arousing interest in and directing the course of
the large emigration that it was felt would turn toward Oregon in the
Spring of 1843. We are the more inclined to this opinion for the reason
that this was the most important thing by far that could have occupied
the man's mind, however one views the question; what could more have
benefited the mission cause than a flood-tide of American pioneers into
Oregon with axes to sing that old home-loving song sung long ago in the
Alleghanies, in Ohio, in Kentucky, and beyond? And what more, pray,
could be done than this to advance the interests of the United States
hereabouts? In point of fact the nation had depended on the conquest of
Oregon by pioneers, if it was to be conquered at all; treaties could
be made and broken, but a conquest by the axe-bearing army would be
final.
"The policy," writes Justin Winsor, "which the United States soon after
developed was one in which Great Britain could hardly compete, and
this was to possess the [Oregon] country by settlers as against the
nominal occupancy of the fur-trading company directed from Montreal.
By 1832 this movement of occupation was fully in progress. By 1838 the
interest was renewed in Congress, and a leading and ardent advocate of
the American rights, Congressman Linn of Missouri, presented a report
to the Senate and a bill for the occupation of Oregon, June 6, 1838. A
report by Caleb Cushing coming from the Committee on Foreign Affairs
respecting the Territory of Oregon, accompanied by a map, was presented
in January and February in 1839:
"'It was not till 1842 that the movements of aggression began to
become prominent in politics, and immigration was soon assisted by
Fremont's discovery of the pass over the Rocky Mountains at the
head of the La Platte.[8] Calhoun in 1845 took the position that
the tide of immigration was solving the difficulty and it was best
to wait that issue and not force a conflict.'"
It seems perfectly certain that Whitman was concerned especially with
this "tide of immigration." He left home October 3; in eleven days
Fort Hall was reached, four hundred miles away. Finding it best, he
struck southward on the old Santa Fé Trail, by way of Fort Wintah, Fort
Uncompahgre, and Fort Taos. From Santa Fé the course was in part by the
old Santa Fé Trail to Bent's Fort and Independence. Bent's Fort was
left January 7, 1843, but the date of reaching Westport (Kansas City),
Missouri, is not definitely known; it was probably the last of January,
and here he was busy for some little time helping to shape things up
for the much talked of emigration of 1843. Indeed, there is evidence
that he did not leave Westport until at least the 15th of February.
Possibly it was here that he prepared and published a pamphlet
describing Oregon, the soil, climate, and its desirableness for
American colonists, and said that "he had crossed the Rocky Mountains
that winter principally to take back that season a train of wagons to
Oregon." The Doctor assured his countrymen that wagons could be taken
to the Columbia River. "It was this assurance of the missionary," wrote
one emigrant, "that induced my father and several of his neighbors to
sell out and start at once for this country."[9]
If this line of investigation is followed steadily with reference to
Dr. Whitman's Eastern visit, the result is eminently satisfactory from
any point of view. It is well and good to believe that he attempted
to right the minds of some eminent men on the Oregon question, but
he probably accomplished more by some plain talks with a score of
frontiersmen at Westport and by his pamphlet on the subject than
by visiting ten thousand men in high authority. What was to save
Oregon was the emigration movement,--the rank and file of the army
with the broadaxe,--not Whitman or Webster or a President or a
congressman or a hundred congressmen. This Oregon missionary was a
plain, straightforward, brave, modest man, not seeking notoriety, come
eastward to have a part in inducing emigration that must start, if at
all, _in the Spring months_. There you have an explanation for the
Winter's ride.
Pressing on eastward, Whitman went to Washington; this has been
questioned because none of the public prints of the city noised abroad
his coming or his presence. This proves he was not there as much as the
absence of his foot-prints on those streets to-day proves it; so far as
it indicates anything, it only shows the man was not seeking notoriety
and cheap advertisement. A year afterwards, in June, 1844, the Hon.
James M. Porter, Secretary of War, received a letter from Marcus
Whitman which began, "In compliance with the request you did me the
honor to make last winter, while in Washington, I herewith transmit to
you the synopsis of a bill." Another sentence runs, "I have, since our
interview, been," etc.,[10] making, in all, two definite statements in
his own hand to the effect that Whitman visited the Secretary of War
in Washington, and that while there he talked with the Secretary of
War concerning the national character of the Oregon movement. Any who
might incline to the view that Whitman came East solely on a mission
errand must pay small attention to this letter, which proves that
the Secretary of War and Whitman must have talked of a bill relative
to Oregon emigration. Whitman certainly conversed with Porter along
the lines of their subsequent correspondence, which resulted in the
missionary's sending in a bill authorizing the President of the United
States to establish a line of
"agricultural posts or farming stations, extending at intervals
from the present and most usual crossing of the Kansas River, west
of the western boundary of the State of Missouri, thence ascending
the Platte River on the southern border, thence through the
valley of the Sweetwater to Fort Hall, and thence to settlements
of the Willamette in the Territory of Oregon. Which said posts
will have for their object to set examples of civilized industry
to the several Indian tribes, to keep them in proper subjection
to the laws of the United States, to suppress violent and
lawless acts along the said line of the frontier, to facilitate
the passage of troops and munitions of war into and out of the
said Territory of Oregon, and the transportation of the mail as
hereinafter provided."
Whitman reached Boston probably March 30. There seems to be no question
that his chief errand here with the officers of the American Board
was to interest them in a plan to induce emigration for the sake of
preserving the missions. On his return to Oregon he wrote Secretary
Greene of the Board:
"A [Catholic] 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 have
had good families, say two and three together, to have placed
in select 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 immigration was secured and
saved from disaster in the Fall of forty-three. Upon that event
the present acquired rights of the U. States by her citizens hung.
And not less certain is it that upon the result of immigration
to this country the present existence of this mission and of
Protestantism in general hung also. It is a matter of surprise
to me that so few pious men are ready to associate together and
come to this country, when they could be so useful in setting
up and maintaining religious society and establishing the means
of education. It is indeed so that some of the good people of
the East can come to Oregon for the double purpose of availing
themselves of the Government bounty of land and of doing good to
the country."
This quotation undoubtedly contains in outline the fundamental purpose
of Dr. Whitman's journey eastward through the Winter's snows; the
American missions in Oregon were evidently on the point of being
actually crowded out by the threatened emigrants from the North;
to hold the ground gained, a rival emigration from the States was
an imperative necessity, and that was the thing for which Whitman
was working. So closely bound were the real interests, then, of the
missions and the territorial interests of the United States, that for
one to attempt a technical separation is to do an injustice to both.
Read as widely as you will the few manuscripts left us in Dr. Whitman's
hand, and the impression grows stronger with each word that the man
was exceptionally clear-sighted and sane; and while a great deal of
nonsense is and has been put into circulation about him, so far as
Whitman himself is concerned we find his attention given to roads and
trails, forage and provisions, axle grease and water; in all he wrote
(and there is sufficient for a very fair guess at his purpose and
plans) we find almost no reference whatever to the greater national
work which he was actually doing,--a fact that cannot but be forever
enjoyed by those to whom his splendid life work will appeal.
On May 12 Whitman was again in St. Louis writing Secretary Greene, "I
hope no time will be lost in seizing every favorable means of inducing
good men to favor the interest of the Oregon." We should say here that,
while in Boston, Whitman induced the officers of the American Board
to rescind their action abolishing certain of the mission stations in
Oregon. Now once more on the frontier, Whitman found that his hope
of a large American emigration to Oregon was in a fair way of being
realized; as George Rogers Clark came back to Virginia from Kentucky at
an opportune moment to urge Patrick Henry to authorize the far-famed
Illinois campaign, so now Marcus Whitman had come East at an opportune
moment to add what weight he could in the interests of an Oregon
campaign. But as in the case of Clark's visit to Virginia, so now, far
more important causes had been at work to bring the desired result
than the mere coming of a messenger. It would indeed be impossible
to estimate the large number of forces that had been at work to
bring about the famous emigration of 1843, but among them should be
remembered the long debates in Congress on the Ashburton Treaty, the
Linn Bill concerning Oregon lands, Greenhow's "Memoir," and Lieutenant
Wilkes's report, as well as the missionary efforts of the various
denominations, and the Whitman pamphlet, before referred to.
As a result, as singular and interesting an army as ever bore the
broadaxe westward now began to rendezvous in May near Independence,
Kansas, just beyond the Missouri line. It would probably have gathered
there to go forth to its brave conquest though there had been no Marcus
Whitman or Daniel Webster, or any other man or set of men that ever
lived; the saying that Whitman "saved Oregon" is just as false as
the saying that Washington was the "Father of his Country," or that
Thomas was the "Rock of Chickamauga," or Webster the "Defender of
the Constitution"--and just as true; it is a boast, a toast, an idle
fable to those who disbelieve it, a precious legend of heroism and
magnetism to those who glory in it. On the 18th of May a committee
of the emigrants was appointed to go to Independence and inquire of
Whitman concerning the "practicability of the road," as one of the
party (George Wilkes) wrote; another pioneer (Peter H. Burnett) said
that on the twentieth he attended a meeting with Colonels Thornton and
Bartleson, Mr. Rickman and Dr. Whitman, at which meeting rules and
regulations for the "Oregon Emigrating Society" were adopted. There
is no doubt that Whitman's advice was of considerable importance.
Any man who had taken a wagon over the Rockies would have been of
prime importance to these emigrants, irrespective of any other
considerations. On the 22d of May the vanguard of the army started,
with John Gant as guide, and the Kansas River was reached on the 26th,
and wholly crossed on the last day of May. On the 30th of May we find
him writing to Secretary Greene in the following strain:
"You will be surprised to see that we are not yet started.
Lieutenant Fremont left this morning. The emigrants have some of
them just gone, and others have been gone a week, and some are
yet coming on. I shall start to-morrow. I regret I could not have
spent some of the time spent here in suspense with my friends at
the East.
"I have only a lad of thirteen, my nephew, with me. I take him to
have some one to stay with Mrs. Whitman. I cannot give you much of
an account of the emigrants until we get on the road. It is said
that there are over two hundred men besides women and children.
They look like a fair representative of a country population.
Few, I conclude, are pious. Fremont intends to return by land, so
as to be back early in winter. Should he succeed in doing so we
may be able to send you an account of the Mission and country at
that time. We do not ask you to become the patrons of emigration
to Oregon, but we desire you to use your influence that, in
connection with all the influx into the country, there may be a
fair proportion of good men of our own denomination who shall
avail themselves of the advantages of the country in common with
others. Also that ministers should come out as citizens or under
the Home Missionary Society. We think agents of the Board and of
the Home Missionary Society, as also ministers and good men in
general, may do much to send a share of good, pious people to that
country. We cannot feel it to be at all just that we do nothing,
while worldly men and Papists are doing so much.... I wish to
say a few words about manufactures in Oregon, that I may remove
an impression that they cannot compete with the English. First,
let us take the operatives and the raw material from the Pacific
Islands. It matters not at how much labor the Islander cleans the
cotton, for it gives him employment, and for that he gets goods,
and then for his coffee and sugar and salt and cotton, etc.,
etc., he gets goods also. This is all an exchange trade that only
a population and manufacturers in Oregon can take advantage of,
because they alone will want the articles of exchange which the
Islander can give. The same will hold good in relation to Indians
whenever they shall have sheep, and I intend to try and have the
Government give them sheep instead of money, a result not likely
to be delayed long. A good man or company can now select the best
mill sites and spots, and likely would find a sawmill profitable
at once. I think our greatest hope for having Oregon at least part
Protestant now lies in encouraging a proper intention of good
men to go there while the country is open. I want to call your
attention to the operation of Farnham of Salem and the Bensons of
New York in Oregon. I am told credibly that secretly Government
aids them with the secret service fund. Captain Howard of Maine is
also in expectation of being employed by Government to take out
emigrants by ship should the Oregon Bill pass."
Those who love the memory of this brave missionary must hold this
letter exceedingly precious; it has, in addition to its enthusiasm and
patriotism, that sane and practical outlook on the future that pervades
so much of Washington's writings, especially the letters to William
Crawford. Here is another man looking, on the Pacific slope, for such
important commonplace things as mill sites in 1843, just as Washington
was looking for mill sites in the Ohio Valley in 1770, and between
the two it would be difficult to say which was the more seriously
optimistic, though the influence of both must have been strong, in
their respective days, on the advancing pioneer.
For all the daring of the hardy Winter's journey that Whitman made[11]
we look upon this other journey, with this splendid army of nearly a
thousand Oregon pioneers and home-builders, as the one of supremest
importance. Ay, here was Whitman's Ride,--not sung, perhaps, so widely
as the one in the Winter's snows, and yet the one ride which Oregon
could not have missed, and the one she can never forget! Let the
fruitless debate go on as to the exact measure of this unpretentious
missionary's influence in shaping Government policies and moulding
public opinion; it is enough for me to know that he viewed the whole
question as keenly as his few letters prove he unquestionably did,
and then to know that when the great emigration started he was there
to direct and inspire; that he could do the humblest duty and say the
least about it, and at the same time show Fremont where to go if he
would gain the immortal title of "Pathfinder."
Whitman has suffered at the hands of his friends, who have been
over-jealous touching matters concerning which his own lovable modesty
and reticence would not allow him to speak; they have made claims and
inferences unwarranted by the known facts of the case. His Winter's
ride has been compared with Sheridan's from Winchester, and tasted no
better in some mouths than does the ballad of Sheridan's Ride in the
mouths of Crook's men, who knew their leader had, an hour back, given
and carried out the order Sheridan is said (in the poem) to have given
when he dashed upon the scene, when, in fact, he merely came to Crook
and asked him what he had done.[12] And yet Reid's poem is as true to
the spirit of the indomitable Sheridan as Butterfield's is true of
Whitman.
We have compared Whitman on the Walla Walla to Zeisberger on the
Muskingum; and the terrible massacre of November 29, 1847, in which
the brave hero of Oregon, with his wife and twelve others, gave their
lives, belongs in history with the awful Gnadenhütten tragedy. The
murder of these brave pioneers by Indians, to whom they had given
the best of their lives and all their strength and prayers, is quite
as fiendishly incongruous as the destruction of the Moravian band of
corn-huskers by frenzied Monongahela frontiersmen; in each case the
murderers knew not what they did.
But Whitman's work was done, for we have it in his own hand that
he would be contented if posterity would remember, not that he had
influenced a President or a Congress or saved an Empire, but merely, as
he wrote, that he was
"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."[13]
And yet when you study this boast you will find that it contains in its
essence all that any boast for Whitman could hold; for it was an army
of axe-bearers that was to save Oregon; and if Meade won Gettysburg or
Wolfe captured Quebec, then Whitman and the Americans who went in his
track won for America the northern Pacific slope.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] See p. 46.
[6] Dr. Cushing Eells's letter in archives of A. B. C. F. M., Boston.
[7] "The Legend of Whitman's Ride," by Prof. E. G. Bourne, _American
Historical Review_, January, 1901.
[8] Dr. Whitman's route, as we have seen, in 1836.
[9] "Letter of John Zachrey," _Senate Ex. Doc. No. 37_, Forty-first
Congress, Third Session.
[10] Letter file, office of Secretary of War, received June 22, 1844.
[11] Friends of Whitman have unfortunately exaggerated this Winter's
ride; though a daring feat, it has many parallels in the annals of the
old Salt Lake Trail, on which Jim Bridger built the fort that bore his
name as early as 1837.
[12] The report of a worthy eyewitness of the Thirty-sixth Ohio.
[13] Whitman to Secretary Greene, Nov. 1, 1843; Mowry, _Marcus
Whitman_, 267.