THE ROMANCE OF THE OREGON MISSION.
These pages are mainly designed to show in brief the historical and
political environments of Oregon in pioneer days, and the patriotic
services rendered the nation by Dr. Marcus Whitman. But to attempt to
picture this life and omit the missionary, would be like reciting the
play of Hamlet and omitting Hamlet.
The mission work to the Oregon Indians began in a romance and ended in
a great tragedy. The city of St. Louis in that day was so near the
border of civilization that it was accustomed to see much of the
rugged and wild life of the plains; yet in 1832 the people beheld even
to them the odd sight of four Flathead Indians in Indian dress and
equipment parading their principal streets.
General Clarke, who commanded the military post of that city, was
promptly notified and took the strangers in charge. He had been an
Indian commissioner for many years in the far West, knew the tribe
well and could easily communicate with them. With it all he was a good
friend to the Indians and at once made arrangements at the fort to
make them comfortable. They informed him that they were all chiefs of
the tribe and had spent the entire Summer and Fall upon their long
journey. Their wearied manner and wasted appearance told the fact
impressively, even had the general not known the locality where they
belonged.
For a while they were reticent regarding their mission, as is usual
with Indians; but in due time their story was fully revealed. They had
heard of "The White Man's Book of Life," and had come "to hunt for it"
and "to ask for teachers to be sent" to their tribe.
To Gen. Clarke this was a novel proposition to come in that way from
wild Indians. Gen. Clarke was a devoted Catholic and treated his
guests as a humane and hospitable man. After they were rested up he
piloted them to every place which he thought would entertain and
interest them. Frequent visits were made to Catholic churches, and to
theaters and shows of every kind. And so they spent the balance of the
Winter.
During this time, two of the Indians, from the long journey and
possibly from over-eating rich food, to which they were unaccustomed,
were taken sick and died, and were given honored burial by the
soldiers. When the early Spring sun began to shine, the two remaining
Indians commenced their preparations for return home.
Gen. Clarke proposed to give them a banquet upon the last evening of
their sojourn, and start them upon their way loaded with all the
comforts he could give. At this banquet one of the Indians made a
speech. It was that speech, brimming over with Indian eloquence, which
fired the Christian hearts of the Nation into a new life. The speech
was translated into English and thus doubtless loses much of its
charm.
The chief said: "I come to you over the trail of many moons from the
setting sun. You were the friends of my fathers, who have all gone the
long way. I came with an eye partly open 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. Two fathers came with us, they
were the braves of many winters and wars. We leave them asleep here by
your great water and wigwams. 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 to where you allow your women to dance as we do not ours, and the
book was not there. You took me to where they worship the Great Spirit
with candles and the book was not there. You showed me images of the
good spirits and the pictures of the good land beyond, but the book
was not among them to tell us the way. I am going back the long and
sad trail to my people in the dark land. You make my feet heavy with
gifts and my moccasins will grow old in carrying them, yet 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 a long path to 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."
When this speech was translated and sent East it was published in the
Christian Advocate in March, 1833, with a ringing editorial from
President Fisk of Wilbraham College. "Who will respond to go beyond
the Rocky Mountains and carry the Book of Heaven?" It made a profound
impression. It was a Macedonian cry of "Come over and help us," not to
be resisted. Old men and women who read this call, and attended the
meetings at that time, are still living, and can attest to its power.
It stirred the church as it has seldom been stirred into activity.
This incident of the appearance in St. Louis and demand of the four
Flathead Indians has been so fully verified in history as to need no
additional proof to silence modern sceptics who have ridiculed it. All
the earlier histories such as "Gray's History of Oregon," "Reed's
Mission of the Methodist Church," Governor Simpson's narrative,
Barrow's "Oregon," Parkman's "Oregon Trail," with the correspondence
of the Lees, verified the truth of the occurrence.
Bancroft, in his thirty-eight-volume history, in volume 1, page 579,
says, "Hearing of the Christians and how heaven favors them, four
Flathead Indian chiefs, in 1832, went to St. Louis and asked for
teachers," etc. As this latter testimony is from a source which
discredited missionary work, as we shall show in another chapter, it
is good testimony upon the point. Some modern doubters have also
ridiculed the speech reported to have been made by the Indian chief.
Those who know Indians best will bear testimony to its genuineness.
Almost every tribe of Indians has its orator and story-teller, and
some of them as famous in their way as the Beechers and Phillipses and
Depews, among the whites, or the Douglasses and Langstons among the
negroes.
In 1851 the writer of this book was purser upon the steamer Lot
Whitcomb, which ran between Milwaukee and Astoria, Oregon. One
beautiful morning I wandered a mile or more down the beach and was
seated upon the sand, watching the great combers as they rolled in
from the Pacific, which, after a storm, is an especially grand sight;
when suddenly, as if he had arisen from the ground, an Indian appeared
near by and accosted me. He was a fine specimen of a savage, clean and
well dressed. He evidently knew who I was and my position on the
steamer and had followed me to make his plea. With a toss of his arm
and a motion of his body he threw the fold of his blanket across his
left shoulder as gracefully as a Roman Senator could have done, and
began his speech. "Hy-iu hyas kloshe Boston, Boston hy-iu steamboat
hy-iu cuitan. Indian halo steamboat, halo cuitan." It was a rare
mixture of English words with the Chinook, which I easily understood.
The burthen of his speech was, the greatness and richness and goodness
of white men; (they called all white men Boston men); they owned all
the steamboats and horses; that the Indians were very poor; that his
squaw and pappoose were away up the Willamette river, so far away that
his moccasins would be worn out before he could reach their wigwam;
that he had no money and wanted to ride.
I have heard the great orators of the nation in the pulpit and halls
of legislation, but I never listened to a more eloquent plea, or saw
gestures more graceful than were those of that wild Wasco Indian, of
which I alone was the audience.
Another interesting historical scrap of the romantic history of these
Flathead chiefs is furnished in the fact that the celebrated Indian
artist, George Catlin, was on one of his tours in the West taking
sketches in the spring of 1833. Soon after their leaving St. Louis he
dropped in with the two Indians on their return journey and traveled
with them for some days, taking pictures of both, and they are now
numbers 207 and 208 in his great collection.
Upon his return east he read the Indian speech, and of the excitement
it had caused, and not having been told by the Indians of the cause of
their journey, and wishing to be assured that he had accidentally
struck a great historic prize in securing the pictures, he sat down
and wrote Gen. Clarke at St. Louis, asking him if the speech was true
and the story correct. Gen. Clarke promptly replied, "The story is
true; that was the only object of their visit." Taken in connection
with the after history, no two pictures in any collection have a
deeper or grander significance.
[Illustration: THE LOT WHITCOMB.
The first Steamboat built in Oregon.]
We may add here that within a month after leaving St. Louis, one of
the Indians was taken sick and died, and but one reached his home
in safety.
When I reached Oregon in 1850, the first tribe of Indians I visited in
their home was the Flatheads. But whether the story is true in all its
minutiae or not, it matters but little. It was believed true, and
produced grand results. It can hardly be said, from the standpoint of
the Christian missionary, that the work in Oregon was a grand success.
And yet, never were missionaries more heroic, or that labored in any
field with greater fidelity for the true interests of the Indian
savages to whom they were sent.
They were great, warm-hearted, intelligent, educated, earnest men and
women, who endured privation, isolation and discomfort with
cheerfulness, that they might teach Christianity and save souls. There
was no failure from any incompetency of the teachers, but from
complications and surroundings hopelessly beyond their power to
change.
They brought with them over their long, weary journey the Bible,
Christianity and civilization, and the school. They were met at first
with a cordial reception by the Indians, but a great corporation,
dependent upon the steel trap and continuous savage life, soon showed
its hand. It was a foreign un-American opposition. It had met every
American company that had attempted to share in the business promoted
by savage life, and routed them. The missionaries were wide-awake men
and were quick to see the drift of affairs.
Dr. Whitman early foresaw what was to happen. He saw the possibilities
of the country and that the first battle was between the schoolhouse
and civilization, and the tepee and savagery. He resolved to do
everything possible for the Indian before it began. In a letter to his
father-in-law, dated May 16, 1844, from Waiilatpui, he says:
"It does not concern me so much what is to become of any particular
set of Indians, as to give them the offer of salvation through the
Gospel, and the opportunity of civilization, and then I am content to
do good to all men as I have opportunity. I have no doubt our greatest
work is to be to aid the white settlement of this country and help to
found its religious institutions. Providence has its full share in all
those events. Although the Indians have made, and are making rapid
advance in religious knowledge and civilization, yet it cannot be
hoped that time will be allowed to mature the work of Christianization
or civilization before white settlers will demand the soil and the
removal both of the Indians and the Missions.
"What Americans desire of this kind they always effect, and it is
useless to oppose or desire it otherwise. To guide as far as can be
done, and direct these tendencies for the best, is evidently the part
of wisdom. Indeed, I am fully convinced that when people refuse or
neglect to fill the design of Providence, they ought not to complain
at the results, and so it is equally useless for Christians to be
over-anxious on their account.
"The Indians have in no case obeyed the command to multiply and
replenish the earth, and they cannot stand in the way of others doing
so. A place will be left them to do this as fully as their ability to
obey will permit, and the more we do for them the more fully will this
be realized. No exclusiveness can be asked for any portion of the
human family. The exercise of his rights are all that can be desired.
In order for this to be understood to its proper extent, in regard to
the Indians, it is necessary that they seek to preserve their rights
by peaceable means only. Any violation of this rule will be visited
with only evil results to themselves."
This letter from Dr. Whitman to his wife's father, dated about seven
months after his return from his memorable "Ride to Save Oregon," is
for the first time made public in the published transactions of the
State Historical Society of Oregon in 1893. It is important from the
fact that it gives a complete key to the life and acts of this silent
man and his motives for the part he took in the great historic drama,
in which the statesmen of the two nations were to be the actors, with
millions of people the interested audience.
In another place we will show how Whitman has been misrepresented by
modern historians, and an attempt made to deprive him of all honor,
and call attention to the above record, all the more valuable because
never intended for the public eye when written.
In the same letter Whitman says, "As I hold the settlement of this
country by Americans, rather than by English colonists, most
important, I am happy to have been the means of landing so large an
immigration on the shores of the Columbia with their wagons, families
and stock, all in safety."
Such sentiments reveal only the broad-minded, far-seeing Christian
man, who, though many thousand miles away from its protecting
influence, still loved "The banner of beauty and glory." He had gone
to Oregon with only a desire to teach savages Christianity; but saw in
the near future the inevitable, and, without lessening his interest in
his savage pupils, he entered the broader field.
Who can doubt that both were calls from a power higher than man? Or
who can point to an instance upon historic pages where the great work
assigned was prosecuted with greater fidelity? Having accomplished a
feat unparalleled for its heroism and without a break in its grand
success, he makes no report of it to any state or national
organization, but while he talked freely with his friends of his work
it is only now, after he has rested for forty-seven and more years,
that this modest letter written to his wife's father at the time,
strongly reveals his motives.
Having accomplished his great undertaking, he was still the missionary
and friend of the Indians, and at once dropped back to his work, and
the drudgery of his Indian mission.
Again we find him enlarging his field of work, teaching his savage
friends, not only Christianity, but how to sow, and plant, and reap,
and build houses, and prepare for civilization. He took no part in the
new political life which he had made possible. He was a stranger to
all things except those which concerned the work he was called to do.
In his letter he speaks of earnestly desiring to return East and bring
out the second company of immigrants the coming Spring, but the needs
of his mission, his wasted fields, and his mill burned during his
absence, seemed to demand his presence at home.
The world speaks of this event and that, as "It so happened." They
will refer to the advent of the Flathead Indians in St. Louis in 1832,
as "It so happened." The more thoughtful readers of history find fewer
things "accidental." In this great historic romance the Flathead
Indians were not an accident. The American Board, the Methodist
Board, Dr. Whitman and Jason Lee, and their co-workers, were not
accidents. They were all men inspired to a specific work, and having
entered upon it, the field widened into dimensions of unforeseen
grandeur, whose benefits the Nation has never yet befittingly
acknowledged.