THE FAILURE OF MODERN HISTORY TO DO JUSTICE TO DR. WHITMAN.
Says an old author: "History is a river increasing in volume with
every mile of its length, and the tributaries that join it nearer and
nearer the sea are taken up and swept onward by a current that grows
ever mightier." Napoleon said: "History is a fable agreed upon." If
Napoleon could have looked downward to the closing years of this
century and seen the genius of the literary world striving to do him
honor, he would perhaps have modified the sentiment.
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. Scarcely has any great leader escaped from the
stings of history, but it is well to know and believe that time will
correct the wrong. The case of Dr. Whitman is peculiar in the fact
that all his contemporaries united in doing him honor, save and
except one, Bishop Brouillet. The men who knew the value of his work
and his eminent services, such as Gray, Reed, Simpson, Barrows, and
Parkman; the correspondence of Spalding, Lovejoy, Eells, and the Lees,
have made the record clear.
It has been reserved for modern historians of that class who have just
discovered the "Mistakes of Moses," and that Shakespeare never wrote
Shakespeare's plays, to indulge in sneers and scoffs and to falsify
the record. It is not the intention to attempt to reply to all these,
but we shall notice the fallacies of two or three. In a recent edition
of the history of the Lewis and Clarke Expedition, published by F. P.
Harper, New York, and edited by Dr. Elliott Coues, a most entertaining
volume, and yet wholly misleading as to the final issue which resulted
in Oregon becoming a part of the Republic, Dr. Coues in his dedication
of the volume says:
"To the people of the great West: Jefferson gave you the country.
Lewis and Clarke showed you the way. The rest is your own course of
empire. Honor the statesman who foresaw your West. Honor the brave men
who first saw your West. May the memory of their glorious achievement
be your precious heritage. Accept from my heart this undying record of
the beginning of all your greatness.
ELLIOTT COUES."
All honor to Jefferson, the far-sighted statesman; and a like honor to
the courageous explorers, Lewis and Clarke; but the writer of history
should be true to facts. Lewis and Clarke were not "The first men who
saw your West." They were not the discoverers of Oregon. Old Captain
Gray did that a dozen years prior to the visit of Lewis and Clarke. A
writer of true history should not have blinded his eyes to that fact
on his dedicatory page. Captain Gray sailed into the mouth of the
Columbia River on his good ship Columbia, from Boston, on May 7th,
1792. The great river was named for his vessel. This, together with
the title gained by the Louisiana purchase in 1803, and the treaty
with Spain and Mexico, more fully recited in another chapter, made the
claim of the United States to ownership in the soil of Oregon.
The mission of Lewis and Clarke was not that of discoverers, but to
spy out and report upon the value of the discovery already made. Their
work required rare courage, and was accomplished with such
intelligence as to make them heroes, and both were rewarded with fat
offices; one as the Governor of Louisiana, and the other as General
Commissioner of Indian Affairs; and both were given large land grants.
We have not been able to see in any of Dr. Coues' full notes any
explanation of such facts, but even if he has given such explanation,
he had no right, as a truthful chronicler of history, to mislead the
reader by his highly ornate dedicatory: "Jefferson gave you the
country, Lewis and Clarke showed you the way."
President Jefferson was much more of a seer and statesman than were
his compeers. The Louisiana purchase, to him, was much more than
gaining possession of the State at the mouth of the Mississippi River,
with its rich acres for the use of slave-owners of the South. In his
later years he said: "I looked forward with gratification to the time
when the descendants of the settlers of Oregon would spread themselves
through the whole length of the coast, covering it with free,
independent Americans, unconnected with us but by the ties of blood
and interest, and enjoying, like us, the rights of self-government."
If the old statesman could view the scene and the condition now, how
much grander would be the view! It would be unjust to question the
interest of President Jefferson in the Northwest Territory; the great
misfortune was, that the statesmen of his day were almost wholly
oblivious to his appeals. The report made by the Lewis and Clarke
expedition was stuffed into a pigeon hole, and was not even published
until eight years after the exploration, and after one of the
explorers was dead. It was not received with a single ripple of
enthusiasm by Congress or the people of the Nation. The Government,
on the contrary, fourteen years after the advent of Lewis and Clarke
in Oregon, entered into a treaty with England, which virtually gave
the English people the control of the entire country for more than the
first third of the century. The most that can be said of Lewis and
Clarke is that they were faithful explorers, who blazed the way which
Americans failed to travel, until, in the fullness of time, a man
appeared who led the way and millions followed.
Among the most pointed defamers of Dr. Whitman is Mrs. Frances F.
Victor, of Oregon, author of "The River of the West," who seldom loses
an opportunity to attempt to belittle the man and his work. In a
communication to the Chicago Inter Ocean, she openly charges that his
journey to Washington in the winter of 1842 and '43 was wholly for
selfish interests. She charges that he was about to be removed from
his Mission and wanted to present his case before the American Board.
That he wanted his Mission as "A stopping place for immigrants." In
other words, it was for personal and pecuniary gain that he made the
perilous ride. We quote her exact language:
"That there was considerable practical self-interest in his desire to
be left to manage the Mission as he thought best, there can be no
question. It was not for the Indians, altogether, he wished to
remain. He foresaw the wealth and importance of the country and that
his place must become a supply station to the annual emigrations.
Instead of making high-comedy speeches to the President and Secretary
of State, he talked with them about the Indians, and what would, in
his opinion, be the best thing to be done for them and for the white
settlers. His visit was owing to the necessity that existed of
explaining to the Board better than he could by letter, and more
quickly, his reasons for wishing to remain at his station, and to
convince them it was for the best." Says Mrs. Victor: "The
Missionaries all believed that the United States would finally secure
a title to at least that portion of Oregon south of the Columbia
River, out of whose rich lands they would be given large tracts by the
Government, and that was reason enough for the loyalty exhibited."
She openly charges that "Dr. Whitman acted deceitfully toward all the
other members of the Mission." If such were true, is it not strange
that in all the years that followed every man and woman among them
were his staunchest and truest friends and most valiant defenders? She
proceeds to call Whitman "Ignorant and conceited to believe that he
influenced Secretary Webster." That the story of his suffering,
frost-bitten condition was false. "He was not frost-bitten, or he
would have been incapacitated to travel," etc. Mrs. Victor makes a
grave charge against Whitman. She says: "He got well-to-do by selling
flour and grain and vegetables to immigrants at high prices." Now, let
us allow Dr. Spalding to answer this calumny. He knew Whitman and his
work as well, or better than any other man. Dr. Spalding says:
"Immigrants, by hundreds and thousands, reached the Mission, way-worn,
hungry, sick, and destitute, but he cared for all. Seven children of
one family were left upon the hands of Dr. and Mrs. Whitman--one a
babe four months old--and they cared for them all, giving food,
clothing, and medicine without pay. Frequently, the Doctor would give
away his entire food supply, and have to send to me for grain to get
through the Winter."
She pointedly denies that Dr. Whitman went to Washington or the States
with the expectation of bringing out settlers to Oregon.
The letters recently published by the State Historical Society of
Oregon, quoted in another chapter, were written by Dr. Whitman the
year following his famous journey. In them he clearly reveals the
reasons for the ride to Washington. The reader can believe Dr. Whitman
or believe Mrs. Victor, but both cannot be believed.
In addition to these letters, we have the clear testimony of General
Lovejoy, who went with him; of Rev. Mr. Spalding, of Elkanah Walker,
Dr. Gray, Rev. Cushing Eells, P. B. Whitman, who accompanied him on
his return trip; Mr. Hinman, Dr. S. J. Parker, of Ithaca, N. Y., and
the Rev. William Barrows, who had frequent conversations with him in
St. Louis. In an interview with Dr. William Geiger, published in the
New York Sun, January 17th, 1885, he says: "I was at Fort Walla Walla,
and associated directly with Dr. Whitman when he started East to save
Oregon. I was there when he returned, and I am, perhaps, the only
living person who distinctly recollects all the facts. He left, not to
go to St. Louis or to Boston, but for the distinct purpose of going to
Washington to save Oregon; and yet he had to be very discreet about
it."
Will the honest reader of history reject such testimony as worthless,
and mark that of these modern skeptics valuable?
Mrs. Victor's charges, that selfishness and personal aggrandizement
accounted for all the sacrifices made by Whitman, are preposterous in
the light of testimony, and made utterly untenable by the environments
of the Missionary. There was no time in all the years that Dr. and
Mrs. Whitman lived in Oregon that they could not have packed all their
worldly goods upon the backs of two mules. The American Board made no
bribe of money to the men and women they sent out to Oregon and
elsewhere. If the great farm he opened at Waiilatpui, and the
buildings he erected by his patient toil, had grown to be worth a
million, it would not have added a single dollar to Whitman's wealth.
Even the physician's fees given him by grateful sufferers, under the
rules of the Board, were reported and counted as a part of his meager
salary.
The idea that a man should leave wife and home, and endure the perils
of a mid-winter journey to the States, to persuade Congress "To buy
sheep" and "make his Mission a stopping place," or the American Board
to allow him to work sixteen hours a day for the Cayuse Indians, is a
heavy task on credulity, and is so far-fetched as to make Whitman's
maligners only ridiculous.
But it is Hubert Howe Bancroft, the author of the thirty-eight volume
History of the Pacific States, who is the offender-in-chief. As a
collector and historian, Bancroft necessarily required many
co-workers. It was in his failure to get them into harmony and tell
the straight connected truth, in which he made his stupendous
blunders. Chapter is arrayed against chapter, and volume against
volume. One tells history, and another denies it. In Volume I, page
379, he refers to the incident, already fully recited in another
chapter, of the visit of the Flathead Indians to St. Louis, and does
not once doubt its historic accuracy; but in Volume XXIII, another of
his literary army works up the same historic incident, and says:
"The Presbyterians were never very expert in improvising Providences.
Therefore, when Gray, the great Untruthful, and whilom Christian
Mission builder, undertakes to appropriate to the Unseen Powers of his
sect the sending of four native delegates to St. Louis in 1832,
begging saviors for transmontain castaways, it is, as most of Gray's
affairs are, a failure. The Catholics manage such things better."
On page 584, Volume I, "Chronicles of the Builders," Mr. Bancroft
says: "The Missionaries and Pioneers of Oregon did much to assure the
country to the United States. Had there been no movement of the kind,
England would have extended her claim over the whole territory, with a
fair prospect of making it her own."
In another place says Mr. Bancroft: "The Missionary, Dr. Whitman, was
no ordinary man. I do not know which to admire most in him, his
coolness or his courage. His nerves were of steel, his patience was
excelled only by his fearlessness. In the mighty calm of his nature he
was a Caesar for Christ."
In the same volume another of his literary co-workers proceeds to
glorify John Jacob Astor, and to give him all the honors for saving
Oregon to the Union. Mr. Bancroft says:
"The American flag was raised none too soon at Fort Astoria to secure
the great Oregon country to the United States, for already the men of
Montreal were hastening thither to seize the prize; but they were too
late. It is safe to say that had not Mr. Astor moved in this matter as
he did, had his plans been frustrated or his purposes delayed, the
northern boundary of the United States might to-day be the 42d
parallel of latitude. Thus we see the momentous significance of the
movement."
The author proceeds to picture Astor and make him the hero in saving
Oregon. In another chapter we have given the full force and effect of
Mr. Astor's settlement at Astoria. A careful reading will only show
the exaggerated importance of the act, when compared with other acts
which the historian only passes with a sneer or in silence. John Jacob
Astor was in Oregon to make money and for no other purpose.
In Volume I, page 579, "Chronicle of the Builders," Mr. Bancroft
allows Mrs. Victor, his authority, to dip her pen deep in slander. He
refers to both the Methodist Missions on the Willamette and the
Congregational and Presbyterian Missions of the Walla Walla, and
writes:
"But missionary work did not pay, however, either with the white men
or the red, whereupon the apostles of this region began to attend more
to their own affairs than to the saving of savage souls. They broke
up their establishments in 1844, and thenceforth became a political
clique, whose chief aim was to acquire other men's property."
Please note the charges. Here are Christian men and women who have for
years deprived themselves of all the benefits of civilization, and
endured the hardships and dangers of frontier life, professedly that
they might preach the gospel to savage people, but says Mr. Bancroft:
"Missionary work did not pay." In the sense of money making, when did
Missionary work ever pay? This history of the Pacific States is a
history for the generations to come. It is to go into Christian homes
and upon the shelves of Christian libraries. If it is true,
Christianity stands disgraced and Christian Missionaries stand
dishonored.
Mr. Bancroft says: "They broke up their establishments in 1844 and
became a political clique, whose chief aim was to acquire other men's
property." As usual, another one of the historian's valuable aides
comes upon the stage in the succeeding volume, and gives a horrifying
account of "The great massacre at Dr. Whitman's Mission, on Nov. 29th,
1847." He tells us "There were at the time seventy souls at the
Mission" and "Fourteen persons were killed and forty-seven taken
captives." Does this prove the historian's truthfulness who had
before told his readers that "They broke up their establishments in
1844 and thenceforth became a political clique, whose aim was to
acquire other men's property?" There is no possible excuse for the
historian to allow his aides to lead him into such blunders as we have
pointed out.
The real facts were in reach. Here were men and women educated,
cultivated, exiles from home, engaged in the great work of civilizing
and Christianizing savages, and without a fact to sustain the charge,
it is openly asserted that they gave up their work and entered upon
the race for political power and for wealth. Instead of the Missions
of the American Board being "closed in 1844," they were at no time in
a more prosperous condition; as the record of Dr. Eells, Dr. Spalding
and Dr. Whitman all show.
There is not a particle of evidence that Dr. Whitman ever took any
part in any political movement in Oregon; save and except as his great
effort to bring in settlers to secure the country to the United States
may be called political. As soon as he could leave the emigrants, he
hurried home to his Mission, and at once took up his heavy work which
he had laid aside eleven months before. He went on building and
planting, and sowing and teaching; the busiest of busy men up to the
very date of the massacre. In his young manhood he sacrificed ease in
a civilized home, and he and his equally noble wife dedicated
themselves and their lives to the Missionary service. At all times
they were the same patient, quiet, uncomplaining toilers.
Why should the great historian of the Pacific States stand above their
martyr graves and attempt to discredit their lives and dishonor their
memories? Dr. Whitman exhibited as much patriotism and performed as
grand an act of heroism as any man of this century, and yet, Mr.
Bancroft devotes half a dozen volumes to "The Chronicle of the
Builders," in which he presents handsome photographs and clear,
well-written sketches of hundreds of men, but they are mainly
millionaires and politicians. The historian seems to have had no room
for a Missionary or a poor Doctor. They were only pretending "to save
savage souls." And that "did not pay," and "they broke up their
settlements in 1844 and thenceforth became a political clique" whose
"chief aim was to acquire other men's property."
It is a slander of the basest class, not backed up by a single
credible fact, wholly dishonorable to the author, and discredits his
entire history. An old poet says:
"And ever the right comes uppermost,
And ever is justice done!"
The Christian and patriotic people who believe in honest dealing will,
in the years to come, compel all such histories to be re-written and
their malice expunged, or they will cease to find an honored place in
the best libraries.
It is by such history that the modern public has been blinded, and the
real heroes relegated to the rear to make room for favorites. But
facts are stubborn things, "The truth is mighty and will prevail." The
great public is honest and loves justice and honesty; and it will not
permit such a record to stand. The awakening has already begun. The
time is coming when the martyred heroes in their unhonored graves at
Waiilatpui, will receive the reward due for their patriotic and heroic
service.
It is also gratifying to be able to observe that this malevolence is
limited to narrow bounds. It has originated and has lived only in the
fertile brains of two or three boasters of historic knowledge, who
have made up in noise for all lack of principle and justice. They seem
to have desired to gain notoriety for themselves and imagined that the
world would admire their courage. It was Mr. Bancroft's great
misfortune that this little coterie in Oregon were entrusted with the
task of writing the most notable history of modern times, and his
great work and his honored name will have to bear the odium of it
until his volumes are called in and the grievous wrong is righted. It
will be done. Mr. E. C. Ross, of Prescott, says in the Oregonian in
1884:
"Time will vindicate Dr. Whitman, and when all calumnies, and their
inventors, shall have been forgotten, his name, and that of his
devoted, noble wife, will stand forth in history as martyrs to the
cause of God and their Country."
Let the loyal, patriotic men and women of America resolve that the
time to do this is now.