wilderness as far as the Wind River Mountains, near the present
Yellowstone Park. After familiarizing themselves through talks with
traders, trappers, and Indians with the conditions which prevailed
in the valley of the Columbia, Whitman and his companion returned
to Boston, and upon the strength of their report the American Board
decided to lose no time in occupying the field. Ordered to establish a
station on the Columbia, in the vicinity of Fort Walla Walla, then a
post of the Hudson’s Bay Company, Whitman turned the long and arduous
trip across the continent into a wedding journey. The conveyances
used and the roundabout route taken by the bridal couple strikingly
emphasize the primitive internal communications of the period. They
drove in a sleigh from Elmira, N. Y., to Hollidaysburg, a hamlet on the
Pennsylvania Canal, at the foot of the Alleghanies, the canal-boats,
which were built in sections, being taken over the mountains on a
railway. Travelling by the canal and its communicating waterways to
the Ohio, they journeyed by steamboat down the Ohio to its junction
with the Mississippi, up the Mississippi to St. Louis, and thence up
the Missouri to Council Bluffs, where they bought a wagon (bear that
wagon in mind, if you please, for you shall hear of it later on), and
outfitted for the journey across the plains. Accompanied by another
missionary couple, Doctor and Mrs. Spalding, they turned the noses of
their mules northwestward and a week or so later caught up with an
expedition sent out by the American Fur Company to its settlement of
Astoria, at the mouth of the Columbia. Following the North Fork of
the Platte, they crossed the Wind River Mountains within sight of the
landmark which came in time to be known as Frémont’s Peak, though these
two young women crossed the Great Divide six years before Frémont,
“the pathfinder,” ever set eyes upon it. Few women of our race have
ever made so perilous or difficult a journey. Before it was half
completed, the party, owing to a miscalculation, ran out of flour and
for weeks on end were forced to live on jerked buffalo meat and tea.
Crossing the Snake River at a point where it was upward of a mile in
width, the wagon was capsized by the velocity of the current, and, the
mules, on which the women had been put for safety, becoming entangled
in the harness, their riders escaped drowning by what the missionaries
devoutly ascribed to a miracle and the rough-spoken frontiersmen to
“damned good luck.” Another river they crossed by means of a dried
elkskin with two ropes attached, on which they lay flat and perfectly
motionless while two Indian women, holding the ropes in their teeth,
swam the stream, drawing this unstable ferry behind them.
At Fort Hall, near the present site of Pocatello, Ida., they came
upon the southernmost of that chain of trading-posts with which the
Hudson’s Bay Company sought to guard the enormous territory which,
without so much as a “by-your-leave,” it had taken for its own. Here
Captain Grant, the company’s factor, made a determined effort to induce
Whitman to abandon the wagon that he had brought with him across
the continent in the face of almost insuperable obstacles. But the
obstinacy that had caused the folks in Plainfield to shake their heads
when the name of young Marcus Whitman was mentioned stood him in good
stead, for the more persistent the Englishman became in his objections
the more adamantine grew the American in his determination to cling at
all costs to his wagon, for no one knew better than Whitman that this
had proved the most successful of the methods pursued by the great
British fur monopoly to discourage the colonization of the territory
wherein it conducted its operations. The officials of the Hudson’s Bay
Company well knew that the colonization of the valley of the Columbia
by Americans meant not only the end of their enormously profitable
monopoly but the end of British domination in that region. Though they
did not have it in their power to forcibly prevent Americans from
entering the country, they argued that there could be no colonization
on a large scale unless the settlers had wagons in which to transport
their seeds and farming implements. Hence the company adopted the
policy of stationing its agents along the main routes of travel with
instructions to stop at nothing short of force to detain the wagons.
And until Marcus Whitman came this policy had accomplished the desired
result, the specious arguments of Captain Grant having proved so
successful, indeed, that the stockade at Fort Hall was filled with
abandoned wagons and farming implements which would have been of
inestimable value to the settlers who had been persuaded or bullied
into leaving them behind. But Whitman was made of different stuff, and
the English official might as well have tried to argue the Snake River
out of its course as to argue this hard-headed Yankee into giving up
his wagon. Though it twice capsized and was all but lost in the swollen
streams, though once it fell over a precipice and more than once went
rolling down a mountainside, though for miles on end it was held on
the narrow, winding mountain trails by means of drag-ropes, and though
it became so dilapidated in time that it finished its journey on two
wheels instead of four, the ramshackle old vehicle, thanks to Whitman’s
bulldog grit and determination, was hauled over the mountains and was
the first vehicle to enter the forbidden land. I have laid stress upon
this incident of the wagon, because, as things turned out, it proved
a vital factor in the winning of Oregon. “For want of a nail the shoe
was lost,” runs the ancient doggerel; “for want of a shoe the horse was
lost; for want of a horse the rider was lost; for want of a rider the
kingdom was lost.” And, had it not been for this decrepit old wagon of
Whitman’s, a quarter of a million square miles of the most fertile land
between the oceans would have been lost to the Union.
Seven months after helping his bride into the sleigh at Elmira, Whitman
drove his gaunt mule-team into the gate of the stockade at Fort Walla
Walla. To-day one can make that same journey in a little more than four
days and sit in a green plush chair all the way. The news of Whitman’s
coming had preceded him, and an enormous concourse of Indians,
arrayed in all their barbaric finery, was assembled to greet the man
who had journeyed so many moons to bring them the white man’s Book
of Heaven. Picture that quartet of missionaries--skirmishers of the
church, pickets of progress, advance-guards of civilization--as they
stood on the banks of the Columbia one September morning in 1836 and
consulted as to how to begin the work they had been sent to do. It was
all new. There were no precedents to guide them. How would you begin,
my friends, were you suddenly set down in the middle of a wilderness
four thousand miles from home, with instructions to Christianize and
civilize the savages who inhabited it?
Whitman, in whom diplomacy lost an adept when he became a missionary,
appreciated that the first thing for him to do, if he was to be
successful in his mission, was to win the confidence of the ruling
powers of Oregon--the Hudson’s Bay Company officials at Fort Vancouver.
This necessitated another journey of three hundred miles, but it could
be made in canoes with Indian paddlers. Doctor McLoughlin, the stern
old Scotchman who was chief factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company and
whose word was law throughout a region larger than all the States east
of the Mississippi put together, had to be able, from the very nature
of his business, to read the characters of men as students read a
book; and he was evidently pleased with what he read in the face of
the American missionary, for he gave both permission and assistance in
establishing a mission station at Waiilatpui, twenty-five miles from
Walla Walla.
Whitman’s first move in his campaign for the civilization of the
Indians was to induce them to build permanent homes and to plough and
sow. This the Hudson’s Bay officials had always discouraged. They
did not want their savage allies to be transformed into tillers of
the soil; they wanted them to remain nomads and hunters, ready to
move hundreds of miles in quest of furs. The only parallel in modern
times to the greed, selfishness, and cruelty which characterized
the administration of the Hudson’s Bay Company was the rule of the
Portuguese in Mozambique and Angola and of King Leopold in the Congo.
At this time Oregon was a sort of no man’s land, to which neither
England nor the United States had laid definite claim, though the
former, realizing the immensity of its natural resources and the
enormous strategic value that would accrue from its possession, had
long cast covetous eyes upon it. The Americans of that period, on
the contrary, knew little about Oregon and cared less, regarding the
proposals for its acquisition with the same distrust with which the
Americans of to-day regard any suggestion for extending our boundaries
below the Rio Grande. Daniel Webster had said on the floor of the
United States Senate: “What do we want with this vast, worthless
area, this region of savages and wild beasts, of shifting sands and
whirlwinds of dust, of cactus and prairie-dogs? To what use could we
ever hope to put these great deserts or these endless mountain ranges,
impenetrable and covered to their base with eternal snow? What can
we ever hope to do with the western coast, a coast of three thousand
miles, rock-bound, cheerless, and uninviting, and not a harbor on it?
Mr. President, I will never vote one cent from the public treasury to
place the Pacific coast one inch nearer to Boston.”
The name Oregon, it must be borne in mind, had a very much broader
significance then than now, for the territory generally considered to
be referred to by the term comprised the whole of the present States of
Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, and a portion of Montana.
Notwithstanding the systematic efforts of the Hudson’s Bay Company to
keep them out, a considerable number of Americans--perhaps two or three
hundred in all--had settled in the country watered by the Columbia, but
they were greatly outnumbered by the Canadians and British, who held
the balance of power. The American settlers believed that, under the
terms of the treaty of 1819, whichever nation settled and organized
the territory that nation would hold it. Though this was not directly
affirmed in the terms of that treaty, it was the common sentiment of
the statesmen of the period, Webster, then Secretary of State, having
said, in the course of a letter to the British minister at Washington:
“The ownership of the whole country (Oregon) will likely follow the
greater settlement and larger amount of population.” The missionaries,
recognizing the incalculable value of the country which the American
Government was deliberately throwing away, did everything in their
power to encourage immigration. Their glowing accounts of the fertility
of the soil, the balmy climate, the wealth of timber, the incalculable
water-power, the wealth in minerals had each year induced a limited
number of daring souls to make the perilous and costly journey across
the plains. In the autumn of 1842 a much larger party than any
that had hitherto attempted the journey--one hundred and twenty in
all--reached Waiilatpui. Among them was a highly educated and unusually
well-informed man--General Amos Lovejoy. He was thoroughly posted in
national affairs, and it was in the course of a conversation with him
that Doctor Whitman first learned that the Webster-Ashburton treaty
would probably be ratified before the adjournment of Congress in the
following March. It was generally believed that this treaty related
to the entire boundary between the United States and England’s North
American possessions, the popular supposition being that it provided
for the cession of the Oregon region to Great Britain in return for
fishing rights off the coast of Newfoundland.
Doctor Whitman instantly saw that, as a result of the incredible
ignorance and short-sightedness of the statesmen--or rather, the
politicians who paraded as statesmen--at Washington, four great States
were quietly slipping away from us without a protest. There was but
one thing to do in such a crisis. He must set out for Washington.
Though four thousand miles of Indian-haunted wilderness lay between
him and the white city on the Potomac, he did not hesitate. Though
winter was at hand, and the passes would be deep in snow and the plains
destitute of pasturage, he did not falter. Though there was a rule of
the American Board that no missionary could leave his post without
obtaining permission from headquarters in Boston, Whitman shouldered
all the responsibility. “I did not expatriate myself when I became
a missionary,” was his reply to some objection. “Even if the Board
dismisses me, I will do what I can to save Oregon to the nation. My
life is of but little worth if I can keep this country for the American
people.”[E]
Whitman’s friends in Oregon felt that he was starting on a ride into
the valley of the shadow of death. They knew from their own experiences
the terrible hardships of such a journey even in summer, when there was
grass to feed the horses and men could live with comfort in the open
air. It was resolved that he must not make the journey alone, and a
call was made for a volunteer to accompany him. General Amos Lovejoy
stepped forward and said quietly: “I will go with Doctor Whitman.”
The doctor planned to start in five days, but, while dining with the
Hudson’s Bay officials at Fort Walla Walla, an express messenger of
the company arrived from Fort Colville, three hundred and fifty miles
up the Columbia, and electrified his audience by announcing that a
party of one hundred and forty British and Canadian colonists were
on the road to Oregon. A young English clergyman, carried away with
enthusiasm, sprang to his feet, waved his napkin above his head and
shouted: “We’ve got the country--the Yankees are too late! Hurrah
for Oregon!” Whitman, appreciating that things had now reached a pass
where even hours were precious, quietly excused himself, hurried back
to the mission at Waiilatpui, and made preparations for an immediate
departure. The strictest secrecy was enjoined upon all the Americans
whom Whitman had taken into his confidence, for had a rumor of his
intentions reached British ears at this juncture it might have ruined
everything. So it was given out that he was returning to Boston to
advise the American Board against the contemplated removal of its
missions in Oregon--an explanation which was true as far as it went.
On the morning of October 3, 1842, Whitman, saying good-by to his wife
and home, climbed into his saddle and with General Lovejoy, their
half-breed guide, and three pack-mules set out on the ride that was
to win us an empire. The little group of American missionaries and
settlers whom he left behind gave him a rousing cheer as he rode off
and then stood in silence with choking throats and misted eyes until
the heroic doctor and his companions were swallowed by the forest.
With horses fresh, they reached Fort Hall in eleven days, where
the English factor, Captain Grant--the same man who, six years
before, had attempted to prevent Whitman from taking his wagon into
Oregon--doubtless guessing at their mission, did his best to detain
them. Learning at Fort Hall that the northern tribes were on the
war-path, Whitman and his companions struck southward in the direction
of Great Salt Lake, planning to work from there eastward, via Fort
Uintah and Fort Uncompahgre, to Santa Fé, and thence by the Santa Fé
trail to St. Louis, which was on the borders of civilization. The
journey from Fort Hall to Fort Uintah was one long nightmare, the
temperature falling at times to forty degrees below zero and the
snow being so deep in places that the horses could scarcely struggle
through. While crossing the mountains on their way to Taos they were
caught in a blinding snow-storm, in which, with badly frozen limbs,
they wandered aimlessly for hours. Finally, upon the guide admitting
that he was lost and could go no farther, they sought refuge in a
deep ravine. Whitman dismounted and, kneeling in the snow, prayed
for guidance. Can’t you picture the scene: the lonely, rock-walled
gorge; the shivering animals standing dejectedly, heads to the ground
and reins trailing; the general, muffled to the eyes in furs; the
impassive, blanketed half-breed; in the centre, upon his knees,
the indomitable missionary, praying to the God of storms; and the
snowflakes falling swiftly, silently, upon everything? As though in
answer to the doctor’s prayers--and who shall say that it was not--the
lead-mule, which had been left to himself, suddenly started plunging
through the snowdrifts as though on an urgent errand. Whereupon the
guide called out: “This old mule’ll find the way back to camp if he kin
live long ’nough to git there.” And he did.
The next morning the guide said flatly that he would go no farther.
“I know this country,” he declared, “an’ I know when things is possible
an’ when they ain’t. It ain’t possible to git through, an’ it’s plumb
throwin’ your lives away to try it. I’m finished.”
This was a solar-plexus blow for Whitman, for he was already ten
days behind his schedule. But, though staggered, he was far from
being beaten. Telling Lovejoy to remain in camp and recuperate the
animals--which he did by feeding them on brush and the inner bark of
willows, for there was no other fodder--Whitman turned back to Fort
Uncompahgre, where he succeeded in obtaining a stouter-hearted guide.
In a week he had rejoined Lovejoy. The storm had ceased, and with
rested animals they made good progress over the mountains to the
pyramid pueblo of Taos, the home of Kit Carson. Tarrying there but a
few hours, worn and weary though they were, they pressed on to the
banks of the Red River, a stream which is dangerous even in summer,
only to find a fringe of solid ice upon each shore, with a rushing
torrent, two hundred feet wide, between. For some minutes the guide
studied it in silence. “It is too dangerous to cross,” he said at last
decisively.
“Dangerous or not, we _must_ cross it, and at once,” answered Whitman.
Cutting a stout willow pole, eight feet or so in length, he put it on
his shoulder and remounted.
“Now, boys,” he ordered, “shove me off.” Following the doctor’s
directions, Lovejoy and the guide urged the trembling beast onto
the slippery ice and then gave him a sudden shove which sent him,
much against his will, into the freezing water. Both horse and rider
remained for a moment out of sight, then rose to the surface well
toward the middle of the stream, the horse swimming desperately. As
they reached the opposite bank the doctor’s ingenuity in providing
himself with the pole quickly became apparent, for with it he broke the
fringe of ice and thus enabled his exhausted horse to gain a footing
and scramble ashore. Wood was plentiful, and he soon had a roaring
fire. In a wild country, when the lead-animal has gone ahead the
others will always follow, so the general and the guide had no great
difficulty in inducing their horses and pack-mules to make the passage
of the river, rejoining Whitman upon the opposite bank.
Despite the fact that they found plenty of wood along the route that
they had taken, which was fully a thousand miles longer than the
northern course would have been, all the party were severely frozen,
Whitman suffering excruciating pain from his frozen ears, hands,
and feet. The many delays had not only caused the loss of precious
time, but they had completely exhausted their provisions. A dog had
accompanied the party, and they ate him. A mule came next, and that
kept them until they reached Santa Fé, where there was plenty. Santa
Fé--that oldest city of European occupation on the continent--welcomed
and fed them. From there over the famous Santa Fé trail to Bent’s
Fort, a fortified settlement on the Arkansas, was a long journey
but, compared with what they had already gone through, an easy one.
A long day’s ride northeastward from this lonely outpost of American
civilization, and they found across their path a tributary of the
Arkansas. On the opposite shore was wood in plenty. On their side
there was none, and the river was frozen over with smooth, clear ice,
scarce strong enough to hold a man. They must have wood or they would
perish from the cold; so Whitman, taking the axe, lay flat upon the
ice and snaked himself across, cut a sufficient supply of fuel and
returned the way he went, pushing it before him. While he was cutting
it, however, an unfortunate incident occurred: the axe-helve was
splintered. This made no particular difference at the moment, for the
doctor wound the break in the handle with a thong of buckskin. But as
they were in camp that night a famished wolf, attracted by the smell
of the fresh buckskin, carried off axe and all, and they could find no
trace of it. Had it happened a few hundred miles back it would have
meant the failure of the expedition, if not the death of Whitman and
his companions. On such apparently insignificant trifles do the fate of
nations sometimes hang.
Crossing the plains of what are now the States of Oklahoma and Kansas,
great packs of gaunt, gray timber-wolves surrounded their tent each
night and were kept at bay only at the price of unceasing vigilance,
one member of the party always remaining on guard with a loaded rifle.
The moment a wolf was shot its famished companions would pounce upon
it and tear it to pieces. From Bent’s Fort to St. Louis was, strangely
enough, one of the most dangerous portions of the journey, for, while
heretofore the chief dangers had come from cold, starvation, and
savage beasts, here they were in hourly danger from still more savage
men, for in those days the Santa Fé trail was frequented by bandits,
horse-thieves, renegade Indians, fugitives from justice, and the other
desperate characters who haunted the outskirts of civilization and
preyed upon the unprotected traveller. Notwithstanding these dangers,
of which he had been repeatedly warned at Santa Fé and Bent’s Fort,
the doctor, leaving Lovejoy and the guide to follow him with the
pack-animals, pushed on through this perilous region alone, but lost
his way and spent two precious days in finding it again--a punishment,
he said for having travelled on the Sabbath.
The only occasion throughout all his astounding journey when this man
of iron threatened to collapse was when, upon reaching St. Louis, in
February, 1843, he learned, in answer to his eager inquiries, that
the Ashburton treaty had been signed on August 9, long before he left
Oregon, and that it had been ratified by the Senate on November 10,
while he was floundering in the mountain snows near Fort Uncompahgre.
For a moment the missionary’s mahogany-tanned face went white and his
legs threatened to give way beneath him. Could it be that this was the
end of his dream of national expansion? Was it possible that his heroic
ride had been made for naught? But summoning up his courage he managed
to ask: “Is the question of the Oregon boundary still open?” When he
learned that the treaty had only settled the question of a few square
miles in Maine, and that the matter of the northwest boundary was still
pending, the revulsion was so great that he reeled and nearly fell.
God be praised! There was still time for him to get to Washington! The
river was frozen and he had to depend upon the stage, and an overland
journey from St. Louis to Washington in midwinter was no light matter.
But to Whitman with muscles like steel springs, a thousand miles
by stage-coach over atrocious roads was not an obstacle worthy of
discussion.
He arrived at Washington on the 3d of March--just five months from
the Columbia to the Potomac--in the same rough garments he had worn
upon his ride, for he had neither time nor opportunity to get others.
Soiled and greasy buckskin breeches, sheepskin _chaparejos_, fleece
side out, boot-moccasins of elkskin, a cap of raccoon fur with the
tail hanging down behind, frontier fashion, and a buffalo greatcoat
with a hood for stormy weather, composed a costume that did not show
one inch of woven fabric. His face, storm-tanned to the color of a
much-smoked meerschaum, carried all the iron-gray whiskers that five
months’ absence from a razor could put upon it. I doubt, indeed, if
the shop-windows of the national capital have ever reflected a more
picturesque or striking figure. But he had no time to take note of the
sensation created in the streets of Washington by his appearance. Would
he be granted an audience with the President? Would he be believed?
Would his mission prove successful? Those were the questions that
tormented him.