less formality than he is in these busier times, and President Tyler
promptly received him. Some day, perhaps, the people of one of those
great States which he saved to the Union will commission a famous
artist to paint a picture of that historic meeting: the President, his
keen, attentive face framed by the flaring collar and high black stock
of the period, sitting low in his great armchair; the great Secretary
of State, his mane brushed back from his tremendous forehead, seated
beside him; and, standing before them, the preacher-pioneer, bearded
to the eyes, with frozen limbs, in his worn and torn garments of fur
and leather, pleading for Oregon. The burden of his argument was that
the treaty of 1819 must be immediately abrogated and that the authority
of the United States be extended over the valley of the Columbia. He
painted in glowing words the limitless resources, the enormous wealth
in minerals and timber and water-power of this land beyond the Rockies;
he told his hearers, spellbound now by the interest and vividness of
the narrative, of the incredible fertility of the virgin soil, in which
anything would grow; of the vastness of the forests; of the countless
leagues of navigable rivers; of the healthful and delightful climate;
of the splendid harbors along the coast; and last, but by no means
least, of those hardy pioneers who had gone forth to settle this rich
new region at peril of their lives and who, through him, were pleading
to be placed under the shadow of their own flag.
But Daniel Webster still clung obstinately to his belief that Oregon
was a wilderness not worth the having.
“It is impossible to build a wagon road over the mountains,” he
asserted positively. “My friend Sir George Simpson, the British
minister, has told me so.”
“There _is_ a wagon road over the mountains, Mr. Secretary,” retorted
Whitman, “for I have made it.”
It was the rattletrap old prairie-schooner that the missionary had
dragged into Oregon on two wheels in the face of British opposition
that clinched and copper-riveted the business. It knocked all the
argument out of the famous Secretary, who, for almost the first time in
his life, found himself at a loss for an answer. Here was a man of a
type quite different from any that Webster had encountered in all his
political experience. He had no axe to grind; he asked for nothing; he
wanted no money, or office, or lands, or anything except that which
would add to the glory of the flag, the prosperity of the people,
the wealth of the nation. It was a powerful appeal to the heart of
President Tyler.
“What you have told us has interested me deeply, Doctor Whitman,” said
the President at length. “Now tell me exactly what it is that you wish
me to do.”
“If it is true, Mr. President,” replied Whitman, “that, as Secretary
Webster himself has said, ‘the ownership of Oregon is very likely to
follow the greater settlement and the larger amount of population,’
then all I ask is that you won’t barter away Oregon or permit of
British interference until I can organize a company of settlers and
lead them across the plains to colonize the country. And this I will
try to do at once.”
“Your credentials as a missionary vouch for your character, Doctor
Whitman,” replied the President. “Your extraordinary ride and your
frostbitten limbs vouch for your patriotism. The request you make is a
reasonable one. I am glad to grant it.”
“That is all I ask,” said Whitman, rising.
The object that had started him on his four-thousand-mile journey
having been attained, Whitman wasted no time in resting. His work was
still unfinished. It was up to him to get his settlers into Oregon,
for the increasing arrogance of the Hudson’s Bay Company confirmed him
in his belief that the sole hope of saving the valley of the Columbia
lay in a prompt and overwhelming American immigration. He had, indeed,
arrived at Washington in the very nick of time, for, if prior to his
arrival the British Government had renewed its offer of compromising
by taking as the international boundary the forty-ninth parallel to
the Columbia and thence down that river to the Pacific--thus giving
the greater part of the present State of Washington to England--there
is but little doubt that the offer would have been accepted. But the
promise made by President Tyler to Whitman committed him against taking
any action.
Though Whitman was treated with respect and admiration by the President
of the United States, the greeting he received when he reported himself
at the headquarters of the American Board in Boston was far from being
a cordial one.
“What are you doing here, away from your post without permission?”
curtly inquired the secretary of the Board, eying his shaggy visitor
with evident disapproval.
“I came on business to Washington,” answered Whitman, looking the
secretary squarely in the eye. “There was imminent danger of Oregon
passing into the possession of England, and I felt it my duty to do
what I could to prevent it.”
“Obtaining new territories for the nation is no part of our business,”
was the ungracious answer. “You would have done better not to have
meddled in political affairs. Here, take some money and get some
decent clothes, and then we’ll discuss this scheme of yours of piloting
emigrants over the mountains.”
Meanwhile General Lovejoy had been busy upon the frontier spreading
the news that early in the spring Doctor Whitman and himself would
guide a body of settlers across the Rockies to Oregon. The news spread
up and down the border like fire in dry grass. The start was to be
made from Weston, not far from where Kansas City now stands, and soon
the emigrants came pouring in--men who had fought the Indians and the
wilderness all the way from the Great Lakes to the Gulf; men who had
followed Boone and Bowie and Carson and Davy Crockett; a hardy, sturdy,
tenacious breed who were quite ready to fight, if need be, to hold this
northwestern land where they had determined to build their homes. The
grass was late, that spring of 1843, and the expedition did not get
under way until the last week in June. At Fort Hall they met with the
customary discouragements and threats from Captain Grant, but Whitman,
like a modern Moses, urged them forward. On pushed the winding train
of white-topped wagons, crossing the sun-baked prairies, climbing the
Rockies, fording the intervening rivers, creeping along the edge of
perilous precipices, until at last they stood upon the summit of the
westernmost range, with the promised land lying spread below them.
Whitman, the man to whom it was all due, reined in his horse and
watched the procession of wagons, bearing upward of a thousand men,
women, and children, make its slow progress down the mountains. He must
have been very happy, for he had added the great, rich empire which the
term Oregon implied to the Union.[F]
For four years more Doctor Whitman continued his work of caring for the
souls and the bodies of red men and white alike at the mission station
of Waiilatpui. On August 6, 1846, as a direct result of his great ride,
was signed the treaty whereby England surrendered her claims to Oregon.
In those days news travelled slowly along the frontier, and it was
the following spring before the British outposts along the Columbia
learned that the British minister at Washington had been beaten by the
diplomacy of a Yankee missionary and that the great, despotic company
which for well-nigh two centuries had been in undisputed control of
this region, and which had come to regard it as inalienably its own,
would have to move on. From that moment Marcus Whitman was a doomed
man, for it was a long-standing boast of the company that no man defied
it--and lived.
The end came with dramatic suddenness. Early in the afternoon of
November 20, 1847, Doctor Whitman was sitting in the mission station
prescribing medicine, as was his custom, for those of his Indians who
were ailing, when a blanketed warrior stole up behind him on silent
moccasins and buried a hatchet in his brain. Then hell broke loose.
Whooping fiends in paint and feathers appeared as from the pit. Mrs.
Whitman was butchered as she knelt by her dying husband, their scalps
being torn from their heads before they had ceased to breathe. Fourteen
other missionaries were murdered by the red-skinned monsters and forty
women and children were carried into a captivity that was worse than
death. And this by the Indians who, just fifteen years before, had
pleaded to have sent them the white man’s Book of Heaven! Though no
conclusive proof has ever been produced that they were whooped on to
their atrocious deed by emissaries of the great monopoly which had
been forced out of Oregon as a result of Whitman’s ride, there is but
little doubt. Whitman had snatched an empire from its greedy fingers,
and he had to pay the price.
Within sight of the mission station, where for more than a decade they
had worked together, and from which he had started on his historic
ride, the martyr and his courageous wife lie buried. You can see the
grave for yourself should your travels take you Walla Walla way. You
will need to have it pointed out to you, however, for you would never
notice it otherwise: a modest headstone surrounded by a picket fence.
Though Marcus Whitman added to the national domain a territory larger
and possessing greater natural resources than the German Empire, though
but for him Portland and Tacoma and Seattle and Spokane would be
British instead of American, no memorial of him can be found in their
parks or public buildings. Instead of honoring the man who discovered
the streams and forests from which they are growing rich, who won for
them the very lands on which they dwell, unworthy discussions and
acrimonious debates as to the motives which animated him are the only
tributes which have been paid him by the people for whom he did so
much. But he sleeps peacefully on beside the mighty river, oblivious
to the pettiness and ingratitude of it all. When history grants Marcus
Whitman the tardy justice of perspective, over that lonely grave a
monument worthy of a nation builder shall rise.
THE MARCH OF THE ONE THOUSAND
THE MARCH OF THE ONE THOUSAND
Twenty-two centuries or thereabouts ago a Greek soldier of fortune
named Xenophon found himself in a most trying and perilous situation.
Lured by avarice, adventure, and ambition, he had accepted a commission
in a legion of Hellenic mercenaries, ten thousand strong, who had
been engaged by Cyrus to assist him in ousting his brother from the
throne of Persia. But at Cunaxa Cyrus had met his death and his forces
complete disaster, the Greek legionaries being left to make their
way back to Europe as best they might. Under Xenophon’s daring and
resourceful leadership they set out on that historic retreat across the
plains of Asia Minor which their leader was to make immortal with his
pen, eventually reaching Constantinople, after an absence of fifteen
months and a total journey of about three thousand five hundred miles,
with little save their weapons and their lives. Xenophon’s story of the
March of the Ten Thousand as told in his “Anabasis,” is the most famous
military narrative ever written; it is used as a text-book in colleges
and schools, and is familiar wherever the history of Greece is read.
Yet how many of those who know the “Anabasis” by heart are aware that
Xenophon’s exploit has been surpassed on our own continent, in our own
times, and by our own countrymen? Where is the text-book which contains
so much as a reference to the march of the _One Thousand_? How many
of the students who can glibly rattle off the details of Xenophon’s
march across the Mesopotamian plains have ever even heard of Doniphan’s
march across the plains of Mexico? During that march, which occupied
twelve months, a force of American volunteers, barely a thousand
strong, traversed upward of six thousand miles of territory, most of
which was unknown and bitterly hostile, and returned to the United
States bringing with them seventeen pieces of artillery and a hundred
battle-flags taken on fields whose names their countrymen had never so
much as heard before. Because it is the most remarkable campaign in all
our history, and because it is too glorious an episode to be lost in
the mists of oblivion, I will, with your permission, tell its story.
Early in May, 1846, Mexico, angered by the annexation of Texas,
declared war against the United States. Hostilities began a few days
later, when the Army of Occupation under General Zachary Taylor,
whom this campaign was to make President, crossed the Rio Grande at
Matamoros and defeated the Mexicans in quick succession at Palo Alto
and Resaca de la Palma. The original plan of campaign was for the
Army of Occupation to penetrate directly into the heart of Mexico
via Monterey; the Army of the Centre, under General Wool, to operate
against Chihuahua, the metropolis of the north, two hundred and
twenty-five miles below the Rio Grande; while an expeditionary force
under Colonel Stephen Watts Kearny, known as the Army of the West,
was ordered to march on Santa Fé for the conquest of New Mexico.
Subsequently this plan was changed: General Scott captured Vera Cruz
and used it as a base for his advance on the capital; General Wool,
instead of descending on Chihuahua, effected a juncture with General
Taylor at Saltillo; and Colonel Kearny, after the taking of New Mexico,
divided his force into three separate commands. The first he led in
person across the continent to the conquest of California; the second,
under Colonel Sterling Price, was left to garrison Santa Fé and hold
New Mexico; the third, consisting of a thousand Missouri volunteers
under Colonel Alexander Doniphan, was ordered to make a descent upon
the state of Chihuahua and join General Wool’s division at Chihuahua
City. The march of this regiment of raw recruits from Fort Leavenworth
to Santa Fé, El Paso, Chihuahua, Saltillo, and Matamoros is known as
Doniphan’s Expedition.
When, echoing Mexico’s declaration of war, came President Polk’s call
for fifty thousand volunteers, Governor Edwards, of Missouri, turned
to Colonel Doniphan for assistance in raising the quota of that State.
He could not have chosen better, for Alexander Doniphan combined
practical military experience and remarkable executive ability with the
most extraordinary personal magnetism. Though a citizen of Missouri,
Doniphan was a native of Kentucky, his father, who was a comrade of
Daniel Boone, having pushed westward with that great adventurer to
“the dark and bloody ground,” where, in 1808, Alexander was born.
Left fatherless at the age of six, he was sent to live with his
elder brother at Augusta, Ky., where he received the best education
that the frontier afforded. Graduating from the Methodist college in
Augusta when nineteen, he took up the study of law and in 1833 moved
to Liberty, Mo., where his pronounced abilities quickly brought him
reputation and a large and profitable clientèle. A born organizer,
he took a prominent part in building up the State militia, commanding
a brigade of the expeditionary force which was despatched in 1838 to
quell the insurrectionary movement among the Mormons at Far West. A
polished and convincing orator, he met with instant success when he set
out through upper Missouri to raise recruits for service in Mexico.
The force thus raised was designated as the 1st Missouri Mounted
Volunteers, and no finer regiment of horse ever clattered behind the
guidons. Missouri, then on our westernmost frontier, was peopled by
hardy pioneers, and the youths who filled the ranks of the regiment
were the sons of those pioneers and possessed all the courage and
endurance of their fathers. Though Doniphan was a brigadier-general
of militia and had seen active service, he enlisted as a private in
the regiment which he had raised, but when the election for officers
came to be held he was chosen colonel by acclamation. If ever a
man looked the _beau sabreur_ it was Doniphan. He was then in his
eight-and-thirtieth year and so imposing in appearance that the mere
sight of him in any assemblage would have caused the question: “Who
is that man?” to go round. Six feet four in his stockings; crisp,
curling hair, which, though not red, was suspiciously near it;
features which would have been purest Grecian had not an aquiline nose
lent them strength and distinction; a complexion as fair and delicate
as a woman’s; a temperament that was poetic, even romantic, without
being effeminate; a sense of humor so highly developed that he never
failed to recognize a joke when he heard one; a personal modesty
which was as delightful as it was unaffected; manners so courtly and
polished as to suggest an upbringing in a palace rather than on the
frontier; conversation that was witty, brilliant, and wonderfully
fascinating--there you have Alexander Doniphan _en silhouette_, as it
were. Small wonder that President Lincoln, when Colonel Doniphan was
presented to him in after years, remarked: “Colonel, you are the only
man I ever met whose appearance came up to my previous expectations.”
The Army of the West, of which Colonel Doniphan’s Missourians formed
a part, was ordered to mobilize at Fort Leavenworth, where several
weeks were spent in completing the equipment, collecting supplies,
and teaching the recruits the rudiments of drill. Everything being
complete down to the last horseshoe, on the morning of June 26, 1846,
the expedition, comprising barely two thousand men in all, headed by
Colonel Kearny with two squadrons of United States dragoons, smart
and soldierly in their flat-topped, visored caps and their shell
jackets of blue piped with yellow, and followed by a mile-long train
of white-topped wagons, set out across the grassy prairies on a march
which was to end in the conquest and annexation of a territory larger
than all the United States at that time. It would be difficult to
express the hopes and apprehensions of the volunteers and of those
who watched and waved to them, when, with the bands playing “The Girl
I Left Behind Me,” they moved out of Fort Leavenworth on that sunny
summer’s morning and turned their horses’ heads toward the south--and
Mexico. At that time the American people’s knowledge of Mexico was
very meagre, for the geographies of the day, though indicating very
clearly the Great American Desert, as it was called, stretching long
and wide and yellow between Missouri and Mexico, showed little beyond
the barest outlines of the vast unexplored regions to the west and
south. The people of Missouri, however, knew more than any others, for
their traders, for more than twenty years, had laboriously traversed
the dangerous trail which led from Independence to the northernmost of
the Mexican trading-posts at Santa Fé and thence on to Chihuahua. Thus
they knew that the regions between the Missouri and the Great Desert
were Indian country and dangerous, and that those beyond were Indian
and Mexican and more dangerous still. No wonder that the volunteers
felt that every mile of their advance into this _terra incognita_ would
reveal perils, marvels, and surprises; no wonder that those who were
left behind prayed fervently for the safety of the husbands and sons
and lovers who had gone into the wild as fighters go.
There was no road, not even a path, leading from Fort Leavenworth
into the Santa Fé trail, and, as the intervening country was slashed
across by innumerable streams and canyons, bridges and roads had to
be built for the wagons. The progress of the column was frequently
interrupted by precipitous bluffs whose sides, often two hundred feet
or more in height, were so steep and slippery that it was impossible
for the mules to get a foothold, and the heavily laden wagons, with a
hundred sweating, panting, cursing men straining at the drag-ropes,
had to be hauled up by hand. As the column pressed southward the heat
became unbearable. The tall, rank grass harbored swarms of flies and
mosquitoes which attacked the soldiers until their eyes were sometimes
swollen shut and clung to the flanks of the mules and horses until
the tormented animals streamed with blood. In places the ground became
so soft and marshy that the wagons sank to the hubs and the march
was halted while a dozen teams hauled them out again. Numbers of
the wagons broke down daily under the terrific strain to which they
were subjected, and, as though this was not enough, the troubles of
the teamsters were increased by the mules, which, maddened by the
attacks of insects and made refractory by the unaccustomed conditions,
stubbornly refused to work.
Preceding the column was a hunter train, commanded by Thomas Forsyth,
a celebrated frontiersman. Leaving camp about eleven in the evening
and riding through the night, the hunters and butchers would reach the
site selected for the next camp at daybreak and would promptly get to
work killing and dressing the game which swarmed upon the prairies,
so that a supply of fresh meat--buffalo, elk, antelope, and deer--was
always awaiting the troops upon their arrival at sundown, while along
the banks of the Arkansas the men brought in quantities of wild grapes,
plums, and rice. Arriving at the towering butte, standing solitary in
the prairie, known as Pawnee Rock, Forsyth asked his hunters to ascend
it with him. Even these old plainsmen, accustomed as they were to
seeing prodigious herds of game, whistled in amazement at the spectacle
upon which they looked down, for from the base of the rock straightaway
to the horizon the prairie was literally carpeted with buffalo.
Forsyth, who was always conservative in his expressions, estimated that
five hundred thousand buffalo were in sight, but his hunters asserted
that eight hundred thousand would be much nearer the number of animals
seen from the summit of Pawnee Rock that morning.
Crossing the Arkansas, the expedition entered upon the Great American
Desert--as sterile, parched, and sandy a waste as the Sahara. Dreary,
desolate, boundless solitude reigned everywhere. The heat was like a
blast from an opened furnace door. The earth was literally parched
to a crust, and this crust had broken open in great cracks and
fissures. Such patches of vegetation as there were had been parched and
shrivelled by the pitiless sun until they were as yellow as the sand
itself. Soon even this pretense of vegetation disappeared; the parched
wire grass was stiffened by incrustations of salt; streaks of alkali
spread across the face of the desert like livid scars; the pulverized
earth looked and felt like smouldering embers. The mules grew weak
from thirst and some of the wagons had to be abandoned. Horses fell
dead from heat and exhaustion, but the men thus forced to march on
foot managed to keep pace with the mounted men. Their boots gave
out, however, and for miles the line of their march could be traced
by bloody footprints. Wind-storms drove the loose sand of the desert
against them like a sand-blast, cutting their lips, filling their eyes
and ears and sometimes almost suffocating them. Though constantly
tantalized by mirages of cool lakes with restful groves reflected in
them, they would frequently fail to find a pool of water or a patch
of grass in a long day’s march and would plod forward with their
swollen tongues hanging from their mouths. Those who saw the smart
body of soldiery which rode out of Fort Leavenworth would scarcely
have recognized them in the straggling column of ragged, sun-scorched
skeletons of men, sitting their gaunt and jaded horses, which crossed
the well-named Purgatoire eight weeks later, and saw before them the
snow peaks of the Cimarrons.