How Marcus Whitman saved Oregon/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III.
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 51 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 52 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 53 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 54 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 55 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 56 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.
We may add here that within a month after 
The first Steamboat built in Oregon.
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 58 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 59 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 60 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, 61 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 62 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.