On November 1 he wrote from the Fort Walla Walla: "my journey across the mountains was very much prolonged by the necessity for me to pilot the emigrants. I tried to leave the party, at different points, and push forward alone, but I found that I could not do so without subjecting the emigrants to considerable risk." Then follows a plea for more help from the mission board:
"We very much need good men to locate themselves two, three or four in a place and secure a good influence for the Indians, and form a nucleus for religious institutions, and keep back Romanism. This country must be occupied by Americans or foreigners: if it is by the latter, they will be mostly papists. … I regret very much that I was obliged to return so soon to this country, but nothing was more evidently my duty. … Yet I do not regret having visited the States, for I feel that either this country must be American or else foreign and mostly papal. If I never do more than to have been one of the first to take white women across the mountains and prevent the disorder and inaction which would have occurred by the breaking up of the present emigration and establishing the first wagon road across to the border of the Columbia river, I am satisfied. I do not feel that we can look on and see foreign and papal influence making its greatest efforts and we hold ourselves as expatriated and neutral, I am determined to exert myself for my country and to procure such regulations and laws as will best secure both the Indians and white men in their transit and settlement intercourse."
In the following summer, on July 22, Whitman wrote in regard to the emigration of 1843, "The lateness of the spring prevented them from setting out so soon by a month as in ordinary seasons. No one but myself was present to give them the assurance of getting through,[1] which was necessary to keep up their spirits, and to counteract reports which were destined to meet and dishearten them at every stage of the journey.[2]
From these contemporary letters it is clear that Whitman made no claim to have organized the emigration of 1843 or to have rendered them services, beyond encouragement and advice and guidance. These services were amply recognized by the leaders of the emigration.
In Jesse Applegate's most interesting narrative, "A Day with the Cow Column," and in Peter H. Burnett's Recollections there are warm tributes to Whitman's disinterested and untiring efforts for the welfare of the emigration; but neither of these leaders of the movement intimates that the organization of the expedition was owing in any way to Whitman.[3] In none of the strictly contemporary sources
- ↑ In Hastings's Emigrant Guide to Oregon and California, etc., Cincinnati, 1845, emigrants are cautioned not to leave Independence later than May 1. I. 147.
- ↑ All these letters are in the letter-book, "Oregon Indians." I may hereby express my appreciation of the courtesy with which the officials of the Board gave me access to their records.
- ↑ Applegate's article was originally published in the Overland Monthly, Aug. 1868
