did not carry out, feeling that by going on immediately with the already organized emigration of 1843 he would be of greater service.[1] Whitman did not organize the emigration of 1843, but joined it and rendered valuable services en route. As the facts about the emigration of 1843 are perfectly accessible in Bancroft,[2] I shall merely quote from Whitman's letters such extracts as will illustrate his purposes, his relation to the emigration, and his own view of what he had accomplished by coming East.
On May 12, 1843, Whitman writes from St. Louis, "I have made up my mind that it would not be expedient to try and take any families across this year except such as can go at this time. For that reason I have found it my duty to go on with the party myself."[3] Calling attention to the Catholic missionary efforts, for which he refers the committee to De Smedt's Indian Sketches, he continues, "I think by a careful consideration of this together with these facts and movements you will realize our feelings that we must look with interest upon this the only spot on the Pacific Coast left where protestants have a present hope of a foothold. It is requisite that some good pious men and ministers go to Oregon without delay as citizens or our hope there is greatly clouded, if not destroyed."
- ↑ He wrote his wife's parents from Waiilatpu, May 16, 1844: "I did not misjudge as to my duty to return home; the importance of my accompanying the emigration on the one hand, and the consequent scarcity of provisions on the other, strongly called for my return, and forbid my bringing another party that year." Trans. of the Oregon Pioneer Association, 1893, 64.
- ↑ Cf. Bancroft, Oregon, I, 390 ff. It is perhaps unnecessary to say that Whitman never pretended that he organized the emigration. In his letter to the Secretary of War, received June 22, 1844, he wrote: "The Government will now doubtless for the first time be apprised through you, or by means of this communication, of the immense immigration of families to Oregon which has taken place this year. I have, since our interview, been instrumental in piloting … no less than three hundred families," etc. Nixon, 316. He would not have expressed himself in this way if his achievement had been the fulfilment of his pledge to Tyler to organize and conduct such a company.
- ↑ Two weeks later, May 27, he wrote from Shawnee Mission School: "I hope to start to-morrow. I shall have an easy journey as I have not much to do, having no one depending on me." Trans. Oregon Pioneer Association, 1891, 177.
