It may be questioned if the emigration of 1843 would have met with disaster if Whitman had not been with them, or, if it had, whether that would have really made any difference in the history of the Oregon question. The sufferings of the emigration of 1846 did not prevent the southern road from being attempted again in 1847[1] and with success. The value of Whitman's services in 1843 was great and need not be questioned. That they were indispensable there is no reason to suppose.
Two questions may now be considered which have frequently been urged in support of the legend. First, if the fate of Oregon was not at stake but only the continuance of the mission, why did Whitman make the perilous winter journey; why did he not wait till summer? The answer is twofold. First, by starting immediately he hoped to reach the settlements before winter set in.[2] If successful he would have time to get up his party of Christian lay helpers and return the following summer. If he waited till summer he would be absent from his mission and his wife two years. The second question is, why did he go to Wash-
- ↑ Bancroft, I, 543–572.
- ↑ Mrs. Whitman wrote her parents, Sept. 30, 1842: "He wishes to cross the mountains during this month, I mean October, and to reach St. Louis about the first of Dec." Trans. Oregon Pioneer Assoc., 168.
further attempt to settle the country across the mountains, which would be to see it abandoned altogether. Now, mark the difference between the sentiments of you and me. Since that time you have allowed yourself to be laid aside from the ministry for an opinion only. … Within that time I have returned to my field of labour, and in my return brought a large immigration of about one thousand individuals safely through the long and the last part of it an untried route to the western shores of the continent. Now that they were once safely conducted through, three successive immigrations have followed after them, and two routes for wagons are now open to the Willamette valley. Mark, had I been of your mind I should have slept, and now the Jesuit Papists would have been in quiet possession of this the only spot in the western horizon of America not their own. They were fast fixing themselves here, and had we missionaries had no American population to come in to hold on and give stability, it would have been but a small work for them and the friends of English interests, which they had also fully avowed, to have routed us, and then the country might have slept in their hands forever," Letter to Rev. L. P. Judson, Transactions Oregon Pioneer Assoc., 1893, 200–201.
