The Spalding Narrative—continued.
and others—who had once made calculations to come to Oregon, had abandoned the idea because of the representations from Washington that every attempt to take wagons and ox teams through the Rocky Mountains and Blue Mountains to the Columbia had failed. Dr. Whitman saw at once what the stopping of wagons at Fort Hall every year meant. The representations purported to come from Secretary Webster, but really from Governor Simpson, who, magnifying the statements of his chief trader, Grant, at Fort Hall declared the Americans must be going mad, from their repeated fruitless attempts to take wagons and teams through the impassable regions of the Columbia, and that the women and children of those wild fanatics had been saved from a terrible death only by the repeated and philanthropic labors of Mr. Grant, at Fort Hall, in furnishing them with horses. The doctor told these men as he met them that his only object in crossing the mountains in the dead of the winter, at the risk of his life, and through untold sufferings, was. to take back an American emigration that summer through the mountains to the Columbia with their wagons and teams. The route was practicable. We had taken our cattle and our families through several years before. They had nothing to fear, but to be ready on his return. The stopping of wagons at Fort Hall was a Hudson Bay Company scheme to prevent the settling of the country by Americans, till they could settle it with their own subjects, from the Selkirk settlement. This news spread like fire through Missouri. The doctor pushed on to Washington and immediately sought an interview with Secretary Webster—both being from the same State—and stated to him the object of his crossing the moun-
The Gray Narrative—continued.
exhausted from toil and exposure, and stopped for the winter, while the Doctor continued on and reached Washington."
"Thus far in this narrative I give Dr. Whitman's, Mr. Lovejoy's, and my own knowledge. I find an article in The Pacific of November 9, from Mr. Spalding, which gives us the result:—'On reaching the settlements,'" etc.
