The Spalding Narrative—continued.
rivers with, a wagon track so deep and plain that neither national envy nor sectional fanaticism would ever blot it out. And when the 4th of September, 1843, saw the rear of the doctor's caravan of nearly two hundred wagons with which he started from Missouri last of April emerge from the western shades of the Blue Mountains upon the plains of the Columbia, the greatest work was finished ever accomplished by one man for Oregon on this coast. And through that great emigration, during the whole summer, the doctor was their everywhere-present angel of mercy, ministering to the sick, helping the weary, encouraging the wavering, cheering the mothers, mending wagons, setting broken bones, hunting stray oxen; climbing precipices, now in the rear, now in the center, now at the front; in the rivers looking out fords through the quicksands, in the deserts looking out water; in the dark mountains looking out passes; at noontide or midnight, as though those thousands were his own children, and those wagons and those flocks were his own property. Although he asked not and expected not a dollar as a reward from any source, he felt himself abundantly rewarded when he saw the desire of his heart accomplished, the great wagon route over the mountains established, and Oregon in a fair way to be occupied with American settlements and American commerce. And especially he felt himself doubly paid, when, at the end of his successful expedition, and standing alive at home again on the banks of the Walla-Walla, these thousands of his fellow summer pilgrims, wayworn and sunbrowned, took him by the hand and thanked him with tears for what he had done."[1]
That this[user annotations 1] narrative is the primary source of the Whitman legend and that it was first brought before the public in 1865[2] by Mr. Spalding are abundantly proved by both
- ↑ Spalding's (Wikisource contributor note)
- ↑ Cf. Spalding's later and more compact and explicit statement, infra, p. 100.
- ↑ I. e., as a whole. The story of Whitman's interview with Webster Mr. Spalding related in conversation in 1864, and it was published in the Sacramento Union, Nov. 16, 1864, from which it was reprinted in the Dansville, N. Y., Advertiser of May 4, 1865. This version, which is sometimes found in the popular accounts, formed a part of the remarks of the Speaker of the Oregon House of Representatives on the occasion of the presentation to the State of the tomahawk
