elapsed since Whitman appeared in Boston, no missionary in the hundreds of pages of correspondence in their records or in personal interviews had ever told them the story of how Whitman had saved Oregon,[1] and hence when they first hear it they not only discredit the story but also its source.
Dr. Atkinson then requested them to write to Dr. Eells as to one upon whose testimony they could rely. Accepting this suggestion, Secretary Treat wrote on February 22, 1866, to Cushing Eells, who, it will be remembered, had been a colleague of Whitman's, asking for a statement of the results of the old Oregon Mission work, and received in reply a letter dated Walla Walla, W. T., May 28, 1866, in which the religious and educational labors of the missionaries are reviewed. The following are the essential passages relative to Whitman's ride, and their dependence upon Spalding's narrative published the preceding fall is sufficiently obvious.
"Dr. Whitman understood with a good degree of correctness, apparently, that it was the plan of the Hudson's Bay Company to secure this country to the English Government. Undoubtedly he felt strongly in reference to this subject. At that time his missionary associates judged that he was disturbed to an unwarrantable degree. The result has furnished accumulative evidence that there was sufficient reason for determined earnestness on his part.
"An unyielding purpose was formed by Dr. Whitman to go East. The mission was called together to consider whether or not its approval could be given to the proposed undertaking. Mr. Walker and myself were decidedly opposed, and we yielded only when it became evident that he would go, even if he had to become disconnected from the mission in order to do so. According to the understanding of the members of the mission, the single object of Dr. Whitman, in attempting to cross the conti-
- ↑ See the statement of W. I. Marshall, The Whitman Legend in the Report of the Am. Hist. Association for 1900. The Home Missionary published several letters a year from the Oregon country every year between 1848 and 1865, and in not one of those letters is there a single reference to the Whitman legend.
