More than once it is directly asserted that Whitman was murdered because his journey to Washington frustrated the policy of the Hudson's Bay Company. For example:
"There is abundant proof to show that the said Whitman massacre and the long and expensive wars that followed were commenced by the abovesaid British monopoly for the purpose of breaking up the American settlements and of regaining the territory, and that they were especially chagrined against the said Whitman as being the principal agent in disappointing this scheme."[1]
The constant reiteration of the Whitman story in Spalding's collection of materials in Doc. 37 emphatically illustrates the reliance that was placed upon it.[2]
Having indicated, so far as has been practicable in the absence of explicit testimony, the occasion and motives which gave rise to the legend of Marcus Whitman, I will now complete the story of its diffusion and acceptance. In the summer of 1866 during the period of suspense in regard to the settlement of the Hudson's Bay Company's claims, and while the counsel were taking testimony in Oregon, Mr. W. H. Gray, the former mechanic and helper at the Whitman mission, published his version of the early history of Oregon in a series of articles in the Astoria Marine Gazette. These articles were an intensely bitter arraignment of the Hudson's Bay Company, and were later incorporated into his History of Oregon.[3] In one of them[4] he told the story of Whitman's
- ↑ Exec. Doc. 37, 42. In the report of Dr. G. H. Atkinson's address before the American Board at Norwich in 1868 it is said: "He told most effectively the story of the manner in which the heroic missionary Dr. Whitman, who was subsequently murdered for the deed, made the journey from Oregon to Washington in 1842," etc. The Congregationalist, Oct. 15, 1868.
- ↑ Cf. for example, 20, 23, 25, 42, 75-76, and 78, Exec. Doc. 37, 41st Cong., 3d Sess.
- ↑ In the preface to this work the reader is promised, among other things, "The American History of the Hudson's Bay and Puget Sound Agricultural Companies."
- ↑ The Astoria Marine Gazette, Aug. 6, 1866. Cf. History of Oregon, 315-6. Curiously enough, in the History, Gray preferred to quote Spalding's article in The Pacific.
