The next three or four years were critical in the history of the legend of Marcus Whitman. In the Northwest Mrs. Frances Fuller Victor[1] and the Hon. Elwood Evans,[2] who had earlier given currency to the story, had now become convinced that it was a fabrication and attacked it with great vigor. It is to be hoped that the history of this controversy may some day be published, for the picture of the grapple of criticism with a legend in its earlier growth, and of the survival if not victory of the fiction in spite of crushing attack in an age which flatters itself on its intelligence, would be full of sobering instruction for the historical student.
- ↑ Mrs. Victor became an assistant to H. H. Bancroft about the year 1878. Bancroft's Literary Industries, N. Y. ed., 293. She is the author of the volumes on Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Wyoming, and Nevada, in his series. Soon after the publication of her River of the West (1870), Mrs. Victor discovered that she had been led into error in following Gray's articles in the Astoria Marine Gazette in regard to the American Board Mission history and particularly in regard to Whitman's acts and motives. For a long time she supposed that his misstatements were merely errors. Her first suspicions that the Whitman story had been manufactured arose from her discovery that the Spalding-Gray narrative was being used in a petition to Congress by Spalding and Eells in pushing the claim of the American Board for the stations at Waiilatpu and Lapwai. "This document Mr. Spalding refused to let me see, although he had it in his hands at the time I asked for it without a doubt that he would allow me to see it. This incident occurred soon after the publication of the History and of The River of the West, and before I had offered any public criticism of Gray's statements." Letter from Mrs. Victor, May 18, 1901. This "petition" was probably Exec. Doc. 37, or that part of it which begins on p. 41 of the document. An extract is printed below on p. 101. Mrs. Victor apparently did not know of Spalding's articles in The Pacific, which antedated Gray's nearly a year. I understand from what Mrs. Victor writes that she convinced Mr. Evans in regard to the Whitman matter.
- ↑ Elwood Evans went out to Puget Sound from Philadelphia in 1851, as Deputy Collector of Customs. Returning home in 1852 he again went to the Northwest as private secretary to Governor Stevens, 1853. From this time he was a careful observer of events and student of the history of the Northwest. He wrote a history of Oregon, the MS. of which, with a mass of other material, he put at Bancroft's disposal, who awards him high praise as lawyer, scholar, and writer. Literary Industries, 292, 350-51. Bancroft's History of Washington, etc., 54. He was the author of the general historical chapters in the History of the Pacific Northwest, Oregon, and Washington, Portland, Oregon, 1889. The true account of Whitman's journey, and a brief refutation of the fictitious account, will be found in this work, I, 197-8.
Whitman's leadership of the Emigration of 1843, and apparently the fable about Sir George Simpson's political intrigues.
