Barrows to expatiate on the ignorance of the west and of western history prevalent in the east,[1] and it was to be his singular fortune to write a book on the west the acceptance of which as history by eastern scholars was to be a far more convincing demonstration of his thesis than anything he ever said in its support.[2]
This rehash of Spalding and Gray, overladen with much irrelevant disquisition, became the accepted source of Oregon history for writers of text-books and popular articles, although H. H. Bancroft's Oregon, which was published a year later, offered a painstaking and comprehensive narrative based on contemporary sources and scrupulously authenticated by footnotes.[3] But Bancroft's Oregon, since it formed part of a series which was too vast for one man to write and which therefore must be the work of various anonymous subordinates, was ignored as "machine made" history, and therefore unworthy of consideration, and confidence was reposed in the handiwork of Mr. Barrows. Never were confiding scholars and a
- ↑ Cf. his United States of Yesterday and To-morrow, Boston, 1888, passim.
- ↑ The book was warmly praised by the Magazine of American History, Dec. 1883. The editor, Mrs. Lamb, contributed a leading article to the September number, 1884, entitled A Glimpse of the Valley of many Waters, which was a description of the Walla-Walla country. The legend of Whitman is narrated after Gray and Barrows.
- ↑ It is perhaps not superfluous to remark that the task before Mr. Bancroft and his "assistants "was essentially different from that before Mr. Winsor and his collaborators. In the one case the results of generations of historical investigation were to be sifted and summarized: in the other the critical and constructive work had to be done from the very beginnings. Whatever may be the defects of detail, the Bancroft History of the Pacific States is a great achievement. It cannot be used uncritically, nor can many histories be safely used that way, but, after such a critical examination of the sources as I have made in this study of The Legend of Marcus Whitman, it is not a common experience to find in any general history, constructed directly from the raw material, so faithful and trustworthy a presentation of the contents of those sources as in the parts of the first volume of Bancroft's Oregon that I have subjected to this test. The gulf between it and Barrows is immeasurable. To Mrs. Frances Fuller Victor as the avowed author of Bancroft's Oregon, working under his editorial supervision, every student of Oregon history is under great obligations for her scholarly and honest presentation of the facts derived from the unparalleled collection of materials gathered by Mr. Bancroft.
