and of his relation to the Oregon Emigration of 1843, to compare the legend with the real history, and to offer such explanation as can be given of the origin of some of the peculiar features of the fiction.
It will not be superfluous, perhaps, to remind the reader that the evidence advanced is the contemporary spontaneous testimony of the actors themselves at the time, and not their recollections or reports of their recollections, or reports of their subsequent conversations about their recollections first put in writing twenty to forty years later.
The real cause of Dr. Whitman's journey to the east was the decision of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to discontinue the southern branch of the mission, and his purpose was to secure a reversal of that order, and reinforcements from the Board, and to bring back, if possible, a few Christian families. The rapidly increasing immigration into Oregon made an increase of Protestant missions seem essential if Oregon was to be saved from becoming Catholic.
Owing to difficulties of the work among the small and widely scattered groups of Indians and to dissensions among the missionaries[1] of the Oregon mission, the Prudential Committee of the American Board passed the following resolution, February 23, 1842: "That the Rev. Henry H. Spalding be recalled, with instructions to return by the first direct and suitable opportunity; that Mr. William H. Gray be advised to return home, and also the Rev. Asa B. Smith on account of the illness of his wife; that Dr. Marcus Whitman and
- ↑ Mrs. Whitman wrote her father in October, 1840: "The man who came with us [Spalding] is one who never ought to have come. My dear husband has suffered more from him in consequence of his wicked jealousy, and his great pique towards me, than can be known in this world. But he suffers not alone—the whole mission suffers, which is most to be deplored. It has nearly broken up the mission." See the whole letter in Transactions of the Oregon Pioneer Association for 1893, pp. 128–133. Mr. Spalding had been a suitor of Narcissa Prentiss (Mrs. Whitman).—Mrs. Dye's McLoughlin and Old Oregon, p. 19. On a point like this, Mrs. Dye would aim at fidelity to fact, and her statement is practically confirmed by Mrs. Whitman's letter.
