These examples might be multiplied, but it is unnecessary; such instances as these show beyond question that not an affidavit or resolution or interview or narrative in Executive Document 37 can be accepted as evidence unless otherwise authenticated and confirmed.
Inasmuch as W. H. Gray is commonly considered an independent contemporary witness for the Whitman story, it is necessary to examine his trustworthiness. Gray was at Waiilatpu when the missionaries discussed the recall of Spalding and the discontinuance of the Southern mission. Yet in letters in the Daily and Weekly Astorian, reprinted in Circular No. 8 of the Pioneer and Historical Society of Oregon, he said: "The order to abandon the mission, I confess, is new to me;" and in reply to Mrs. F. F. Victor's assertion that Dr. Whitman went east to secure a reversal of
emotions at being prohibited from taking up his work again with the Indians. "I lifted up my lamentations amid the wild roar of the ocean's waves. I wept for the poor Nez-Percés. … I wept as I called to mind the many years of hard labor, etc. … all apparently laid a sacrifice at the bloody shrine of the Papacy, by the baptized hands of an American officer, the husband of a Presbyterian wife! The Superintendent was of course influenced to this anti-American step by the same influences which instigated the poor benighted Indians to butcher their best friends. … Henceforth my field of labor is among my countrymen in this valley. I am now about my master's business,—preaching the Gospel." (The Home Missionary, April, 1852, 276.) The next number of the Home Missionary contained a letter from Dart, who happened to be in New York, in which he said: "There is no truth in Mr. Spalding's statements in question," No treaties had been made with the Middle District tribes, and in the thirteen treaties with the tribes west of the Cascade Mountains then before the President there was "not one word … touching the subject, directly or indirectly as stated by Mr. Spalding under the head of 'Treaty of Expulsion.'" The Home Missionary, May, 1852, 20.
On December 7, 1857, Elkanah Walker wrote to Secretary Treat of the American Board: "I am compelled to believe until I have better evidence that Mr. Spalding's publication in regard to Dr. Dart was more with the intention of effecting the removal of him from his office of Superintendent of Indian Affairs in Oregon than because he believed such treaty had been made. My reason for this is, in conversation with Mr. Spalding, I said I was present, and no such treaty was made excluding Protestant missionaries. He replied, 'I knew it. He could make no such treaty.'" From vol. 248 of the correspondence of the missionaries in the records of the Board. For this last extract I am indebted to Mr. W. I. Marshall.
