This incident, heralded through the press, elaborated in the pulpit, and wrought into divine and spiritual forms by fervid religionists, who saw in it the finger of God pointing westward, awakened general interest in that direction. Moved by inspiration, they said, and in obedience to the order of a council of chiefs, these messengers had come from beyond the Rocky Mountains, travelling thousands of miles, and undergoing many hardships and dangers; and in the accomplishment of this sacred work they had yielded up their lives. Among others the Missionary Board of the Methodist Episcopal Church was importuned to establish forthwith a mission among the Flatheads.
heads and Nez Percés had been Christian at heart, the result of instructions in the Catholic faith by certain educated Iroquois who found their way to them. The Flathead chiefs were in the habit of assembling every year at the Bitter Root River, whence in 1831 a deputation of five chiefs was sent to St Louis to obtain priests. None of the five reached their destination, and others were sent; but the bishop had no priests to spare. John W. York of Corvallis, in a private communication dated April 25, 1876, to J. Quinn Thornton, which is embodied in Thornton's Hist. Or., MS., makes the number five, and the date of their arrival at St Louis Sept. 17, 1830. All other authorities place the number at four, and the date at about 1830 or 1831, Evans, Hist. Or., MS., 209, and Atkinson, Spalding, and others, make the date 1832. The messengers were generally called Flatheads; though some say Nez Percés; and Smith, in the Boston Missionary Herald, Aug. 1840, intimates that they were Spokanes, and that six started, two turning back. Thornton, Or. and Cal., ii. 21, states that 'two natives were permitted to pass in company with a party of Capt. Sublette's trappers, from the Rocky Mountains to the Indian agency of the late Major Pilcher, and thence to St Louis.' Pilcher himself asserts, if we may believe Kelley, Settlements of Oregon, 63, that 'four thoughtless and sottish Indians accompanied Capt. Sublette's party of hunters to his, Pilcher's, agency. They seemed to have no particular object in travelling. Sublette refused to let them proceed farther in his company, unless they would there obtain a passport, showing a good reason for a visit into the States. Mr Pilcher furnished the Indians with a reason and excuse for their visit to St Louis. Whatsoever the truth of all this, the Catholics claim to have been the first teachers of the natives of that region. John W. York, himself a Methodist elder, asserts in the letter just quoted that he was summoned, in company with two brother Methodists, McAllister and Edmundson, to an interview with Clarke in relation to the Indian delegation just then arrived. York, whose statement I take with some degree of allowance, says that on that occasion Clarke assured him 'that he was a Roman Catholic, but that the Methodist travelling preachers were the most indefatigable laborers, and made the greatest sacrifices of any men in the world.' He further remarked that Catholic priests could teach the mysteries of religion, but Methodist ministers taught practical piety and husbandry, and the two united would be the best arrangement he could think of. 'From Clarke's house we went to the conference room and reported the interview. With closed doors the conference accepted the general's proposition, and resolved, if possible, to send a missionary to Oregon.' As to the fate of their messengers some say that all died, two at St Louis and the others on their way back.
