The voice of "Wilbur Fisk was heard rousing the churches.[1] And to no one more than to Hall J Kelley, the Oregon enthusiast and the religious fanatic, did this curiosity of the simple savages appear as the immediate work of the Almighty, and the incident greatly aided his efforts. His schemes multiplied; his pen worked with new vigor; he urged the preachers of the Word not to confine their efforts to the mountains, but to descend the broad River of the West to the Canaan there awaiting them, and unite earthly empire with heavenly enlightenment.[2]
In answer to the call appeared before the Methodist board two men, sometime from Stanstead, Canada, first Jason Lee, and afterward his nephew, Daniel Lee, offering themselves as laborers in this western field, and were accepted. They were formed of good material for pioneer missionary work; the former had been engaged in similar labors in the British provinces, and he presented striking characteristics, carrying them on the surface; qualities pronounced, which made the presence of the possessor felt in any society in which he happened to be placed. He was now, in 1833, made member of the Methodist conference, and ordained deacon, and later, elder.
At the time of his appointment to a position destined to be more conspicuous in Oregon's history than at that time he could have surmised, Jason Lee was about thirty years of age, tall, and powerfully built, slightly stooping, and rather slow and awkward
- ↑ So declared the missionaries themselves. See Lee and Frost's Ten Years in Or., 109–13; Hines' Oregon Hist., 9. A highly wrought account appeared in March 1833, in the New York Christian Advocate and Journal, then the leading organ of the Methodists.
- ↑ Indeed, if Mr Thornton, Or. and Cal., ii. 21, is correct, 'as early as the year 1831, the Methodist Board of Missions had been induced by Mr Kelley to determine upon sending Messrs Spalding and Wilson as missionaries to the Indians of Oregon, but the expedition which they proposed to accompany having been broken up, they changed their destination, and went to Liberia.' And Kelley himself says: 'In the year 1832, I published several articles in the Zion's Herald'—see affidavit of the editor, W. B. Brown, Jan. 30, 1843—'calling for missionaries to accompany the expedition, and two years after, Jason and Daniel Lee were sent to commence missionary labors on the Wallamet.'
