Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/155

CHAPTER V.

COMING OF THE PRESBYTERIANS.

1834–1836.

American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions—Parker and Whitman Sent to Choose Mission Sites—Whitman Returns East for Teachers—Parker's Adventures—His Favorable Opinion of the Indians—Their Desire for Teachers and Religious Observances—Parker Selects a Site at Waiilatpu—Religious Services Established at Fort Vancouver—Parker Returns Home—Whitman and Spalding and their Wives—Their Overland Journey—Whitman's Wagon Route—Stuart and Pilcher—The Welcome at Fort Vancouver—Return of Gray for More Teachers—Later Missionaries, Walker, Eels, and Smith.

 

It is not to be supposed that of all the Protestant denominations the Methodists alone responded to the demand of the Flatheads for teachers. The farewell meeting of the church in Forsyth street, which blessed the departure of Jason and Daniel Lee for the almost unknown wilds of Oregon, was attended by pastors of other religious creeds, notably the Presbyterians, whose sympathy led them to take part in the addresses on this occasion.^[1] But the Presbyterian church, more careful and conservative, did not plunge into an unknown country and work as did their Methodist brethren. In a history of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, published in 1840, appears a mention that the Dutch Reformed church of Ithaca, New York, resolved to sustain a mission to the Indians west of the Rocky Mountains, under the direction of the board. Rev. Samuel Parker, Rev. John Dunbar, and Samuel Allis were

1. Lee and Frost's Or., 112

(104)