possession of the lands which they claimed to be theirs; and it made them independent of the missionaries by furnishing them a market for the vegetables they raised, while it gave them an opportunity to obtain stock, which they were eager to do, cheerfully giving a good horse for a poor cow. Each year thereafter their riches increased in the same manner, and each year they grew more intractable, proud, and insolent. They complained that Whitman occupied lands belonging to them on which he raised wheat to sell to the immigrants; that he had a mill on their lands, yet charged them for grinding their grain; and often, when in bad humor, ordered him to leave the country. That they appreciated the benefits received through the missionaries seemed evident, but they appeared incapable of gratitude, and used the intelligence with which they had been furnished to make more conspicuous their indifference or their hostility.
Thus matters went from bad to worse at the Presbyterian mission, until Dr Whitman himself became convinced that there was nothing to be gained by remaining. No settlements had been formed in his neighborhood, though many immigrants had passed. If he was able to induce a few persons to winter at his station, they invariably left in the spring for the Willamette Valley. Little by little the savages departed, and now that he was ready to go, the difficulty was for time to withdraw, the chiefs being divided, and some desiring him to remain on purely sectarian grounds, that they might, as Protestants, triumph over the Catholics of the tribe. As this was the very ground on which he had proposed to the board to remain, he had no valid reason to give for abandoning the field. Had all the chiefs desired his departure, his way would have been plain.[1]
In this delay he was probably encouraged by the temporizing policy of the United States in the matter of the boundary of Oregon, and afterward in the
- ↑ Statement of Thomas McKay, in Brouillet's Authentic Account, 28.
