mation given by Jason Lee, who met the immigration at the Dalles, that the Methodist Mission intended to make the laws for the colonists, was sufficient to arouse the independent spirit of the western men, who had besides a liberal contempt for the close-fisted Yankee class to which most of the missionaries belonged.[1] But the Methodist was of all the Protestant denominations most popular on the western frontier, where zeal rather than intelligence contributed to the qualifications of members; and among the immigration were many zealous Methodists. Obviously these were likely to indorse, or at least excuse and condone, any acts of the missionaries.
But of the leading men few were hampered by this religious allegiance. Men of note amongst western communities, they possessed not only greater freedom from conventionalities than the ordinary New Englander, but greater mental culture. By reason of their struggles with the hardships of pioneer life, not to mention those of their ancestors, they were often lacking in refinement of manner, and always in the polish which inherited ease imparts; but their ideas were bold, strong, and speculative, and their conversation, though sometimes bookish, was seldom pedantic, while their adventurous past furnished them with original matter of interest far beyond the ordinary topics of salons. That this was so, and that they won the friendship and respect of the more regularly educated and trained gentlemen of the aristocratic Hudson's Bay Company by their true manliness and evident talents, is a matter of history.[2]
If, then, some of the immigrants of 1843 affiliated at once with the Mission, others openly exhibited a regard and deference for the officers of the fur company, which was in missionary eyes heretical and dangerous. There was still another class composed of those who had conscientiously opposed the formation
