Jason Lee did. But the great work had to be done; and these men resolutely went at it and built a house in thirty days from the standing trees. Logs were cut, squared and laid up, a puncheon floor from split logs put in, doors were hewn from fir logs, and hung on wooden hinges, window sashes whittled out of split pieces with a pocket knife, a chimney built of sticks, clay and wild grass mixed; two rooms, four little windows, and tables, stools and chairs added little by little from the work of patient hands. And thus was started the first Christian mission west of the Rocky mountains.
While the Methodists were first in the Oregon missionary fields, the Presbyterians were not idle spectators of the movement. On the contrary they were deeply moved by the story of the four Flathead chiefs, and attended the farewell services to Jason Lee and joined in the prayers for his success. But being a more conservative people, they moved slower and with more careful preparation. The history of the American Board of Foreign Missions published in 1840 recites that the Dutch Reformed Church of Ithaca, New York, resolved to sustain a mission to the Indians west of the Rocky mountains. Rev. Samuel Parker, Rev. John Dunbar and Samuel Allis were selected to go west and explore the country for a suitable site for a mission. These explorers left Ithaca in May, 1834, but arriving at St. Louis too late to join the annual caravan across the plains, Parker returned home. But in the following spring (1835) Parker repeated his effort and this time with success; reaching St. Louis in April where he found Dr. Marcus Whitman, who had been appointed to accompany him, waiting his coming. These two men proceeded at once by steamboat from St. Louis to Liberty which was then the frontier town of Missouri from which the Rocky mountain fur trading expeditions then started. The caravan made up of the trappers and hangers-on of Fontenelle. The captain, and capitalist of the expedition, got off on the 15th of May, 1835, and reached Laramie in the Black Hills on the 1st of August.
And here at Laramie, Dr. Whitman made a showing of the reserve force and ready ability which great exigencies might bring out. Hearing that he was a doctor and near to a man of God, both natives and trappers flocked to see him, and secure his favor and services. From the back of Captain Jim Bridger, who afterwards discovered Salt Lake, and built Fort Bridger, Dr. Whitman, cut out an iron arrow head three inches in length which a Blackfoot Indian had planted there; and from the shoulder of another hunter he extracted an arrow imbedded in the flesh which the man had carried there for two years. This exhibition of his skill excited the wonder of the Flatheads and Nez Perces gathered there, and all joined in clamorous pleadings that Whitman, or other men like him be sent to their tribes to teach and preach.
At this juncture of affairs, it appears that there must have been some sort of friction between the Rev. Parker and the successful Doctor. For without any very good reason ever given to the public, Dr. Whitman left the missionary party and returned to the States for the purpose of obtaining other assistants and joining the overland train of fur traders in the spring of 1836. Mr. Gray in his history of Oregon (p. 108) states the reason for Whitman leaving Parker and returning to the states (to be) the fact that Parker could not abide the frontier ways and manners of Whitman who evidently believed in "doing in Rome as the Romans did," while Rev. Parker carried the etiquette of his cultured home town to the rough ways of the Rocky mountaineers. And as Gray is something of a partizan for Whitman, there is doubtless a foundation for this explanation; that Whitman went back to New York to get rid of Parker and make a new start with more congenial associates.
However, Parker went on with the natives. Flatheads and Nez Perces, being on the same route with Bridger's party of sixty men for eight days. As they proceeded, Parker studied the Indians and taught them the ten commandments, and in due time, reached Walla Walla, October 6, where he was feasted by the Hudson Bay agent with roast duck,bread, butter and milk, the first he had seen
