T have opportunity.' I have no doubt our greatest work is to be to aid the
white settlement of this country and help to found its religious institutions
Providence has its full share in all these events. Although the Indians have
made and are making rapid advance in religious knowledge and civiliztion, ye'
it cannot be hoped that time will be allowed to mature either the work of Christianization or civilization before the white settlers will demand the soil and seek
the removal of both the Indians and the mission. What Americans desire o
this kind they always effect, and it is equally useless to oppose or desire ii
otherwise. To guide, as far as can be done, and direct these tendencies for the
best, is evidently the part of wisdom. Indeed, I am fully convinced that when
a people refuse or neglect to fill the designs of Providence, they ought not to
complain at the results ; and so it is equally useless for Christians to be anxious
on their account. The Indians have in no case obeyed the command to multiply
and replenish the earth, and they cannot stand in the way of others in doing
so. A place will be left them to do tliis as fully as their ability to obey will
permit, and the more we can do for them the more fully can this be realized.
No exclusiveness can be asked for any portion of the human family. The exer-
cise of his rights are all that can be desired. In order for this, to its proper
extent in regard to the Indians, it is necessary that they seek to preserve their
rights by peaceable means only. Any violation of this rule will be visited with
only evil results to themselves.
The Indians are anxious about the consequences of settlers among them, but I hope there will be no acts of violence on either hand. An evil affair at the falls of the Willamette resulted in the death of two white men killed and one Indian. But all is now quiet."
In April of the same year Mrs. Whitman had written to Mrs. Brewer of the Methodist mission :
"Our Indians have been very much excited this spring, but are now quiet. The influx of emigration is not going to let us live in as much quiet, as it regards the people, as we have done."
The fall of 1845 brought a larger immigration than ever, numbering in all several thousand. Shortly after this Mrs. Whitman writes again of her ap- prehensions :
"It may be that we shall be obliged to leave here in the spring. The state of things now looks very much as though we should be required to. . . . For the poor Indians' sake and the relief of future travellers to this country I could wish to stay here longer if we could do it in peace. We feel sometimes as if our quietness were past for this country, at least for a season."
Such was the growing uneasiness at the mission. It awakened apprehen- sions, but did not weaken purpose or paralyze activity. The same zeal, warm and unabated, for the welfare of the Indians, was manifest through it all. Meanwhile the increased immigration brought to the Whitman household care and work of another kind. The long journey was a severe tax upon the strong- est, but for the weak it was doubly trying. Some fell by the way; mothers — now and then both father and mother — sickened and died, leaving dependent families of young children; invalids unable to complete the journey without a period of rest; wives approaching confinement; families of slender means which the exacting journey had exhausted — such from time to time took refuge under the hospitable roof of the mission.
Mrs. Whitman in letters to friends gives us vivid pictures of the family at Waiilatpu these years after the great immigration. In January following her return from her stay at the Methodist missions during her husband's absence she writes to one of her friends :
"My family consists of six children and a Frenchman that came from the mountains and stops with us without invitation. Mary Ann, however, is with Mrs. Littlejohn now. Two English girls, Ann and Emma Hobson, one 13 and the other 7, of the party, stopped with us; husband engag
