Page:The Whitman Controversy.pdf/34

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portant questions. Before it could be settled the Oregon Question had become of world-wide interest and too big to be embraced in the Ashburton treaty."

Did any one ever see so wise a lady, to be able to solve so difficult a question with so few words? We in Oregon, and a great many in England, and even the President of the United States thought it could and would be settled by this high officer of Great Britain and Mr. Webster; and we say it would have been, by giving Oregon to Britain, if Ashburton had been more liberal on the Maine question, and Benton and Linn less active to prevent it. In the remainder of this No. 8, we have the apology for President Tyler, Mr. Ashburton and Mr. Webster, from our learned historian.

Let us look for a moment now at Nos. 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16: We are told that Smith and Sublette took ten wagons and two carts to the head of Wind River, which we know not to be the truth. The wagons and carts of the fur company were taken to old Fort Laramie, and these they left there in 1836. Whitman took the mission wagon to Fort Hall, and at that fort the wagon was made a cart to Boise, carrying the two wheels on the cart. In 1838 wagons were taken on to the lower part of Wind River, near its junction with the Yellowstone River, over one hundred miles from the sources of Wind River. Our historical rat has left a vast mountainous country, at that time but little known.

The wild fur trappers of the Rocky Mountains and the traders into Mexico with wagons did not venture over the Rocky Mountains till after the missionary pioneer, Whitman, took his wagon to Fort Boise, where Hudson's Bay Company traders wanted to use it to remove their old corral fort further down on to Snake river, where Gray found it in 1838 well cared for and well used, as when Farnham saw it. That old wagon has done more towards settling the boundary question and holding Oregon and the Pacific Coast than all your diplomacy and long efforts to cover up the Hudson's Bay Company and the Jesuits' efforts to wrest it from our American people. As to Dr. Whitman's leaving it at Boise and the insinuations she makes about it by referring to Payette and Farnham seeing it, is proof of the falsehoods and policy of the Hudson's Bay Company's fear of the next wagon that might come over the Rocky Mountains, which was brought by another band of noble American missionaries headed by the meek and noble Rev. Harvey Clarke and wife, assisted by Mr. A. T. Smith and wife, and P. B. Littlejohn and wife. This party brought two wagons to Fort