Page:The Whitman Controversy.pdf/37

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Let us now look at parts of Nos. 18 and 19. She says: "Having shown the part the government and the people east of the Missouri river were taking in the scheme of settling Oregon by immigration, let me now take up the Spalding-Gray story, of Dr. Whitman's part in it. In the first place let me show how Whitman was situated at this time. He had been six years in the Cayuse country without having either benefited or conciliated the Indians. He found them selfish, thieving, given to lying, haughty and ungrateful. From their stand-point he was a trespasser on their lands, making money out of their country and them, without any sufficient exchange of benefits."

In the above statement we have the egotist, either ignorant or malicious. The writer was present when that mission station was commenced. All the Indians about it assisted to put up the buildings and the fences, to plow the ground, to harvest the mission's and their own crops of wheat, and it was ground for them without toll. They attended constantly to Dr. Whitman's Sabbath Bible reading or lectures up to the time the two Jesuit priests arrived at Walla Walla. Not many hours after an Indian came to the station, and in my presence told Dr. Whitman he had been teaching them lies. They now had the true black gowns, and from that time it was evident to Gray that the Indians and Protestant American missions would be (and have been) a partial failure in the country. It will be borne in mind that the occurrence here alluded to was in the fall of 1838, four years before Whitman went to Washington, and Gray with his family, to Salem; and during these four years he was not asleep.

Mrs. Victor says, under her figures (28): "No one has told us what that object was; therefore, we are at liberty to speculate about it." That is, in reference to Whitman's going to Washington. It must be a deeply prejudiced and perverted judgment that, after all that has been printed on the Whitman trip to Washington, can not understand the object of that trip, which accomplished all that was designed, to wit: to defeat the Hudson's Bay Company's effort to hold Oregon. The results have proved the wisdom of the effort, which the blind influence on a woman's brain, like Mrs. Victor's, can not comprehend. And no candid person can justify her in slandering the dead martyr, nor the dead missionary, Rev. H. H. Spalding.

Gray has met her before in controversy, and has for more than a year known of her present attempt to slander the dead and chal-