Page:The Whitman Controversy.pdf/39

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34

For him that was enough. He not only thought he was doing service for King George by such hostility, but that he would protect him."

Hon. Mr. Evans says: "Such was the race among whom Dr. Whitman and his heroic wife labored, at a station hundreds of miles distant from the settlements, its inmates numbering some twelve or more, men, women and children.

He further says: "An Oregon audience needs no assurance that Dr. Whitman and his devoted companion were among the very best of their race, that their hospitality and kindness had been of the utmost service to the weary immigrant en route to the Willamette. Pages could be devoted to the praise of their many good works. They were philanthropical, practical, devoted Christians, who literally obeyed the Divine injunction. He was equally the dispenser of charity and benefits to his own race. The Indians never had a more sincere and earnest friend since good William Penn, founder of my native city, gave the world that glorious illustration of 'unbroken faith by the deeds of peace.' The martyr Whitman acted with equal good faith to the perfidious Cayuses. That at this mission had been aggregated all those appliances of civilization, church, school-house, work -shops, etc., by which the Indians were made the recipients of the advantages of civilized life. All these were lain waste, and those eminent benefactors of the Indians, together with every American inmate of the mission, were brutally sacrificed."

We have copied from the Hon. Mr. Evans' address to show the character of the woman and that of the person she attempted to slander and misrepresent, not that we think to convince her and such as agree with her egotism and strong disposition to malign the dead and slander the living. There is in that address of Hon. Elwood Evans, as presented to the large audience of old pioneers at Salem, a careful statement of the circumstances and causes that led to the massacre of the Whitman family, pointed out distinctly, in his "tinder-box illustration," and in the Hudson's Bay Company or King George's education of the Indians. Our personal knowledge of the King George education relieves us of all doubt on that question, as we have listened to the catechising of the Indian children at old Fort Walla Walla (now Wallula) by the officer in charge.

As the writer is the sole survivor of those most intimately acquainted with all the early affairs and trials of the Whitman and