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Spalding mission, he will here affirm that what is commonly called the honorable Hudson's Bay Company were the prime cause of the Whitman massacre, and to accomplish it and shield themseves, Governor Simpson, as we have learned from pages 24-5 of "Catholic Church in Oregon," arranged to bring to Oregon two Jesuit missionaries—Vicar General Blanchet and Demers, and gave to them every possible assistance to counteract and drive from Oregon every American missionary and settler in it. The two priests of that order commenced their work with the Hudson's Bay Company's servants on starting to cross the country from Canada, and were, as their report shows, permitted to indoctrinate the Hudson's Bay Company's servants and the Indians all along the route to Oregon. In their recent work they boast of their success. It was stated and admitted by Mr. Douglass and Dr. McLoughlin that the priests came to minister to their French and Canadian servants. A plausible excuse for a deeper plan. We might ask, as Mrs. Victor does, and even as Captain Belcher of the British Navy does, "Why did not the company go to their own country for religious teachers?" They were from Protestant England, Scotland, and Wales.
They did, in the case of Rev. Mr. Beaver, when they wanted an extension of time of joint occupation, and found Mr. Beaver favoring the plan of civilizing the Indian, they sent him away and brought the Jesuits to indoctrinate their servants and Indians. The Whitman massacre and the Cayuse war were the results. Honorable Mr. Evans has turned the key to unlock the causes, and it should be a lesson to every pioneer and citizen of the country. Since copying the noble encomium on Dr. Whitman and family by the Hon. Elwood Evans, I have received the Weekly Oregonian of December 26, and find the honorable gentleman has been converted to the principles of our Oregon historical rat's nest discoverer, which brings to our mind the following remark of a good old deacon in an Eastern church in reference to a slanderous statement about a member of the church—"Let the devil alone, it will kill itself." Our honorable friend has followed the example of Madame Victor—first, to confuse his readers, and then, like the good cow that gave a full bucket of nice milk, kicked it all over. We frankly confess that most of his statements in the first column read to us as though he had gathered a bundle of straws to throw at his readers to make them believe that he knew more than any one else about transactions that occurred in Oregon long before he came to it, and when he came to Oregon he went to the missionaries to learn
