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Hon. Mr. Hinman informs me that after listening to the reading of McBean's letter that Mr. Douglass turned to him and "wished to know why I was not at home at so perilous a time?" His reply was—" I told him I had received no letter from Walla Walla, and did not learn of the massacre till below the Cascades." At this Mr. Douglass expressed surprise, and said Mr. McBean ought by all means to have informed you of your danger. After this the express was opened, and Mr. Douglass read and I listened to the account as given by McBean, and also of his account of three parties going to destroy the other parts of the mission, including that at The Dalles, Mr. Hinman's place included, as understood by Mr. McBean, who was ordered to keep silent—to let them be destroyed. He, Mr. Hinman, says Mr. Douglass excused McBean, as he had ordered the messenger to say nothing about it at The Dalles, hence we have only to trace effect to first cause and watch the result.
INSTRUCTIONS TO INDIANS ON BUYING THE CAPTIVES.
When Mr. Ogden paid the Indians for their captives—Americans—nor especially must we forget the instruction he gave to the Indians on that occasion, as reported by Brouilette, who was, by special request of Ogden, present, and gives us Ogden's words to the Indians. He (Brouilett) informs us on page 69, "Protestantism in Oregon," that Mr. Ogden told the Indians that "the Hudson's Bay Company had never deceived them; that he hoped they would listen to his words; that the company did not meddle with the affairs of the Americans; that there were three parties—the Americans on one side, the' Cayuses on the other, and the French people and the priests in the middle. The company was there to trade and the priests to teach them' their duties. Listen to the priests, said he, several times, listen to the priests; they will teach you how to keep a good life." See Gray's History, page 533.
The two persons who have called up this Whitman question must have some special object. Is it to delay or defeat the effort for the Whitman monument, or is it to prepare the way for the revision of "Gray's History of Oregon," and a second volume? The material and interest in both is accumulating.
Being, as stated in the commencement of this reply, the oldest and only one now living, who came to Oregon with Dr. Whitman and Rev. Mr. Spalding, and interested in the secular department of the missions, and especially active with Dr. Whitman to defeat the boasts and outspoken designs and actions of the British Hudson's
