Letter from the Secretary of the Interior (Whitman Massacre)/American Congress vs. Protestantism in Oregon
AMERICAN CONGRESS vs. PROTESTANTISM IN OREGON.
WITNESS FOR THE DEFENSE, NO. 2—WHAT THE PEOPLE OF OREGON AND WASHINGTON THINK OF EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT No. 38.
To the honorable the Senate and House of Representatives of the Congress of the United States:
The memorial of the undersigned, Henry H. Spalding, of the State of Oregon, late missionary of the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions to the Indians, in the former Territory of Oregon, respectfully represents:
That Marcus Whitman, M.D., a citizen of the United States, and a native of the State of New York, did, in 1836, by official permit from the War Department of the United States, proceed to the Pacific shores, then almost wholly unknown to our people and totally unappreciated, and ostensibly in the joint occupancy of the United States and Great Britain, but really under the exclusive control of the Hudson's Bay Company, a British monopoly, governed by a board of directors in London, with 55 sworn officers in the Territory, and 515 articled men, and over 800 half-breeds and all the Indian tribes under their control, with a line of well-established and strongly fortified posts extending from the Pacific to the Atlantic shores, and having complete control of the Pacific coast for over 2,000 miles, deriving a yearly revenue of over $40,000, and who had succeeded by their power and the aid of the savages in forcing the last American trader from the country.
And that said Dr. Whitman, by order of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, established an American mission in the valley of the Walla-Walla, in said Territory of Oregon, and by his travels as missionary made himself acquainted with the value of the country, both for settlement and for its mineral wealth; and having demonstrated the problem that wagons and families could cross the mountains and the continent by bringing his wagons through in 1836.
And that said Whitman, by his sleepless vigilance, became convinced that a deep-laid lan was about culminating to secure this rich country of Oregon Territory to Great Pritain, from misrepresentations on the part of Great Britain and for want of informa tion as to the character and value of the country on the part of the Government of the United States.
And that to prevent the sale and transfer of said Territory, and the consequent loss to the United States of this great Northwest and its valuable seaboard, and the great commercial considerations there with, said Whitman did, in the dead of winter, at his own expense, and without asking or expecting a dollar from any source, cross the con tinent, amid the snows of the Rocky Mountains and the bleakness of the intervening plains, inhabited by hostile savages, suffering severe hardships and perils from being compelled to swim broad, rapid, and ice-floating rivers, and to wander lost in the ter rific snow-storms, subsisting on mule and dog meat, and reached the city of Washing ton not an hour too soon, confronting the British agents Ashburton, Fox, and Simp son, who, there is evidence to show, in a short time would have consummated their plans, and secured a part, if not all, of our territory west of the mountains to Great Britain, and by his own personal knowledge disproving their allegations, and by com municating to President Tyler important information concerning the country, and the fact that he had taken his wagons and mission families through years before, and that he proposed taking back a wagon-train of emigrants that season, did thereby prevent the sale and loss of this our rich Pacific domain to the people of the United States. And that said Whitman did then return to Oregon Territory and conduct the first wagon-train of 1,000 souls to the Columbia River, thereby greatly increasing American influence, and completely breaking the influence of the British monopoly and adding immensely to the courage and wealth of the little American settlement, and continued, at his mission station in the Walla-Walla Valley, to furnish needed supplies to the yearly emigrants, and a resort for them to rest and recruit, until he and his heroic wife and her equally heroic associate, Mrs. Spalding, together with seventeen other emigrants who had stopped to winter, were brutally destroyed in 1847 by the Indians, and the American settlements in Middle Oregon broken up, and a bloody war to exter minate the Americans on the Pacific coast commenced.
And that there is abundant proof to show that the said Whitman massacre, and the long and expensive wars that followed, were commenced by the above-said British monopoly for the purpose of breaking up the American settlements and of regaining the territory, and that they were especially chagrined against the said Whitman as being the principal agent in disappointing their schemes.
And said proof consists in—
1. A pamphlet published by an agent from Europe, connected with the Hudson's Bay Company, who was on the ground during the bloody tragedy, and walked unharmed amid the slaughter, which lasted eight days, encouraging the savages, in which he says, “The massacre of Waiilatpu has not been committed by the Indians in hatred of the heretics. If Americans only have been killed, it is because the war has been declared by the Indians against the Americans only, and not against foreigners; and it was in their quality as American citizens and not as Protestants that the Indians killed them.”
2. The said agent, with his associates and officers of the Hudson's Bay Company, turned out the escaped Americans from their posts, one of whom was murdered by the Indians, and they also refused admittance to mothers and their infants during the slaughter, and with their own hands, for fifteen nights, handed one of our American girls to the savages, to be the sport of their atrocities.
3. One of the overland companions of this agent, from Canada, gave the signal for the tomahawk to commence, and shot Mrs. Whitman with his own hand.
4. Defying the infant provisional government, and remaining in the hostile country furnishing our enemies with war material after that country was closed against ail whites.
5. Attempting to furnish the combined hostiles from the English post, at Fort Vancouver, in the Hudson's Bay Company's boats, with Hudson's Bay men in charge of one of their agents, with over four thousand pounds of powder and ball, and three cases of guns, which were taken from them at Fort Wascopum by Lieutenant Rogers, only fifteen miles short of the hostile camp, waiting at the river Des Chutes, who boasted three days before that such ammunition was coming up by such agents to them, and that when they obtained it they would fall upon the American settlements and destroy them, and take their women and cattle and herds.
6. The sudden building of fortifications at Fort Vancouver.
7. The significant boast of Sir George Simpson, only a few months before this bloody work commenced, published in his Voyage Around the World, viz.: “I defy the American Congress to establish their Atlantic tariff in the Pacific ports.”
It is not, therefore, too much to say that Dr. Marcus Whitman and those heroic women lost their lives in consequence of their services aforesaid, which they so heroically and lavishly gave to their country and a pure Christianity.
And that a document has been published by order of Congress, entitled Executive Document No. 38, of the Thirty-fifth Congress, (doubtless through one of those inadvertencies which sometimes occur in the proceedings of deliberative bodies,) which document casts severe reflections upon the memory of said Dr. Whitman and his com patriots, as also upon the early Protestant missions in Oregon, attempting to show that they rendered no benefit to the country, but "set a bad example to the races among whom they chose to dwell," and were the real causes of the massacre and of the war. In connection with this memorial, the undersigned respectfully invites attention to the following documents bearing on the case, viz:
Document A. Memorial to Governor Ballard, signed by E. R. Geary, and some 700 citizens of Oregon, and Elwood Evans and others, of Washington Territory.
Document B. Resolutions of the Presbyterian Church, (Old School,) signed by A. L. Lindsley, moderator, and E. R. Geary, stated clerk.
Document C. Resolutions of the Oregon Presbytery of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, W. R. Bishop, moderator; C. Wooley, stated clerk.
Document D. Resolutions of Oregon United Presbyterian Church, Jeremiah Dick, moderator; T. S. Kendal, stated clerk.
Document E. Resolutions of the Oregon Association of the Congregational Church, G. H. Atkinson, moderator; C. N. Terry, clerk.
Document F. Resolutions of the Oregon Conference, Methodist Episcopal Church, Bishop Kingsley, moderator; C. C. Stratton, clerk.
Document G. Resolutions of the Pleasant Bute Baptist Church, State of Oregon, J. W. Warmouth, moderator; H. J. C. Averill, clerk.
Document H. Resolutions of the Oregon Brotherhood of the Christian Church, J. M. Harris, moderator; W. H. Rowland, clerk.
Document I. Resolutions of the Steuben Presbytery, Presbyterian Church, New York, D. Henry Palmer, J. H. Hotchkiss, O. F. Marshall, committee.
Document J. Memorial of the citizens of Steuben County, Alleghany County, and Chemung County, New York. Signed by O. F. Marshall, George Edwards, J. W. Hoff man, and others.
Document K. Memorial of the citizens of Oberlin, Ohio, signed by President Fair child, and others.
Now, therefore, in view of the great wrong and injustice done to the cause of Protestant missions, on the ground, to the memory of martyrs whose services there were of so signal advantage to the country as such, as well as to the cause of religion, and the undersigned personally, the present Congress is respectfully and earnestly petitioned so far to review the action of the Thirty-fifth Congress, as to issue, in documentary form, a suitable vindication of the parties mentioned. Your honorable body is respectfully but earnestly requested to publish, in a like congressional document, the reply or manifesto here with transmitted.
And your memorialist feels the utmost assurance that the sacred regard for the truth of history ever entertained, and the high value ever placed upon unselfish patriotism by your honorable body, will lead you at once to see both the justice and the patriotism of his humble prayer.