Page:A Contribution toward a Bibliography of Marcus Whitman.pdf/4

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Charles W. Smith

tion to his own collected savings covering many years, he has recently obtained the William I. Marshall collection. Here are to be examined Marshall's letter files containing hundreds of letters written by Whitman's associates and friends, and by the principal parties to the Whitman controversy covering a period of over twenty-five years. Here are also typewritten copies of a great deal of contemporaneous source material. The collection includes twenty-four notebooks containing Marshall's man script notes and memoranda; five of these are filled with copies of letters from the file of the American Board in Boston. It includes also five scrap-books of mounted newspaper clippings and many pamphlets and books relating to the carly history of Oregon. In addition to all this, there is a bound manuscript copy of Marshall's unpublished history of the "Acquisition of Oregon and the long suppressed evidence about Marcus Whitman." This is a remarkable piece of work covering over 1,300 pages with an exhaustive eighty-eight-page index. Fortunately for students, Mr. Bagley makes his collection available to all serious workers in the field of history. For those who have occasion to use his library, he makes generous provision of a large we lighted study room, affording access to his books and pamphlets relating to the Pacific Northwest and to bound files of early newspapers not elsewhere available in the State.

Possessing the Marshall collection, Mr. Bagley's library is naturally strong upon the negative side of the Whitman controversy. Whitman College Library has the best collection upon the affirmative side. Here is the Myron Eells collection of books, pamphlets, mounted clippings and manuscript material. One of the interesting treasures is a scrap-book of clippings collected by Mr. H. H. Spalding and containing much of the material that he used in the compilation of his "Executive Document, Number 37." Whitman College Library is strong in missionary literature.

The University of Washington Library has a good collection of United States Public Documents, and, barring newspaper accounts, is fairly well supplied with secondary material for the study of Whitman.

The present list of references is by no means complete, but t is hoped that the field has been sufficiently covered to make it of practical use as a bibliographic introduction to the study of Marcus Whitman. If it should be the means of causing some few students to suspend judgment until they have had opportunity to carefully examine the sources of information, it will amply