Protestant Missions in the Northwest.[1] As has already been said, the larger part of this volume is devoted to a defence of Spalding's Executive Document 37 from the attack of the Catholic World.[2] It was to be expected, then, that Doctor Craighead would accept Spalding and his fellow witnesses wherever their assertions were not in palpable contradiction to such other evidence as he was familiar with or chose to take into consideration. His book, consequently, is a typical specimen of specious apologetics. The apparently candid sifting and rejection of the obviously legendary narratives of Whitman's interviews with Tyler and Webster inspires the reader with confidence, and he is given no reason to suspect that other essential features of the story which Doctor Craighead saves are just as destitute of contemporary evidence, or just as contradictory to known facts.
For example, he repeats the incidents of the Walla-Walla dinner, without even hinting that they had been completely disproved.[3] Again, although he devotes one hundred pages to defending Spalding's Document against the Catholic Worlds he glides over the crushing attack of Mrs. Victor and Mr. Evans by giving a brief summary and then evading the point at issue. "Some writers," he remarks, "have endeavored to convince the public that the chief object of Doctor Whitman's winter journey to the east was not to induce immigration to Oregon nor to convey such information to our government as was needed in order to settle aright the question of boundaries between Great Britain and the United States. They claim that his main purpose was to visit Boston, in order to induce the American Board to countermand an order sent out that year, on account of the hostile disposition shown by a few Indians, discontinuing two of the stations; and thus concentrating the missionaries for greater safety; and in confirmation they adduce the fact that his missionary associates
