tility of the latter toward the fur company, and especially toward McLoughlin, to whose jealousy of them the Methodists attributed the action of the company in allowing, or as they believed in inviting, the Catholics to settle in the territory. This suspicion was strengthened when McLoughlin joined the Catholic church in 1842. It then began to be said of him that he had always been a Catholic, and a very Jesuitical one, and that he was plotting against Protestantism and American progress in every form; and though nothing could be further from the truth,[1] these accusations had great weight with those opposed to him from personal, sectarian, or political motives. That neither McLoughlin nor the fur company had any intention of covering the country with missions, as the Americans had done, was evident from the refusal of the committee to allow two other priests, Rev. A. Landois and J. B. Z. Bolduc, to follow the first two to Oregon, by denying them a passage in their express in 1841, although this did not prevent their coming the year following by sea.
The reader will remember that a petition of the Flatheads for white teachers, sent to St Louis about
- ↑ Though McLoughlin's religion has been the subject of much rancorous dispute, there is really no mystery about it. He was brought up in the Anglican church; but his life in the wilderness had separated him so long from religious observances that at the time the first missionaries appeared at Vancouver he might be said to have had no specific creed. Naturally conscientious, he reproached himself that the free Canadians should have forestalled him in the direction of religious cultivation. Nevertheless he encouraged both them and the Methodists, and at the first opportunity suggested to the governor and committee in London the propriety of sending a chaplain to Vancouver. As we have seen, they sent Mr Beaver, of the Anglican church, who proved such a disagreeable and meddlesome member of the society, that McLoughlin was glad to be rid of him after a year and a half. This episode was followed by the Methodist war upon him at Oregon City, in the midst of which he chanced to read Dr Milner's End of Controversy, which seemed to him to establish the claim of the Roman Catholic church to be considered the true church, and he decided to unite with it at once. This he did November 18, 1842, to the end remaining a faithful Catholic, while never interfering with the religious sentiments of others. Blanchet, who was proud of this notable conversion, boasts on page 9 of his Cath. Church in Or., of having accomplished it in 1841; but forgetting this statement, he gives the true date on page 69 of the same work. See also address of W. H. Rees, in Or. Pioneer Assn., Trans., 1879, 30: Hist. Northwest Coast, this series.
