"How Oregon Was Saved."
Revival of the romance of Marcus Whitman's winter Ride—The Truth Perverted.
Attempt to Make Sentiment at the Expense of History—An Old Story in a New Dress—Dr. Nixon as the Champion of Historical Romancists of Oregon.
by frances fuller victor.
It strikes as curious the mind of a conscientious nineteenth century historian that any man or set of men should undertake to foist upon an intelligent public, history constructed on the plan of the Niebelungenlied, the tales of King Arthur's round table or the story of William Tell. Yet this is what Dr. Oliver W. Nixon, "for seventeen years president and literary editor of the Chicago Inter-Ocean," has done in his book, "How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon," which he very properly in his sub-title names, "A True Romance."
Even if I were not called by name to defend myself from the calumny of being styled "a defamer" of Dr. Nixon's hero, a natural reverence for what I am convinced by my judgment and assured by the facts is the truth on the subject of Dr. Whitman's agency in Oregon affairs, would impel me to take notice of Dr. Nixon's book.
Why a man who is killed, as the natural sequence to a course of events in which he has taken a principal part, should be idealized as a martyr because he failed to accomplish what he had undertaken, my reason is too obtuse to discover. Why a man who during his lifetime had absolutely nothing to do with the politics of Oregon, and who has left not the least record of desiring to have any, should become, nearly half a century after his death, a shining example of devotion to tis country's interest as against another power, with whose subjects he was on terms of amity if not of dependence, my darkened intellect fails to comprehend.
The real author of Dr. Nixon's "true romance" was W. H. Gray, the carpenter and general assistant of the Waiilatpu mission in the Walla Walla Yaliey, which was the superintendent's or Dr. Whitman's station. Besides this there were other stations—that in charge of Rev. H. H. Spalding at Lapwai, eighty miles or more distant from Waiilatpu; another in charge of Messrs. Walker and Eells in the Spokane country, and for a year or longer a fourth among the upper Nez Perces. Mr. Gray was sometimes employed at Waiilatpu and sometimes at Lapwai. I mention these particulars to show the ground covered by the Presbyterian missions, and for another reason, which is to account for my own fault as an historian in following Gray's narrative in my "River of the West." I naturally supposed that a man for years employed about the missions and intimately acquainted with their affairs must be telling the truth about them, and I went into print before I found out my error. When I found it out I sought to rectify it, and it is this conscientious effort to correct my own, and incidentally others, mistake 3, which has brought down on my devoted head the heavy blows of the Gray-Nixon controversialists. But although they have attacked my position by the press and from the puipit they have not been able to overturn it, because I am able to prove my statements, while they have only the resource of repeating unfounded assertions. In the columns of a newspaper I am limited, but a brief review of Dr. Nixon's book will bring out some general points which I desire to make.
Taking up chapter VI, entitled "The Ride to Save Oregon," Nixon closely follows Gray, making a difference sufficient to give* an appearance of independent knowledge. Gray bays that in the autumn of 1842 Dr. Whitman, happening to be at Fort Walla Walla, the Hudson Bay Company's post on the Columbia, and at dinner with" some newly arrived Catholic priests, heard them boasting that some sixty settlers from the Red River country were about to arrive, who would give the balance of power to the British in Oregon. He also states that Sir George Simpson, Governor of the Hudson Bay Company, not only ordered this colony to Oregon for the purpose of holding the country, but accompanied it himself. Gray further represents that Dr. Whitman on the occasion of this dinner impetuously replied to the priests that he would bring a thousand settlers for their sixty, and jumping on his horse rode home, a distance of thirty miles, in great haste, and before dismounting from his foaming steed announced to Mrs. Whitman that he was going immediately to the States to bring out a large immigration and save Oregon to the United States. He also says that he did set off within two or three days. In the same chapter in which he relates these exciting incidents he tells us that Sir George Simpson went to Washington that winter to take a hand in shaping the boundary treaty, which was also Whitman's errand. All this is romantic enough, but unfortunately it is not true. If any one interested to know the facts (and we might assume that Dr. Nixon should be such a man) will take the trouble to open Sir George Simpson's "Voyage Around the World," he will find that the purpose of Simpson's visit to America was solely to look after the affairs of the London company; that the visit took place in 1841 and not in 1842; that the Red River settlers arrived in 1841 instead of 1842; that Sir George, after paying a visit to Stickeen to investigate the causes which led to the killing of Dr. McLoughlin's son, and a visit to San Francisco to establish a business house there, returned to London through Russia, and that in his whole narrative he makes no mention of having seen any United States territory, much less that he bad paid a diplomatic visit to Washington to interfere with treaty-making.
So far from any Catholic priests arriving with or before the Red River settlers in 1841, the Hudson Bay Company refused to allow two priests who wished to come to Oregon that year from Canada the privilege of traveling with their express, a privilege never refused to the American missionaries. I have not the space required to go into explanations of these apparently contradictory acts of the British company. I can only state facts directly opposed to the Gray-Nixon romance. As Dr. Whitman did not go East in 1841, but in 1842, all that interesting story of the utterances of the avant-couriers of the Red River settlers, Whitman's impetuous reply to their boast of occupying the country, and his hasty departure for Washington, falls flat.
Gray, in his ignorance of history, has said that Whitman made his visit to Washington to prevent Webster from trading off Oregon for a codfishery on the coast of Newfoundland with Lord Ashburton, and that he did prevent it, the truth being that the Oregon boundary was not considered in the correspondence between Webster and the British plenipotentiary in 1842, but only the Maine* boundary, which had never been settled. Had Whitman intended to influence international negotiations he would have been unable, as the Webster-Ashburton treaty was concluded in August. 1842, before he had thought of leaving Oregon.
Now all these errors of Gray are just as open to discovery by Dr. Nixon as by myself, because they are all matters of record. Yet he chooses to write as if he believed the romance he offers in place of history. Another statement winch cannot be sustained against the evidence to the contrary is that Dr. Whitman brought a wagon through to the Walla Walla Valley in 1836. Dr. Nixon makes Whitman say to Secretary Webster in March, 1843, "Six years ago I was told there was no wagon road to Oregon and it was impossible to take a wagon there, and yet in despite of pleadings and almost threats I took a wagon over the road and have it now."
Of course, as this conversation had no witnesses, it is purely an imaginary one, though if we were willing to believe Dr. Whitman a liar, as I am not, it might have taken place. Dr. Whitman did not take any wagon to the Columbia River in 1836. The American Fur Company, with which he traveled, annually took wagons as far as Green River, which was the rendezvous of the trappers, white and Indian. Beyond there the country was rough, mountainous and rocky, and very trying to the feet of animals, as well as hard upon wheels. Far this reason the leaders of the Hudson Bay Company, to whom the American Company transferred the missionaries for guidance and protection, objected to the proposition to continue the use of wagons beyond Green River. But the two ladies in the party found a wagon a great convenience, and, in the case of Mrs. Spalding, a necessity, for her health was such that she could not sit on a horse all day. This motive, with possibly others, induced Mr. Whitman to cling to the lightest of his two wagons. He took off the front wheels at Fort Hall and made it into a cart, and in this shape took it as far as Fort Boise, where it was left, the horses being quite worn out, and Mrs. Spalding having recovered her health. Farnham, who came to Oregon in 1839, speaks of having seen this cart at Fort Boise. In 1840, when the American fur companies were abandoning the mountains, beaver no longer being plenty, two mountain men—Robert Newell and Joseph L. Meek—brought both of Whitman's wagons through to the Columbia, leaving the cart at the mission, but taking the four-wheeled vehicle to the Willamette Valley the following year. This part of the road to Oregon—from the Snake River to the Willamette—being by far the most difficult portion of the route, why should history deprive these men of the honors which belong to them and bestow it upon another?
The want of candor in Dr. Nixon's book is too glaring to be passed over. For instance, he quotes from "Senate document (without number) December 31, viz., the Forty-first Congress, February 9, 1871," as follows: "There is no doubt but that the arrival of Dr. Whitman in 1843 was opportune. The President was satisfied that the territory was worth the effort to win it. The delay incident to a transfer of negotiations to London was fortunate, for ! there is reason to believe that if former negotiations had been renewed in Washington, and that, for the sake of a settlement of the protracted controversy, and the only remaining unadjudicated cause of difference between the two Governments, the offer had been renewed of the forty-ninth parallel to the Columbia, and thence down the river to the Pacific Ocean, it would have been accepted. The visit of Whitman committed the President against any such action." "This is a clear statement," says Dr. Nixon, "summarizing the great historic event and forever silencing effectually | the slanderous tongues that have in mod- I era times attempted to deprive the old i hero of his great and deserving tribute." Why is the fact concealed that this Senate document is a chapter from "Gray's History of Oregon" and penned by the same hand, or the further fact that its purpose was to obtain from Congress a grant of land at Lapwai, ostensibly for the American Board of Missions, but really to enrich men connected with the Oregon missions? The history of this case in the courts is not without value in connection with the subject in hand. On this business Mr. Spalding went to Washington and while in the East presented the Whitman story, as published in this document, to the editor of the New York Evangelist, Dr. J. G. Craighead, with the request that he should do all that he could to maintain Dr. Whitman's claim to be considered the savior of Oregon. This the gentleman promised, and afterward went to Washington, where he spent two months in looking for evidence that this claim had any foundation. Failing in this h« wrote to Hon. Elwood Evans of Olympia, now of Tacoma, telling him that there was nothing discovered to corroborate the statement of Gray and Spalding, and asking him for light. A copy of this letter is among papers in my possession.
I now come to the consideration of that part of the Gray-Nixon narrative which deals with the immigration of 1843. It should be unnecessary to go into the examination of recorded evidence, the claim being on the face of it untenable. Dr. Whitman arrived in the United States in March, 1843, and found, according to his own report to the board, preparations already in progress for a large migration. It j goes without saying that a body of 800 or 1000 people with cattle and household goods could not be got together by the efforts of one man between the first of March and the middle of May in a country thinly settled like the border States, or indeed anywhere. Nothing short of a year's time would suffice. Farms and other property were to be disposed of, wagons and cattle with six months' provisions to be provided, and all arrangements perfected for quitting the country forever. Yet Gray says that the magic voice of Whitman accomplished this marvelous exodus by simply passing through Missouri on his route to Washington, and Dr. Nixon says, by way of making an improbable thing sound probable, that while Whitman wag in the East attending to mission and private affairs, Mr. Lovejoy was "publishing far and wide that Dr. Whitman and himself would early in the spring pilot across the plains to Oregon a body of immigrants," and further, "it is just as certain that the large immigration to Oregon that year was incited by the movements of Whitman and Lovejoy as any fact could be." He had overlooked the fact that Lovejoy himself says, and he has inserted the statement in his appendix, "The doctor remained all night at the fort (Bent's Fort, in Colorado), starting early on the following morning to join the St. Louis party. Here we parted. The doctor proceeded to Washington. I remained at Bent's Fort until spring, and joined the doctor the following July near Fort Laramie, on his way to Oregon, in company with a train of emigrants."
There could be no mistake about this statement, though he, depending on memory and influenced by the impressions of others, says a little further on, "The doctor came to the frontier settlements, urging the citizens to emigrate to the Pacific. He left Independence, Mo., in the month of May, 1843, with an emigrant train of about 1000 souls for Oregon" — clearly a matter of hearsay, as he was himself at Fort Bent at the time mentioned. To quote as reliable anything stated after an interval of thirty-three years and strengthened by no recorded testimony 13 to lay one's self open to grave doubts. With my experience in proving the value of remembered events, such evidence is set down as worthless or at best only corroborative. An article in the Missionary Herald, published by the Mission Board in 1843, informs its readers that Dr. Whitman left for Oregon in June, which agrees with the assertions of several of the most intelligent of the immigrants of 1843 that Whitman overtook them on the South Platte. Thus it is clearly not proven anywhere that Dr. Whitman either was instrumental in raising the large immigration of 1843 or that he conducted it from the Missouri border. It met in council near Westport, Missouri, and was led by a well Known mountain man and pilot as far as Fort Hall. From there Dr. Whitman, with a company of Nez Perces and Cayuse, who had come out to meet and trade with the immigrants, of whose expected arrival they had been apprised, piloted the companies down Snake River and over the Blue Mountains into Oregon. The latter, and most difficult part of the journey to Whitman's station was entirely under the direction of the Indians, as Dr. Whitman was intercepted at Grand Rond and hurried to Lapwai to attend Mrs. Spalding, who was very ill. All this is susceptible of proof, and nothing which Dr. Whitman reported to the board thereafter contradicts it.
In a letter to the Secretary of War he uses these expressions: "I have, since our interview, been instrumental in piloting across the route described in the accompanying bill, and which is the only eligible wagon road, no less than 300 families,, consisting of 1000 persons of both sexes, with their wagons, amounting to 120, 694 oxen and 773 loose cattle. The emigrants are from different States, but principally from Missouri, Arkansas. Illinois and New York. The majority of them are farmers, lured by the prospect of bounty in lands (long held out by Congress), by the reported fertility of the soil, and by the desire to be first among those who are planting our institutions on the Pacific Coast." Further on he says: "They have practically demonstrated that wagons drawn by horses or oxen can cross the Rocky Mountains to the Columbia River, contrary to all sinister assertions of all those who pretended it to be impossible."
I come now to a consideration of the real motives which led Whitman to make his winter journey to the States. My Gray-Nixon opponents allege that it was solely to "save Oregon," which was in no immediate danger. I say, and abundant proofs bear me out, that he went on his own private business and the affairs of the mission, and that whatever he said or did while in the East that seemed to bear upon National politics was simply as any other person going from Oregon to the East in those days might have said or done these things. To come from the Pacific Coast in 1842 was to have done something remarkable. To be able to relate stories of adventure and describe a vast and wilderness country was to gain an interested audience anywhere. Especially were the President and Cabinet alert to learn everything bearing upon the value of a territory whose title was in dispute between the United States and Great Britain; and every man, whether he was a mountain man or a missionary, who had been in Oregon was closely questioned. Only the year before Dr. White, a returned missionary, had been sent for to go to Washington and answer questions. He answered them so intelligently that he was told to proceed to the West and collect as many as he could of the people who were waiting for the bounty land act, and lead them to Oregon that season. He was made sub-Indian agent, paid a salary, and commissioned with other extraordinary powers. At the same time Fremont was sent to explore the country as far as the Great Divide, it being intended that his report of the land passage should connect with Commodore Wilkes' reports on his explorations on the Pacific Coast. Yet in the face of all this action by the Government we are told that Oregon was in danger of being traded off for a codfishery on the Newfoundland coast.
Dr. White gathered up about 130 persons by advertising and lecturing and proceeded to lead them to Oregon. As he had only previously traveled by sea to and from the Columbia" River and knew nothing of the road before him, he prudently left his wagons at Fort Hall and depended upon pack-horses down Snake River and across the mountains. By this course he arrived at Whitman's station by the middle of September. Mr. Grant, the Hudson Bay Company's agent at Fort Hall, assured Dr. White that he could, if t,e wished to attempt it, take his wagons through to the Columbia, and pointed out the road. It ran, after leaving Fort Boise, through Burnt River Canyon and Grand Rond Valley, thence over the Blue Mountains to the Umatilla. This route had been pointed out to Farnham in 1839 by the company's agent at Fort Boise as a feasible wagon route while commenting on Dr. Whitman's abandonment of his wagon at the fort. These facts dispose of the charge that Grant endeavored to discourage the taking of wagons to the Columbia. As a matter of fact, this route traveled by White's company, and the following year by the great wagon company, was fully described to them by Grant, who furnished the captains of divisions with a chart of the country. No credits for exploration, therefore, are due to Dr. Whitman, or the immigrants who performed the labor of opening the road to wagons by grading or felling trees. As all this is susceptible of proof, I beseech my opponents to refrain from saying hard things about me for stating a fact.
But to return to the motives which led Dr. Whitman to go East as suddenly as he did. The cause lay, first of all, in the untractable disposition of the Indians in general, and the Cayuses in particular. There is a whole volume of evidence to show that from the earliest years of the missions the Indians were dissatisfied. While they were willing to receive material benefits, they were unable to comprehend spiritual truths. After, some experience with them it was found necessary to use an arbitrary authority over them, even in some cases to whip them. This punishment was sometimes inflicted on the young chiefs at Lapwai, but the Cayuses would not submit to it. On the contrary, they on several occasions attacked Dr. Whitman by striking him, knocking off his hat, throwing mud over him, and like hostile demonstrations. As there were usually at his place no more than three or four persons, including Mrs. Whitman, retaliation, if it had been Christian policy, would have been unsafe, and these insults were submitted to. The Indians, being only grown-up children, presumed more and more upon the immunity they enjoyed, until at last they were quite beyond control. In 1841 when Wilkes visited Waiilatpu he was informed of these troubles, which he reports in his "narrative." Apparently all that held the Cayuses in check was the presence of the Hudson Bay Company. When matters became too serious to be overlooked McKinlay, the agent in charge of Fort Walla Walla, a firm and kind friend of Dr. Whitman, paid a visit to the chiefs and gave them to understand that unless they conducted themselves in a friendly manner toward the missionaries they might expect to lose the trade of the company, this argument usually being sufficient to quiet them for that time.
But as they beheld the prosperity of Whitman, who by much labor and energy had built up a comfortable home, farm and flouring mill, and compared with it their own failures, they were consumed with envy and jealousy. They assumed that the land used by Whitman belonged to them, and that consequently the crops from it were theirs. They destroyed the doctor's water ditches because they were not allowed to use the water for their gardens, and stole the melons from the mission garden, besides practicing many other annoying acts. At the other missions there were similar complaints made, as the reports printed in the Boston Missionary Herald furnish evidence.
At the time of the arrival of Dr. White with the first real emigration to Oregon, the affairs of the superintendent were becoming desperate. The home board, dissatisfied because the missions were not self-supporting after six years, and warned by the missionaries themselves that they were in danger, had ordered that the Cayuse and Nez Perce stations should be abandoned, and that Mr. Spalding should return to the East, while Dr. Whitman should join Walker and Eells at Spokane. Such an ending to six years of constant effort was not to be thought of. Besides, the arrival of an immigration furnished an argument, which if properly presented to the board ought to satisfy them that the two stations which were ordered closed could not only, with an annual influx of immigrants, hungry from the plains, become self-supporting, but the source of wealth. All that was lacking was more help, and that he intended to demand. But there was no time to be lost, as his orders were imperative. In a fortnight after White's arrival Dr. Whitman was on his way to the East to explain the new situation and to ask for re-enforcements. His friend McKinlay fitted him out with the dress of a Hudson Bay man, the better to insure his safety, and with a guide to other of the company's forts, whence he would be forwarded along his route.
No sooner was Dr. Whitman well started on his way than the Cayuses commenced hostilities. One cf their chiefs invaded the chamber of Mrs. Whitman at night, she being protected by a single white man. Alarmed at this outrage she fled to Fort Walla Walla and was sent to The Dalles, where the Methodists had a station, and spent the year of her husband's absence in visiting different places in the Columbia and Willamette valleys. Even in the matter of Mrs. Whitman's desertion in the midst of an Indian country Dr. Nixon descends to subterfuge, giving the impression that the doctor provided for his wife's removal to The Dalles before leaving his station, although if he knew his subject at all he must have known that he left ncr in charge of the mission, with only one man for a helper. All the writers of that day, namely, Hines, White and Lee; comment on the fact. After the incident referred to, and the flight of Mrs. Whitman and her male assistant, the doctor's mill was burned down, with the grain it contained. From this time until 1847, when the troubles culminated in the massacre of November 29, the history of the missions is one of failure. Convinced at last that he could not hold out much longer Dr. Whitman purchased The Dalles station, but, neglecting to remove, and the Indians becoming further enraged at the appearance among them of a fatal disease introduced by the immigration, he paid the penalty of his determination with his life.
San Francisco, July 26, 1895.