The Oregon Native Son/Volume 2/Oregon War History, Errors
INDIAN WAR HISTORY, ERRORS.
MISTAKES MADE BY MRS. VICTOR POINTED OUT BY REV. MYRON EELLS.
I have read with interest Mrs. Victor's "Early Indian Wars of Oregon," and desire to offer a few corrections, supply omissions, etc., therefore call attention to the following:
Chapter II, page 17, of such history, says: "Besides the Methodist missions, there were north of the Columbia river and east of the Cascade mountains several Presbyterian missions, founded in 1836, 1837 and 1838. These were under the superintendency of Dr. Marcus Whitman, and supported by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Dr. Whitman was settled among the Cayuses in the Walla Walla valley, twenty-five miles from Fort Walla Walla of the Hudson's Bay Company. Rev. H. H. Spalding was stationed among the Nez Perces, eighty miles east of the superintendent, on the Clearwater river at a place called Lapwai; and a third station on a branch of the Spokane river, about forty miles from Fort Colville of the Hudson's Bay Company, was in charge of Elkanah Walker and Cushing Eells. who had charge of the Spokane Indians. A fourth station was selected among the Nez Perces. about sixty miles northeast of Lapwai, which was put in charge of A. B. Smith."
There are at least three errors in matter of fact in the above statement. The American Board of Page:Oregon Native Son volume 2.djvu/250 Commissioners for Foreign Missions founded no missions north of the Columbia and east of the Cascade mountains, all being south and east of that river. The one at Waiilatpu (Dr. Whitman's), was 25 miles east of it; the Lapwai mission (Mr. Spalding's) not less than 100 miles east; the Tshimakani mission (Messrs. Walker and Eells), about 30 miles east and about 75 miles from the fort of the Hudson's Bay Company at Colville, instead of 40 miles as Mrs. Victor has it. The Kamiah mision (Mr. Smith), was also east of that river. None of these missions were established in 1837, as she writes. Waiilatpu and Lapwai missions were founded in 1836, the one at Tshimakani in 1838, and that at Kamiah in 1839. Reckoning the course of the Columbia geographically as west, which is generally so construed, it would be said that all these missions were located south of the river, never north.
Again, Dr. Whitman was not "superintendent" of these missions. The affairs of these missions were settled in annual or special meetings of the missionaries, and were determined by a majority vote of each missionary present. Dr. Whitman's vote counted as one. and the vote of each missionary present counted the same. Dr. Whitman is also erroneously styled "superintendent" on pages 27. 28, 29, 30 and 37.
These missions were not "Presbyterian missions," notwithstanding the historian's statements. Dr. Whitman and Mr. Spalding were Presbyterians and Messrs. Walker, Eells and Smith were Congregationalists. The American Board which supported them was sustained by gifts from the Congregational, Presbyterian and Dutch Reformed churches, and was a union society. The two latter denominations have since withdrawn their support from it, so that now it is distinctly Congregational. This misleading statement appears again on page 40.
Again, on page 26. the books says: "A. B. Smith, the year after his arrival with Gray's party, was sent to establish a mission upon the lands of Chief Ellis, at Kamiah, east of Lapwai. To do this he had permission, but was forbiden to cultivate the land. After being at Kamiah one year Smith made some preparations to till a small field, but Ellis reminded him that he had been warned not to do so. 'Do you not know,' he asked, "what has been told you, that you would be digging a hole in which you would be buried?' At this he desisted, but the following year made another attempt, and was again reminded, when he made no more such efforts."
Mrs Victor does not give her authority for the statement, but the original is given in Brouillet's "Protestantism in Oregon," on authority of an interpreter's statement that the Indians told him so; that is, Rev. Brouillet says that John Toupin says that the Indians said it was so. Mrs. Victor, however, could not rely on Toupin's statement wholly, as she found mistakes in it, so she changed his statement some, for he added after the word "buried": "Thereupon Mr. Smith said, 'Let me go, and I will leave the place,' and he started off immediately. That circumstance has been related to me by the Indians, and soon after I saw Mr. Smith myself at Fort Walla Walla. He was on his way to 'ancouver, where he embarked for the Sandwich Islands, from whence he did not come back any more."
Mrs. Victor knew that if she accepted this latter statement it would make Mr. Smith leave in 1840, whereas he did not leave until 1841. so she puts in another year and lets him again try to cultivate the ground.
The fact was that, according to Mr. Spalding's journal of that time, which I now have, Mr. Smith had a garden in 1839, not waiting until 1840, as Mrs. Victor says, and he taught the Indians to cultivate the land, for the annual report of the American Board for 1843, says that at Kamiah, the station formerly occupied by Mr. Smith, but now vacant, a large addition has been made during the last year or two to the amount of land tilled by the Indians. This shows Page:Oregon Native Son volume 2.djvu/252 that at least they were not averse to cultivating the soil.
In March, 1884, I wrote Mr. Smith, asking him about the truth of this story, and in a letter dated April 16th, the same year, he replied: "In regard to the representations made concerning me to which you refer I can only say it is almost entirely a fabrication. Ellis, the name mentioned, I had nothing to do with. I know not who is referred to by that name, unless it be a young Indian who had been at the Red River school, and proved to be a worthless fellow. I did hear of his stirring up the people against the missionaries, but he had nothing to do with the land where I was located, there were two petty chiefs — Hu-sin-me-la-kin and Um-tam-lai-a-kin — who claimed the land where I was. I never negotiated with them or any other ones, in regard to the land. I went there with their knowledge, and according to their wish. There was no opposition to my plowing, or anything of the kind. All that story has not the shadow of truth in it. I went to Kamiah in the spring of 1839, plowed several acres the next spring, and raised a crop, without any opposition from any one. In the autumn of 1840 these two chiefs above mentioned came to me and demanded pay for the land. I refused to comply with the demand, when they ordered me to leave it. I told them I would go. Then they ordered me to leave the next day. I told them, 'No, I will go when I get ready.I accordingly wrote to Dr. Whitman and Mr. Spalding. Dr. Whitman was soon there, Mr. Spalding afterward. . Nothing special was done by them among the Indians; they talked it out among themselves after the Doctor and Spalding were gone. These two chiefs found that all the other Indians were against them, and, so, after a few days, these two came and wished to take back what they had said. Then everything became quiet and we stayed through the winter. I might have continued, but my wife's health by this time had become such that it seemed absolutely necessary to make a change on her account."
Mr. Spalding's journal confirms the above facts in almost every particular. This was published in 1886, in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a paper to which Mrs. Victor has access.
All that Mrs. Victor says on pages 24. 29 and following, about Mr. Parker's promising that ships loaded with Indian goods and agricultural implements, with which to pay them for their lands, rests on the same unreliable evidence of John Toupin. not written down at the time, nor until thirteen years after Mr. Parker's visit.
I wish also to quote another sentence in the book—not to disprove it, but to show the style and animus of the author. On page 37 she speaks of the officers of the American Board at Boston as "highly-proper, clean-shaven, decorous Presbyterians."
On page 31 I find: "Added to other trials. Dr. Whitman was worried by demands from the Home Board that the Oregon missions should be made selfsupporting." I call for proof of this. While the Board may have hoped for such from their missions in due course of time, it never expected or demanded from them that they should be self-supporting during the early years of their existence, especially those located among the Indians. Aly father, an associate missionary of Dr. Whitman, never mentioned such a request, and no record of the proceedings of the Board have ever been found that will substantiate the statement.
There is no evidence, as stated on page 32, that these missionaries expected to hold their "good homes" and receive large or any donations of land from the government in the event of treaties being made by it with the Indians. The members of the missions gave themselves to the work they sought to accomplish, and they knew that if their lands on which their missions were situated were alloted to any one, they would go to the Board, and not to themselves as individuals. This has been the policy of the Board wherever it established missions throughout the world.
Page:Oregon Native Son volume 2.djvu/254 On page 35 is found, "Dr. Whitman, in his vexation with the Indians, before leaving for the states, threatened them with bringing back many people to chastise them." I call for the proof! I have read everything I could find on the subject of the Doctor's going east, published and in manuscript, and this is the first time I ever heard it intimated that he made such, or any threat. Rev. Gustavus Hines, a pioneer missionary of 1840, who was well posted on the affairs of early Oregon, says in his "History of Oregon," that the Doctor went east "with the avowed intention of bringing back as many as he could enlist for Oregon," but says nothing about a threat, and that is all that I have ever been able to find on the subject. Instead of this, subsequent to 1843, he explored a route from the foot of the Blue mountains to the mouth of the Umatilla river for the emigrants, so they would not pass his mission station, thus giving rise to possible ill feelings against them by the Cayuses, for crossing their lands.
At the top of page 36 is found: "His whole thought seemed to be now to repel Indian aggressions. Whatever admirations he had at first felt for the aboriginal character had been completely effaced by his experiences among them." These statements are mere assertions without any proof, and are not true, and, consequently, the deduction in the sentence following, which says that "the settler in him was stronger than the missionary," is also an untruth. For many years Mrs. Victor has tried to make Dr. Whitman out to be a deceitful, selfish man. Such assertions ought not to be in the pages of a history published under the auspices of the State of Oregon. That Dr. Whitman did much for it during its hours of infancy is beyond controversy, and he is deserving of at least fair treatment at the hands of the great commonwealth of which he was among the very first to lay its foundations deep and well.
On page 40 Mrs. Victor says: '"First. That with the purest intentions, and with the best religious ideas of the times, the Presbyterian missionaries of the upper country found it impossible to implant spiritual religion in the minds of the aboriginal inhabitants of the earth. Second. That the influence of contact with savagery was to unspiritualize themselves; to drive out of their minds confidence in the power of religion to change the nature of men in the low stage of their mental evolution." These conclusions are not true. Spiritual religion was implanted in the minds of some of the Spokanes, Nez Perces and Cayuses. See "Eells' Indian Missions," pages 6388, for proof. The lives of Messrs. Spalding, Walker and Eells, who lived in Oregon and Washington for many years thereafter, show that they were not unspiritualized. They subsequently labored for the Master as faithfully as before, all among the whites, and Messrs. Spalding and Eells also labored among the Indians. The third conclusion, "That the change this discovery made in themselves, being preceived by the Indians, was a cause of displeasure to them, and of danger to the missionaries," is consequently false, and hardly worth noticing.
On page 98 mention is made of "negotiations which were then in progress for the sale of Waiilatpu to the Catholics." That thought is wholly from the author's imagination. There were never any "negotiations in progress" or thought of, for the sale of the Doctor's station (Waiilatpu) to that denomination. There may have been, and probably were, negotiations on the part of the Catholics to obtain some land from the Indians for a mission about three miles from Whitman's.
I deny, as asserted on page 160, "that the average Christian of that day was pledged in his own conscience to be a bigot," Mrs. Victor to the contrary, and it is certainly unfortunate for the State of Oregon that such language should receive an indorsement through finding a place in a history published by it, thus defaming pioneer heroes and heroines to whom belongs the credit of much of what she is at the present time.
Page:Oregon Native Son volume 2.djvu/256 On page 248 will be found, "By what arguments they (the Cayuse murderers) had been persuaded to give themselves up has never been revealed." I received from General Lane, on January 20, 1880, the following: "I carried on negotiations with the Cayuses in 1849 in a friendly manner, with the hope of getting them to surrender up the principal actors in the murder of Dr. Whitman, his wife and many others at Waiilatpu, without war. But told them that war upon them would be certain if they did not deliver up the guilty. They agreed at last, agreed to meet me near The Dalles in May, 1850, and as agreed, with Lieutenant Addison and ten soldiers of the rifle regiment, we met them, the principal chiefs and many warriors, and after a long talk with them, they delivered the prisoners to me. We then, after taking our leave, left with our prisoners. The rest you know."
Readers of this pretended history will find on page 62 thereof, "Mr. Spalding determined to strengthen the hands of the agent (Dr. Elijah White), by receiving thirty Nez Perce Indians into the church, and it was done May 14, 1843." There is not a particle of evidence to show that this was done "to strengthen the hands of the agent." These converts had been propounded for membership previously, and were received for the same reason that other persons were recived, and the presence or absence of the agent had no bearing whatever upon their admission as members of the church.