Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/219



THE CENTENNIAL III8T0KV !•' RK(J.\ Il>:,

boru west of the Koeky Mountains, and now Grand (chaplain to llie >State Grange of Oregon. Another son is a missionary stationed in Cliiua. Dr. Geiger left a son now a jiraetieing physician in Forest Grove. Mr. Gray left a forceful family of children. One son was county jvidge of Clatsop county for many years. An- other son is prondnent in business and has had large transportation interests on the upper CoUunbia; while IVFrs. Jacob Kamm of Portland, Oregon, is known far and wide for her support of charitable and religious work both in and outside of the Presbytci-ian church.

It is not within the purview of this history, or the object of this chapter to follow out the movements and settlements of this little party of devoted mission- aries. It is enough to our purpose to say, that after a long toilsome and tedious journey, full of dangers and trials of every description, they reached their prom- ised land, that they founded a nnssiou at Wai-il-at-pu, near the city of Walla Walla, where Whitman college is now located, that they labored and toiled, taught and prayed for the Indians, as no others had ever done, before or since, and that they were rewarded in the end by the base treachery of those they sought to save and bless, and finally murdered by the infiiriated savages they had fed, clothed and taught the lessons of love and affection of the founder of Christianity. We give this picture of these devoted men and women to show by contrast and example, the characters of these teachers and the native inborn weakness and barbarism of those they sought to lift up in the human scale. We will let the characters of Lee and Whitman stand as substantial representatives of the whole Protestant mis- sionary effort to the Indians of this couutry ; and from their experience and good or ill success draw what conclusions seem to be reasonable as to the real char- acter of these Oregon Indians. And to throw fui-ther light upon the picture, and enable the reader to more perfectly understand the Indian character, we will give the experience of the Catholic Priest and missionaries in dealing with and teaching these same Indians, although they may have labored with other and different tribes.

The first efforts to introduce the services of the Catholic religion into the legions of old Oregon, were put forth by the French Canadians of the Wil- lamette Valley in July, 1834, just about the time Jason Lee was holding the first Protestant church services in the territory of old Oregon, at old Fort Hall. There is no evidence of any relation between these two competing, if not op- posing, religious movements. Nobody in all the Oregon region, so far as the his- torical record shows, knew that Jason Lee was on his way out here to preach the gospel and organize Protestant Episcopal institutions. The movement of the French Canadians seems to have been purely local, and originated from the natural desire of those people to have once more the religious services of the church in which they were born and reared in at distant Montreal. These Canadians at that time, sent a request to J. N. Provencher, Catholic Bishop of the Red River settlements, asking that leligious teachers be sent to Oregon. The arrival of Lee a few months afterward increased the anxiety of these faithful Catholics, and in February, 1835, a second letter was dis- patched to Bishop Provencher for religious instructors. To these letters, Pro- vencher replied sending the reply to Chief Factor McLoughlin. regretting that no priests could at that time be spared from the work in the east, but that an effort would be made to secure priests from Europe. And as early as the matter