Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/225



THE CENTENNIAL IlISTOKV OK OKEGON 129

tentions that arose out of the Whitman massacre and the management of the Indians. It would have been far better for the Indians, and for the white peo- ple, and the cause for which both Protestants and Catholics claimed they were the champions, to have left the Indians wholly to one sect or the other.

But the evil that was wrought has long since passed, leaving nothing but the lesson that peace and harmony is more profitable than contention and discord. The cause of Christianity was not promoted. What services then, if any, can be discovered outside the cause of religion which these .sectarians may have rendered the country? Before the Protestant missionaries came, the white population was practically all males, and almost wholly subjects of Great Britain, and members of the Catholic church. If any action or influence was to be expected or might be exerted, it would have been in favor of delivering Oregon to the British monarchy. The record is made up, and there can be no successful denial of this proposition. What then were American citizens, if they were even men of God and disposed to peace, to do 1 It did not take Jason Lee long to decide. Although born in Canada under the British flag, he was United States American to the core. Marcus Whitman, born in the United States, was first of all things in his character as a citizen, a champion of Amer- ican ideas and laws. And the same was to be said of Gray, Griffin, Walker, Eells and all the i-est of the American missionaries. Were they to keep silence on political rights for fear public speech might offend Briton or Catholic? Self preservation being the iirst law of nature, they must act; and they did act.

The great fur company had an eye single to the coining of profits out of the skins of wild animals. Its interest was first to hold Oregon as a game preserve for the pelts it might produce. But if civil government must come, then let it be the government that gave the country over to the Fur Company, and the great monopoly would still control the country. To make good this scheme sub- jects of Great Britain alone must be encouraged to come to Oregon; and they must be such as would take orders from the Catholic Vicar General. Protestant Episcopal priests from England would not do, although their salaries were pro- vided by law, because they could not receive the confession of the Roman Catholic French trappers of the Hudson's Bay Company, and could not control such employees in any political movement instigated by the Protestant preach- ers. The line of cleavage was plainly discernible when the American indepeml- ent trappers and employees of the Protestant missions sought to unitr with themselves the Catholic Frenchmen on French Prairie, in a movement for civil government to protect life and property. Under the lead of the Vicar General, the H. B. Co., and every member of the Catholic church but two op- posed any organization whatever, and put their protest on record. And while waiting patiently for two years to persuade the Catholics to join in an organi- zation to protect the rights of all persons without distinction of creed or na- tionality, Jason Lee, Marcus W^hitman and their co-laborers, worked with might and main to bring the government of the United States to support and defend the infant colony. Letters, petitions and memorials were sent to Con- gress and Cabinet, and eastern journals were plied with facts and arguments to save Oregon. Jason Lee went in person ; and Marcus Whitman took his life in his hands and made a mid-winter ride across the continent to foresta