Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/438



Up to this time, Jason Lee had been a member of the "Wesleyan Church of Canada; but at once accepted the offered appointment.

Jason Lee was born in 1803 at Stanstead, and his life was that of a back- woodsman, with limited means of education. It was in 1827 that he entered Wilbraham academy as a student, at the age of twenty-four.

Jason Lee was received into the New England conference in the spring of 1833, and set about the preparation for his mission at once. As his assistant in the duty of the new field he chose Rev. Daniel Lee, his nephew, then a minister in New Hampshire. As a teacher, Cyrus Shepard, of Lynn, was en- gaged. They held a farewell meeting in New York in the Forsyth street church, November 20, Bishop Hedding presiding.

Captain Wyeth at this time, was planning a second expedition to Oregon, and was to start overland in the spring of 1834. The opportunity was thus offered for our missionaries to cross the plains and mountains with men who had become acquainted with the route, and the Methodist mission took its de- parture in March to pass via Pittsburg, and the Ohio river and Mississippi to St. Louis, and fell into the train of Captain Wyeth at Independence, then the last town westward, on April 22d. Prom St. Louis to Independence, Jason and Daniel Lee had ridden horseback across Missouri. At Independence Mr. Lee engaged P. L. Edwards as a teacher and Courtney M. Walker as an assistant.

ACROSS THE PLAINS WITH CAPTAIN WYETH

The young evangelist found himself in strange company. There were nearly two hundred of Wyeth 's men, and they were a tough lot of mountaineers and trappers, accustomed to hard life and scant ceremony — winters spent in St. Louis and the river towns in wild orgies, then back to the fur country. This company was expecting to compete with the Hudson's Bay establishment for the fur trade of the Northwest, and it is not likely that Captain Wyeth engaged any class-leaders for the enterprise. The Lees were sick of their strange surround- ings at first, but soon found themselves none the worse. They bore their proper share of the toils and dangers of the journey through the Indian country and won the friendship and good-will of the party.

On June 15, the Wyeth company met the great body of trappers and mountain- eers of the inter-mountain region at the ' ' summer rendezvous, ' ' a summer gather- ing of these semi-wild men, at a time when they were footloose. This time the rendezvous was on Ham's Pork, a stream which enters Green river, a branch of the Colorado, at a point near the site of Port Bridger. Two days' journey by the old emigrant road west from Green river, some of the trappers in the motley crowd promised to make trouble for the missionary party, but as soon as Jason Lee was informed of their threats, he sought the men out and had a frank talk with them, which quite removed their hostile ideas and gave them a wholesome respect for the young preacher.

At the redezvous Lee encountered certain Indians of the Nez Perces tribe who had heard of Christianity, like their neighbors, the Platheads, and the young chief who was at the head of this party of Nez Perces invited him to come to the country of his people and establish his mission among them. This