Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/875



The settlement of Oregon by Americans was started by a wave of religious enthusiasm. Prior to the advent of Jason and Daniel Lee in 1834, Oregon had no place on the map of the world except that of a vast game preserve for the taking of the furry skins of wild animals. Its native Indian population of from fifty to eighty thousand had no standing or consideration whatever in the minds of civilized or Christian men prior to the mission of Jason Lee. To Spaniard, Englishman and American, all alike, the fur trade was the sole excuse for any action in relation to the vast territory known as Oregon.

The historical incidents leading up to the planting of Christian missions in Oregon have already been related. But if the light and experience of the past seventy-eight years were reflected back on the religious missionary efforts to Christianize the heathen and establish churches and religions in Oregon, it might indicate that a vast amount of labor, effort and money had been expended without compensating results in the propagation of Christianity. At the time Jason Lee and Marcus Whitman voluntarily cast themselves out into the wilderness of Oregon two thousand miles from a Christian church and commenced their wonder making missions among the Pacific Coast Indians, the American people were practically nine-tenths professedly members of Christian churches. It is within the memory of the author of this book that the people of the western states in the year of the great gold discovery in California were fully nine-tenths members of the various churches. They are not so now. And in the states west of the Rocky mountains there is not one half of the people affiliated with the churches. It is not the purpose of this work to critically investigate the causes of this change. The accumulation of wealth, and from which came a provision for idle and luxurious habits in all directions, and the exploitation of secret societies—fraternal orders, so-called—has sapped the foundations of the Christian churches and broken down their ancient influences on the moral tone and unwavering fiber of human society and organized government.

When the reader goes back to the decade between 1834 and 1844, and takes a look at the work of Lee and Whitman at short range, we see them confronted with trials, dangers and opposition that would have paralyzed all the college professor preachers of Oregon in 1912. To begin with, they found the Oregon