Page:Essays in Historical Criticism.djvu/125



Dr. Mowry prints the contemporary newspaper accounts of the visit of the four Flathead Indians to St. Louis. George Catlin travelled with the two survivors on their return and painted their portraits. He writes: "These two men were part of a delegation that came across the Rocky Mountains to St. Louis a few years since to enquire for the truth of a representation which they said some white men had made amongst them, 'that our religion was better than theirs, and that they would all be lost if they did not embrace it.' Two old men of this party died in St. Louis, and I travelled two thousand miles, companion with these two young fellows, towards their own country and became much pleased with their manners and dispositions." This is probably as near the truth in regard to this mission as we can get, for the contemporary newspaper accounts are admittedly exaggerated. The account given by Barrows in his Oregon, 108–113, is an imaginative perversion of these newspaper accounts. Barrows gives the farewell speech of one of the Indians which has been reproduced in many places, but never with any references which properly authenticate it. The nearest to an authentication of it that I have been able to make traces it to Mr. Spalding. In 1870 he reported the characteristic features of the speech to a writer in The Chicago Advance, who, in reproducing it, says: "The survivor repeated the words years afterward to Mr. Spalding." Dr. Mowry confidently asserts that the speech was taken down as it was uttered by one of General Clark's clerks. There is no trace of the speech in the contemporary accounts as reproduced in Dr. Mowry's book. I feel pretty certain that the speech was invented by Mr. Spalding. Until it can be carried back of Mr. Spalding, it ought not to be continually reprinted as an authentic document.