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36 The next three or four years were critical in the history of the legend of Marcus Whitman. In the Northwest Mrs. Frances Fuller Victor and the Hon. Elwood Evans, who had earlier given currency to the story, had now become convinced that it was a fabrication and attacked it with great vigor. It is to be hoped that the history of this controversy may some day be published, for the picture of the grapple of criticism with a legend in its earlier growth, and of the survival if not victory of the fiction in spite of crushing attack in an age which flatters itself on its intelligence, would be full of sobering instruction for the historical student.