Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/353

302 The caution used not to provoke opposition as apparent in the wording of the resolution itself, which only proposes to consider the propriety of taking measures. But the committee, or those of them who were managing the business under the direction of the Mission, held stated meetings, at which they discussed more than anything else the question of how to make a governor, and whom to place in that position. They also drew up a report which was an acceptance of a form of provisional government, and a list of the officers they proposed to the people to elect. In the mean time the subject was skilfully agitated among the settlers, French and American, who were convinced that an organization was inevitable, and taught to believe that unless they would be ruled entirely by the missionary class, they must take the matter of the proposed government into their own hands. Among other arguments urged was the attitude of the natives in the interior, the need of a military organization, and the benefit to be derived from having a land law. These were the ruling motives with the American settlers; but that they did not influence the Canadians to any great extent, their in Portland, San Francisco, and New York. As a book of reference, when compared with other authorities, the work is valuable, containing many facts and important documents. It has, however, three faults—lack of arrangement, acrimonious partisanship, and disregard of truth. A notable instance of its mendacity is the dramatic account given of Whitman's visit to the United States, its cause and purpose, and the alleged instrumentality of Whitman in raising the emigration of 1843, almost the whole of which must be relegated to the domain of fiction. Gray had a popular style of writing, however, as is shown by the reluctance of the public to give him up as an authority even after fair examination by critics had shown him to be unreliable. He is charged by Robert Newell with resorting to his imagination in giving the history of the proceedings of the early provisional government. See Strictures on Gray, in Portland Democratic Herald, Oct. 1866, et seq., in which Newell repays with interest some of Gray's rather broad caricatures of him. Criticisms of Gray's History, on the ground of unfairness, may be found in the writings of several of his contemporaries, viz.: Moss' Pioneer Times, MS., 16, 17; Crawford's Missionaries, MS., 8; White's Early Government, MS., 40; Waldo's Critiques, MS., 4; Roberts' Recollections, MS., 17; Tolmie's Puget Sound, MS., 24-5; and in the writings of Evans, Victor, Strong, Blanchet, Burnett, and Applegate. As an exhibition of the feeling entertained by certain persons in Oregon 40 years ago, toward the subjects of Great Britain, and professors of the Catholic faith, it is striking, though perhaps somewhat overdrawn, and is all the more impressive in that the writer speaks as if those past days were still present to him.