Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/384

Rh natives at their best, with few exceptions, manifested scarcely more gratitude for benefits bestowed than is current in civilized circles. "I have no evidence to suppose," says Spalding, speaking of the selfishness and ingratitude of the natives, "but a vast majority of them would look on with indifference and see our dwelling burned to the ground, and our heads severed from our bodies." This was said by the most successful of the missionary teachers regarding the people whom he taught. Walker and Eells, at the Chemakane mission, while not having suffered the same indignities as teachers at the other stations, complained that the real object of the aborigines in professing interest in religion and learning was to secure the favor of their instructors and obtain presents, and Smith at Kamiah gave them the same character, while all often referred to their untruthfulness.

Yet the missionaries continued to hope against hope that in time some good might be effected, and reported as their circumstances chanced to inspire them, some times cheerfully but oftener despondingly. Whitman wrote in March 1841, that the people were quiet, and appeared never to have been so well disposed toward him as at that time; assigning as a reason that the troublesome chief, Split-lip, had been removed by death. But letters of the same date, from the other stations, gave disheartening accounts of opposition from savages.

In the previous year there had been a serious disturbance at Waiilatpu, occasioned by the Cayuses allowing their horses to damage the grain in the mission field. When reproved by Whitman, they covered him with mud, plucked his beard, pulled his ears, snapped a gun at him, threatened to pull down his house, and would have struck him with an axe had