Page:History vs. the Whitman saved Oregon story.djvu/17

Rh its value to this country was small," and that "Webster thought Oregon was useless to our country on account of the impassable character of the mountains," and that "Tyler entertained precisely the same views" (as Webster) "as to the uselessness of Oregon to the United States." (pp. 191-2, speaking of those desiring to migrate to Oregon in 1843): "It is evident from a variety of sources of information that the great drawback to these would-be emigrants was that they could not carry their wagons and families through the mountains. The great Rocky Mountain range and the Blue Mountains were supposed to be impassable for wagons."

As to Dr. Whitman there are but three really important questions, to wit:

What was the origin and the purpose of Whitman's ride from Oregon to the States, begun October 3, 1842?What was the condition of the Oregon question at Washington (i. e., the attitude towards it of Tyer's Administration), in the winter of 1842-43 and the spring of 1843, and what influence, if any, did Whitman exert to change the policy of the National Government towards Oregon.What was Whitman's real relation to the great overland migration of 1843? Let us examine Dr. Mowry's treatment of the original sources concerning each of these three points.

As to (A) the only important original sources and the only ones that it is certain Dr. Mowry has examined are: First. The correspondence of the Oregon Mission in the archives of the A. B. C. F. M. in Boston, prior to Whitman's return to Oregon in September, 1843, before which none of his associates knew that anything had occurred to make them wish their records different from what they had been written.

These letters, many of them very long (one covering 74 and another 52 pages of very large paper), number more than 200 and must aggregate considerably more than 400,000 words, and in them all is not one sentence expressing the least interest in or concern about the political destinies of any part of the Oregon Territory, or furnishing the least support in any other way to any form of the saving Oregon theory of Whitman's ride, and the same is true of all the correspondence of all these missionaries with their friends (so far as it has yet been published), during the whole time the Oregon question was unsettled, except that after Whitman had visited the States and found the whole country aflame about the Oregon