Page:History vs. the Whitman saved Oregon story.djvu/18

12 question he did, in some of his letters after his return, express some interest in the subject, and made some very extravagant and unfounded claims of having been largely instrumental in settling the question by having led out the 1843 migration.

The nearest to an expression of any interest in the political destiny of Oregon prior to Whitman's Ride is the following passage in an undated and hitherto unpublished letter of W. H. Gray (No. 136, Vol. 138, American Board archives), plainly written after October, 1839, and probably in November or December, 1839: "Dr. McLoughlin said to me that it was his wish that our people should occupy that place, and gave as a reason that then our people would be all together, and have nobody to meddle with us, and in case the boundary line was to be the Columbia River and the Fort" (i. e., Walla Walla) "was to be removed, he should like to have us there, both on account of the influence we might exert on the Indians and the men of the Fort. He did not wish to answer all my questions about the country, because it would imply a claim to the country, which they had none, except what their forts now occupied; he would say that he thought we had just as good a right to occupy any place as they had."

Any proper treatment of Whitman's career requires an honest summary (to the extent of 20 to 25 pages like this), of some 75,000 to 90,000 words of this correspondence, and in addition an accurate quotation of some 8,000 to. 10,000 words more of it.

Of all this correspondence Dr. Mowry quotes only 510 words, and they—even as he quotes them—furnish no support to his theories about the political purpose of Whitman's ride.

All but 86 of these 510 words Professor Bourne had previously quoted in the "Legend of Marcus Whitman" as being the strongest possible evidence against the saving Oregon theory of Whitman's ride, and they have been considered as being conclusive against the theory of any saving Oregon purpose of that ride and as proving it to have been undertaken solely on the business of his mission, by such historians as Professor John Fiske, Dr. Edward Eggleston, Professor John B. McMaster, Professor Allen C. Thomas, Professor Harry P. Judson, Professor Edward C. McLaughlin, Horace E. Scudder, Principal Wilbur F. Gordy, Professor Edward Channing, Professor F. Newton Thorpe, etc., etc. (Cf. Am. Hist. Review, January, 1901 (pp. 276-300) and Tr. Am. Hist. Assn.; 1900, pp. 288-300).

But, whereas, Professor Bourne quoted accurately, Dr. Mowry quotes far otherwise.

The only document Whitman took with him to the American Board from the three men who remained associated with him in the Mission was the following: