Page:History vs. the Whitman saved Oregon story.djvu/25

Rh other object of Dr. Whitman in making the above mentioned journey was to procure additional laborers. He desired also to induce Christian families to emigrate and settle in the vicinity of the different stations, that they might relieve the missionary of his secular responsibilities, and also contribute directly in various ways to the social and moral improvement of the Indians. How far his wishes in those particulars will be responded to is uncertain." (Miss. Herald, September, 1843, P- 356-) This did not appear till after the receipt by D. Greene, Secretary, of Rev. C. Eells' letter of Oct. 3, 1842, endorsed by Rev. E. Walker, which contained the official re-port of that Special Meeting, and of Walker's letter of Oct. 3, 1842, endorsed by C. Eells as correct, and also of Walker's letter of Feb. 28, 1843, complaining that Whitman started to the States without waiting for their letters, as he had agreed to do, and also H. H. Spalding's long letter of defense and justification of Oct. 15, 1842, as the endorsement of D. Greene, secretary, on these several letters shows. This first published account of the origin and purpose of the ride agrees exactly with the account given in the letters for which Whitman did not wait, and is absolutely irreconcilable with the account Rev. C. Eells gave in his various "statements" in 1866, 1878 and 1883. Turning to p. 193 of the Annual Report of the American Board for 1842 we find that not only were these three out of the four stations discontinued, but that both Rev. H. H. Spalding and Mr. W. H. Gray were recalled to the States by the order of February, 1842. Yet Gray, in 1885, wrote that he had no personal knowledge of that order, or of its being talked about at the Special Meeting of Sept. 26-27, 1842. (Cf. Gray's article in the Oregonian of Feb. 1, 1885, reprinted in "The Whitman Controversy" (pamphlet), Portland, Ore., 1885).

The second account is in the Missionary Herald for July, 1848, in the brief sketch of his life (containing only 162 words), prefacing the account of the massacre, and merely / says, "He made a visit to the Atlantic States in the Spring of 1843, being called hither by the business of the mission."

Not another word about Whitman's ride was printed in this official organ of the American Board till in December, 1866, 18 years and five months later, it published and endorsed Rev. C. Eells' version of its origin and purpose. This second account was published two years after the treaty of 1846 had settled the boundary of Oregon at 49 degrees, and the editors of the Missionary Herald knew that in chronicling the massacre they were also chronicling the final destruction of their Oregon Mission. Who can doubt that with the memory of Whitman's visit only five years before fresh in their minds, and with all the correspondence of the mission and the records of the action of the Board thereon open to their inspec-