Page:History vs. the Whitman saved Oregon story.djvu/26

20 tion, they knew, and in this short sentence stated exactly what caused his ride, and who can doubt that if they could honestly have claimed that that ride had any political significance, or had saved any, even the smallest part of Oregon to the nation, they would then have stated it, when the whole country was stirred with sympathetic sorrow over the bloody tragedy which had destroyed their Oregon Mission? This second account of the origin and purpose of Whitman's ride, containing only 22 words, neither Dr. Mowry nor any other advocate of the Saving Oregon theory of that ride has ever quoted, and I think no one of them has ever even intimated that any such account was ever printed.

Whitman's letters after his return to Oregon cannot be considered as "original sources" as to the origin and purpose of that ride, since his frigid reception by the Secretary of the American Board (who told him he was sorry that he had come), and the fact that the next month after he started on that journey the Indians burned his rude grist mill and a large quantity of grain, involving him in so much expense to rebuild, that, with the expenses of his journey, he was troubled for two years after his return- in his settlements with the American Board, as he states in his letter of April 13, 1846, (which Dr. Mowry refrains from even alluding to), together with the fact that the decadence of the mission which had begun as early as 1839, continued to progress towards its complete destruction so steadily and with such frightful rapidity that on May 20, 1845, less than 20 months after his return, Whitman himself, having been directed at a full meeting of the Mission (at which all were present except Mr. Spalding), held at Whitman's Station, and which closed May 14, 1845, to write to D. Greene, Sec, as to the state of the mission, etc., was compelled to write: "The state of the mission is such as to give no very decided promise of permanency or of much good." All these things subjected Whitman to very strong temptation to exaggerate the importance of his ride, and its influence on the destiny of Oregon, so that he naturally strove to convince the Secretary of the Board that though the mission (whose continuance had been secured only by that ride), seemed destined soon to be a dismal failure, yet his expensive disobedience to the positive order of the Board in making that ride had, somehow, resulted in such benefit to Oregon as justified the expense of the ride and the resulting continuance of the mission.

An indispensable postulate of the Whitman Saved Oregon story being that the mission was of immense benefit to the