Page:History vs. the Whitman saved Oregon story.djvu/35

Rh In January, 1842 (as we know from contemporaneous written and printed sources), Doctor White appeared in Washington with letters of introduction from Daniel Webster's eldest son to President Tyler, Secretary Webster and Secretary of 1 the Navy A. P. Upshur, and after interviews with them, and with Secretary of War John C. Spencer, and Senator Linn and other friends of Oregon, by order of the president he was commissioned Indian sub-agent for the region west of the Rockies, and directed to raise as large a company as possible and proceed with them to Oregon, which he did, starting from near Westport, Mo., May 16, 1842, as the leader of the first large overland migration consisting of 112 persons.

He remained in Oregon some three years, and was the only official ever commissioned by our government to reside in Oregon, till after the territory was organized in 1848. Being a very "shifty" and selfish politician. White became exceedingly unpopular and consequently his work for Oregon has received very scant mention.

There is no doubt but what a very large part—if not all —of the honest advocacy of the Whitman Saved Oregon story has resulted from transferring to Doctor Whitman the claims which Doctor White made, of the influence on Tyler's Oregon policy, of his interviews with President Tyler and Secretary Webster, just before Ashburton's arrival in Washington, though there is not the slightest reason for believing that Doctor White any more than Dr. Whitman really affected in any way the Oregon policy of the national government.

How does Doctor Mowry treat this matter? Though he mentions "White's Travels in Oregon" (published 1848), in his list of authorities, he does not quote one word from it, and nowhere gives his readers any intimattionintimation [sic] that Doctor White had ever been a missionary to the Oregon Indians, or was ever in Oregon before the autumn of 1842, or that he ever was in Washington, or ever saw President Tyler and Secretary Webster, or that he held any official position in Oregon, but only says of him (p. 188): "Doctor White, with a considerable party of settlers, arrived near Whitman's station early in September" (1842).

3. When in August, 1838, Lieut. Charles Wilkes set sail with six ships and nearly 600 men in command of the greatest exploring expedition our government has ever sent out, Van Buren's administration gave him positive instructions to spend six months in exploring "our territory on the northwest coast of America," and the Columbia River, and the coast of California as far south as San Francisco Bay.

April 28, 1841, twenty-four days after Harrison's untimely death brought Tyler to the presidency, Wilkes, with part of his squadron, sighted the mouth of the Columbia, and