Page:History vs. the Whitman saved Oregon story.djvu/58

52 wrote to Rev. M. Eells asking him to either print that diary or turn it over, unmutilated, to the Oregon Historical Society. To that letter I received no answer, but on pages 19 and 20 of this "Reply," after quoting that request from me, he says that some years since he did "Copy by hand and turn over to Professor F. G. Young, Secretary of the Oregon Historical Society" (not that diary unmutilated, but) "all that was of public interest in this diary"—he being the only judge of what was of public interest—and that "The diary does not include the time under discussion," but covers and "Is quite full from November, 1838, to April 22, 1842," and has a page and a half covering "February 21 to March 7, 1843," and then says, "The reader can judge from this on what little evidence and knowledge the professor (i. e., myself) bases some of his statements." What I had claimed was, that "That diary must contain a good deal of matter that would be very important in the discussion of the Whitman question." Our candid author seeks first to hedge by claiming that "it does not cover the time under discussion (that is September, 1842, to October, 1843), as if it would be possible to properly discuss the Whitman question without covering the whole time that the Whitman-Spalding Mission existed, i. e., 1836 to 1848, but he is careful not to quote another word out of the something more than 25,000 in the diary, except the sixty-one before mentioned.

Determined to know what was in this so carefully concealed original source of Oregon history, in July, 1902, I went from Chicago to Portland, Ore., mainly to see this part of it which M. Eells claims to have turned over to the Oregon Historical Society, and if that should not seem to me a proper selection from it, to go to Mr. Eells' home and ask to see the diary itself. Finding that the Assistant Secretary and Librarian of the Oregon Historical society in Portland knew nothing of any extracts from Spalding's Diary having ever been given into the custody of the Society, I went to Skokomish, and at Mr. Eells' house examined and copied some 11,000 words from it, and found in it, exactly as I expected, a great deal of matter which is of much importance to a thorough understanding of the Whitman Saved Oregon question, but not a single word in it which furnishes the least support to any version of the Saving Oregon theory of Whitman's ride, or to any claim of great patriotism, or farsightedness, or intellectual or moral greatness in Marcus Whitman's character or achievements. As it is evident that no advocates of the Whitman Saved Oregon story will ever have any desire to publish any considerable part of this diary, any more than to publish the correspondence of the Oregon Mission with the American Board, it appears likely that the public will have to wait for several pages of it in my forthcoming book