Page:History vs. the Whitman saved Oregon story.djvu/66

60 "To confer with the Committee of the A. B. C. F. M. in regard to the interests of this Mission," and with not the least intimation that he was to go for any other purpose. For these (which the few great historians who have had a chance to read them all in my MSS. agree are conclusive evidence that missionary business, and not patriotism, impelled him to make his ride), our author substitutes his father's alleged "recollections" from 1866 to 1882, though those "recollections" are not only wholly unsupported by a single sentence of contemporaneous written pr printed evidence, but on all points on which we can compare them with contemporaneous written documents are proved beyond any doubt to be wholly incorrect. Let us see how our truth-seeking author treats the evidence of the others.

We have already seen (pp. 40-42 ante) that Dr. Mowry, while using a great amount of what Gray and Spalding after 1864-66 "recollected"—or imagined—about Whitman's ride, and endorsing them as good, truthful men whose "recollections" may safely be depended upon as to the place Whitman should occupy in the history of Oregon, himself totally rejects all that they wrote about Whitman's ride, which was a matter of their own personal knowledge and experience, to-wit., its origin, by not even alluding to the Spalding-Gray version of the great dinner at Walla Walla, and the taunt anent the announcement of the speedy arrival of the Red River settlers, etc., nor to their "recollection" that to save Oregon was the "sole purpose" of his ride, nor to their equally positive "recollection" that Whitman barely succeeded in preventing the trading off of Oregon in the Ashburton treaty for a codfishery on the banks of Newfoundland.

Rev. M. Eells in like manner calmly repudiates all of these "recollections" of Gray and Spalding, (since they have been proved beyond any dispute to be totally false,) but still, like Dr. Mowry, quotes extensively from them to support other parts of the Saving Oregon story, and, carefully suppressing their contemporary letters and diaries, with those of his father and Rev. E. Walker, which demonstrate beyond any doubt the falsity of the whole Whitman Saved Oregon story, he imposes upon the credulity of his readers as trustworthy history what Gray and Spalding "recollected" about what Whitman said and did in Missouri and in Washington, from 2,000 to 3,000 miles away from them!