Page:History vs. the Whitman saved Oregon story.djvu/76

70, 1842, that a record of it was made, but that "the book containing the same was in the keeping of the Whitman family. At the time of their massacre, November 29, 1847, it disappeared." The house of Dr. Eells at the Whitman Mission was burned in 1872, a fact which Mr. Evans knew. He had also been furnished with a pamphlet containing the above statement of Dr. Eells. Yet in 1884 he wrote: "In 1866 Rev. Gushing Eells had in his possession the minutes of all the missionary meetings. The assertion that those records were destroyed by fire in 1872 will not be accepted as a satisfactory excuse that between 1865 and 1872 those minutes were not appealed to to settle the question of what transpired at the Mission meeting of 1842."

It will be noticed that Mr. Evans did not say that "In 1866 Rev. Gushing Eells had in his possession the record book containing the reports of all the Mission meetings," but "the minutes'* of those meetings, which is quite a different matter, as every one who has had much experience as a Secretary can testify. Furthermore, Rev. Myron Eells himself was the authority on whom Elwood Evans depended for those dates, for in a "History of the Congregational Association of Oregon and Washington," by Rev. Myron Eells, we read that "The proceedings of the meetings of the Missions were either burnt or destroyed at the Whitman massacre in 1847, or at the time of the fire at Rev. Gushing Eells' in 1872." This was quoted to me by Mr. Evans in a letter dated Tacoma, Wash., August II, 1882, two and one-quarter years before the date of the article in the Oregonian, from which Rev. M. Eells makes this quotation, which he claims misquotes his father's statement about the records of the Mission. Reply (p. 23), he continues, "Mr. Evans wrote that Daniel Webster said in his speech March 30, 1846. "The Government of the United States never offered any line south of 49 degrees (with the navigation of the Columbia) and it never will. It behooves all concerned to regard this as a settled point. I said as plainly as I could speak or put down words in writing, that England must not expect anything south of 49 degrees. I said so in so many words." The first two sentences are in that speech. Afterwards when questioned he added in regard to what he had just told the Senate, not England, in 1842, "the senator and the Senate will do me the. justice to admit that I said as plainly as I could and in as short sentence as I could frame that England must not expect anything south of the 49th degree," except that there might be friendly negotiations about the navigation of the Columbia, and about certain straits, sounds and islands in the neighboring seas. Mr. Evans's quotation is a strange mixture, and the words "put down words in writing" were not then used by Webster."