Page:How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon.djvu/146

 the greater wonder is that a brainy man like Webster could be so over-reached by an interested party such as Governor Simpson was; well knowing as he did, that he was the chief of the greatest monopoly existing upon either continent—the Hudson Bay Company. All Dr. Whitman demanded was that if it were true, as asserted by Mr. Webster himself, in his instructions to Edward Everett in 1840, then Minister to England, that "The ownership of Oregon is very likely to follow the greater settlement and larger amount of population;" then "All I ask is that you won't barter away Oregon, or allow English interference until I can lead a band of stalwart American settlers across the plains: for this I will try to do."

President Tyler promptly and positively stated: "Dr. Whitman, your long ride and frozen limbs speak for your courage and patriotism; your missionary credentials are good vouchers for your character." And he promptly granted his request. Such promise was all that Whitman required. He firmly believed, as all the pioneers of Oregon at that time believed, that the treaty of 1818, while not saying in direct terms that the nationality settling the country should hold it, yet that that was the real meaning. Both countries claimed the territory, 131 and England with the smallest rightful claim had, through the Hudson Bay Company, been the