Page:How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon.djvu/153

 Dr. Whitman, Gen. Lovejoy had neglected no opportunity to publish 137 far and wide that Dr. Whitman and himself would, early in the Spring, pilot across the plains to Oregon, a body of immigrants. A rendezvous was appointed, not far from where Kansas City now stands, at the little town of Weston. But they were in various camps at Fort Leavenworth and other points, waiting both for their guide and for the growing spring grass—a necessity for the emigrant.

Certain modern historians have undertaken to rob Whitman of his great services in 1843, by gathering affidavits of people who emigrated to Oregon in that year, declaring, "We never saw Marcus Whitman," and "We were not persuaded to immigrate to Oregon by him," etc. Doubtless there were such upon the wide plains, scattered as they may have been, hundreds of miles apart. But it is just as certain that the large immigration to Oregon that year was incited by the movements of Whitman and Lovejoy, as any fact could be. There is no other method of explaining it. That he directly influenced every immigrant of that year, no one has claimed.

True, old Elijah White had paved the way, the year before, by leading in the first large band of agriculturist settlers; but men of families, undertaking a two thousand mile journey, with their families and their stock, were certainly desirous of an experienced guide. They may, as some of 138