Page:Letter from the Secretary of the Interior, re Whitman Massacre, 1871.pdf/21

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This vastly important emigrant route, thus established by the personal sacrifices and hazards of those two devoted missionaries, was saved to our country, as it was about to be extinguished by the false representations and wiles of the Hudson's Bay Company. by the personal hazards and hardships of that devoted missionary, Dr. Whitman, in the California mountains, in the winter of 1842 and 1843.

Those two missionary heroines, with Dr. Whitman, Dr. Gray, and myself, crossed the mountains in 1836, bringing the first cattle and wagons. In 1838 four lady missionaries—Mrs. Smith, Eells, and Walker, from New England, and Mrs. Gray, from New York—and their husbands, and Mr. Rogers, from Cincinnati, crossed, bringing cattle, but no wagons. Two lady missionaries crossed in 1839—Mrs. Griffin and Mrs. Minger, from New York, and their husbands. In 1840 three missionary ladies from New York. Mrs. Smith, Clark, and Littlejohn, and their husbands, and the first emigrant lady. Mrs. Walker, and her husband, crossed the mountains and brought their wagons; but on reaching Fort Hall they were compelled to abandon their wagons by the representations of the Hudson's Bay Company, who declared that wagons never had passed and could not pass through the Snake country and the Blue Mountains to the Columbia. This Mrs. Walker and her husband went from Oregon to California in 1841—the first American lady in California.

In 1841 no missionaries crossed, but several emigrant families, bringing wagons, which, on reaching Fort Hall, suffered the same fate with those of 1840. In 1842 considerable emigration moved forward with ox teams and wagons, but on reaching Fort Hall the same story was told them and the teams were sacrificed, and the emigrant families reached Dr. Whitman's station late in the fall, in very destitute circumstances. About this time, as exents proved, that shrewd English diplomatist, Governor Simpson, long a resident on the Northwest coast, reached Washington, after having arranged that an English colony of some 150 souls should leave the Selkirk Settlement on the Red River of the lakes in the spring of 1842, and cross the Rocky Mountains by the Saskatchawan Pass.

The peculiar event that aroused Dr. Whitman and sent him through the mountains of New Mexico, during that terrible winter of 1843, to Washington, just in time to save this now so valuable country from being traded off by Webster to the shrewd Englishman for a "cod fishery" down east, was as follows: In October of 1842 our mission was called together, on business, at Waiilatpu–Dr. Whitman's station—and while in session, Dr. W. was called to Fort Walla-Walla to visit a sick man. While there the "brigade" for New Caledonia, fifteen bateaux, arrived at that point on their way up the Columbia, with Indian goods for the New Caledonia or Frazer River country. They were accompanied by some twenty chief factors, traders, and clerks of the Hudson's Bay Company, and Bishop Demois, who had crossed the mountains from Canada, in 1839—the first Catholic priest on this coast; Bishop Blanchett came at the same time.

While this great company were at dinner, an express arrived from Fort Colville, announcing the (to them) glad news that the colony from Red River had passed the Rocky Mountains and were near Colville. An exclamation of joy burst from the whole table, at first unaccountable to Doctor Whitman, till a young priest, perhaps not so discreet as the older, and not thinking that there was an American at the table, sprang to his feet, and swinging his hand, exclaimed: "Hurrah for Columbia! (Oregon.) America is too late; we have got the country." In an instant, as by instinct, Dr. Whitman saw through the whole plan, clear to Washington. Fort Hall, and all. He immediately rose from the table and asked to be excused, sprang upon his horse, and in a very short time stood with his noble "Cayuse," white with foam, before his door: and without stopping to dismount, he replied to our anxious inquiries with great decision and earnestness: "I am going to cross the Rocky Mountains and reach Washington this winter, God carrying me through, and bring out an emigration over the mountains next season, or this country is lost." The events soon developed that if that whole-souled American missionary was not the "son of a prophet," he guessed right when he said a "deep-laid scheme was about culminating which would deprive the United States of this Oregon, and it must be broken at once, or the country is lost." We united our remonstrances with those of sister Whitman, who was in deep agony at the idea of her husband perishing in the snows of the Rocky Mountains. We told him it would be a miracle if he escaped death either from starving, or freezing, or the savages, or the perishing of his horses, during the five months that would be required to make the only possible circuitous route, via Fort Hall, Toas, Santa Fé, and Bent Fort. His reply was that of my angel wife six years before: "I am ready not to be bound only, but to die at Jerusalem or in the snows of the Rocky Mountains for the