Page:Letter from the Secretary of the Interior, re Whitman Massacre, 1871.pdf/3

2 I here with transmit these papers as being all that are on file in this office relating to the subject.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant, E. S. PARKER, Commissioner.

Secretary of the Interior.

, January 28, 18711em : I am respectfully requested by the Rev. H. H. Spalding, the oldest living Protestant missionary in Oregon, to place on file in your Department the accompanying documents giving a history of the early missionary work and labors of Dr. Marcus Whitman, himself, and others; the progress and civilization of the Indians under their charge, without aid from the Government; also a history of the massacre of Dr. Whitman and others; also resolutions of Christian associations in answer to Executive Document No. 38, House of Representatives, and a variety of historical information which it would seem proper to have on file or placed in some more permanent form for future history, that our people upon the Pacific as well as the Atlantic coast may be reminded of the self-sacrificing dispositions of these early missionaries, as well as their patriotic devotion to our country, which, in so great a measure, led to the acquisition of that vast territory upon the Pacific coast. All of which is respectfully submitted. A. B. MEACHAM, Superintendent Indian Affairs, Oregon.

Secretary of the Interior.

In presenting this history to the people of the United States, we will glance—

1st. At the Oregon of 1834, the date that marks the first successful enterprise to secure to the people of the United States their vast Territories west of the Rocky Mountains—its dreary and worthless character, as regarded even by our Government, by reason of its supposed desolate character, and its remoteness and inaccessibility by land route.

2d. The helpless condition of the Territory at that date, in the hands of the Hudson's Bay Company, a powerful British monopoly, governed by a board of directors in Lon don, with a governor and 54 sworn officers in the Territory, with 515 articled men and 800 half-breeds and all the Indian tribes under their control, with a line of well-