Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 1.djvu/175

Rh ashes, venison, bread, butter, milk and tea, while the host interestingly told of having known Captain Bonneville and his party on the plains, as well as members of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. In his journeys he knew the watershed of the Columbia and Missouri by heart, and in one night had set traps in both rivers.

One of Oregon's most polished and charming of her earlier pioneers, was entertained at a frugal board, and in graceful acknowledgment sent the hostess some soup plates from the Hudson's Bay store, and a daughter of the house exhibited them to him forty years afterward. Although he returned to New England to spend many of the last years of his life, his interest in Oregon never waned, and during his visits here his reminiscences of early days were a delight to those who were so fortunate as to hear them.

The first school opened in the original Oregon country for American children was by Doctor Whitman at the Waiilatpu Mission, on the Walla Walla River. The school was attended by the children of missionaries, those who were left orphans, and the children of immigrants who were belated by winter storms and kept from entering the Willamette Valley.

Eliza Spalding was born at Lapwai Mission in 1837, and at ten years of age was sent to Whitman's station in charge of a trusty Nez Perce woman. These two journeyed alone on horseback three days, and camped as many nights by the trail. The air was cold on the table land adjacent to the Snake River, but the child was tenderly cared for by this faithful woman. Eliza was interpreter, owing to her thorough knowledge of Nez Perce, but her school-time at the mission was brief. Fifty years afterward she told of the awful tragedy that ended the life-work of a great and good man and his wife, and those others who shared their fate. Half a century had not