Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 1.djvu/365

Rh the trip across the plains in a way that brought them when the cry of California gold was raised, or when as Mormon converts they were longing for a refuge from molestation. Then, too, the Oregon pioneers not only led the way; they decided our destiny Pacificward. It is time that history was conferring its award of justice to them. The highway they opened to the greater sea, and which their march made glorious, should take its name from them and thus help to commemorate unto coming generations the momentous import of their achievement for all the future of mankind.

The transcontinental movement as a march of civilization to the west shore of the continent was in its incipiency a missionary enterprise.. There is hardly any doubt, however, but that the home-seeking pioneer would have been on the way just as soon without the initiative of the missionary heroes and heroines. It is, nevertheless, the lasting glory of the Presbyterian and Congregational denominations that under the auspices of their missionary board the first American families successfully made the passage that was to sweep such a marvelous movement into its train. The Methodist Episcopal missionary enterprise antedated all others and played a conspicuous role in the political organization of the Oregon community, but it was not first in setting up the American home. So long as it lacked that it could not bear an American civilization, which was the crucial matter. It was Whitman who demonstrated the possibility of taking households across the plains, and this achievement, too, was a decisive initiative.

But how did the impulse to make this dangerous and arduous journey to the then far-off wilderness of Oregon originate with the missionary and the homeseeking pioneers? The inception of the Oregon move-