Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 1.djvu/73

Rh mythical character. He was a real man; a missionary of the American Board. In 1842 he found the Indians around him so dissatisfied, that he called a synodical meeting of the neighboring missions, and submitted to them the question "Shall we give up the mission of Waiilatpu?' The synod decided in the negative. The doctor then said to his co-laborers, "Then you must vote me leave of absence, for I must go home to confer with the board on the situation.' In fact Doctor Whitman seems to have had a mild kind of monomania on the subject of ox teams drawing plain Missouri wagons from Fort Independence to the Columbia at Wallula. Anyway, his brethren of that synod all knew that he carried that conviction with him to the states. They knew, too, that he wanted an opportunity to publish it along the frontiers to the restless multitude who were asking the question, "Was it safe to attempt to take a family to Oregon in an ox wagon?' Doctor Whitman said he knew this could be done; said he himself would guide a train of wagons to Wallula, on the Columbia, and reach there before the fall storms should hinder their progress.

Let us now turn to the restless people of the frontier who wanted to go to Oregon, and inquire what their mental picture of the great barriers of the journey was. At this time, 1842, these restless people might be found from Eastern Tennessee to Western Missouri. In their view the Kocky Mountain barrier was not a single line of mountains, but a complex system of ranges, like the one that separated Eastern Virginia and the Carolinas from the valley of the Ohio, with whose character they were familiar. They clearly apprehended the difficulties of such mountain travel, without roads or bridges, without shops for repairs, or towns for repurchase of supplies run short. They saw plainly the necessity of starting with wagons loaded for the whole journey, and of getting