Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 20.pdf/169



To determine the exact date when the first seeds of Christian truth were planted in Oregon soil—meaning historic Oregon, or the "Oregon Country," the area bounded on the south by the 42d parallel, west by the Pacific Ocean, north by the 49th parallel, and east by the summit of the Rock Mountains—is very difficult. So far as known, the first white men known to have set foot on any portion of this soil were Davis Coolidge, first mate of the sloop Washington, commanded at this time by Capt. Robert Gray, and Robert Haswell, third officer of the Columbia, who had been transferred to the sloop as second mate, and several of the crew. On or about August 3, 1788, the little vessel "made a tolerably commodious harbor"—presumably Tillamook Bay—when Captain Gray sent the officers named ashore with several of the crew, among them his colored boy, Marcos, to get some grass and shrubs. The latter, having used a cutlass in cutting grass, carelessly stuck it in the sand while carrying the grass to the vessel; whereupon a native seized it and ran to the Indian village. Marcos pursued the thief and seized him by the neck, but was soon over powered by the savages and killed. The officers and men retreated to their boats and rowed to the sloop, followed by the natives in canoes, who were checked by swivel fire from the sloop. One of the crew was wounded by a barbed arrow.

The next men to touch the soil of Oregon were Captain Gray and his clerk, John Hoskins, "in the jolly-boat," and presumably a number of his crew—all going "on shore to take a short view of the country," in the afternoon of May 15, 1792, on the north bank of the Columbia at a point about twenty miles from its mouth.

Whether Gray or any of his men gave the Indians, who were very numerous about the good ship Columbia when it was anchored in what is now known as Gray's Bay, any hint or suggestion relating to religion in any sense, is not