Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/261

Rh story was subject to doubt. Nevertheless, he tells us that Gen. William Clark, of the Lewis and Clark expedition, told him in 1834 that two years before—that is, in 1832—four Indians, probably Nez Perces, had accompanied a party of white trappers from the mountains to St. Louis, and had given him an interesting account of their journey and its objects. From the trappers they had heard of the white man's God, and the Book he had given, and they wanted to know. General Clark was not a doctor of theology, and appears to have answered them in merely conventional terms. The story carried by the newspapers to the East touched the religious imagination, and served the missionary purpose just as well as if the sole object for which the Indians had accompanied the trappers was to make these inquiries. Certain it is that the cause which started the first of our missionaries to Oregon was publication in New York of this simple Indian story. Let not incredulity smile at the simplicity of the recital. This is the true beginning of the history of the making of Oregon.

The missionary expedition did not find its resting place in the country of the Nez Perces or the Flatheads, according to the original intention. It fell in with the Wyeth party and came on down to the Willamette, then the settlement of a few of the men of the Hudson Bay Company—British subjects, most of whom had taken Indian wives. The Wyeth party was to meet at the mouth of the Willamette the little vessel which Wyeth had dispatched from Boston, with goods for the Indian trade. The destination of the Wyeth party determined also that of the Lee party. Both were received with kindness by Doctor McLoughlin, the chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company. Shepard remained at Vancouver, detained by sickness. Jason Lee and Courtney Walker came on up the Willamette by boat, and Daniel Lee and Edwards took horses, for which they were indebted to the kindness of Doctor McLoughlin, and