Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 13.djvu/178

170 which took place in 1843, and which virtually determined the destiny of this great region for all time to come! The story of this pilgrimage is yet to be told. It comprised an organization of nearly a thousand persons gathered principally from the states bordering on the Mississippi. It was made up largely of families with their children, taking with them their household goods and large numbers of horses and cattle. The journey was one of over two thousand miles across arid plains, broad and rapid rivers and over almost impassable mountains. Viewed in its historic aspect this was not merely a movement of individuals intent upon bettering their material condition. It was all this and more. It was the carrying of social and political organization from the region of the Mississippi to the region of the Columbia, and laying the foundations for civil government in the three imperial commonwealths that were to be.

"This great movement has suffered in its historic importance by being presented, not as the legitimate outgrowth of the social and political activity of the time which was carrying the "Star of Empire" westward, but rather as the, result of the political labors of the American Board missionary Dr. Marcus Whitman that it was in fact but the culmination of his wise, far-seeing labors to save the territory from becoming exclusively a British possession through the machinations of the Hudson's Bay Company and the Catholics. So much has been written upon the "Saving of Oregon" by Dr. Whitman that a brief statement of his identification with the settlement of the, territory and the establishment of the sovereignty of the United States to it, is admissible here.

"We have seen that Dr. Whitman and Mr. Spalding, acting under the auspices of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, established a mission to the Indians in the Walla Walla Valley in 1836. It is evident that early in 1842 the Board was seriously exercised over the future of their mission. The Board was apprised of some dissensions within the mission itself, and of serious dangers surrounding it, arising from the growing hostility of the Indians, which it was alleged was secretly abetted by the Catholic priests as well as by the roving trappers and adventurers in the territory. Then, too, the discussion of the Oregon question in Congress and by the press was bringing the settlement of the territory, the establishment of civil government and the treatment of the Indians therein, into the, political arena, where it was felt that the mission had no place. Accordingly, the officers