Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 13.djvu/180

172 "While in the East Dr. Whitman visited Washington. In view of the very great interest in Oregon, his evident purpose was to lay before the proper authorities his conclusions, derived from his experience, as to the practicability of a wagon route to the Columbia; and also to urge the desirability of the government establishing a mail route from the Missouri to the Columbia, with government posts or stations along the way, not only for protecting and aiding the immigrants, but also for the purpose of extending a measure of civil government over the vast region between these two rivers. In returning Dr. Whitman joined, in May, 1843, the great immigrant expedition to which I have, referred and which he found completely organized and on its way when he reached the Missouri River. That he freely rendered valuable assistance to this expedition as pilot and counsellor during its long and arduous journey is not questioned. Such service was entirely consistent with his robust Christian character. But the claim put forward, many years after his death, that this whole expedition was the direct outgrowth of his efforts to save Oregon, that he organized it and heroically led it, with all its impedimenta of horses, cattle and wagons, that he might demonstrate to a doubting government at Washington the entire feasibility of such an undertaking, is wholly a fiction of the imagination. This expedition was the outgrowth of the westward movement of the American people in the development of their social and political life, and it would have occurred just as it did had Dr. Whitman never been born.

"The trip of Dr. Whitman to the East was not without its direful effects upon Dr. Whitman himself. His return, accompanied by such an army of occupation to appropriate their lands, aroused to greater fury than ever the bitter fury of the Indians. He became a marked man for vengeance. His God could not be on the Indians' side. In spite of sullen discontent and warnings, he and his devoted wife struggled valiantly at their post for four long years, when they were brutally murdered by the very Indians they were endeavoring to uplift and to save, and the mission came to an end.

"We do well on this commemorative occasion to honor the faithful missionary who endured severe privations, braved great dangers and fell a martyr to the missionary work to which he had devoted his life. But we should do him great injustice to ascribe to him projects of empire for which neither his words nor his acts give any warrant, which necessitate the appropriation to him of the labors of others and require