Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 16.djvu/204



184 HENRY L. TALKINGTON

The fur trader with his Indian wife and half-breed children did much to prepare the Indian for the coming of the white man. Peter Skene Ogden's ransom of the survivors of the Whitman Massacre, and McLoughlin's noble benefices to the early missionaries, and early immigrants, have few parallels in the world's history.

THE ERA OF MISSIONS.

In 1830 the whole of the Oregon country was inhabited by roaming bands of Indians who were continually at war with each other. The story of the four Flathead Indians and their trip to Saint Louis in search of the white man's Bible is too well known to need mention here. Sufficient is it to say that the Methodist Mission in the Willamette Valley near Salem, Oregon, the Whitman Mission near Walla Walla, the Spald- ing Mission at Spalding, ten miles east of Lewiston, and the Saint Mary's Mission near Coeur d'Alene, were all estab- lished in response to that request.

Space will not permit of speaking in detail of all of these missions; only the Spalding and the Saint Mary's, or as it is sometimes termed, the DeSmet Mission, will be noticed, as the others will doubtless receive due consideration by those in the vicinity of their location.

The Spaldings were met at Fort Walla Walla by a delega- tion of the Nez Perces, who took them to the site of their future work. They arrived in November and began life in a tepee, where they remained until the January following, when a little log house had been constructed. Later a larger building used for church and school was erected.

While the work of the Spaldings was primarily religious yet they taught the Indians all the arts of civilization. Spald- ing began by teaching the men how to sow, cultivate, reap, thresh and grind grain, as well as to raise other food products and livestock. Mrs. Spalding taught the women how to carve, spin and weave cloth, and make clothes ; how to cook and keep house, care for the sick, etc.