Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 16.djvu/425



CORRESPONDENCE 397

an order from me to pay $29 to N. B. Buford on a draft given for my services up to the first day of April, you will please pay the said $29 and take the draft, whatever may be the face of the draft, without any power of attorney from me to said Buford.

Yours under date of Nov. 14th, 1844, says : "Yours of 16th of Sept. was laid before our Ex. Board at their last meeting and your request to have your salary commence at the time of your starting for Oregon was agreed to." But in the commission you state, "for the period of twelve months to receive three hundred dollars from the said Board, or at that rate per annum, the time to commence as soon as you reach the territory, the above sum to cover traveling expenses and salary and you to derive the remainder of your support from the people among whom you labor."

Now I have sacrificed at least $300 in preparation for the journey, and my pecuniary means are so reduced that I must break at least $100 or $150 on the salary to be ready to start ; and then we have a wilderness of 2500 miles to cross, with not a single church organization to receive us and provide even our bread. Now I leave your Board to say whether of the two letters shall define the time in which my salary shall commence. The sacrifice is made and I shall go, God being my helper, and do what I can. I do not faint or feel dis- couraged. It is not absolutely certain whether we go by Council Bluffs or Independence, Missouri. 79 You will do well to address me one letter to Independence to the care of Eld. Hezekiah Johnson, and another to Council Bluffs, immediately on the reception of this. I suppose you are advised that Mr. Zuron [Jason] Lee 80 has been at Washington the past winter

79 These were convenient points on the frontier for reaching the Platte River Valley, along which was the first part of the trail to Oregon. Independence had for some years been the rendezvous for those starting west on the Santa Fe trail, and in fact to all points in the Rocky Mountain region and beyond. Overton Johnson and W. H. Winter, Route Across the Rocky Mountains, in Ore. Hist. Soc. Quar. VII :6s. Bancroft, Hist, of Arizona and New Mexico, 329.

80 Jason Lee, prominent in the Methodist mission in Oregon, had been in the East since May, 1844, on business connected with Oregon and the mission. He died March 12, 1845. The Methodist Institute, the forerunner of Willamette University, was organized in February, 1842. Wm. D. Fenton and H. W. Scott, on Jason Lee, in Oregon Hist. Soc. Quar. VII 1237, 239, 263. See also note 95.