Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 23.djvu/110



82 ROBERT MOULTON GATKE

fornia where he was prominent in political life. His death occurred in 1869. 19 While not primarily a missionary, his relations with the other members of the Oregon mission were most cordial. He served splendidly the cause with which he was temporarily connected, and even sacrificed his privilege of an early return to the States, in order that one of the mem- bers, Daniel Lee, might visit the Sandwich Islands in an effort to overcome a threatening disease of the throat. His place in the educational history of early Oregon is a worthy one.

Solomon Howard Smith was another teacher who helped for a short time with the work of the Mission school. Smith had come to Oregon as a member of Captain Wyeth's first party. After teaching the school at Vancouver for a short time, he opened a little school for the French Canadian half-breed chil- dren living at French prairie, in which work he was engaged at the time the missionaries arrived to establish their station. Smith was a pioneer of the enterprising Yankee type. To teach school, open a little farm, to aid in establishing one of the first grist mills of the valley, to develop a new farm at Clatsop plains, to take the work horses that he needed on his new farm for almost a hundred miles down the Columbia River on a raft made of boards fastened between two Indian canoes, all seemed a natural part of his enterprising life. In his work of teaching at the mission he was assisted by his wife, Helen Smith, a member of the Clapsop tribe of coast Indians. She had learned to read in an elementary way, and proved to be an able assistant in teaching the Indian children. 20

This paper can not give space to the others who taught in the school from time to time, some six or more faithful teach- ers who gave their best to try and elevate the Indian youth. Nor yet can we give time for an account of the removal of the school in the year 1842 to the present site of Salem, where in what was then the most pretentious structure in the Pacific Northwest a renewed effort was made to save the native chil- dren. Many unfavorable conditions, partly of a temporary nature, made its prospects appear so unpromising that in

19 Bancroft. Oregon, Vol. I, p. 109. 20 For account of Solomon Smith sec Clarke: Vol. I, p. 343, and Vol. II, pp.