Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 25.djvu/112

94 interest was aroused and they wanted to learn the truth. As St. Louis was then the chief trading point for the hunter and trapper, to that city four Indians were sent to get the details of this strange tale. Tradition and history tell they learned but little. Two of them died in St. Louis. The other two, disappointed and disheartened, turned toward the land of their fathers, no wiser than when they left their wigwams in the far West. One died on the way—the other may have reached home. Here ends this part of the story—but it was not the end. It was but the beginning. The story was published in the newspapers and it came to the notice of those whose life was devoted to the service of God.

The missionary spirit was fanned into a flame at the thought of vast numbers of human beings living and dying without knowledge of the Gospel and all that it means, and with the unquenchable ardor and zeal of the crusader, the pioneer missionaries, the men who blazed the way for others, soon were struggling forward, fighting their way across thousands of miles of desert and boundless plains, crossing great mountain ranges, fording or swimming dangerous streams, enduring all things to answer the call of the Indians for knowledge of the white man's God.

In the settlement of various parts of what is now the United States, more often than otherwise, the real leaders, the pioneers, were missionaries of various faiths, all imbued with the same spirit, all serving the same God, and all consecrating their lives to a cause founded on the fatherhood of God and the brotherhoood of man. It is well that it was so, for their lives, the principles on which they acted, and on which was built this great commonwealth, will be in time of stress the sure foundation on which we can rest in security and a rule by which we may measure our duties and obligations as citizens.

The Circuit Rider was a natural product of the time in which he lived. The population was small and scattered over wide areas. There were no means of locomo-