Page:Oregon Native Son volume 2.djvu/255

Rh On page 35 is found, "Dr. Whitman, in his vexation with the Indians, before leaving for the states, threatened them with bringing back many people to chastise them." I call for the proof! I have read everything I could find on the subject of the Doctor's going east, published and in manuscript, and this is the first time I ever heard it intimated that he made such, or any threat. Rev. Gustavus Hines, a pioneer missionary of 1840, who was well posted on the affairs of early Oregon, says in his "History of Oregon," that the Doctor went east "with the avowed intention of bringing back as many as he could enlist for Oregon," but says nothing about a threat, and that is all that I have ever been able to find on the subject. Instead of this, subsequent to 1843, he explored a route from the foot of the Blue mountains to the mouth of the Umatilla river for the emigrants, so they would not pass his mission station, thus giving rise to possible ill feelings against them by the Cayuses, for crossing their lands.

At the top of page 36 is found: "His whole thought seemed to be now to repel Indian aggressions. Whatever admirations he had at first felt for the aboriginal character had been completely effaced by his experiences among them." These statements are mere assertions without any proof, and are not true, and, consequently, the deduction in the sentence following, which says that "the settler in him was stronger than the missionary," is also an untruth. For many years Mrs. Victor has tried to make Dr. Whitman out to be a deceitful, selfish man. Such assertions ought not to be in the pages of a history published under the auspices of the State of Oregon. That Dr. Whitman did much for it during its hours of infancy is beyond controversy, and he is deserving of at least fair treatment at the hands of the great commonwealth of which he was among the very first to lay its foundations deep and well.

On page 40 Mrs. Victor says: '"First. That with the purest intentions, and with the best religious ideas of the times, the Presbyterian missionaries of the upper country found it impossible to implant spiritual religion in the minds of the aboriginal inhabitants of the earth. Second. That the influence of contact with savagery was to unspiritualize themselves; to drive out of their minds confidence in the power of religion to change the nature of men in the low stage of their mental evolution." These conclusions are not true. Spiritual religion was implanted in the minds of some of the Spokanes, Nez Perces and Cayuses. See "Eells' Indian Missions," pages 6388, for proof. The lives of Messrs. Spalding, Walker and Eells, who lived in Oregon and Washington for many years thereafter, show that they were not unspiritualized. They subsequently labored for the Master as faithfully as before, all among the whites, and Messrs. Spalding and Eells also labored among the Indians. The third conclusion, "That the change this discovery made in themselves, being preceived by the Indians, was a cause of displeasure to them, and of danger to the missionaries," is consequently false, and hardly worth noticing.

On page 98 mention is made of "negotiations which were then in progress for the sale of Waiilatpu to the Catholics." That thought is wholly from the author's imagination. There were never any "negotiations in progress" or thought of, for the sale of the Doctor's station (Waiilatpu) to that denomination. There may have been, and probably were, negotiations on the part of the Catholics to obtain some land from the Indians for a mission about three miles from Whitman's.

I deny, as asserted on page 160, "that the average Christian of that day was pledged in his own conscience to be a bigot," Mrs. Victor to the contrary, and it is certainly unfortunate for the State of Oregon that such language should receive an indorsement through finding a place in a history published by it, thus defaming pioneer heroes and heroines to whom belongs the credit of much of what she is at the present time.