Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/121

Rh Tualitin plains by the point where Hillsboro is now located, and on by where the town of Cornelius is located, crossing- over the Tualtin river at Rocky Point where the first flouring mill in Washington County was constructed; from thence ascending the northwest end of the Chehalem mountain ridge and following the ridge five miles eastwardly, they found themselves on Bald Peak from which point they could see the great Willamette valley spread out before them for sixty miles south. Oregon was then all a wild wilderness country. Elk and deer were everywhere as tame almost as sheep.

From the Chehalem mountains, the party descended into the Chehalem valley, and passing along by the little prairie where the prosperous town of Newberg and its Quaker College is now located, the party swam their horses across the Willamette river, and crossing in a canoe kept on south to the farm of Joseph Gervais, where they stayed all night with the hospitable Frenchman, and for whom the town of Gervais has been named. The next day they selected a tract of land two miles above the Gervais farm on the east side of the river and sixty miles south of Portland for the site of their mission; and where they built their first mission house. Returning to Vancouver, Dr. McLoughlin furnished a boat and boatman to move the household goods from the ship and transport them up the Willamette river to the mission point; seven oxen were loaned with which to haul timbers to build houses at the mission, eight cows with calves were furnished to supply milk and start stock; and by the 6th of October, 1834, Jason Lee and his party were all safely landed at their mission home in the Willamette valley—the first Protestant mission in the United States, west of the Rocky mountains from the North Pole down to the Isthmus of Panama.

It will be asked by the reader, why did not Lee answer the pathetic call of the Flathead Indians and establish a mission among them. If Lee had been moved wholly by sentimental consideration he would have gone to the Flatheads. But while Jason Lee was first, last, and all the time an evangelist and servant of his God, he was at the same time eminently a man of safe practical common sense. With nothing but his own light and resources to guide him, he must shoulder all the responsibility of his position, and take that course which would secure success in this great experiment, or be blamed for a failure. He had noted carefully the conditions of an experiment with the Flatheads, six hundred miles from sea coast transportation, surrounded by unfriendly Indians, and exhausted by continuous wars with the vengeful Blackfeet. The outlook was not inviting. And the very fact that he had become the friend of the Flatheads, if he had decided to locate there, would have aroused the enmity of the Blackfeet and other tribes, and not only cut off from him the friendship and access to other tribes, but might have resulted in the destruction of himself, supporters and innocent victims he had sought to help. More than that, the Willamette was the wider field, with the greater outlook to the future. Lee. saw, then, as we see now, that the Willamette valley was more important to the future than all the valleys of the Rocky mountains. His decision was based upon the practical common sense and the great interests he had come to serve, and has been a thousand times over vindicated by the development of the country, and by the vast results of his work.

Let us now for a few moments, look in on this young missionary to the Oregon Indians as he builds his first log cabin, three thousand miles distant from the comfortable and luxurious homes of the people who sent him out here from the state of New York. As he stood there on the virgin prairie alongside the beautiful Willamette gliding silently to the sea, the hills, the waving grass and silent woods, with native men, all innocent of the great work of civilization ahead. He was facing the great responsibility, and he must commence his work with the humblest means. Before a sheltering house could be raised, he must sharpen his axes, his saws, and break his half wild oxen to the services of the yoke and the discipline of a driver. Napoleon might easily win the greatest battles, but he would have failed utterly to make a wild ox pull in a yoke, as