Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/123

Rh after leaving the Missouri river. From Walla Walla, Parker proceeded to Fort Vancouver where he arrived October 16, and was welcomed and hospitably entertained by Dr. John McLoughlin. Parker visited the mouth of the Columbia, the Willamette valley, and many points in the upper Columbia, going- as far north as Fort Colville, and making a careful study of the Indians and selecting eligible sites for missions. He selected the site of Wailatpu (near where the town of Walla Walla is now built) for a mission, and which Dr. Whitman settled and improved; and where he lost his life and sacrificed his noble wife. Parker was in may respects a level headed sensible man. But he like all the rest erred in their judgment of the Indian character. Parker summed up his observations, declaring that the "unabused, uncontaminated Indians would not suffer by comparison with any other nation that could be named, and that the only material difference between man and man, was that produced by the knowledge and practice of the Christian religion." But he thought there was a great difference between the Indians along the Columbia river and those inhabiting the Rocky mountains. The former would load their visitors with presents, while the latter would beg the shirt off a man's back. Parker returned to the States by seas voyage by the way of the Sandwich islands, reaching Ithaca, New York, in May, 1837, having traveled twenty-eight thousand miles.

We return now to Dr. Whitman. His separation from Parker and return to the states must not only be explained to the satisfaction of the Church, but he must vindicate his course to his friends and maintain a reputation by renewed zeal and energy in the cause in which he had enlisted. And so we find him organizing forces to establish two missions beyond the Rocky mountains; one among the long neglected Flatheads who were the prime movers of the whole missionary movement to Oregon, and one to the Nez Perces, who it seems were in all the investigations found to be a very interesting people for a missionary field. And the more effectually to arouse interest in the Indians, Whitman resorted to the expedients of Columbus and Pizarro, and carried back from the mountains two likely Indian boys to show the conservative Presbyterian Missionary board the inviting material he would have to begin work upon. And with what he had seen, and from common sense suggestions he decided that it was families he must take to Oregon, and not single men; if he was to make a success of his missions. And so he set the example by taking a good woman for a wife, to accompany him to the wilderness, the fateful fortune as it turned out to be, fell to the lot of Miss Narcissa Prentiss, of Prattsburgh, New York, whom he married in February, 1836. Mrs Whitman is described as a person of good figure, pleasant voice, blue eyes, and unusually attractive in. person, and manner, well educated and refined. Having secured one attractive and engaging woman for the mission to the wilderness it was easier to secure another, and so Dr. Whitman speedily enlisted the Rev. H. H. Spalding, a young Presbyterian minister who had then recently married Miss Eliza Hart, a farmer's daughter of Oneida County, New York. Mrs. Spalding had accomplishments, too, if not so well educated, she could be eminently useful as she was; for she had been taught to spin, weave cloth, make up clothing as well as an accomplished cook and housekeeper. Both of these ladies might have stood for models for all that was noble, good and of good report in any community, and were thoroughly imbued with that spirit of self-sacrifice which must come to any person who undertakes to teach and serve the ignorant and benighted natives of any race. Spalding, the man and preacher, hesitated to commit himself to the dangerous enterprise, pleading the delicate health of his wife; but the wife, the greater hero of the twain, asked only for twenty-four hours prayerful consideration, and then went into the expedition with all her heart, not even returning from Ohio to see her parents. To this party. Whitman, was able to enlist the services of William H. Gray, of Utica, New York, a bright, active, energetic young man of some education, and large natural abilities with great courage and forceful purposes in life. Mr. Gray wrote a history of Oregon after he had spent most