Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/593



native barbarism, such men as Jason Lee and Marcus Whitman challenged the attention and consideration of all thoughtful men. It was no ordinary man that would voluntarily assume the task of lifting up eighty thousand natives to a con- sideration of better things than his dumb instincts could not comprehend or ex- press. It was a brave man, a hero of heroes, that would take his life in his hands to make a journey across trackless plains, mountains and deserts to reach and teach the lowest of the lowly in a land that could offer him nothing but the earth for a foundation and the skies for a covering.

It is not a wonder then that the names of Lee, Whitman, and Blanchet, have left their impress upon the history of three states, with reputations for heroism, patriotism, virtue and integrity that have overflowed the boundaries of their fields of effort and become a national inheritance. Admitting to the full, all the criticism that has ever been made of the lives or characters of these men, the fact remains uncontested and incontestable, that their works and reputations doth still overshadow all their successors in the same field.

And the enduring fame of these men does not depend on the question whether Lee, or Whitman influenced the United States government to assert its rights to Oregon. That political question was one that ought not to have required or needed any entreaty from these pioneers on an unfriendly outpost two thousand miles distant from any encouraging voice. And it will always stand as the stigma and disgrace of a president of the United States, and his cabinet minister, that he did not assert the rights of his country and extend the protecting aegis of its flag over these devoted Americans upholding their country's honor and just rights. What these pioneer preachers did do — and it cannot be gainsaid — was to set in motion a train of events that resulted in immigration, that aroused public opinion in distant states, and that set the seal of sobriety, morality and justice on the whole movement as one largely the work of teachers and missionaries. And whether Lee or Whitman were prudent, or imprudent, signifies but little in the judgment of candid history. They both set up the same banner in the wilderness, and called all men to reject or approve. Had Whitman retired from his post he might have saved his life. But he was on the outpost. If he retired what might have re- sulted to the immigrants all struggling forward to reach for succor and support. Starvation was as bad as Indians. That Whitman offered assistance in some degree, and in a moral degree, is indisputable. And his service to the immigrants, to the founding of a state, and to the great thought that a religious teacher was standing as the friend of both natives and his own countrymen, and proclaiming morality, justice and truth in the heart of the wilderness, is undeniable.

And with these men, the character and fame of that soldier of the cross, Peter John De Smet, rises to equal grandeur and heroism. De Smet, more than all others of the pioneer period, secured the confidence and obedience of the Indians. None of these men had the support of the government; and in a very limited way, had they the support of the Hudson's Bay Company. Many of the Indians, notably the Blackfeet and Sioux, could not be influenced by any form of teach- ing or religion. They hated and despised every thing coming from the white man. And these Indians, and other tribes if uninfluenced, might have at any time combined and exterminated the whole people in Oregon, if they had not been restrained by missionary influences. For the enemies of the white man among the Indians were never quite sure that the friends of the white man among the Indians would not join the white man in any attempted war of extermination.

These pioneer preachers and priests did the best they could with the wild men they must influence and control. And how much of bloodshed the labors and influence of De Smet prevented, the world will never know. The rivalries between the Catholics and Protestants in the conversion or proselyting of the Indian neophytes in 1840 appears at this distance to be simply ridiculous. And of the reality or comparative virtues of these conversions, it is not now necessary to consider. But the general question of influencing and controlling the Indian