Page:Scrapbook of a Historian - Frances Fuller Victor.djvu/7

Rh A few days later, John Minto wrote to the Oregonian from Salem, mildly not agreeing with Mrs. Victor's interpretation of the Whitman matter but mostly telling how little she received for writing The Early Indian Wars of Oregon. Then, from San Francisco, came a letter to the Oregonian from Mrs. Victor, with this opening paragraph:

"It is so much the custom for reviewers in Oregon to dissect any book of mine dealing with facts of history, and to bring in the Whitman mission and massacre as the piece de resistance of their reviewer's feast that I have learned to expect, and not particularly to resent it. But on the last occasion, the review of my Early Indian Wars of Oregon, by Mr. H . S . Lyman, although I am not addicted to slang, I was forced to exclaim: "You make me tired!""

The Dalles Times-Mountaineer had over a year and a half earlier in August 1895, made this statement under the title "The Whitman Story:

"Mrs. Victor is fortified in every position she assumes, but her version of the affair will not be eagerly accepted, because it destroys the patriotism and disinterestedness of Dr. Whitman in which the public have had implicit faith for long years."

Also in 1895 the Oakland, California, Times, calling it "A Literary War," had told how Dr. O. W . Nixon clashed with Mrs. Victor over "the agency of Dr. Whitman in the settlement of Oregon." According to the Times writer, "Dr. Whitman, in Oregon, was a sort of John Brown in Kansas."

These are the highlights of the Scrapbook of Frances Fuller Victor, one of the most brilliant of Oregon women and one of the greatest in her benefactions, whose lack of suitable recognition in life has continued for two score years after her death.