Page:Some Observations Upon the Negative Testimony and the General Spirit and Methods of Bourne and Marshall in Dealing with the Whitman Question.pdf/15

Rh considerations into account is it not preposterous to claim that the absence of these claims to the extent noted by these historians, and in view of the fact that the missionaries themselves had a positive reason for not publishing it widely, necessarily invalidates their later testimony? Of course it was a curious inadvertance, one greatly to be deplored, and one that would almost justify a little extra choice villification by W. I. Marshall, that those narrow-minded, mercenary, ignorant, and; quarrelsome missionaries at Waiilatpu, Chimakain, and Lapwai, did not maintain regular correspondence with the Oregonian, P.-I. and Spokesman-Review, and telephone connections with the chief business centers, and send a daily night letter to Washington City. But they were so parsimonious and so anxious to sell vegetables to the immigrants, and general conditions in the Forties so unfavorable, that I suppose it never really ocurred to them that they could do it.

Negative testimony! That is the basis of the whole argument against the Whitman legend. By the same line of reasoning or the same faulty application of an acknowledged canon of history we could reduce all history to a reductio ad absurdum. Grant that such letters of the missionaries prior to Whitman's ride as have been found and reported do not proclaim his national purposes, but suppose that the only people that had the opportunity of knowing his aims testified that he had them, but that he and they had sufficient reasons for not writing them at that time. Are we going to throwaway such firsthand testimony for the sake of an assumption? All history is in the first place individual memory testimony. Greater or less time always must pass before any of it is reduced to writing. Some people would make errors if they wrote it down within an hour. Others would retain and correctly report their knowledge years afterward. And we may well emphasize in this connection the well-known fact of human nature that the big things are ordinarily accurately retained and reported. It is the little things in which memory is so treacherous.

Therefore at this point we must needs consider the character of the witnesses to the Whitman claims. We refer here to Eells' Reply to Bourne, page 54 et seq. These witnesses were men of unusual mental vigor and moral rectitude. I personally knew most of them and their families after them. Mr. Gray and Mr. Spalding, were the only ones who could be called "cranky," and they, have been abused and maligned by the opposition beyond all reasonable limits. While they had some intense hatreds and prejudices, their general powers of observation and statement were excellent. No one who knew W. H. Gray ever questioned his force of mind or rectitude of character,