Page:Some Observations Upon the Negative Testimony and the General Spirit and Methods of Bourne and Marshall in Dealing with the Whitman Question.pdf/3

Rh was the genesis of the essay. It certainly sounds like it. It has the spirit of certain historians and schools of history which go gunning to see if they can find some available target to shoot at in the way of some fine story or current belief. William Tell, Pocohontas, Washington and the Cherry tree, many other popular stories have been exploded by some "tireless and patient investigator with scientific methods!" What can Professor Bourne of Yale and his major students find to expose? They must find something in order to maintain their reputation as "scientific historians." Well, here is that Whitman story which some missionaries and college builders in a distant state seem to take much comfort in as an example of heroism and patriotism! How would it do to punch the eyes out of that by way of a little class practice? Such seems to me largely the attitude of Professor Bourne.

But when we turn to Mr. Marshall we find a prevailing tone of bitterness, abuse, and vituperation which removes him from the class of reliable historians and places him in that of mere controversalists. We refer readers to his own books for examples. His stock in trade is the imputation of dishonesty and falsification to men whom the Pacific Northwest honored in their time as models of Christian devotion and honesty. On page 50, Vol. 2, of the "Acquisition of Oregon" note his reference to "three credulous clergymen, all eager to get money from the national government, and profoundly ignorant of the * * * diplomatic struggle, etc." He refers to Spalding, Atkinson and Eells. He then gives certain letters of Atkinson in connection with the Dalles mission land. On page 51 he declares that "the Whitman legend would never have been heard of had the national government paid the thirty or forty thousand dollars claimed by Spalding and Eells for the destruction of the mission and allowed their claims for a square mile of land around each mission station." In the next paragraph he says that until he read Atkinson's letters he "had no idea that it (the 'legend') sprung up first from a contest with the Methodists as to which of them had saved Oregon, and so as a reward was entitled to a square mile townsite at the Dalles." Hence "the origin of the legend was vastly more sordid than I had previously supposed." And I would ask the people still living in Oregon and Washington who knew Eells and Atkinson, as well as their descendants who knew of them, what they think of a historian who· places those heroes and saints in the ranks of petty grafters. Read those letters of Atkinson and see whether Marshall gives them any fair interpretation. And what of Father Eells? When we call up his long years of unselfish devotion, how he and his faithful wife almost worked their