Page:Some Observations Upon the Negative Testimony and the General Spirit and Methods of Bourne and Marshall in Dealing with the Whitman Question.pdf/5

Rh Vol. 2, from one of Whitman's letters as, to the good health of the party, and then comment: "All of which shows that the journey was its own sufficient reward, as tens of thousands of people have since found the journey by wagon, train or saddle animal to be." So those two devoted women setting out on such a journey, that was to sunder them from every tie that made their lives worth living to them personally, were just out for a little health tour, or a little pleasure jaunt! Very easy for those women to cross the plains! Nothing particularly worthy of notice in that! Had good health!

Not less marked is Marshall's exhibition of a morose and prejudiced spirit to be found in chapter 8, Vol. 2, on the Massacre. His venemous spirit is found in nearly every reference to the victims of the tragedy. In giving his summary of causes for the Massacre he finally arrives, on page 261, at the conclusion that the chief cause was Whitman's unwisdom in continuing to practice medicine among the Indians though he knew perfectly well that they were in the habit of killing unsuccessful medicine men, while on page 268 he assures us that Whitman had ample warning, but that he possessed extreme obstinacy, and disinclination to accept good advice. So this is the conclusion of the whole matter. Dr. Whitman was to blame for his own murder? This clears the skirts of Hudson's Bay Company, renegade white men, half breeds, and probably Indians themselves! Whitman himself was the guilty party! If the Lord had not mercifully interposed to stay the constructive hand of the author of the "Acquisition of Oregon" we would probably have another chapter demonstrating that Whitman himself instigated the whole thing for the sake of rais~ ing the price of vegetables at Waiilatpu, or getting the government to give two or three sections of land to the mission. Really it seems to us that Whitman, besides all sorts of other obliquities and mendacities, must have been responsible for one crime that not even this "broad minded historian" would have thought of. If he had not been so foolish as to get himself massacred we might never have had all this bother about the Whitman controversy, and might even have been spared the writings of W. I. Marshall!

In connection with the Massacre notice one other illustration of Marshall's spirit in the ready acceptance of the letter of Mr. William McBeari, page 233. There he gives McBeari's version. In several places, among others in the Columbia River by myself, page 207, Josiah Osborne's version is given. Knowing the daughter of Mr. Osborne, Mrs. Nancy Jacobs, formerly of Walla Walla, now of Portland, and having a view of those events directly from her, I have no hesitation in saying that I would believe Mr. Osborne in such a con-