Page:Some Observations Upon the Negative Testimony and the General Spirit and Methods of Bourne and Marshall in Dealing with the Whitman Question.pdf/6

104 of statements instead of McBeari. Marshall, knowing neither one, follows the line of prejudice and accepts McBeari's version. Marshall seems to feel it incumbent on him to give the Hudson's Bay Company and the Catholic priests the benefit of every doubt, and at the same time open his large battery of rancorous hatred against the American missionaries.

Further in illustration of Marshall's spirit note his continuous epithets for Spalding; as "Spalding's crazy brain," page 276; "Lunatic," page 278. While it is no doubt true that Spalding's mind was impaired by the dreadful experiences of the Massacre any decent historian would find a more humane style in dealing with him.

But Father Eells was so totally different a type of man that no shadow of excuse can be found for Marshall's imputations of dishonesty and untruthfulness to so revered a character. On page 196 he refers to Eells' "ingenious and wholly fictitious version of that tale." He builds up substantially the charge that Eells fabricated the whole story for the sake of accomplishing two things; first, to get possession of that townsite at the Dalles; and second, to humbug people into giving money to Whitman College. Are the thousands of people in this state who know the heroic and unselfish devotion, the clear mind, the tenacious memory, the simple and guileless honesty, the almost painful rectitude of that good man, likely to accept such imputations?

Space forbids adding others of the numerous available examples of the spirit of this historian. We must enter upon the more important and more philosophical part of our subject, an analysis of the historical theory and methods which underlie the treatment of the Whitman controversy by both Bourne and Marshall.

In considering this philosophical phase of the subject the two authors may justly be considered as a unit. They employ the same general theories of historical evidence, and to a considerable degree the same arguments and the same matter. On page 71 of Bourne's "Essays in Historical Criticism" he names Langlois, and Seignobos, and Edward L. Pierce as references upon the relative credibility of recollections and cotemporary writings as sources of history. As they seem to apply the theory it is substantially this: Memory testimony given some considerable or appreciable time after the events cannot be accepted as evidence, unless supported by contemporary writings, if such exist. That is the first working hypothesis. On page 99, volume 2, of Marshall's "Acquisition of Oregon" the same principle is stated in a quotation which he calls an unquestioned canon of historical investigation, as follows: "A single authentic contemporaneous written statement of the reasons which impelled any man to