Page:Some Observations Upon the Negative Testimony and the General Spirit and Methods of Bourne and Marshall in Dealing with the Whitman Question.pdf/9

 recollections. Otherwise there is no reason why matters might not be later reported by memory which might not have appeared at all and would not naturally have appeared at all in the written records. A third qualification: It must be supposed again that there were no positive reasons for withholding certain matters from the contemporary written record and that those reasons did not afterward exist for withholding subsequent testimony by memory.

Come now to the necessary qualifications upon what we named as the third canon of historical evidence-that is, the primary credibility of the original witnesses to any event. This is fundamental in law or history. Nobody can gainsay the proposition that the first requisite of evidence is to secure the original witnesses to the event, and, other things being equal, their testimony must take precedence of any other. But now there are some very important qualifications to this law of evidence. Were the witnesses competent to observe and report, were they honest and reliable, did they have any motives for distorting the truth, what were their relations to contemporary records if any such exist? Obviously all these qualifications must be taken into account in listening to testimony, and this is the basis for cross examinations in court or cross examinations in history.

Placing thus in juxtaposition these two canons of historical evidence with the necessary limitations we are prepared to apply them to the Whitman controversy as it is revealed in the original written records and in the subsequent recollections of the original witnesses. This process leads us first to ask the question: "Are letters and other documents contemporary with "Whitman's Ride" in direct contradiction to the recollections which were reduced to writing some years later, or do they simply omit to mention those essential things embodied in the recollections? To answer this question we must ask what are the contemporary records. They are reducible practically to three groups: First, letters written by the missionaries from 1836 to 1847 to the American Board, and to various friends in the East; second, Government documents and correspondence; third, letters and other documents pertaining to the emigration of 1843. Time forbids me to quote these letters and documents, and I can simply say that they are found in greater or less fullness in the books themselves which we are considering. Now, boiled down to the smallest possible compass, the proposition of Bourne and Marshall is that the first group contains no mention of Whitman's aim being other than missionary business; that the second group contains no hint that Oregon was in danger of being lost, nor any mention of Whitman; and that the third group contains no evidence that he bore any important part in