Page:The American Catholic Historical Researches, vol. 18.djvu/57

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In, October, 1899, was published "The Story of Marcus Whitman Refuted," by H. M. Beadle, Esq., of Washington, D. C.

In The American Historical Review, January, 1901, "The Legend of Marcus Whitman," by E. G. Bourne, is given.

It is a very critical and most exact examination of the story and "demonstrates" it to be "entirely unhistorical" and a "fictitious narrative." This sustains most strongly Mr. Beadle's contention that it was founded on "a pure invention, without any facts to sustain it," manufactured by a "bigoted Protestant who could see no good in anything Catholic."

A brief outline of the story is:

About the first of October, 1842, while Dr. Whitman was dining at a trading post of the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Walla the news comes of the arrival of a colony of Canadians from the Red River country. The assembled company is jubilant and a young priest cries out "Hurrah for Oregon! America is too late, and we have got the country." Whitman realized that if Canadian immigration has really begun the authorities at Washington ought to know it, and a counter American immigration ought to be promoted, so that when the joint occupation of Oregon is terminated, the presence of a majority of American settlers may turn the balance in favor of the United States by right of possession. The government must be informed as to the value of Oregon and its accessibility by overland emigration. In spite of the protests of his fellow missionaries, he immediately starts for Washington, where he arrives March 2, 1843, most opportunely to secure the postponement of negotiations looking to the surrender.of Oregon by pledging himself to demonstrate the accessibility of the country by conducting thither a thousand immigrants, which he does during the ensuing summer.

Prof. Bourne declares: "In both the essentials and the explanatory details the story of how Marcus Whitman saved Oregon is fictitious. It is not only without trustworthy contemporary evidence, but is irreconcilable with well established facts. No traces of knowledge of it have ever been found in the contemporary discussion of the Oregon question.

The story first emerges over twenty years after the events and