Page:The American Catholic Historical Researches, vol. 18.djvu/58

57 seventeen years after Whitman's death and its conception of the Oregon policy of the government is that handed down by tradition in an isolated and remote community.

The real cause of Dr. Whitman's journey to the East was the decision of the| American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to discontinue the Southern branch of the Mission, and his purpose was to secure a reversal of that order, and reinforcements from the Board, and to bring back, if possible, a few Christian families.

The rapidly increasing immigration into Oregon made an increase of Protestant missions essential if Oregon was to be saved from becoming Catholic.

The earliest printed version of the story is in an address on "Early Indian Missions," by Rev. G. H. Atkinson, at Pittsfield, October 5, 1866, but it "does not contain the Fort Walla Walla incident."

The fictitious account of Whitman's journey, its causes, purpose and achievements originated with his colleague in the Oregon mission, the Rev. H. H. Spalding, who was declared by The Oregon Statesman, of August 11, 1855, to be "a lunatic upon the subject of Catholicism and not over and above sane upon any subject"; and "almost if not quite a monomaniac on the subject of Catholicism," says Mr. Bourne, who adds, "his repeated charge brought forth an answer from Brouilet, the Vicar General, of Walla Walla, and nine years later Brouilet' s pamphlet was included by J. Rosse Browne in an official report which he made on the causes of the Indian War in Oregon and Washington. Brouilet's reply is temperate in tone but makes assertions about the attitude of the Indians towards the Protestant missionaries and the causes of it, which the missionaries regarded as slanders. But to have this Catholic pamphlet distributed as public document incensed Spalding beyond endurance and roused him to ceaseless efforts to overwhelm the Catholics with obloquy."

So Spalding accumulated a mass of material which he got published under the title, "Early Labors of the Missionaries of the American Board; etc," in Oregon as an Executive Document 37 (Senate) Forty-first Congress, third session.

It was as an element in this extraordinary campaign of vindication that the legendary story of Whitman was developed. Nothing could more effectively catch the public ear and prepare the public mind for resentment against the Catholics than to show that Whitman saved Oregon to the United States and then lost his life, a sacrifice to the