Page:The American Catholic Historical Researches, vols. 16 and 17.djvu/211

189 House of Representatives in 1839 "that the ultimate rights of the United States (in Oregon) are seriously endangered" by the occupation of the Country by the Hudson Bay Company. Embodied in the same report is the opinion of Nathaniel J. Wyeth, who wrote: "A few years will make the country as completely English as they desire. . . Already Americans are unknown as a nation. ... A population is growing out of the occupancy of the country whose prejudices are not with us, and before many years they will decide to whom the country shall belong, unless in the meantime the American Government make their power felt and seen to a greater degree than has yet been the case." This was true when Wyeth was on the Columbia, was doubtful in 1839, but in 1843, when Whitman arrived in Washington, was without foundation in fact.

The business of the Hudson Bay Company was to get furs. It was opposed to the settlement of the country by any people, for furs cannot be had in a settled country. When the Methodists established their mission in the Willamette Valley, the beginning of the end of the rule of that company had come. After that the company could do but little to delay settlement, and it did not attempt it. Its officers, under the wise direction of John McLoughlin, treated the missionaries with the greatest consideration, and aided then in many ways.

H. H. Spalding reports that Dr. Whitman said, in the latter part of September, 1842; "I am going to cross the Rocky Mountains and reach Washington this winter, God carrying me through, and bring out an emigration over the mountains next summer, or this country is lost." Again Spalding makes Whitman say a "deep-laid scheme was about culminating which would deprive the United States of this Oregon, and it must be broken up at once, or this Country is lost." This bears on its face the stamp of falsehood. No one has ever stated what this scheme was or why, if it was carried out, Oregon would be lost to the United States. Dr. Whitman never put such ideas on paper; neither did Mrs. Whitman, and they must be rejected as coming from Whitman. If there was such a scheme, Whitman would have told Lovejoy of it, and Lovejoy would have mentioned it in his account of the cause and incidents of their hard Journey to the States.

It is impossible, without consuming too much time and space, to show the untruthfulness of the "Story of Marcus Whitman" in all its particulars and trace its growth from its small beginnings, or to refer to all the literature relating to it. I hope to establish two propositions, (1) that the claim that Whitman saved Oregon has no foundation of fact to rest upon, and (2) that the only connection Dr. Whitman had with the immigrants of 1843 was that of guest till they arrived at Fort Hall, and their paid pilot from that place to the Columbia river.