Page:The American Catholic Historical Researches, vols. 16 and 17.djvu/217

195 mountains. In 1841, the Red river emigrants from Canada had brought their women and household goods in carts to the Columbia. The greatest difficulty in getting wagons over the mountains was in cutting roads through the timber. Crossing the plains, tires would have to be frequently reset on account of the dry air. By drawing tent cloths or wagon covers under the wagon beds, good boats could be made of them to cross rivers. Taking wagons to the Pacific was a task of labor not of engineering.

The statement that Whitman saved Oregon rests upon the unsupported assertions of his biographers. Burnett's summing up of the value of Whitman's services might be admitted, did we not know that Jason Lee had done more than Whitman toward making Oregon known to the American people. To claim that either one or both saved Oregon to the United States is absurd. That part of it settled by Lee and Whitman was never in any danger of being taken from the United States. The country would have gone to war on the proposition that the line should be further south than the forty-ninth parallel.

It now remains to be been how far the statement is true that Whitman organized the emigration of 1843 and guided the emigrants to Oregon.

Whitman's historians say that he arrived in Washington March 2 or 8, 1843. After transacting his business in Washington, which must have taken ten days or two weeks, he went on to Boston, where he must have spent some time. He then went to New York, visiting his own relatives and those of his wife, and transacting some business. He spent some time in Illinois visiting relatives. He was back on the Missouri with other relatives, before the 20th of May, for he attended, by invitation of Peter H. Burnett, a meeting of a committee appointed by the emigrants, on that day. It is manifest that he could not have done much to organize the emigration that went to Oregon that year. He was not present when an organization was effected. Peter H. Burnett was the first captain, James H. Nesmith, afterwards United States Senator from Oregon, orderly sergeant, and John Gantt, pilot. Whitman remained behind when the train started, catching up with it on the Platte river. The only one who accompanied him was his nephew. He had no provisions except a ham, when he overtook the train. He rendered service to the emigrants as a physician, but he had nothing whatever to do with the government or conducting of the train until leaving Fort Hall.