Page:The Early Indian Wars of Oregon.djvu/23

Rh in the history of all invasions or explorations of new countries, the invaders have brought back with them some best specimens of the native people to show in evidence of something they wished to prove. But in this instance it was not unnatural that these Indians, perceiving that white men were possessed of knowledge and property above anything ever imagined among themselves, should have desired to obtain a clue to this superiority; nor, since all primitive people are superstitious, with a great awe of spiritual influences, that they should have inquired concerning the God of the white men, and desired to be taught his ways with his creatures. It was a day of great missionary enterprises, and the call of the Flatheads was quickly responded to by the organization of a mission party of five men—two preachers, Jason and Daniel Lee, from Stanstead, Canada, and later of Wilbrahoam seminary; and two laymen, Cyrus Shepard of Lynn, Massachusetts, and Philip L. Edwards of Richmond, Missouri; with, as a helper, Courtney M. Walker of the same place, engaged for one year. These, in the spring of 1834, joined a fur-hunting expedition under Nathaniel J. Wyeth bound for the Colum bia river. In addition, two naturalists—Townsend and Nuttall—were attached to Wyeth s party, and all these, although keeping up separate organizations, traveled together with the St. Louis Fur Company under William Sublette, the joint expedition numbering seventy men, with two hundred and fifty horses, and a small herd of cattle.

The missionaries did not, as had been expected, tarry among the Indians upon the upper Columbia. Perhaps the American fur companies who traded with them did not desire it; at all events they came with Wyeth to the lower Columbia, and were received in an unexpectedly friendly fashion by the British company whose head quarters were at Vancouver, and who also politely but determinedly made Oregon very uncomfortable for the Yankee trader, who soon sold out to them and retreated from the field.