Page:The Early Indian Wars of Oregon.djvu/26

8 the shore of the Pacific Northwest, which was neither of the missionary or adventurer classes, but men with families.

To such straits were the friends of Oregon in Washington reduced about this time by the condition of our international affairs, that in the spring of 1842 John G. Spencer, the then secretary of war, found it necessary to invite Dr. Elijah White, the first physician of the Methodist mission, who had returned to his home in Ithica, New York, to come to Washington to answer certain questions; amongst others if he felt competent to pilot an emigration to Oregon that year. For notwithstanding the great amount of writing and public speaking on the Pacific territory claimed by us, and the prospect of the passage of a very favorable land bill in charge of Dr. Linn, senator from Missouri, who had taken up the work suspended by Floyd s retirement from congress, no important movement of the people in the direction of Oregon had yet been made. The people were waiting for the Linn bill to be come a law; and congress was waiting for an emigration movement to justify such a law; for to legislate for Oregon while our northern boundary was unsettled might complicate international affairs. Hence the appeal to White, and the offer of a commission from the government.

White was of that happy-go-lucky temperament that nothing ever dismayed—not even the reproaches of his own conscience and—although he had never crossed the continent, he knew those who had, and felt himself equal to the emergency. He therefore immediately set about the labor of drumming up a company, for it was January, and he must start by the middle of May. His pay as Indian agent was only seven hundred and fifty dollars a year, with the promise of double that amount when the land bill became a law, and permission to draw upon the