Page:The Early Indian Wars of Oregon.djvu/49

Rh unless the chief and all implicated in the assault should beg the doctor's pardon, which they consented to do.

Hearing of these things prevented some missionaries at the Sandwich Islands from joining the Oregon missions, and prevented the board from sending more across the continent. The Indian boys were mischievous and thieving, and carried off the best fruits raised in the mission garden, which troublesomeness inspired Gray to sicken them with a dose of ipecac introduced into the finest looking melons. The illness induced by the drug caused the Indians to accuse the missionaries of designing to poison them, and incited them to fresh acts of hostility.

These experiences at Waiilatpu were duplicated at Lapwai, where the Nez Percés pulled down Spalding's mill, threatened him with a gun, and offered a gross insult to Mrs. Spalding. These were things hard to be borne; but both Whitman and Spalding were determined to keep their hold upon the homes they had built up in the wilderness under so many difficulties, until such time as the government of the United States should come to their rescue.

Added to his other trials, Dr. Whitman was worried by demands from the home board that the Oregon missions should be made self-supporting, a thing which could not happen while he had so few assistants, and where there was no market for any productions. He could barely subsist his family by raising and grinding grain enough; and by eating horse flesh in place of beef. He could not purchase groceries, clothing, machinery, nor other necessaries, and so he told the board—and that if they wished him to turn trader they must furnish him assistants and means, and even then wait for a market to come to him, as the Methodist missionaries and Hudson's Bay Company controlled the trade of the country.

To all this the board finally returned in 1842 that Dr. Whitman must abandon the Cayuse station and join Walker and Eells in the Spokane country; and Spalding