Page:The Whitman Controversy.pdf/13

 to "speculate" upon, as she appears to be of a speculative turn of mind. It is safe for me to say it was not done by Americans, yet it left the missionaries in a dangerous and disagreeable predicament, but it was by no fault of theirs.

She claims that Dr. Whitman was making money off the Indians, but says that the mission was not self-supporting—in consequence of which the home board had ordered him to abandon his mission. If we leave out of consideration any interest that he may have felt in the Indians, he certainly would have been loth to comply with this order, for his field of operations would have at once been occupied by the Catholics—the staunch friends of the Hudson's Bay Company, and consequently favorable to British interests, although Mrs. Victor tells us that Catholic priests do not meddle with politics. Soon, instead of a settlement of American citizens, we would have had a settlement of British subjects occupying the ground that would have been abandoned by Dr. Whitman. Every impulse of this truly patriotic American must have revolted at the thought. Well was it, then, for American interests that he held his ground.

Mrs. Victor denies that Dr. Whitman could have believed that he might reach Washington before the boundary negotiations should be completed, yet he did so, and had some three years to spare. She claims that his real object was to establish himself in some government office—then asks why he did not bring out an emigration and a commission in his pocket, as Dr. White had done. Her course of reasoning seems to be about this: as Dr. Whitman did not return with a commission, that fact proves that a commission was what he went for. She quotes from a letter of Dr. Whitman in which he mentions the "secret service fund." This she claims was a scheme of the Doctor's for his own private benefit. It seems that his idea was for the government to give the Indians sheep in payment for their lands, instead of paying them off in annuities with money, beads and blankets—a good scheme, surely, for the Indians. He could see that at no distant day the whites would begin to encroach, and he wanted to avoid trouble by paying the Indians for their lands.

She accuses Dr. Whitman with deceit, because he did not tell McKinlay that his mission to Washington was for the purpose of securing Oregon to the United States. What a foolish thing it would have been for him to take into his confidence the command ant of a Hudson's Bay post? In this instance friendhipfriendship [sic] might have