J. R. Wilson

“ The white man who had come to Oregon needed his service not less than the Indian who had gone had needed it, and he was not less willing to give it to the one than he had been to give it to the other. Accordingly, from 1840 on to the close of his life we find him addressing himself with untiring zeal and unflagging energy to the work of providing the opportunities of education for the children of the white settlers of Oregon. ”

“ Coincident with the rapid decay of the Indian was the coming in increasing numbers of the white man. Painful as the failing of the native people was to the warm and earnest heart of Jason Lee, and disappointing as it was to his first and highest desires for his mission, he was not long in recognizing the changed conditions of his work in Oregon, or in adapting himself to them. Here at the seat of the original mission his mission to the Indian was practically closed at the end of six years. ”

“ Leaving behind his only child, a daughter of tender years, with trusted friends, and turning his back upon this land of his love and great and single purpose, with infinite toil and difficulty he made his way to the other side of the continent, that he might make clear to those to whom under God he was accountable the wisdom and the entire rightness of his conduct and purpose. ”

“ Their moving cause was not the desire to enlarge human knowledge, not to carry forward the frontiers of civilized life, but it was primarily to discover and open a new pathway to the riches of the East, a motive made urgent when the inroads of the Turks had closed to Western Europe the trade routes of Asia. ”

“ The fur trade, which hitherto had been the chief inducement for white men to come to the Oregon Country, would not have been furthered by any movement that had resulted in the colonization and cultivation of the country, or which had induced to settled life and civilized occupations its wild and roving inhabitants. ”