Edward Gaylord Bourne

“ Fifty-two years later, in the most careful appraisal of human achievement in America that has ever been made, the voting for the Hall of Fame at New York University, Marcus Whitman received nineteen out of a possible ninety-eight votes to be ranked as one of the fifty greatest Americans. ”

“ No new sources of value relative to the history of the Oregon question have been discovered and the extraordinary posthumous fame of Marcus Whitman is found to rest upon the unsubstantial foundation of a fictitious narrative first published many years after his alleged achievement.
When a traditional narrative is subjected to criticism two questions present themselves: "Is it true?"—and if not: "How did it come to be believed to be true?" In other words, "What is its origin and history?" The answer to the first question is of especial interest only to students of American history. ”

“ If emigration on a grand scale was to begin, the government ought to protect it and establish supply stations. If anything was to be done to reverse the action of the Board it must be done at once, or a year would be lost.
Dr. Whitman was an energetic, impulsive man, of sanguine temperament, and he revolted at giving up the station at the time when its best opportunity to render material and tangible services to Oregon was at hand. ”

“ Government is instituted no less for protection of the property, than of the persons, of individuals" (p. 342) .
Madison.
"In a general view I see no reason why the rights of property, which chiefly bears the burden of Government and is so much an object of legislation, should not be respected as much as personal rights in the choice of Rulers." ”

“ Men now smile when they read or hear of the attempt of Alexander Sixth to divide the undiscovered world between Spain and Portugal, but what single act of any Pope in the history of the Church has exercised directly and indirectly a more momentous influence on human affairs than this last reminder [80] of the bygone world sovereignty of the Holy See? ”

“ A company of some five or ten men may be found of piety and intelligence, not to be appointed by the Board or to be immediately connected with it, who will go to the Oregon country as Christian men, and who, on some terms to be agreed upon, shall take most of the land which the mission have under cultivation, with the mills and shops at the several stations, with the most of the stock and utensils, paying the mission in produce from year to year, in seed to the Indians, and assistance rendered to them—or in some similar manner, the particulars to be decided upon in consultation with the men. ”

“ Oregon has all the virtues we claim for it. A few Americans have gone thither to develop our nation's wealth. We are far off, but our hearts are with the nation of our birth. We are pioneers, and can it be possible that our claims will be ignored,—that our country can consent to trade off her territory and our allegiance to a foreign power?'
"Dr. Whitman did not rest the question with the Secretary. ”

“ Nothing could more effectively catch the public ear and prepare the public mind for resentment against the Catholics than to show that Whitman saved Oregon to the United States and then lost his life a sacrifice to the malignant disappointment of the "Jesuits "and the Hudson's Bay Company.
Some of the heads to the various sections in this collection may be quoted to show its range, but no adequate idea of the hodge-podge can be gained by any description. One must believe it unique in all the vast mass which has issued from the Government Printing Office. ”

“ Whitman, till a young priest, perhaps not so discreet as the older, and not thinking that there was an American at the table, sprang to his feet, and swinging his hand, exclaimed: 'Hurrah for Columbia! (Oregon.) America is too late; we have got the country. In an instant, as by instinct, Dr. Whitman saw through the whole plan, clear to Washington, Fort Hall, and all. He immediately rose from the table and asked to be excused, sprang upon his horse, and in a very short time stood with his noble 'Cayuse,' white with foam, before his door ”

“ Experience had shown the Portuguese pilots that a direct southerly course down the African coast was subject to delays by calms, adverse currents, and unfavorable winds. Vasco de Gama recommended that Cabral on his voyage to India in 1500 should sail south-west until he reached the latitude of the Cape of Good Hope, when he should sail due east, availing himself of the trade winds. This course would be safer and quicker. [30] The Spanish sovereigns felt it safe to concede something, for Columbus had estimated the distance from the Canaries to the new lands as something over 900 leagues. ”

“ Incidental or collateral assumptions usually accompany this statement to the effect that great ignorance and indifference in regard to Oregon prevailed in Washington and generally throughout the United States, and that Dr. Whitman was able to dispel the ignorance and to transform the indifference into a deep and widespread interest. In both the essentials and the explanatory details the story of how Marcus Whitman saved Oregon is fictitious. It is not only without trustworthy contemporary evidence, but is irreconcilable with well established facts. ”

“ They had nothing to fear, but to be ready on his return. The stopping of wagons at Fort Hall was a Hudson Bay Company scheme to prevent the settling of the country by Americans, till they could settle it with their own subjects, from the Selkirk settlement. This news spread like fire through Missouri. The doctor pushed on to Washington and immediately sought an interview with Secretary Webster—both being from the same State—and stated to him the object of his crossing the
rivers with, a wagon track so deep and plain that neither national envy nor sectional fanaticism would ever blot it out. ”

“ America is too late, and we have got the country." Whitman realizes that if Canadian immigration has really begun the authorities at Washington ought to know it, and a counter American immigration ought to be promoted, so that when the joint occupation of Oregon is terminated, the presence of a majority of American settlers may turn the balance in favor of the United States by right of possession. The government must be informed as to the value of Oregon and its accessibility by overland emigration. ”

“ It is to be hoped that the history of this controversy may some day be published, for the picture of the grapple of criticism with a legend in its earlier growth, and of the survival if not victory of the fiction in spite of crushing attack in an age which flatters itself on its intelligence, would be full of sobering instruction for the historical student.
The strongest champion of the story at this crisis was the Rev. Myron Eells, a son of Cushing Eells. In 1882 he published his History of Indian Missions on the Pacific Coast. ”

“ The real history of Marcus Whitman is briefly as follows: Sent out as a missionary to the Oregon Indians in 1836, he established a prosperous station which proved a haven of rest for the weary emigrant and traveller. In 1842 he is ordered to give up the station, but at the very time when the orders come a large emigration party arrives much reduced by the hardships of the journey from Fort Hall. Their leader, Dr. White, announces that the United States are going to occupy the country and that many are preparing to come the following year. ”

“ In Rome there is nothing more impressive than to see the magnificent column of Trajan surmounted by a statue of the Apostle Peter and to reflect on the historic changes that made suitable in the eyes of the Romans of a later day that transformation of the emperor's monument into a pedestal for the figure of a simple missionary of whom he probably never heard. ”

“ In short, for Madison, all his study of the history of federal government confirmed his diagnosis of the existing evils. Permanent peace, prosperity, and development could not be obtained under any type of confederacy known to history. All have fallen a prey to dissension and disintegration. Some- thing new must be devised in the form of a federal constitu- tion. From the debates in Philadelphia emerged our Constitution, to be recognized and classified as a new type : the Bundesstaat, or Federal State, the creation of Madison's thought more than of any one else's. ”

“ Calling attention to the Catholic missionary efforts, for which he refers the committee to De Smedt's Indian Sketches, he continues, "I think by a careful consideration of this together with these facts and movements you will realize our feelings that we must look with interest upon this the only spot on the Pacific Coast left where protestants have a present hope of a foothold. It is requisite that some good pious men and ministers go to Oregon without delay as citizens or our hope there is greatly clouded, if not destroyed." ”

“ His ride across the continent in the winter of 1842, a winter memorable for its severity, is without a parallel in history. It stands as the sublime achievement of a prophet and a hero, who saw and suffered that his country might gain. The United States paid $10,000,000 for Alaska. ”

“ The most striking result was entirely unexpected and contrary to the design of the Bull. Designed, in the interest of Spain, to exclude Portugal from discovery and colonization in the west, it secured Portugal a title to Brazil which her only formidable rival could not impeach. Another result, also undesigned, but of great importance, was the promotion of geographical knowledge. The establishment of the Demarcation Line led to Magellan's voyage, and the efforts to determine it gave a powerful impulse to the progress of geodesy. ”

“ Within that time I have returned to my field of labour, and in my return brought a large immigration of about one thousand individuals safely through the long and the last part of it an untried route to the western shores of the continent. Now that they were once safely conducted through, three successive immigrations have followed after them, and two routes for wagons are now open to the Willamette valley. Mark, had I been of your mind I should have slept, and now the Jesuit Papists would have been in quiet possession of this the only spot in the western horizon of America not their own. ”

“ The answer to the second on the other hand will be not only of general, but of scientific interest, for it will trace the steps by which the imaginative reconstruction of history strangely distorting the relative significance of men and events, has slowly but steadily pushed aside the truth, until it has invaded not only the text-books but the works of historians whose reputation gives their utterances a certain authority. ”

“ That Whitman did press this point about the practicability of a wagon route is rendered probable by the tone of a sentence in his letter to the Secretary of War in regard to the immigration of 1843: "they have practically demonstrated that wagons drawn by horses or oxen can cross the Rocky Mountains to the Columbia River, contrary to all the sinister assertions of all those who pretended it to be impossible." ”

“ A scientific settlement in which both parties could acquiesce seemed hopeless, so finally the two sovereigns in 1750 agreed in consigning to oblivion the rival claims growing out of the Demarcation Line and began all over again, declaring Alexander's Bull and the treaty of Tordesillas and others based thereon all null and void. Spain secured unquestioned possession of the Philippine Islands, while the boundaries of Brazil were drawn for the most part as they exist to-day, partly on the basis of possession and partly on that of the physical configuration of the country. ”

“ As these negotiations of Governor Simpson in Washington and Whitman's success in frustrating them are the very heart and life of the legend of Marcus Whitman, [131] without which it would never have come to anything, and as they are a pure invention, one of three conclusions is forced upon us. Either this story was invented by Marcus Whitman himself and reported years afterward by Spalding and Eells, or it was invented in common by Spalding and Eells, or Spalding invented it and Eells copied it from him. The last is, I believe, the true solution. ”

“ I cannot give you much of an account of the emigrants until we get on the road. It is said that there are over two hundred men besides women and children. They look like a fair representation of a country population. ... We do not ask you to become the patrons of emigration to Oregon, but we desire you to use your influence that in connexion with all the influx into this country there may be a good proportion of good men from our own denomination who shall avail themselves of the advantages of the country in common with others. ”

“ Nixon has been the literary editor of The Chicago Inter-Ocean for twenty years or more, and in the columns of this journal he has been the standing champion of the Whitman story, rushing to its defence against criticism with an impetuosity that has rendered him apparently incapable of stating his opponents' position correctly or of verifying his own assertions in rebuttal. ”

“ I am a missionary, it is true, but my country needs me now.' And taking leave of his missionary associates, his comfortable home, and his weeping companion, with little hope of seeing them again in this world, he entered upon his fearful journey the last of Oct. 1842, and reached the City of Washington the last of March 1843, [6] with his face, nose, ears, hands, feet, and legs badly frozen. It is well that the good man did not live to see himself and his faithful associates robbed and their characters slandered by that very Government he was ready to lay down his life for. ”

“ Whitman's journey to the east was the decision of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to discontinue the southern branch of the mission, and his purpose was to secure a reversal of that order, and reinforcements from the Board, and to bring back, if possible, a few Christian families. The rapidly increasing immigration into Oregon made an increase of Protestant missions seem essential if Oregon was to be saved from becoming Catholic. ”