Frances Fuller Victor

“ In 1840, when the American fur companies were abandoning the mountains, beaver no longer being plenty, two mountain men—Robert Newell and Joseph L. Meek—brought both of Whitman's wagons through to the Columbia, leaving the cart at the mission, but taking the four-wheeled vehicle to the Willamette Valley the following year. This part of the road to Oregon—from the Snake River to the Willamette—being by far the most difficult portion of the route, why should history deprive these men of the honors which belong to them and bestow it upon another? ”

“ Spalding should return to the East, while Dr. Whitman should join Walker and Eells at Spokane. Such an ending to six years of constant effort was not to be thought of. Besides, the arrival of an immigration furnished an argument, which if properly presented to the board ought to satisfy them that the two stations which were ordered closed could not only, with an annual influx of immigrants, hungry from the plains, become self-supporting, but the source of wealth. ”

“ In the same chapter in which he relates these exciting incidents he tells us that Sir George Simpson went to Washington that winter to take a hand in shaping the boundary treaty, which was also Whitman's errand. All this is romantic enough, but unfortunately it is not true. If any one interested to know the facts (and we might assume that Dr. Nixon should be such a man) will take the trouble to open Sir George Simpson's "Voyage Around the World," he will find that the purpose of Simpson's visit to America was solely to look after the affairs of the London company ”

“ I now come to the consideration of that part of the Gray-Nixon narrative which deals with the immigration of 1843. It should be unnecessary to go into the examination of recorded evidence, the claim being on the face of it untenable. Dr. Whitman arrived in the United States in March, 1843, and found, according to his own report to the board, preparations already in progress for a large migration. ”

“ Why a man who during his lifetime had absolutely nothing to do with the politics of Oregon, and who has left not the least record of desiring to have any, should become, nearly half a century after his death, a shining example of devotion to tis country's interest as against another power, with whose subjects he was on terms of amity if not of dependence, my darkened intellect fails to comprehend.
The real author of Dr. Nixon's "true romance" was W. H. Gray, the carpenter and general assistant of the Waiilatpu mission in the Walla Walla Yaliey, which was the superintendent's or Dr. ”

“ Whitman at night, she being protected by a single white man. Alarmed at this outrage she fled to Fort Walla Walla and was sent to The Dalles, where the Methodists had a station, and spent the year of her husband's absence in visiting different places in the Columbia and Willamette valleys. ”

“ Farms and other property were to be disposed of, wagons and cattle with six months' provisions to be provided, and all arrangements perfected for quitting the country forever. Yet Gray says that the magic voice of Whitman accomplished this marvelous exodus by simply passing through Missouri on his route to Washington, and Dr. Nixon says, by way of making an improbable thing sound probable, that while Whitman wag in the East attending to mission and private affairs, Mr. ”

“ It j goes without saying that a body of 800 or 1000 people with cattle and household goods could not be got together by the efforts of one man between the first of March and the middle of May in a country thinly settled like the border States, or indeed anywhere. ”