Whitman Mission

“ Thomas Laurie's inaccurate quotation, he nowhere quotes what Whitman wrote about any other object in his making the ride except to lead out a migration, and nowhere from beginning to end of his book does he even intimate that the Mission would have been "broken up just then" if Whitman had not made his ride. ”

“ As he rode the red men peeped and whispered
"Bad Medicine."
"Kills our people."
"Takes our lands."
"We ought to avenge Elijah."
"Black Gowns better teachers."
Mr. Spalding preached to the Indians at the lodge of Sticcas. At four o'clock Dr. Whitman returned, pale and weary. "I met the Bishop and two priests at Tauitau's house," he said. "They invited me to tea, but I had not the heart to partake. They want to buy my mission." He dropped his head in thought. It was very hard for Dr. Whitman to give up his beloved mission, and particularly to rivals. ”

“ Jonathan Edwards says, in speaking of The Whitman Mission in 1842: "The Indians were cultivating from one-fourth to four acres of land, had seventy head of cattle, and some of them a few sheep." The same author gives a graphic 92 description of the painstaking work of Dr. and Mrs. Whitman, not only in the school room, but in the Indian home, to show them the comforts and benefits of civilization. Every Indian who will plant is furnished the seed. ”

“ To the missionaries, he said he was going East to prevent Oregon from falling into the hands of the British. To the Board, he said he had come to try to induce a few Christian families to return with him and settle about the mission. To the Secretary of War and his family friends, he confided a plan for keeping the Indians quiet by giving them sheep for their lands."
Mrs. Victor does not seem to comprehend the fact that Dr. Whitman could have more than one motive in going East, and that if he had told one person one thing and another person another, he might not have intended to deceive them. ”

“ Besides, news had reached the board of unpleasant differences among the missionaries themselves which seemed to bode ill for the work of the mission. Whitman now learned that the order for the abandonment of the Walla Walla mission, if not already issued, was at least imminent. A less farsighted and courageous man than he might have welcomed the order to leave the post where hardships were great and where perils from the natives were thickening around him. ”

“ Men may be as positive in error as in truth.”
The most prolonged and bitterly contested controversy that has divided the ranks of pioneers and pioneer historians is what is known as the Whitman legend. Possibly not ten per cent of the people of the state have anything but a passing interest in this controversy or special knowledge of the merits of the question.
question. It was over twenty years after Whitman's ride before it attracted any general attention. The Whitman mission was a child of the American Board of Foreign Missions. Dr. Whitman was its representative in the Oregon country. ”

“ What I had claimed was, that "That diary must contain a good deal of matter that would be very important in the discussion of the Whitman question." Our candid author seeks first to hedge by claiming that "it does not cover the time under discussion (that is September, 1842, to October, 1843) , as if it would be possible to properly discuss the Whitman question without covering the whole time that the Whitman-Spalding Mission existed, i. e., 1836 to 1848, but he is careful not to quote another word out of the something more than 25,000 in the diary, except the sixty-one before mentioned. ”

“ In fact, as we see his environments in his Mission Station in Oregon, these 241 hard lessons of his earlier years seem to have been, in the best sense of the word, educational.
With but little help, he opened up and cultivated a great farm, and built a grist-mill and a saw-mill, and when his grist-mill was burned, built another, and, at the same time, attended to his professional duties that covered a wide district. It was the wonder of every visitor to the Mission how one man, with so few helpers, accomplished so much. ”

“ Whitman at the Waiilatpu Mission, as the Doctor and my father were very warm friends. Here we were to separate, I to return to Fort Walla Walla (now Wallula) to join the express, and father to continue across the Blue Mountains to Fort Hall. When Dr. Whitman learned what the plans were for my future, he protested, and urgently urged father to send me to the United States and "make an American "of me. He said this country would certainly belong to the United States in a few years, and I would succeed better here if I was educated in the States and be come an American in thought and feeling. ”

“ From that event the older Indians appear to have lost most of their interest in the mission and its work, and the task of the missionaries never after ran as smoothly as before. The best of them still attended the religious services, and the school flourished. The medicine men of the Cayuse had long been jealous of Whitman's power, and they helped the grumblers and mischief-makers to lessen the Doctor's power and influence with the tribe. ”

“ The American Board had resolved to establish a mission in Oregon, and they notified him that they preferred to send married men into the missionary field. This was unexpected but welcome news to Whitman, and was in accordance with the last advice from Dr. Parker: "Bring with you a good wife." He had already in his own mind made his selection in the person of Miss Narcissa Prentice, a daughter of Judge Prentice, of Angelica, New York, but owing to the privations and perils of the journey, and the isolated life among savages, he had hesitated to ask her to make such sacrifice. ”

“ The Indians never had a more sincere and earnest friend since good William Penn, founder of my native city, gave the world that glorious illustration of 'unbroken faith by the deeds of peace.' The martyr Whitman acted with equal good faith to the perfidious Cayuses. That at this mission had been aggregated all those appliances of civilization, church, school-house, work -shops, etc., by which the Indians were made the recipients of the advantages of civilized life. ”

“ This mission church was Presbyterian in name and Congregational in practice, while Whitman and the other missionaries were supported by the American Board. The American Board was always Congregational, but, at that time, the Presbyterians were co-operating with the American Board. ”

“ Every other advocate of the Whitman Legend who has quoted from this letter has refrained, as carefully as Dr. Mowry has, from making a fair quotation from it, so that this is the first chance the public has ever had to read exactly what Whitman wrote three and one-half years after his return to Oregon, and all that has been found that he ever wrote, making any claim that anything other than the business of saving the mission from destruction impelled him to make his ride. ”

“ Not only were provisions supplied, but a mill was erected about twenty miles from the mission for the purpose of giving employment to the immigrants while they tarried. Located as it was, the mission could not be anything but of great assistance to immigration, and Mr. Whitman as its directing genius could be nothing but the friend of the immigrant.
Of Mr. Whitman himself, only the pleasantest recollections remain with Mr. Hinman. He is not inclined to make a hero out of him, but speaks of him as "brave and discreet, full of energy, and living only for others." ”

“ These Indians did not murder their missionaries, but protected them, and to this day may be seen springing up some of the good seed sown by the missionaries among them forty years ago. It is not a month since I talked with a lady who is one of the children who survived the Whitman massacre. She had just returned from the old Lapwai Mission—her birthplace. She there found many of the old mission Indians who still held to the teachings of the mis sionaries. ”

“ Spalding says:
"Immigrants, by hundreds and thousands, reached the Mission, way-worn, hungry, sick, and destitute, but he cared for all. Seven children of one family were left upon the hands of Dr. and Mrs. Whitman—one a babe four months old—and they cared for them all, giving food, clothing, and medicine without pay. Frequently, the Doctor would give away his entire food supply, and have to send to me for grain to get through the Winter."
She pointedly denies that Dr. Whitman went to Washington or the States with the expectation of bringing out settlers to Oregon. ”

“ Whitman.
"I am worried about you, Doctor," said Tom. "The Indians think you are the cause of their sickness. And now since the Catholic priests are come the Indians want you to move away and let the Black Gowns open a mission."
"I know it," answered Dr. Whitman, groaning in spirit. "My poor Cayuses are distracted by their troubles. And the large number of whites stopping at the mission increases their suspicion. But what can I do? I cannot turn the poor immigrants sick and impoverished away. Can you not come and spend the winter with me, Tom?" ”

“ These then were Whitman's chief objects in that winter ride. There were others incidental and subsidiary to these. One was to get reinforcements for his mission, if not of commissioned missionaries, at least of such families as would settle near the mission and aid in furthering its purpose. Another was to secure an appropriation from the secret service fund of the government to aid in the support of schools among the native tribes, and still anothe r was to
induce the government to send sheep and cattle to the Indians. ”

“ There is no such thing as dividing the honors. 259 They are simply Whitman honors; they lived and labored and achieved together; the bride upon the plains and in the mission home was a heroine scarcely second to the hero who swam icy rivers and climbed the snow-covered mountains in 1842 and 1843, upon his patriotic mission. It is a work that may well engage the patriotic women of America; for true womanhood has never had a more beautiful setting than in the life of Narcissa Whitman. ”

“ Whitman, who is naturally a man of excellent judgment, and especially so with regard to matters relating to the Indians, and who is, moreover, not to be frightened where there is no cause to fear, replied, that he also believed, that prudence, and their safety, required that they should abandon the Mission, for a time, at least. The same opinion was expressed, by all the other gentlemen.
Whether there were other causes to excite the Indians to this step, besides those which they made known, is uncertain. We would hope, that men professing to love good feeling and good actions ”

“ Whitman. There were two other real mission churches, one among the Shoshones, and one among the Shivwits in Utah, eleven in all. These are the results of the work of the early missionaries, among whom the Spaldings and the McBeths were the most fruitful. All of these churches are self supporting, and conduct their own affairs with so much wisdom that at present they do not need a superintendent to care for them. In the Christian Endeavor Convention, held in the Presbyterian church of Tacoma, in 1912, half a dozen well dressed Indian men were there as delegates sent by those churches. ”

“ Whitman's journey publicly." Here we have the testimony of a woman who, at a time before I was born, left home, friends, early associations, and civilization behind her, and came here to teach and civilize. If such as she are not to be believed, then to whom can we look for the truth? The statements of Mr. Gray and the Rev. C. Eells, are to the same effect. Mr. Spalding, before he died, left the same substantially on record. Every member of the mission alive at the time that these matters came into controversy, have agreed as to the main and material facts. ”

“ Eells as to one upon whose testimony they could rely. Accepting this suggestion, Secretary Treat wrote on February 22, 1866, to Cushing Eells, who, it will be remembered, had been a colleague of Whitman's, asking for a statement of the results of the old Oregon Mission work, and received in reply a letter dated Walla Walla, W. T., May 28, 1866, in which the religious and educational labors of the missionaries are reviewed. The following are the essential passages relative to Whitman's ride, and their dependence upon Spalding's narrative published the preceding fall is sufficiently obvious. ”

“ Nothing more natural or true. As the mission station was the only residence of white people in Walla Walla Valley, every traveler, explorer, Government officer or other person who happened to be in the country was sure to visit it. Mrs. Whitman complains that they have to entertain so much without payment, the presence of the Hudson Bay Company prohibiting trade, and the mission property, besides, being owned by the A. B. F. M., by whom Dr. Whitman was appointed. ”

“ Introducing a band of religious men into the country to exert a good religious influence on the Indians & the white population which may come in—especially near the mission stations. Counteracting papal efforts & influences. Releasing the missionaries from the great amount of manual labor, which is now necessary for their subsistance, & permitting them to devote themselves to appropriate missionary work among the Indians, whose language they now speak. Doing more for the civilization and social improvement of the Indians than the mission can do unaided. ”