An illustrated history of the state of Washington, containing biographical mention of its pioneers and prominent citizens, Part 12

Author: Hines, Harvey K., 1828-1902
Publication date: 1893
Publisher: Chicago, The Lewis publishing company
Number of Pages: 1056

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It does not enter into the purpose of this his- tory to give a detailed account of the personnel and work of the various missionary companies that pioneered the work of American civiliza- tion ou the Pacific coast, further than is neces-

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sary to show the relations they sustained to the history of the country into which they entered. It would belong rather to ecclesiastical than general history to do that. Still that personnel was so great and heroic, and that work so funda- mental, that neither can be dismissed with a paragraph. Hence we take up the history of these inissionary companies in the chronological order of their occupancy of this field, premising the remark that the essence of the importance of their work in every respect that bore upon the settlement of questions of national and in- ternational rights was in the time, as well as in the fact, of their coming. With this explana- tory remark, and within this limitation, we re- sume the story of the missionary work of the Methodist Episcopal Church uuder the direction of Jason Lee.

Mr. Lee received his appointment as "Mis- sionary to the Flathead Indians" in 1833, from the New England Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Leaving his home in Can- ada on the nineteenth day of Angst of that year, he spent the following autumn and winter in traveling through the cities and villages of the North from Portland, Maine, to Baltimore, stirring up the hearts of the church everywhere by his fervent appeals for the Indians of the West, and inspiring the confidence of the peo- ple by his evident sincerity as well as his com- manding ability. Under the influence of his speeches Oregon began to rise out of a mythi- cal into an actual existence in the thoughts of the people. To Americans even, up to this time, it was as unknown as Hindoostan, -- a name standing only for nnexplored regions be- tween the summits of the Rocky mountains and the western ocean, of unsurveyed limits and unknown conditions. Although it had served, in Congress and in Parliament, as a text for vaporing political discourse, yet so little did Britain or America know of it that the one sought it only as a preserve for the fur hunter, and the other believed it to be but a barren and inlios- pitable waste fit only to appear on his mnaps as the "Great American desert." The appoint-

ment of Jason Lee to evangelistic work within it, and the evident intention of the great church whose commission he bore to sustain him in the field to which she had assigned him, meant the lifting up of a veil that for the ages had hidden that vast region from human sight.

In the spring of 1834 this company of mis- sionaries joined the company of Mr. Nathaniel Wyeth, of whose trading adventures west of the Rocky mountains we have elsewhere written, at Independence, Missouri, prepared to accompany them on their journey over the mountains. At Independence Mr. Lee secured the services of Mr. P. L. Edwards, a young man of fine abilities and excellent character, afterward a prominent lawyer of Sacramento, California. All his as- sociates were men well adapted to sustain their chief in his arduons undertaking. Notwith- standing there was so much of the history of the Pacific coast wrapped under the coats of these four men, it would occupy too much of the space that is needed for other events to record the in- cidents of their journey of two thousand miles on horseback to their field of selected toil. Suffice it here to say that through all the inci- dents and perils of the journey among such Indian tribes as the Pawnees, the Sioux, the Shoshones, the Blackfeet, the Bannacks, the Nez Perces and the Cayuses, wild freebooters of the plains, they bore themselves like brave men, ready to do all their part in every emergency of travel or danger. Mr. Lee, in a very special manner, won the confidence and respect of such mountain leaders as Sublette, Wyeth, Fitz- patriek, Walker and others. Prof. Townshend, a naturalist who accompanied the party for scientific purposes, speaks of him in his journal in most flattering terms.

Mr. Lee and his company reached Vancouver, the headquarters of the Hudson's Bay Company, and the residence of Dr. McLoughlin, its gover- nor, on the 15th day of September, 1834. He was received with great respect by Dr. Mc- Loughlin. The moral and political casuist will readily see that in the meeting of these two men on that day there stood face to face causes and

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destinies of wonderful import to Oregon, and even to civilization itself the world over. They were both typical and representative men. They were both Canadian born. One was a Scotch- Englishman with all the stalwart grip and force of that splendid blood. The other was of pure New England parentage. They were both over six feet in height and looked level into eacl! others eyes. Seldom indeed have two such representatives of opposing forces and antago- nistic purposes stood face to face with each other, and yet mnet so calmly, and so entered at once into each other's personal friendships, as in the case of these two men. One is tempted to stand long and gaze upon this strange moral and intellectual tableau thrown against the fore- ground of an opening and against the back- ground of a departing era; for when their two hands clasped it was the old greeting, perhaps unconseionsly, the better new, and the new, per- haps as unconsciously, bidding the old depart.

Dr. MeLoughlin, as the representative of the Hudson's Bay Company, and hence of the power and purpose of Great Britain in Oregon, could not meet Mr. Lee as he could and did meet Mr. Nathaniel Wyeth. The cases and the causes were entirely dissimilar. Mr. Wyeth came with merchandise as a trader, came to set np a rival establishment within hearing of the morning gun of Fort Vanconver. Mr. Lee came as a missionary of help and moral uplift to the de- graded tribes that swarmed in the valleys and roamed over the hills. Mr. Wyeth had arms in his hands; Mr. Lee had ideas and moral pur- poses in his mind and heart. The first could be met with stronger and older commercial power or with more numerons arms if necessary ; the other could be met only with ideas and moral purposes better than his own. Therefore the first was hemmed in, circumscribed, thwarted, finally defeated, and within a year compelled to leave the country a broken and ruined man. But Mr. Lee and his ideas had come to stay. One cannot shoot an idea to death. He cannot kill a moral impulse with gunpowder. Besides,

those who knew Dr. McLoughlin in his lifetime know very well that his moral nature was far superior to the purposes and work of the soul- less corporation of which he, by a providence very gracious to the work Mr. Lee came to Oregon to perform, was then the executive head. In the case of Mr. Lee, therefore, his heart became the guide of his actions, and hence he not only did not attempt to hinder, but really extended efficient help in the establish- ment of his mission and the opening of his work in Oregon. Still justice requires us say that it is not probable that Dr. MeLoughlin was enough skilled in moral casnistry, or well enough acquainted with the history of the re- sults of missionary enterprises in other parts of the world, to fully comprehend the meaning of the future history of this coast that was wrapped up within the white folds of Mr. Lee's commis- sion. So he helped where otherwise he might- have hindered; he connseled where he other- wise might have opposed and defeated.

It was under the advice of Dr. McLoughlin that Mr. Lee finally decided to establish his missionary station in the heart of the Willam- ette valley. Two motives seemed to prompt that advice. First, the putting of the American establishment south of the Columbia river, which the Hudson's Bay people expected would be- come the boundary between Great Britain and the United States on this coast, and secondly having it near enough to Vancouver to be under its watchful eye. Mr. Lee, having carefully ex- amined every point that would suggest itself as a suitable one for his work, finally, on Monday, the sixth day of October, 1834, with Daniel Lee and P. L. Edwards, pitched his tent on the banks of the Willamette river, about ten miles below the present city of Salem, where he had determined to establish his mission. On Sun- day, the 19th of October, he delivered the first formal sermon ever preached in the Willamette valley, at the residence of Mr. Joseph Gervais, near where the town of Gervais now stands; his unpublished journal says: " From these

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words, 'Turn ye from your evil ways,' to a mixed assembly, few of whom understood what I said; but God is able to speak to their hearts."

From this time forward, ever increasing, be- coming more and more a molding force in the intellectual and moral life of the country, his work went forward. It is not the province of this history to follow it in detail, -- only far enough to show how potentially this and suc- ceeding missionary establishments became the nucleus around which accreted whatever there was of American thought and purpose and life in Oregon for nearly ten years following this date. For this reason the men, and the work they performed, as makers and molders of his- tory, are of first importance in estimating the conditions out of which history is made.

Though Christians, Mr. Lee and the three men who wrought with him were plain, practi- cal, solid men. All the pictures of the writers who paint them as pietistic recluses, or even religions zealots, expecting to save the heathen and renew a people by exhortations and prayers and moral incantations, are sheer rhetorical cari- catures, to say the least of them, instead of real descriptions, and show either the ignorance or perversity of those who painted them. These men knew well that their work, to be ultimately productive of the results for which they were here, must lay its foundations in the very ele- ments of intellectual and physical culture. They had placed but half a shelter over their lone heads before they proceeded to the establish- ment of an Indian manual-labor school, into which Indians, both youth and adults, were gathered, and where they were taught husbandry and mechanics, as well as song and prayer. As showing the result of this teaching in these earlier years of their work, the testimony of Captain W. A. Slocum, of the United States Navy, commanding the brig Loriot, who visited Mr. Lee's mission abont two years after its es- tablishment, may properly be quoted. He says: " I have seen children who two years ago were roaming over their own native wilds, in a state of savage barbarism, now being brought within

the knowledge of moral and religious instruc- tion, becoming useful members of society, by being taught the most useful of all arts -- agri- culture-and all this without the least compul- sion." So favorably did the work of this mis- sion impress him that he made to it the con- siderable donation of $50, as a testimony of his appreciation.

After two years of successful work by these four men in the missionary field, so promising did the future appear that six others, three men and three women, were added to their number by the missionary authorities of the Methodist Episcopal Church, arriving in Oregon in May, 1837, and these were succeeded in September of the same year by four others, two men and two women. One of the last named gentlemen, Rev. David Leslie, was attended by his wife and several children-a thorough New England family, having some of the best blood of old Massachusetts flowing in their veins; the first real family transplanted from the New England of the Atlantic coast to the better New England to the Pacific coast; the real beginning of American home life in the valley of the Willa- Inette. Does not this mean something for American civilization on the Pacific coast?

It should be noted that up to this time the Indian tribes were maintaining their old nu- merical strength. They were deeply impressed with the superiority of that form of civilized life that they saw in the missionary homes about them. They could not bnt see the difference between them and the trappers and trail-men of the fur companies. So they were calling for missionary establishments elsewhere, -- east of the Cascade mountains, at Clatsop, in the Umpqua, among the Caynses and Nez Perces. An emer. gency of civilization and christianity was upon the land. Jason Lee, the Corypheus of this band of Christian civilizers, returned to the east by the trail by which he came out, to se- cure help adequate to the great emergency. His appeals from Boston to Charleston, from St. Louis to New York, on the rostrum and through the press, in the winter of 1838 and the

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suinmer of 1839, awakened profound and wide- spread interest, not only in his special work but in Oregon itself. He asked for four or five missionary helpers. The great church to which he appealed judged that the demands were greater. Five clerical missionaries, one physi- cian, six mechanics, four farmers, one steward or business-manager, four female teachers,- thirty-six adults in all, together with seventeen children, constituted the reinforcement which the church, in whose employ Mr. Lee was laboring, judged not too large to meet the emergency of the hour. It was a missionary company, but it was not that only. It was an American colony ; an educated, refined, patriotic colony of Ameri- can citizens. When, in the early summer of 1840, these fifty-three people united in the Williamette valley with the sixteen who had preceded them, there was a truly American colony west of the Cascade mountains of nearly four-score souls,-a nuclens of civilization around which the elements of a great history might gather and enlarge and crystallize until a great and prosperons State should be the result. " Man proposes; God disposes." So it was here. A single year while Mr. Lee was absent from the country had tonched the Indian tribes as with a pestilenee. They were wasting out of heing. The beautiful valleys of the west were to be dedicated to something greater and grander than even Indian missionary establishments. A stronger race, with a purpose and a power that could carry the country to the highest forms of civilized society and life was to have and to hold it. Their vanguard of chosen men and women, chosen for their personal power and purpose, was here to fix and drive the initial stake from which should be traced the founda- tion measurements of the history of a thousand years. Nor was this altogether an unexpected condition. This great enterprise had the count- tenanee of the national authorities with some reference to its political as well as its moral and religions significance. Of course it was known that, sooner or later, the Indian tribes here, as everywhere else, would disappear. The men in

authority at Washington did not know this bet- ter than did the men who constituted this mis- sionary company. Indeed they did not know it as well. But it came sooner than was antic- ipated, though not too soon for the safety of American interests, as the pressure of events in Washington and in London were hurrying the two nations toward a final issue of their strug- gles for Oregon. With the coming of this fate -sad, it would seem, to the Indian tribes -- there was a necessary failure, comparatively, of these Indian missions. But that failure was one of the conditions of the incoming of that after civilization the germ of which was in that colony of American men and women that had thus strangely been set down here just in time to give it most potent relation to what was to be. Still, for three years, the work of this company of people was, as far as those immedi- ately about them were concerned, endeavoring to do good to the decaying remnants of the In- dian tribes. Besides the missionaries and those immediately connected with them, the Indians, few and feeble as they were, were all upon whom they could bestow labor or sympathy. As to themselves they were waiting, becoming acquainted with the geography and resources of the country. They were young people. Hardly a person forty years of age among them. They could afford to wait and be ready for what was ready for them.

Our readers will see when they reach and study the history of " Immigration " as treated hereafter in this book, that the autumn of 1843 dates a change in the population of the country of such a character as necessarily to close, in large measure, the era of Indian missions in Oregon. It is true there were local interlap- pings and overlappings, but after that date the white and the American predominates in the country over the red and the Hudson's Bay. Hence we do not trace the history of this first established and strongest mission farther than that period, but consider its personnel as after- ward absorbed into the larger life of a common- wealth of which itself had been a most potent

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creator. As we conclude our distinctive refer- ence to this individual mission, the fairness of history requires us to give the names of the gen- tlemen then constituting it, or had been prom- inently connected with it. They were Jason Lee, Daniel Lee, Cyrus Shepard, who had died, P. L. Edwards, who had returned to the States, David Leslie, H. K. W. Perkins, Elijah White, who had also returned to the States, A. Beers, W. H. Willson, Alvin F. Waller, Gustavus Hines, George Abernethy, Hamilton Campbell, H. B. Brewer.

The same incidents that at the beginning awakened such an intense interest in the Meth- odist Episcopal Church in America for the In- dians of the Rocky mountains and beyond, thrilled with the same intensity the other churches of the land. They began to project missionary work in that region at the same time. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, then representing the Pres- byterian, Congregational and Dutch Reformed Churches, was not backward in its purposes. Early in 1834 initial steps were taken. A com- mission to explore the country preparatory to the establishment of a mission was appointed, consisting of Rev. Samuel Parker, Rev. J. Dun- bar, and Mr. S. Ellis. They left Ithaca, New York, in May, but reached St. Louis too late to join the caravans of fur traders for the Rocky mountains, and were obliged to defer the con- templated exploration until another year. Mr. Parker returned to New York, and Messrs. Dun- bar and Ellis engaged in missionary labors among the Pawness. In the spring of 1835 Mr. Parker was joined by Dr. Marcus Whit- man, and they reached St. Louis in April. In company with the annual caravan of the Amer- ican Fur Company they proceeded westward as far as Green river, abont fifty miles west of the summit of the Rocky mountains, the rendezvous of that company. Here they met a large num- bers of the Indians of the Columbia, and the in- formation they received from them, together with that from trappers, traders and travelers whom they met here, was such as decided them

to establish a mission on or near the middle Columbia. In furtherance of that decision Dr. Whitman returned to the East, and Mr. Parker continued his journey to the Columbia. He visited Walla Walla, Vancouver, the mission of Mr. Lee in the Willamette, and after completing his observations returned to New York by the way of the Sandwich islands and cape Horn in 1837.

Two Nez Perces Indians accompanied Dr. Whitman on his return to New York, where their appearance as specimens of the tribe among which it was proposed to establish a mission excited the greatest curiosity and interest.

In the spring of 1836 Dr. Whitman and his wife, to whom he was but recently married, with Rev. H. H. Spaulding and his young wife, and Mr. W. H. Gray as secular agent of the mission, proceeded to the frontier of Missouri, and uniting themselves to the American Fur Company's convoy proceeded across the conti- nent to the place fixed upon for their mission- ary work among the Cayuses at Waiiletpu and among the Nez Perces at Lapwai.

This journey is justly celebrated in history as the first ever made by white women across the Rocky mountains. That alone was sufficient to make the names of Mrs. Whitman and Mrs. Spaulding historic. It writes them on the page of history as heroines. They were the first white women whose blue eyes ever looked into the black orbs of the aboriginal daughters of the Columbia. That makes their arrival date an epoch in our history. While they were coming by land, others were on the way by sea, but these were first by a few months, and no fair hand has ever been raised, or ever will be raised, to pluck the crown of this great distinc- tion from their brows. They were personally worthy of it, and we are glad to study them in their unique and magnificent isolation in his- toric story. Full as was this journey with thrilling incident, we can do no more than, with these few sentences, conduct these missionaries to their place where, two years after Jason Lee

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had established the Methodist mission in the Williamette, they began theirs in interior Oregon.

The same general course of incident marked the work of these missions as did that already described in the Willamette Valley. There was, however, a difference in one important respect. The Indians of the interior were very superior, physically and intellectually, to those nearer the coast. Hence, while the tribes of the Willamette were smitten with decay these were yet vigorous and comparatively numerous. Seven years, therefore, after the Indian mission work was almost or entirely abandoned in the Willamette, that in this region was enjoying its greatest prosperity. But it was only to meet the same fate at last, except as the Indians themselves have proved capable of so far re- sisting the enfeebling and destruetive contact with a miseellaneons white population, and have maintained an existence as a people even until this day; while those of the Willamette as tribes and nations have long since disappeared.

From time to time these missions of the Amer- ican Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mis- sions were re-enforced by the addition of a class of men and women worthy to be what their position made them, founders of a civilization. Some of the gentlemen composing the mission became most important and honored instru- ments in the settlement of great questions of State, and in the final establishment of the in- stitutions of civil society here. Notably this was true of Dr. Whitman, the record of whose heroic efforts to benefit his adopted home, as well as of his tragic death as a martyr to his steadfast purpose of life, is given elsewhere, and need not be repeated here. Like those whose work in the Willamette we have partially recorded, these were among the best of men. We make no attempt to enshrine them, nor even to exalt them above other men who came after them. They had weaknesses and defects, but they are the weaknesses of strong natures, the defects common to humanity. Withont a question any impartial history of the times from

1834 to 1847 will write the names of Whitman, Spaulding, Eells, Walker, Gray, and their com- panions and co-laborers among the few dozens of names that were foremost in laying deep and broad the foundation of the great common- wealth that is now what it is because the men whose lives and work projected it were what they were.

The history of the institution and work of the missions of the Roman Catholic Church on this coast is more difficult to trace than is that of the Methodist Episcopal Church, or of the American Board. The reasons are obvious to those who have made the methods of that church at all a study. Their work is more dis- tinetly a church work than is that of any other body of Christian people. It consists more exclusively of catechetical instruction, and the observance of certain forms of ritual observ- ances, than any other. There is less publicity to it. They do not organize communities with a public life outside of the ecclesiastical and church life they inculcate. Their missionaries come and go unheralded and unannounced. Without a family life themselves, they appear for a day or a year, then move forward and another takes the vacated place. What has been done or has not been done is not pro- claimed. Silent, self-contained, with the air and aspeet of men who are mnoved by another, instead of moving themselves with a self-pur- pose, except it be a purpose to obey what is commanded, they do their work with a patience, a devotion, a self-forgetfulness that is worthy of all praise as a method of ecclesiastical pros- elytism. These methods and peculiarities are not mentioned as derogatory to them, but only to account for the difficulty a writer experiences in following the lines of their history. And if these peculiarities render it difficult to do this in established conditions of society, they render it much more difficult when the field is such as Oregon was when they entered into it.

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An illustrated history of the state of Washington, containing biographical mention of its pioneers and prominent citizens, Part 12

Author: Hines, Harvey K., 1828-1902 Publication date: 1893 Publisher: Chicago, The Lewis publishing company Number of Pages: 1056

Author: Hines, Harvey K., 1828-1902
Publication date: 1893
Publisher: Chicago, The Lewis publishing company
Number of Pages: 1056