USA > Washington > History of Washington; the rise and progress of an American state, Vol. II > Part 11
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THE RISE AND PROGRESS KIANAMIHOT
of Septentbdaildsfesonottate visitbizim brosse ist asfalmore than hfteen hustadelvlisp sit lo sa ask IL hotanitles Ud wilder- asW_ JI .19x16W dsasHid bis aflod guidaud vad lo
be made in wikipo Fol ds sHAYsells hi croft enoal lemodt gas part of it, through the mountains, where the winter began earliest and lasted longest, would have to be made when the weather was at its worst. So far as known, nobody had ever attempt- ed to cross them at such a season. Even the trappers and the Indians deserted them during that part of the year, if they could. The journey must be made on horseback, and so far as they knew, alone. There were only four points in the whole fifteen hundred miles where human beings might be looked for-where food, clothing, extra horses or medicines in case of sickness, could be obtained. These were Forts Boise and Hall, the rendezvous on Green River, and Latamie. These were hundreds of miles apart. Much of the way between them would be difficult to follow without guides, and was likely to be made impa sable for days together by storms To attempt such a journey at such a season seemed reckless and almost suicidal.
The principal station of the mission would be left without a head-its inmates exposed to insult, its property to pillage. The Indians in the neighborhood were no longer well disposed toward it. In game they should go more insolent than they were no one could tell what muht happen, What might have happened may now be made by what did hap- per four years later. Fort Walla Walla was twenty-five miler bistant. If danger threatened wo relief could with any certainty be expected from it, although the people there were well disposed and promised every adistance,
Mr. Walker, in a letter written in the secretary of the American board, immediately after his return home, gives
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some explanation of the reasons why they did not carry the order of the prudential committee, into immediate effect : "We thought that the object of your letter had been accom- plished by the reconciliation which had taken place; (at the annual meeting) still we felt ourselves placed in a trying situation. We hardly knew what course to pursue, and concluded to wait until we could receive an answer to the letter of the committee of the mission, stating that the diffi- culties of the mission had been settled. We found, too, that there was a difficulty in sustaining the mission, so many had withdrawn,* and as the reinforcement had stopped at the islands. After considerable consultation, without com- ing to any definite conclusion, and as we were about starting for our place, a proposition was made by Dr. Whitman for him to return to the states this winter, and confer with the prudential committee; and conduct a reinforcement out next summer, if it was thought best to continue the mission. At least something definite could be decided upon. The proposition being presented, just as we were on the eve of leaving, we felt that we could not give a decided answer to it. We wanted time to think and pray over it, and proposed to return and send in our conclusion. But we were told that there was no time to be lost. After some consultation, we stated that if the station could be put in a condition which would render it safe to be left, and other proper arrangements could be made, we would consent to Dr. Whitman's going to the states. We did not approve of the hasty manner in which this question was decided. Nothing, it seemed to us, but stern necessity induced us to decide in the manner we did. It seemed death to put the proposition
*Gray and Smith had now left it, Smith going to the Sandwich Islands.
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in force, and worse than death to remain as we were. I have no doubt if his plan succeeds it will be one of great good to the mission country. It is to be expected that a Romish influence will come in, and being under the control of the priests, it will be scattered throughout the country wherever there are Indians, and near the stations of the Mission; to meet this influence, a few religious settlers would be inval- uable."
Having secured the consent of his associates to make this long and dangerous journey, Dr. Whitman at once set about his preparations, and five days later he was ready to start. A young lawyer, A. Lawrence Lovejoy, a native of Massa- chusetts but lately from Missouri, and afterwards famous in the early history of Oregon, had only recently arrived among the immigrants of 1842, and was still at Waiilatpu. Whit- man invited him to return with him, and being "filled with a patriotic zeal and love of country," as an admiring bio- grapher asserts, he consented, with a view to "induce a large emigration of Americans to Oregon the following spring to settle and hold the country west of the Rocky Mountains, and defeat the British scheme to colonize it with emigration from Red River."*
From all this it seems to be reasonably clear that both he and Whitman had a purpose in view to hasten the settle- ment of the country as much as possible-Whitman by appealing to the general missionary board, and the Chris- tian public in general, to send out Christian families to settle in his neighborhood, and assist him by their presence and example to instruct and control the Indians, while Love- joy should make a general appeal to settlers of every class.
*The only colonists who ever came to Oregon from the Red River County arrived a year earlier-in 1841.
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If this was their purpose it was not successful in any consider- able degree, for Lovejoy did not reach the settlements, and after a series of mishaps and adventures, in one of which he was for nine days a prisoner among hostile Indians, he joined the emigration of 1843 at Fort Laramie and reached Oregon City in October.
Seventeen years later, Mr. Lovejoy wrote this account of that winter journey: "Previous to our leaving Waiilatpu I often had conversations with the doctor touching the pros- pects of this coast. The doctor was alive to its interests, and manifested a very warm desire to have this country properly represented at Washington, and after some arrange- ments, we left Waiilatpu, October 3, 1842, overland, for the Eastern States. We traveled rapidly and reached Fort Hall in eleven days, and remained only a day or two and made some few purchases; took a guide and left for Fort Wintee, as the doctor changed from a direct route, to one more southern through the Spanish country via Taos and Santa Fe. On our way from Fort Hall to Fort Wintee we met with terribly severe weather; the snows greatly retarded our progress, and blinded the trail so that we lost much time. After reaching Fort Wintee, and making some suitable pur- chases for our trip, we took a new guide and started on our journey for Fort Macumpagra (Uncompagre), situated on the waters of the Grand River in the Spanish country.
"Here again our stay was very short. We simply made some few purchases, and left for Taos. After being out some four or five days, as we were passing over some very high table lands, we encountered a most terrific snowstorm, which forced us to seek shelter at once. A deep ravine being near by, we rapidly made for it, but the snow fell so rapidly, and the wind blew with such violence that it was almost
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impossible to reach it. After reaching the ravine and cut- ting some cottonwood trees for our animals, we attempted some arrangements to camp as well as we could under the circumstances, and remained snowed in for some three or four days, when the snowstorm subsided, and it cleared off intensely cold. It was with much difficulty that we made our way up upon the highlands; the snow was so deep and the wind so piercing and cold, that we felt compelled to return to camp and wait a few days for a change of weather.
"Our next effort was (little) more successful, and after spending several days wandering around in the snow, with- out making much headway, and greatly fatiguing our animals to little or no purpose, our guide informed us that the deep snow had so changed the face of the country that he was completely lost, and could take us no further. This was a terrible blow to the doctor. He was determined not to give it up without another effort, and we at once agreed that the doctor should take the guide, and make his way back to the fort and procure a new guide, and that I should remain in camp with the animals, until his return, which was on the seventh day, with a new guide. We were soon under way, traveling through the snow at rather a snail's pace. Nothing occurred of much importance, other than the hard and slow traveling, until we reached, as our guide informed us, the Grand River, which was frozen on either side about one-third across. The current was so very rapid that the center of the stream remained open, although the weather was so intensely cold. The stream was some one hundred and fifty or two hundred yards wide, and was looked upon by our guide as very dangerous to cross in its present condition. But the doctor, nothing daunted, was the first to take the water. He mounted his horse, and the guide and
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myself pushed them off the ice into the boiling foaming stream. Away they went completely under water, horse and all, but directly came up, and after buffeting the waves and foam- ing current, he made to the ice on the opposite side, a long way down the stream; leaped from his horse onto the ice, and soon had his noble animal by his side. The guide and I forced in the pack animals, followed the doctor's example, and were soon drying our frozen clothes by a comfortable . fire.
"With our new guide, traveling slowly on, we reached Taos in about thirty days. We suffered considerably from cold and scarcity of provisions, and for food were com- pelled to eat the flesh of mules, dogs and such other animals as came within our reach. We remained at Taos some fifteen days, where we changed off our animals and made such purchases as our journey required, and left for Bent's Fort, on the headwaters of the Arkansas River, where we arrived about the third of January, 1843. The doctor left here on the seventh, at which time we parted, and I did not meet him again until some time in the month of July above Fort Laramie, on his way to Oregon with a train of emigrants.
"The doctor often expressed himself to me about the remainder of his journey, and the manner in which he was received at Washington, and by the Board of Missions at Boston. The doctor had several interviews with President Tyler, Secretary Webster, and many members of Congress, touching the interests of Oregon. He urged the immediate termination of the treaty with Great Britain relative to this country, and the extension of the laws of the United States, and (to provide) liberal inducements to emigrants to come to this coast. He felt much chagrined at the lack of interest, and the great want of knowledge concerning Oregon and
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the wants of this country, though he was very cordially and kindly received, and many seemed anxious to obtain every information which he could give them; and I have no doubt the doctor's interviews resulted greatly to the benefit of Oregon and the entire coast.
"But his reception at Boston was not so cordial. The Board censured him for leaving his post, for the waste of time, and the great expense attending so long a journey across the continent at that time of the year. The doctor returned to the frontier settlements urging the citizens to emigrate to the Pacific Coast. After his exertions in this behalf, he left for Independence, and started for Oregon with a large emi- grant train, some time in May. With his energy and knowl- edge of the country he rendered them very great assistance, and continued to do so till he reached his home, about the first of October (about a year from the time he left), to find the home of his choice sadly neglected, and the flouring mill burned to the ground. The Indians were very hostile about the doctor leaving at the time he did.
Whitman arrived at the home office of the missionary board on March 30, 1843, having been nearly six months on the way. He was but coldly received. Only a bare announcement of his arrival was made in the "Missionary Herald," the organ of the board, and he was reprimanded for having left his station without leave, and for incurring the expense which his long journey required. But the order directing the abandonment of the stations at Waiilatpu, Lapwai and Kamiah was recalled, though he does not appear · to have been successful in any other object he may have had in view. No increase of help was furnished, either as mis- sionaries or teachers. No Christian families were sent by the board, or secured by his own efforts, to settle among the
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Indians. He left Boston in April, in time to overtake the emigrant trains-which were that year much larger than the year preceding-when they were some days out on their journey, and to render them material assistance, both as a physician and as an experienced traveler. Further than this there is no evidence that his long and dangerous winter journey had any other useful result.
Some years after Dr. Whitman's untimely death a claim was put forth by his indiscreet admirers, some of whom were not very friendly to him in life, that the principal, if not the only object of this winter ride was to "save Oregon"; that . but for his visit to Washington, and several interviews he is alleged to have had with President Tyler and Mr. Webster, his secretary of state, the country might have been traded off to Great Britain for a cod fishery on the banks of New- foundland; that the large emigration of 1843 was due to his efforts, and that he led it across the mountains, and to the Columbia, and thus opened the first wagon road into Oregon. These claims were in time enlarged and embellished by numerous writers, who have not hesitated to publish what they represent to be reports of conferences had with authori- ties in Washington, and to put into their mouths certain expressions about Oregon and its value, that are totally at variance with their well-established views, long held and frequently uttered. As might have been expected these representations have been challenged by those who have studied the history of the time with more care. A con- troversy has followed, in the bitterness of which some have seemingly become anxious to rob Whitman of the credit which unquestionably belongs to him. If his blood could cry out from the ground, as that of the first victim of ignorant brutality is said to have done,
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it might well plead: "Save me from my injudicious ad- mirers."
There is no mention of Whitman having been in Wash- ington that winter or spring in any official document, or in the report of any speech in either house of Congress, or so far as known in any letter written by any person who met him there. That he intended to go there, when he left Waiilatpu, though purely in an incidental way, and not as the main object of his trip, is clear from the letters written by Mrs. Whitman, which he took with him, to her friends in the East. In one of these she says: "The interests of the missionary cause in this country calls him home," and in the other that "he goes upon important business as connected with the missionary cause, the cause of Christ in this land," and, much as she dreaded to be left alone, she consented that he might go, in order that "the object of his almost immediate presence in the land of our birth might, if possible, be accomplished; the interest of the cause demands the sacrifice." Then, speaking of his traveling companion, she says: "He expects to accompany him all the way to Boston, as his friends are in that region, and perhaps to Washington."
Five months later, and while Whitman was still absent, Dr. Elijah White, who had led out the emigration of 1842, and with whom Whitman had conferred after he had reached Waiilatpu, wrote the commissioner of Indian affairs a letter, in which he describes the country of the Cayuse Indians as "well-watered, gently undulating, extremely healthy, etc., . . as Dr. Whitman may have informed you."
So it seems clear that White had talked with him before he left, about going to Washington, though he says nothing of any intention, on his part, to consult with either the
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president or the secretary of state about the boundary question.
That the doctor did go to Washington seems to be proven by his own letter to the secretary of war, without date, but evidently written early in the year after his return from his winter ride, in which he says he writes "in compliance with the request you did me the honor to make last winter while at Washington, etc." This letter enclosed a draft of a bill which embodied a plan for aiding and protecting the settlers on their long journey across the plains, by the establishment of agricultural stations, at various points from one to two hundred miles apart, along the route. At these stations the travelers could rest and recruit their animals, repair their wagons, and secure fresh supplies of food and forage, and medical attendance if they should require it. They might also take refuge in them, or be relieved by them if attacked by the Indians. This plan, if it could have been carried out, would have provided the immigrants with very efficient help, and would doubtless have saved many of their lives. But it was wholly improbable that Congress could have been brought to regard it with, favor in that day, and there is no evidence that it was ever given opportunity to do so. The letter and bill went to the files in the war department and there remained.
That Whitman should seek an interview with the secre- tary of war, if in Washington, would be entirely natural. As the head of the war office his recommendation of any plan for protecting and policing the trail would be desirable. But more than that the Indian office was then a part of the war department, and if the doctor wished anything done for or about the Indians with whom he was laboring, he would most naturally go to that official. Doubtless he and
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White had discussed this before he started, and it was for that reason that White thought it probable that he might have seen and talked with the commissioner of Indian affairs before April 1, 1843, the date of his letter above referred to.
But while there was good reason for his call upon the secretary of war, there was no reason why he should call on the secretary of state or the president. He had no business in which they could assist him; they had none then pending in which he could, or would even be likely to think he could be of assistance to them. The Ashburton treaty, by which the boundary between Maine and Canada was fixed, had been concluded, signed and ratified before he left his home. The Oregon boundary had not been dis- cussed during that negotiation, because Lord Ashburton's instructions did not authorize him either to propose or accept any line that Mr. Tyler's administration could possibly assent to. In every previous negotiation, as has been shown, the forty-ninth parallel had been insisted on by every repre- sentative of the United States. Great Britain had been officially informed, years before, that we would accept that and nothing less. A Senate report, made by a committee of which Mr. Linn of Missouri was chairman, as early as June 1838, more than four years before Whitman had started east, quoted Mr. Clay's positive instructions to Mr. Gallatin, to notify the British authorities that the forty-ninth parallel was our ultimatum, and a map showing that line as the boundary had been printed for general distribution, as well as for the use of the Senate. Another report made to the House of Representatives by Caleb Cushing of Massachusetts, a year later, had argued the question of our title with great ability, and in 1840 the Senate had printed Mr. Greenhow's
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compilation of the abundant evidence by which it was sup- ported. All these and many other able documents and speeches had been widely distributed and generally read by the American people. There was perhaps no other inter- national question about which they were so well informed.
So thoroughly aroused were they that public meetings were held in several of the States, particularly in the West, to urge the immediate settlement of the boundary question, and to encourage emigration to Oregon so as to strengthen our hold on it. One of the earliest held of these meetings was at Alton, Ill., on the evening of November 8, 1842. It was addressed by Judge Semple, father of Eugene Semple, one of the territorial governors of Washington. Judge Semple was afterward a senator from Illinois. He was also one of the speakers at another meeting held in the hall of the House of Representatives, at Springfield, on February 5, 1843, at which Ex-Senator Jesse B. Thomas presided, and Lyman Trumbull, who twelve years later defeated Mr. Lincoln in his first senatorial race, reported the resolutions. These and other meetings of similar nature were held before Dr. Whitman could have reached St. Louis on his famous winter ride, and show that public sentiment on the Oregon question was as fully aroused as it could be long before his arrival .* Anything he could have done after his arrival would simply have added the influence of a single individual to that of a multitude who were all of one opinion.
Nor is it possible that he gave either President Tyler, or Secretary Webster, any information that they did not already have, in regard to the value of the country or its accessabil- ity, for there had been in the files of the navy department,
* Quotations from a pamphlet printed in Washington Pioneer Association, 1894.
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for more than eight months previously, a special report from Commodore Wilkes, hurried forward to Washington as soon as possible after his arrival in New York, which contained all the information, in condensed form, about the Oregon country that had been gathered by his expedition, together with a forceful argument in favor of our claims to the whole coast, from the northern boundary of California to 54° 40'. This report was immeasurably valuable, in com- parison with any that Whitman could make, since it was based on a scientific examination of the country, and par- ticularly of the only part of it which was then in dispute- the part about which Whitman knew but little, if anything. With this report both Tyler and Webster must have been familiar, for it had been prepared for their express informa- tion, and after receiving it they would not have dared to propose or accept less than was finally accepted, or than all their predecessors had contended for .*
There was no member of the administration, or of any previous administration, or of either the House or Senate, or any diplomatic representative of the country who expressed a doubt of the completeness of our title to all the country as far north as the forty-ninth parallel, and many were for demanding the line of 54° 40', as was done, very much to Mr. Polk's embarrassment, by the platform adopted a little more than a year later, by the convention which named him for president. More than all this Great Britain had ceased to make any claim whatever to the part of Oregon in which Whitman was interested-the only part of it he had
* This report was not published at that time, because publication would have defeated the object for which it had been prepared, and it has not been published since then. I have secured a copy of it from the navy department, and the most important part of it will be found in the appendix of this volume.
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ever seen, or knew anything about. It had already twice offered to make the Columbia the boundary, and Lord Ash- burton's instructions had authorized him to repeat the offer. So well was the public informed, and so general and well settled was the conviction, both among public men and private individuals, that we were entitled to all of Oregon south of the forty-ninth parallel, and that our government was bound by every consideration of national interest, as well as national honor, to preserve and defend it, that no public man would have ventured even to contemplate the sacrifice of any part of it.
And still more than all this Senator Linn of Missouri, supported as he was in both the House and Senate, by other active advocates of immediate occupation of the Oregon country, had been for five years past proposing practical measures, at every session of Congress, for the encourage- ment of settlers, and thus by the surest of all means, making the country indisputably ours. These measures had been ably and fully debated. No others had received more care- ful attention. The sentiment in favor of terminating the convention for joint occupancy was rapidly growing stronger. So strong was the public confidence becoming that all ques- tion of title to the country would soon be settled, and the liberal laws proposed for it would soon be enacted, that emigrants were already starting toward it in considerable numbers. Whitman had seen one considerable party arrive before leaving home, and his single traveling companion on his long journey had been a member of it. He had returned for the express purpose of encouraging larger parties to go out the following and succeeding years. The road was open, the trip demonstrated to be entirely practicable. All diffi- culties in the way of saving and settling the country were
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