Chapter XXXVII

Whitman's visit to Washington.--A priest's boast.--A taunt, and
Whitman's reply.--Arrival in Washington.--Interview with Secretary
Webster.--With President Tyler.--His return.--Successful passage of
the Rocky Mountains with two hundred wagons.--His mill burned
during his absence.

In September, 1842, Dr. Whitman was called to visit a patient at old Fort Wallawalla. While there, a number of boats of the Hudson's Bay Company, with several chief traders and Jesuit priests, on their way to the interior of the country, arrived. While at dinner, the overland express from Canada arrived, bringing news that the emigration from the Red River settlement was at Colville. This news excited unusual joy among the guests. One of them--a young priest--sang out: "Hurrah for Oregon, America is too late; we have got the country." "Now the Americans may whistle; the country is ours!" said another.

Whitman learned that the company had arranged for these Red River English settlers to come on to settle in Oregon, and at the same time Governor Simpson was to go to Washington and secure the settlement of the question as to the boundaries on the ground of the most numerous and permanent settlement in the country.

The Doctor was taunted with the idea that no power could prevent this result, as no information could reach Washington in time to prevent it. "It shall be prevented," said the Doctor, "if I have to go to Washington myself." "But you can not go there to do it," was the taunting reply of the Briton. "I will see," was the Doctor's reply. The reader is sufficiently acquainted with the history of this man's toil and labor in bringing his first wagon through to Fort Boise, to understand what he meant when he said, "_I will see_." Two hours after this conversation at the fort, he dismounted from his horse at his door at Wailatpu. I saw in a moment that he was fixed on some important object or errand. He soon explained that a special effort must be made to save the country from becoming British territory.

Every thing was in the best of order about the station, and there seemed to be no important reason why he should not go. A. L. Lovejoy, Esq., had a few days before arrived with the immigration. It was proposed that he should accompany the Doctor, which he consented to do, and in twenty-four hours' time they were well mounted and on their way to the States. They reached Fort Hall all safe; kept south into Taos, and thence to Bent's Fort, on the Arkansas River, when Mr. Lovejoy became exhausted from toil and exposure, and stopped for the winter, while the Doctor continued on and reached Washington.

Thus far in this narrative I give Dr. Whitman's, Mr. Lovejoy's, and my own knowledge. I find an article in the _Pacific_ of November 9, from Mr. Spalding, which gives us the result:--

"On reaching the settlements, Dr. Whitman found that many of the now
old Oregonians--Waldo, Applegate, Hamtree, Keizer, and others--who
had once made calculations to come to Oregon, had abandoned the idea
because of the representations from Washington that every attempt to
take wagons and ox-teams through the Rocky and Blue Mountains to the
Columbia had failed. Dr. Whitman saw at once what the stopping of
wagons at Fort Hall every year meant. The representations purported
to come from Secretary Webster, but were from Governor Simpson, who,
magnifying the statements of his chief trader, Grant, at Fort Hall,
declared the Americans must be going mad, from their repeated
fruitless attempts to take wagons and teams through the impassable
regions to the Columbia, and that the women and children of those
wild fanatics had been saved from a terrible death only by the
repeated and philanthropic labors of Mr. Grant, at Fort Hall, in
furnishing them with horses. The Doctor told these men, as he met
them, that his only object in crossing the mountains in the dead of
winter, at the risk of his life, and through untold sufferings, was
to take back an American emigration that summer through the
mountains to the Columbia, with their wagons and their teams. The
route was practicable. We had taken our wagon, our cattle, and our
families through, seven years before. They had nothing to fear; but
to be ready on his return. The stopping of wagons at Fort Hall was a
Hudson's Bay Company scheme to prevent the settling of the country
by the Americans, till they could settle it with their own subjects
from the Selkirk settlement. This news spread like wildfire 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 mountains,
and laid before him the great importance of Oregon to the United
States. But Mr. Webster lived too near Cape Cod to see things in the
same light with his fellow-Statesman who had transferred his worldly
interests to the Pacific coast. He awarded sincerity to the
missionary, but could not admit for a moment that the short
residence of six years could give the Doctor the knowledge of the
country possessed by Governor Simpson, who had almost grown up in
the country, and had traveled every part of it, and represents it as
one unbroken waste of sand deserts and impassable mountains, fit
only for the beaver, the gray bear, and the savage. Besides, he had
about traded it off with Governor Simpson, to go into the Ashburton
treaty, for a cod-fishery on Newfoundland.

"The Doctor next sought an interview with President Tyler, who at
once appreciated his solicitude and his timely representations of
Oregon, and especially his disinterested though hazardous
undertaking to cross the Rocky Mountains in the winter to take back
a caravan of wagons. He said that, although the Doctor's
representations of the character of the country, and the possibility
of reaching it by a wagon route, were in direct contradiction to
those of Governor Simpson, his frozen limbs were sufficient proof of
his sincerity, and his missionary character was sufficient guaranty
for his honesty, and he would therefore, as President, rest upon
these and act accordingly; would detail Fremont with a military
force to escort the Doctor's caravan through the mountains; and no
more action should be had toward trading off Oregon till he could
hear the result of the expedition. If the Doctor could establish a
wagon route through the mountains to the Columbia River, pronounced
impossible by Governors Simpson and Ashburton, he would use his
influence to hold on to Oregon. The great desire of the Doctor's
American soul, and Christian withal, that is, the pledge of the
President that the swapping of Oregon with England for a cod-fishery
should stop for the present, was attained, although at the risk of
life, and through great sufferings, and unsolicited, and without the
promise or expectation of a dollar's reward from any source. And
now, God giving him life and strength, he would do the rest; that
is, connect the Missouri and Columbia rivers with a wagon-track so
deep and plain that neither national envy nor sectional fanaticism
would ever blot it out[10]. And when the 5th of September, 1843, saw
the rear of the Doctor's caravan of nearly two hundred wagons, with
which he started from Missouri last of April, emerge from the
western shades of the Blue Mountains upon the plains of the
Columbia, the greatest work ever accomplished by one man for Oregon
was finished. And through that great emigration during that whole
summer, the Doctor was their everywhere-present angel of mercy,
ministering to the sick, helping the weary, encouraging the
wavering, cheering the mothers, mending wagons, setting broken
bones, hunting stray oxen, climbing precipices; now in the rear, now
at the front; in the rivers, looking out fords through the
quicksands; in the deserts, looking out for water; in the dark
mountains, looking out passes; at noontide or midnight, as though
those thousands were his own children, and those wagons and flocks
were his own property. Although he asked not, nor expected, a dollar
as a reward from any source, he felt himself abundantly rewarded
when he saw the desire of his heart accomplished, the great wagon
route over the mountains established, and Oregon in a fair way to be
occupied with American settlements and American commerce. And
especially he felt himself doubly paid, when, at the end of his
successful expedition, and standing alive at his home again on the
banks of the Wallawalla, these hundreds of his fellow summer
pilgrims, way-worn and sunbrowned, took him by the hand and thanked
him with tears for what he had done.

"During the Doctor's absence, his flour mill, with a quantity of
grain, had been burned, and, consequently, he found but a small
supply at his station on his return, raised by Mr. Geiger, a young
man. But what he had in the way of grain, garden vegetables, and
cattle, he gladly furnished the needy immigrants at the very low
figure of the Wallamet prices, which was six hundred per cent. lower
than what they had been compelled to pay at Forts Hall and Boise,
and one half lower than they are to-day in the same country. And
this was his practice every year till himself and wife and fourteen
immigrants were murdered in the fall of 1847, because, as
Vicar-General Brouillet says, 'they were American citizens', and
not, as I am bold to say and can prove, because he was a physician.
Shame on the American that will intimate such a thing! This
vicar-general of the Papal hosts on this coast does not thank you
for such an excuse. He tells you plainly it was to break up the
American settlements on this coast.

"Often the good Doctor would let every bushel of his grain go to the
passing immigrants in the fall, and then would have to depend upon
me for breadstuffs for the winter and the whole year till next
harvest, for his own large family and the scores of immigrants who
every year were obliged to stop at his station on account of
sickness or give-out teams. Although the Doctor had done so much for
his country, it seems his blood was necessary to arouse the
government to take formal possession of this coast, as it was his
death by savages that sent the devoted J. L. Meek over the mountains
to Washington, in the spring of 1848, to beg the government, in
behalf of the citizens of this coast, to send us help, and to extend
its jurisdiction over us."

[Footnote 10] They reached Fort Hall in safety, but there, in
the absence of Dr. Whitman from their camp, they were told by
Captain Grant, in the interest of the Hudson's Bay Company,
as others had been told before, that it was idle for wagons
to attempt to reach the Columbia. For a time there was a
heaviness of spirit among those families, which, like the
Israelites of old, had penetrated the depths of the "great
and terrible wilderness." But Dr. Whitman, on ascertaining
what had happened, reassured them by his bold and manly
words, saying to them, "My countrymen! you have trusted me
thus far; believe me now, and I will take your wagons to
Columbia River;" and he did so, and Oregon was saved by his
patriotism to the Union.