Chapter XXII: Explanations (6)

The slaughter of so many persons naturally created a great sensation in Oregon at the time, but for months after no one thought of attributing it to the interference of the Catholic missioners. However, Spaulding, whose mind had become disturbed by the contemplation of the dangers he had escaped, and having to abandon his mission among the Nez Perces, and finding himself unemployed, gradually began to give a new version of the affair, and in conversation, preaching, and writing at first hinted, and next broadly asserted, that the “Jesuits” were at the bottom of the whole matter. Considering that the shock to his nervous system was so great that he never entirely recovered from it, and that the repetition of the falsehoods was so persistent, it is charitable to suppose that he eventually came to believe them as truths; for no man in his right senses would persist in forcing on the world such a compilation of improbable statements and downright falsehoods as are contained in _Pub. Doc. No. 37_.

As there are always many persons, made credulous by ignorance or prejudice, willing to credit any anti-Catholic slander, the Rev. 668 Father Brouillet, the only priest near the scene of the crime, wrote and published, in 1853, a full and authentic account of the whole transaction, which was so clear and circumstantial that even the greatest opponents of the Catholic priesthood were silenced. In 1857, a special agent of the Treasury Department, J. Ross Browne, made a tour in the far West, and in reporting on the condition of the aborigines, and the potent causes of war between them and the white settlers, embodied in his statement Father Brouillet’s pamphlet, which together formed _Pub. Doc. No. 38_, against which all the powers of the presbyteries and conferences of Oregon, under the fitting leadership of a crazy preacher, are now directed, after a silence of more than ten years. Is it any wonder that it is so often remarked that the only bond of union, the sole vitalizing principles, of the sects are their hatred to Catholicity?

A glance at the history of the early Indian mission in Oregon is necessary to a clear understanding of the subject. It is well known that for many years that portion of our common country was debatable ground, and, while our government claimed the sovereignty and appointed officials to administer its affairs, the Hudson Bay Company held possession and virtually controlled the inhabitants, nearly all of whom were Indians or half-breeds. Under the direction of the company, the natives were honest, peaceable, and well disposed. Captain Bonneville, who visited the Nez Perces in 1832, says of them:

“Simply to call these people religious would convey but a faint
idea of the deep hue of piety and devotion which pervades their
whole conduct. Their honesty is immaculate, and their purity of
purpose, and the observance of the rites of their religion, are
most uniform and remarkable. They are certainly more like a
nation of saints than a horde of savages.”

“This was a very enthusiastic view to take of the Nez Perces’ character,” says a Protestant authority, Mrs. Victor, “which appeared all the brighter to the captain by contrast with the savage life which he had witnessed in other places, and even by contrast with the conduct of the white trappers. But the Nez Perces were intellectually and morally an exception to all the Indian tribes west of the Missouri River. Lewis and Clarke found them different from any others; the fur-traders and the missionaries found them the same. To account for this superiority is indeed difficult. The only clue to the cause is the following statement of Bonneville. ‘It would appear,’ he says, ‘that they had imbibed some notions of the Christian faith from Catholic missionaries and traders who have been among them. They even had a rude calendar of the fasts and festivals of the Romish Church, and some traces of its ceremonial. These have become blended with their own wild rites, and present a strange medley, civilized and barbarous.’”[131] It was in this happy and quiet condition that the first Protestant missionaries from the United States found the Indians. They were Methodist, and arrived in 1834, remaining for ten years. “No missionary undertaking,” says Rev. Stephen Olin, himself one of the laborers, “has been prosecuted by the Methodist Episcopal Church with higher hopes and more ardent zeal.... This particular mission, involved an expenditure of forty-two thousand dollars in a single year. At the end of six years, there were sixty-eight persons 669 connected with this mission, men, women, and children, all supported by this society.”[132] And the same writer adds: “How such a number of missionaries found employment in such a field it is not easy to conjecture, especially as the great body of the Indians never came under the influence of their labors.” Dr. E. White, Sub-Indian Agent, writes, in 1843: “The Rev. Mr. Lee and associates are doing but little for the Indians.... With all that has been expended, without doubting the correctness of the intention, it is most manifest to every observer that the Indians of this lower country, as a whole, have been very little benefited.”[133]

The two Methodist stations established, at Clatsop’s Plains and Nesqualy were speedily abandoned, and that at the Dalles is described, in _Traits of American Indian Life_, as being in a most fearful condition. “The occurrence,” the author says, alluding to a murder by a converted Indian which he had witnessed, “is but the type of a thousand atrocities daily occurring among these supposed converts.” And we have the authority of Mr. Gray for saying that “the giving of a few presents of any description to them induces them to make professions corresponding to the wish of the donor.” The success of the missionaries at Willamette was, if possible, still more disheartening. Mr. Olin says that of those who held relations with them none remained in 1842; and Alexander Simpson, who visited the valley about the same time, found the mission to consist of but four families, those of a clergyman, surgeon, a schoolmaster, and an agricultural overseer. It is not strange, then, that two years afterwards the missions were entirely abandoned, and have never been attempted to be re-established. “Had they met vice with a spotless life,” says Gray, “and an earnest determination to maintain their integrity as representatives of religion and a Christian people, the fruits of their labor would have been greater.” We are forced, therefore, to conclude that the author of _The River of the West_ is justified in saying on this and other indisputable authority, “so far from benefiting the Indians, the Methodist mission became an actual injury to them”--the Indians.

Thus ended the first chapter in the history of the progress and civilization of the Indians in Oregon, to which we desire to call the respectful attention of the United States Senate. We have the testimony of Captain Bonneville, endorsed by Mrs. Victor, regarding the honesty and piety of the natives in 1832, before the arrival of the Methodists. After nine years of missionary labor, we have the following grave statement from no less an authority than one of their own clergymen:

“The Indians want pay for being whipped into compliance with Dr.
White’s laws, the same as they did for praying to please the
missionaries during the great Indian revival of 1839” (p. 157).

“As a matter of course, lying has much to do in their system of
trade, and he is the best fellow who can tell the biggest
lie--make men believe and practise the greatest deception” (p.
158).[134]

The Methodists having selected Lower Oregon as the field of their labors, the Presbyterians chose the upper or eastern portion of the territory. They arrived in 1836, three in number, afterwards increased to twelve, and backed up by the Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Dr. Marius Whitman settled at Wailatpu among the Cayuses 670 and Walla Wallas, and Messrs. H. H. Spaulding and W. H. Gray at Lapwai, with the Nez Perces. In 1838, the Spokane mission was established by Messrs. Walker and Ellis. Their prospects of success were at first most brilliant. The savages received them kindly and listened to them attentively. “There was no want of ardor in the Presbyterian missionaries,” says _The River of the West_. “They applied themselves in earnest to the work they had undertaken. They were diligent in their efforts to civilize and christianize their Indians.” But they made a fatal mistake at the very beginning, which not only reflects on their personal honesty, but shows that they knew nothing of the character of the people they came to instruct. Mr. John Toupin, who was for many years interpreter at Fort Walla Walla, gave, in 1848, the following account of the establishment of those missions:

“I was there when Mr. Parker, in 1835, came to select places for
Presbyterian missions among the Cayuses and Nez Perces, and to
ask lands for these missions. He employed me as interpreter in
his negotiations with the Indians on that occasion. Mr. Pombrun,
the gentleman then in charge of the fort, accompanied him to the
Cayuses and the Nez Perces. Mr. Parker, in company with Mr.
Pombrun, an American, and myself, went first to the Cayuses upon
the lands called Wailatpu, that belonged to the three
chiefs--Splitted Lip, or Yomtipi; Red Cloak, or Waptachtakamal;
and Tilankaikt. Having met them at that place, he told them that
he was coming to select a place to build a preaching-house, to
teach them how to live, and to teach school to their children;
that he would not come himself to establish the mission, but a
doctor or a medicine-man would come in his place; that the doctor
would be the chief of the mission, and would come in the
following spring. ‘I come to select a place for a mission,’ said
he, ‘but I do not intend to take your lands for nothing. After
the doctor is come, there will come every year a big ship loaded
with goods to be divided among the Indians. These goods will not
be sold, but given to you. The missionaries will bring you
ploughs and hoes to teach you how to cultivate the land, and they
will not sell, but give them to you.’

“From the Cayuses Mr. Parker went to the Nez Perces, about one
hundred and twenty-five miles distant, on the lands of Old
Button, on a small creek which empties into the Clearwater, seven
or eight miles from the actual mission, and there he made the
same promises to the Indians as at Wailatpu. ‘Next spring there
will come a missionary to establish himself here and take a piece
of land; but he will not take it for nothing; you shall be paid
for it every year: this is the American fashion.’ In the
following year, 1836, Dr. Whitman arrived among the Cayuses and
began to build. The Indians did not stop him, as they expected to
be paid as they said.

“In the summer of the year 1837, Splitted Lip asked him where the
goods which he had promised him were; whether he would pay him,
or whether he wanted to steal his lands. He told him that, if he
did not want to pay him, he had better go off immediately, for he
did not want to give his lands for nothing.”[135]

But the doctor and his co-laborers did not pay for the lands, nor indeed fulfil any of the promises of Mr. Parker, and thus the expected neophytes received their first lesson in duplicity, which eventually destroyed all confidence in the honesty and truthfulness of their teachers, and led directly to the massacre of Whitman and some of his companions, and to the total destruction of the Presbyterian missions. This latter event occurred late in 1847. Let us see what had been done in the eleven previous years by the agents of the Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. In 1842, they had but three stations. “At each of these,” says _The River of the West_, “there was a small body of land under cultivation, a few cattle and 671 hogs, a flouring and saw mill, and a blacksmith’s shop.” In 1843, Mr. Spaulding writes to Dr. White, the Sub-Indian Agent: “But _two_ natives have as yet been admitted into the church. Some ten or twelve others give pleasing evidence of having been born again.”[136] It seems, then, that it took twelve missionaries seven years to convert two savages, at an expense of over forty thousand dollars for one year at least! Can the English Protestant mission for converting the Hebrews in Jerusalem show any return more preposterous than this?

But the years intervening between this time and their entire discontinuance show no converts at all. Business was entirely suspended, as far as spiritual affairs were concerned. Mr. Thomas McKay, an intimate friend of Whitman, under date September 11, 1848, says, “The doctor often told me that for a couple of years he had ceased to teach the Indians, because they would not listen to him”; and John Baptist Gervais about the same time assures us that “Mr. Spaulding told me himself, last fall, that for three or four years back he had ceased entirely to teach the Indians because they refused to hear him”--a fact which that unscrupulous apostle corroborated in a conversation with Dr. Ponjade, in the preceding August. “The Indians,” he said, “are getting worse every day for two or three years back; they are threatening to turn us out of the missions. A few days ago, they tore down my fences, and I do not know what the Missionary Board of New York means to do. It is a fact that we are doing no good: when the emigration passes, the Indians run off to trade, and return worse than when we came among them.”[137] Even as early as 1839, a missionary of the Spokanes, writing to Dr. Whitman, said that the failure of that mission was so strongly impressed on his mind, he felt it necessary “to have cane in hand, and as much as one shoe on, ready for a move.” “I see,” he adds, “nothing but the power of God that can save us.” When we consider this condition of affairs in connection with the brutal massacre at Wailatpu by Dr. Whitman’s immediate neighbors and even some members of his household and congregation, at a time of profound peace, we can form some adequate idea of the benefits of the “progress and civilization of the Indians under their [Presbyterian] charge.” Will the United States Senate, in its laudable search after information, consult some of the authorities, who are with one exception Protestant, which we have quoted?

The Catholic missions may be said to have commenced in 1838. In that year, two Catholic priests passed Walla Walla on their way from Canada to Fort Vancouver. In 1839 and 1840, one of them, Father Demers, occasionally visited Walla Walla, for a short time, to give instruction to the Indians, many of whom were in the habit of visiting him, particularly the Cayuses and Nez Perces at the fort. This presence excited the wrath of Dr. Whitman, and he presumed so far as to reprimand in severe language the gentleman in charge of the post. “From the time the Jesuits arrived,” says Gray, “his own [H. H. Spaulding’s] pet Indians had turned Catholics, and commenced a quarrel with him. These facts seemed to annoy him, and led him to adopt a course opposed by Smith, Gray, and Rodgers.” The visits of the Catholic missionaries were, however, few and far between, till the 5th of September, 1847, when the Rt. Rev. Bishop A. M. A. Blanchet arrived 672 at Fort Walla Walla, accompanied by the Superior of the Oblates and two other clergymen, to establish permanent missions in Eastern Oregon. It was the design of the bishop to locate a mission on the lands of Towatowe (Young Chief), a Catholic Indian, who had offered him his own house for that purpose. The Young Chief, however, being absent hunting, Dr. Blanchet was delayed at the fort, longer than he anticipated, and while there was visited by Protestant missionaries and Indian chiefs alike. The former treated him with great incivility and disrespect. Dr. Whitman, we are told by an eye-witness, “made a furious charge against the Catholics, accusing them of having persecuted Protestants, and even of having shed their blood wherever they had prevailed. He said he did not like Catholics; ... that he should oppose the missionaries to the extent of his power.... He spoke against the _Catholic Ladder_ (a picture explaining the principal points of Catholic faith), and said that he would cover it with blood to show the persecution of Protestants by Catholics. He refused to sell provisions to the bishop, and protested that he would not assist the missionaries unless he saw them in starvation.”[138] The temper of the savages was milder than their would-be evangelizers. On the 26th of October, Young Chief came to the fort, and asked for a priest to be sent to teach his young people. He repeated the offer of his house, but suggested as a substitute the lands of his relative Tilokaikt, upon which Dr. Whitman was settled. On November 4, the four chiefs of the Cayuses assembled at Walla Walla, and after a long “talk” agreed to let the bishop have a site for a mission and as much ground to cultivate as was necessary to support the priests. The bishop “told them,” says Father Brouillet, “that he would not make presents to the Indians; that he would give them nothing for the land he asked; that in case they worked for him he would pay them for their work and no more.” The author just quoted was sent among the Cayuses to select a proper site, but, not finding one suitable, accepted Young Chief’s offer, a camp fully twenty-five miles from Dr. Whitman’s residence, in the midst of another tribe altogether. As one of the many traits of Christian charity which distinguishes the Catholic missionaries in every part of the world, it may be mentioned that, during the conference at the fort, one of the chiefs spoke of Dr. Whitman in very harsh terms, accusing him of dishonesty and mercenary motives. Bishop Blanchet reproved him instantly, sternly telling him that the doctor was a good man, and that he, the chief, had a bad heart to say so; and when Father Brouillet was offered, by Tilokaikt, Whitman’s own mission for Catholic purposes for nothing, he positively and peremptorily declined it. And yet _Pub. Doc. No. 37_ would have us believe that the Catholics coveted Whitman’s Station, and were resolved to have it at any cost. On November 27, the bishop, with his secretary and Father Brouillet, proceeded to the new station at Umatilla. On the day following, Sunday, they were visited by Whitman, and on Monday by Spaulding, who remained for supper, both these gentleman, it seems, having modified their views during the previous two months’ intercourse with the missionaries. It was on this latter day, between two and three o’clock in the afternoon, that Whitman and his companions were murdered. The account of that horrible event, as 673 related by Father Brouillet, who was on the ground two days after, is still highly interesting. In a letter to Colonel Gilliam, three months later, when the facts were fresh in his memory, and every resident of the neighborhood was in a position to disprove anything he might say that was false, he writes:

“Before leaving Fort Walla Walla, it had been decided that, after
visiting the sick people of my mission on the Umatilla, I should
go and visit those of Tilokaikt’s camp, for the purpose of
baptizing the infants, and such dying adults as might desire this
favor; and the doctor and Mr. Spaulding having informed me that
there were many sick persons at their missions, I was confirmed
in the resolution, and made preparations to go as soon as
possible.

“After having finished in baptizing the infants and dying adults
of my mission, I left on Tuesday, the 30th of November, late in
the afternoon, for Tilokaikt’s camp, where I arrived between
seven and eight o’clock in the evening. It is impossible to
conceive my surprise and consternation when, upon my arrival, I
learned that the Indians the day before had massacred the doctor
and his wife, with the greater part of the Americans at the
mission. I passed the night without scarcely closing my eyes.
Early next morning I baptized three sick children, two of whom
died soon after, and then hastened to the scene of death to offer
to the widows and orphans all the assistance in my power. I found
five or six women and over thirty children in a condition
deplorable beyond description. Some had lost their husbands, and
others their fathers, whom they had seen massacred before their
eyes, and were expecting every moment to share the same fate. The
sight of those persons caused me to shed tears, which, however, I
was obliged to conceal, for I was, the greater part of the day,
in the presence of the murderers, and closely watched by them,
and, if I had shown too marked an interest in behalf of the
sufferers, it would only have endangered their lives and mine;
these, therefore, entreated me to be on my guard. After the first
few words that could be exchanged under the circumstances, I
inquired after the victims, and was told that they were yet
unburied. Joseph Stainfield, a Frenchman, who was in the service
of Dr. Whitman, and had been spared by the Indians, was engaged
in washing the corpses, but, being alone, he was unable to bury
them. I resolved to go and assist him, so as to render to those
unfortunate victims the last service in my power to offer them.”

The reverend father then goes on to relate how, after comforting the women and children as well as he could, and having been told by the chief “to say to them that they need fear nothing, they shall be taken care of and well treated,” he set out toward his mission, in order to intercept Spaulding and warn him of his danger. He was accompanied by his interpreter, and closely followed by a son of the chief, who, it afterward appeared, was going to his uncle Camastilo to acquaint him of the slaughter. His meeting with Spaulding is graphic, and, if not for the hideous surroundings, would be amusing. He says:

“In a few minutes after, while they were thus engaged in smoking,
I saw Mr. Spaulding coming toward me. In a moment he was at my
side, taking me by the hand and asking for news. ‘Have you been
to the doctor’s?’ he inquired. ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘What news?’
‘Sad news.’ ‘Is any person dead?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Who is dead--is it
one of the doctor’s children?’ (He had left two of them very
sick.) ‘No,’ I replied. ‘Who, then, is dead?’ I hesitated to
tell. ‘Wait a moment,’ I said, ‘I cannot tell you now.’ While Mr.
Spaulding was asking me those questions, I had spoken to my
interpreter, telling him to entreat the Indian in my name not to
kill Mr. Spaulding, which I begged of him as a special favor, and
hoped that he would not refuse it to me. I was waiting for his
answer, and did not wish to relate the disaster to Mr. Spaulding
before getting it, for fear he might by his manner discover to
the Indian what I had told him, for the least motion like flight 674
would have cost him his life, and probably exposed mine also. The
son of Tilokaikt, after hesitating some moments, replied that he
could not take it upon himself to save Mr. Spaulding, but that he
would go back and consult the other Indians, and so he started
back immediately to his camp. I then availed myself of this
absence to satisfy the anxiety of Mr. Spaulding. I related to him
what had passed. ‘The doctor is dead,’ said I; ‘the Indians have
killed him, together with his wife and eight other Americans, on
Monday last, the 29th, and I have buried them before leaving
to-day.’ ‘The Indians have killed the doctor--they will kill me
also if I go to the camp!’ ‘I fear it very much,’ said I. ‘What,
then, shall I do?’ ‘I know not. I have told you what has
happened. Decide now for yourself what you had best do. I have no
advice to give you in regard to that.’ ‘Why has that Indian
started back?’ he inquired. ‘I begged him to spare your life,’
said I, ‘and he answered me that he could not take it upon
himself to do so, but that he would go and take the advice of the
other Indians about it; that is the reason why he started back.’
Mr. Spaulding seemed frightened and discouraged. ‘Is it possible!
is it possible!’ he exclaimed several times. ‘They will certainly
kill me.’ And he was unable to come to any decision. ‘But what
could have prompted the Indians to this?’ he inquired. ‘I know
not,’ said I; ‘but be quick and decide, you have no time to lose.
If the Indians should resolve not to spare your life, they will
be here very soon, as we are only about three miles from their
camp. ‘But where shall I go?’ ‘I know not; you know the country
better than I. All I know is that the Indians say the order to
kill all Americans has been sent in all directions.’ Mr.
Spaulding then resolved to fly. His asked me if I were willing to
take charge of some loose horses he was driving before him. I
told him I could not, for fear of becoming suspicious to the
Indians. I told him, however, that if the interpreter was willing
to take them under his charge at his own risk, he was perfectly
at liberty to do so. To this the interpreter agreed. I gave Mr.
Spaulding what provisions I had left, and hastened to take leave
of him, wishing him with all my heart a happy escape, and
promising to pray for him.... The interpreter had not left
Mr. Spaulding (after pointing out a byroad) more than twenty
minutes, when he saw three armed Cayuses riding hastily toward
him in pursuit of Mr. Spaulding. Upon coming up to the
interpreter, they seemed much displeased that I had warned Mr.
Spaulding of their intentions, and thereby furnished him an
opportunity to escape.’ The priest ought to have minded his own
business, and not to have interfered with ours,’ they said in an
angry tone, and started immediately in pursuit of him.”[139]

This Spaulding escaped to tell the tale, and to traduce the character of the priest that saved his life at the risk of his own. At first, he was inclined to acknowledge the obligation, for in a letter to his “reverend and dear friend,” as he styles Bishop Blanchet, eight days after, he writes: “The hand of the merciful God brought me to my family after six days and nights from the time _my dear friend_ furnished me with provisions and I escaped from the Indians.” This effort of gratitude was, however, too much for him to sustain, and, accordingly, we find published in _The Oregon American_ (p. 13) the following choice specimen of bigotry and base ingratitude, “worse than the sin of witchcraft.” He says:

“It has been said by some of my friends in this country that they
felt greatly mortified to see me in the dust at the bishop’s feet
begging for my life.... This is not the first time that
Protestants (that is, heretics) have lain prostrate at the feet
of the Pope of Rome. I saw my life, under God, in the hands of
the bishop and the priests. I had a right to ask it again. I
seemed to see the hands of these priests wet with the blood of
our associates.... I stopped not to ask whose hands placed the
bishop’s foot upon my neck, the lives of so many human beings
were worth the struggle.”

Can the force of prejudice and deception go further than this? Here is a man, who, if not an open enemy of the missionaries, was certainly a 675 violent opponent, whose life was saved by one of them at a most critical moment at imminent danger to his own, who was shown the pathway by which he might escape the fury of the savages whose hatred he had awakened by long years of injustice, and who was even supplied with food from the poor priest’s scrip, turning round on his benefactors when he attained a place of safety, and vilifying the church and religion to whose lesson of charity he owed his miserable existence. This is the man, too, upon whose authority the “Christian Associations of Oregon” have undertaken to brand the heroic priests of that section as instigators of murder; and who has undertaken to inform the Senate, and provide Mr. Delano with matters for history “in a more permanent form.”

And here it may be well to dispose of some of the minor charges. _Pub. Doc. No. 37_, at page 30, says of the scenes of the Whitman massacre:

“They [the Indian children] leaped and screamed for joy, throwing
handfuls of blood around, drinking down the dying agonies of
their victims as a precious draught. These blood-stained little
savages were to receive the sacred ordinance of baptism a few
hours after, at the hands of the priest of God--the mangled
bodies yet lying unburied around, the food of dogs and wolves by
night, and of hogs and vultures by day, seeming to pay down to
the Indians for what they had done.”

We are not aware that in the whole course of Protestant history there is to be found a more deliberate, cool, and atrocious tissue of falsehoods than the above. Two days, not a few hours, after the murder, _three_ sick children were baptized, of whom two were so ill that they died the same day. Are those some of the children who leaped and screamed for joy? The baptism took place two miles from Whitman’s Station, so that the bodies of the slain could not well have been lying around. The dogs and wolves, hogs and vultures, are purely the creation of the Rev. H. H. Spaulding’s imagination, and would, in vulgar parlance, be styled “piling on the agony.” Before the arrival of Father Brouillet, Joseph Stainfield had already washed the corpses, and, with the assistance of the good priest, they were buried. The insinuation in the last line is worthy of Spaulding, and shows to what extremes a man will go whose sense of truth and even decency has become completely blunted.

Another charge against the missionaries is that they acted inhumanly with the captives, and that Father Brouillet, who promised to return to them, neglected to do so. It is true he did not do so, and the prisoners may thank Mr. Spaulding for his not returning. Had he not been as solicitous about saving that individual’s life, and thereby enable him to go down to the grave at an old age with a load of falsehood and forgeries on his soul, he would never have incurred the ill-feeling of the Indians of Wailatpu, or be himself kept a prisoner in Young Chief’s tent for two or three weeks. But his thoughts and those of his fellow-missionaries were with the unfortunates, and his every effort was used, and successfully too, for their liberation. While Spaulding, from his mission with the Nez Perces, was writing lying letters to his “reverend and dear friend,” Bishop Blanchet, soliciting his good offices with the Indians with regard to the captives, amongst whom was his own daughter, that ecclesiastic was calling around him the chiefs of the Cayuses, admonishing them to treat their captives kindly, promising to write to the American governor for terms of peace, and attending a council at Fort Walla 676 Walla, at which the Indians consented and actually did liberate the prisoners, the ransom being paid by the agents of the much abused Hudson Bay Company. Spaulding himself was then virtually a prisoner among the Nez Perces, with whom he lived eleven years, and “was very much beloved,” if we may believe his own statement.

We now come to what we may be permitted to call the first grand falsehood, as set forth in _Pub. Doc. No. 37_, for the information of the Senate and the benefit of history, namely, that the Whitman murderers were instigated by the “Jesuits.” This calumny is repeated in several places and in many forms in this extraordinary public document, and may be supposed to be crystallized in the two following paragraphs:

“When the Jesuits and English had, by means of Indian runners,
excited the surrounding tribes to butcher the Protestant
missionaries and American emigrants at Wailatpu, and to
exterminate the American settlements on the Pacific, the Nez
Perces refused to join them, and rushed at once to the defence of
their beloved teacher, Mrs. Spaulding, and rescued her and her
infants from a band of forty of the murderers; then, second, fled
to the scene of the eight days’ carnage, and by their influence
stopped the bloody work of the Jesuits.” (_Resolutions adopted by
the Pleasant Butte Baptist Church of Linn Co., Oregon, Oct. 22,
1869._)

“This Brouilette [Brouillet], it is proved in part by his own
testimony, was present at the massacre, doing nothing to save the
victims, but baptizing the children of the murdering Indians, and
otherwise stimulating them to their work of death.” (_Report of the
Committee of the Presbytery of Steuben, adopted by the Christian
Associations of Oregon, 1869._)

Surely this is history run mad. In fact, so gross are the misstatements that we are inclined to think that Spaulding either forged the signatures or interpolated the resolutions of the associations--a proceeding which, it will appear further on, he was perfectly capable of doing. Now, it is well known, and stated even by Spaulding (_Pub. Doc. No. 37_), that the so-called “Jesuits,” namely, Bishop Blanchet and his priests, had only been in that part of the country a short time--Father Brouillet says two months, but Spaulding reduces it to six weeks; that no Catholic mission had been established within hundreds of miles of Whitman’s Station till two days previous to the mission, when one was commenced at Umatilla, twenty-five miles distant, among a tribe of the Cayuses, who had no act or part in the crime; that there never was a Catholic missionary, Jesuit or otherwise, in the camps of Tilokaikt, where Whitman resided till two days after the massacre, but once, and that for a short time when Father Brouillet was invited by the chief to go and procure a site for a mission, in which he failed; and, finally, that the Indians who did the bloody deed were near neighbors of the doctor, the worst being a member of his household; and that _every one of them were Protestants_, as Spaulding himself partly admits[140] (_Ex. Doc. No. 37_). Even the Rev. Gustavus Hines, who is named as one of the assistants in the 677 compilation of this document, says in his _History of Oregon_, in describing a council of chiefs in 1843: “Tilokaikt, a Cayuse chief, rose and said, ‘What do you read the laws for before we take them? We do not take the laws because Tanitan says so. He is a Catholic, and as a people we do not follow his worship!” The story of Father Brouillet having been on the scene of massacre stimulating the Indians in their work of death is a poor fabrication, for the doctor visited the bishop and his two priests at Umatilla, twenty-five miles distant, late on Sunday, the 28th, and on the 29th, the day of the slaughter, Spaulding himself supped with them at the same place. The ridiculous reference to the Nez Perces, under the supposition that they were Protestants, is simply absurd. The fact is that Spaulding says, in his letter to his “reverend and dear friend” the bishop, the Nez Perces only promised to protect him and the American settlers if troops were not sent against the Cayuses, and that they demanded and received from Mr. Ogden, of Walla Walla, clothing, ammunition, and tobacco before they would release their “beloved teacher,” her husband and infants. The only Nez Perces who fled to the scene to stop “the bloody work of the Jesuits” were two messengers of that tribe who bore his treacherous letter to the bishop, begging him to assure the Cayuses that he would use every effort to prevent the troops from being sent against them, and which he afterwards declared was meant to deceive both the bishop and the Indians.[141] No sooner, however, was he out of danger than he used his best efforts to bring on a war. “I recollect distinctly,” says Major Magone, “that he was not in favor of killing _all_ the Cayuses, for he gave me the names of four or five that he knew to be friendly, and another whom I marked as questionable: the balance, if I am not very much mistaken, _he would have to share one fate_.” Truly, this was strange advice from a minister of the Gospel of peace, and from one who wished the bishop to assure the Indians “that we do not wish Americans to come from below to avenge our wrongs,” etc.

But apart from the credibility of the witness Spaulding, and the impossibility of the Catholic missionaries stirring up the Protestant Indians to the work of death, even if they so desired, not to speak of their early, continuous, and indignant denials of every statement and assertion put forth by the Oregon fanatics, we have the evidence of several persons, all Protestants we are inclined to believe, who were either in the neighborhood at the time, or arrived soon after. R. T. Lockwood, an old resident of Oregon and a prominent contributor to the press, relates the following conversation which he had in 1851 with one of the Indians who was a spectator of the murder:

“Q. Do the Indians generally want the Catholic priests among
them, and, if so, why do they prefer them to such men as Dr.
Whitman?

“A. No, not generally; yet a considerable number do, and prefer
them because they do not try to get our land away from us.

“Q. Did the priests that came among you, a little before the
massacre, encourage the killing of Dr. Whitman and the others?

“A. No. The killing of Dr. Whitman was resolved on before the
priests came.

“Q. Are you a Catholic Indian?

“A. No, sir.”

Some time after, Mr. Lockwood met a Mrs. Foster, one of the survivors. “I asked her,” he says, “if she thought the priest had anything to do 678 with the massacre, and she said she did not think he did, as he appeared very much pained, and was very kind and tender towards the survivors. I asked her, also, if she thought that the priest did all he safely could, and she answered, ‘I do.’” This impartial and well-informed gentleman winds up his letter thus: “Suffice it to say that, in all I ever heard said in regard to this lamentable massacre (and it has been much) _prior to the last two years_, there was not the slightest intimation of you or any other Catholic priest being implicated, or in any way responsible therefor.”[142]

“Why is the Catholic exempt from danger? Why can the Hudson Bay Company employee remain amid these scenes of blood and Indian vengeance against the white race, at peace, undisturbed, and, what is more loathsome, neutral in such a conflict?” asks the Hon. Elwood Evans of Spaulding, in 1868. The answer is simple. Because the Catholic priests treat the Indians with uniform kindness and justice; because they neither deceive them with false promises nor appropriate their lands and labor without payment, and because, being ministers of peace, they are opposed to strife; all of which Whitman, Spaulding, and his missionary companions did not and were not. And this brings us to the real cause of the massacre. For the sake of the Senate which desires information, and for Mr. Delano’s future history, we will give a few extracts from authorities which, if at all prejudiced, would be on the side of the Protestant view:

“‘I came to select a place for a mission,’ said he, ‘but I do not
intend to take your lands for nothing. After the doctor is come,
there will come every year a big ship, loaded with goods to be
divided among the Indians. These goods will not be sold, but
given to you. The missionaries will bring you ploughs and hoes,
to teach you to cultivate the land, and they will not sell but
give them to you.’... And there [among the Nez Perces] he made
the same promises to the Indians as at Wailatpu.” (_Mr. John
Toupin’s Statement, in 1848, of the Foundation of the Presbyterian
Missions by Mr. Parker, in 1835._)

“Two years ago. 1846, a Cayuse came to my house in the Willamette
settlement, and stopped with me over two weeks. During that time
he often spoke of Dr. Whitman, complaining that he possessed the
lands of the Indians, on which he was raising a great deal of
wheat, which he was selling to the Americans, without giving them
anything; that he had a mill upon their lands, and that they had
to pay him for grinding their wheat, a big horse for twenty
sacks. He said they told him to leave, but that he would not
listen to them.” (_Ib._)

“A man of easy, don’t-care habits, that could become all things
to all men, and yet a sincere and earnest man, speaking his mind
before he thought the second time, giving his views on all
subjects without much consideration, correcting them when good
reasons were presented, yet, when fixed in the pursuit of an
object, adhering to it with unflinching tenacity. A stranger
would consider him _fickle_ and _stubborn_.” (_Character of Dr.
Whitman by a brother missionary, Rev. W. H. Gray._)

“The Americans had done them much harm. Years before, had not one
of their missionaries suffered several of their people, and the
son of their chiefs, to be slain in his company, yet himself
escaped? Had not the son of another chief (Elijah), who had gone
to California to buy cattle, been killed by Americans for no
fault of his own?... So far as regarded the missionaries, Dr.
Whitman and his associates, they were divided, yet so many looked
on the doctor as an agent in promoting the settlement of the
country with whites, it was thought best to drive him from the
country, together with all the missionaries, _several years_
before. Dr. Whitman had known that the Indians were displeased
with his settlement among them. They had told him of it; they had 679
treated him with violence, they had attempted to outrage his
wife, had burned his property, and had several times warned him
to leave their country, or they should kill him.” (_River of the
West_, p. 400.)

“The fulfilment of the laws which the agent recommended for their
adoption, ... occasioned suspicions in the minds of the Indians
generally that the whites designed the ultimate subjugation of
their tribes. They saw in the laws they had adopted a deep-laid
scheme of the whites to destroy them and take possession of their
country. The arrival of a large party of emigrants about this
time, and the sudden departure of Dr. Whitman to the United
States, with the avowed intention of bringing back with him as
many as he could enlist for Oregon, served to hasten them to the
above conclusions.... The great complaint of the Indians was that
the Boston people [Americans] designed to take away their lands,
and reduce them to slavery.” (_Rev. Gustavus Hines, D.D., assistant
of Spaulding, in Pub. Doc. No. 37, on the Nez Perces in 1843,
History of Oregon_, p. 143.)

“They [the Indians] were demanding unreasonable pay for their
lands upon which the stations were erected, and paying but little
or no attention to their American teachers.” (_Gray’s History of
Oregon_, p. 365.)

“The fact is also shown that, as far back as 1835, the Indians
west of the Rocky Mountains protested against the taking away of
their lands by the white races, and this was one of the alleged
causes of the murder of Dr. Whitman.” (_J. Ross Browne, Special
Agent of the Treasury, Report to the Com. of Indian Affairs_,
Dec. 4, 1857.)

Thus we find that, whatever credit may be claimed for Dr. Whitman as a colonist, his course toward the people whom he was sent to evangelize was anything but just or Christian; for he not only did not pay for his own land, but helped others to steal also, and he admits himself that for some years he had utterly neglected the spiritual and mental duties of his mission. But there were other and not less potent causes at work. Of his “esteemed friend Dr. Whitman,” Sir James Douglass, chief factor of the Hudson Bay Company, writes on December 9, ten days after the massacre:

“He hoped that time and instruction would produce a change of
mind--a better state of feeling toward the mission, and he might
have lived to have seen his hopes realized, had not the measles
and dysentery, following in the train of immigrants from the
United States, made frightful ravages this year in the upper
country. Many Indians have been carried off through the violence
of the disease, and others through their own imprudence. The
Cayuse Indians of Wailatpu, being sufferers in this general
calamity, were incensed against Dr. Whitman for not exerting his
supposed supernatural power in saving their lives. They carried
this absurdity beyond the point of folly. Their superstitious
minds became possessed of the horrible suspicion that he was
giving poison to the sick instead of wholesome medicine, with the
view of working the destruction of the tribe, his former cruelty
probably adding strength to their suspicions. Still, some of the
reflecting had confidence in Dr. Whitman’s integrity, and it was
agreed to test the effects of the medicine he had furnished on
three of their people, one of whom was said to be in perfect
health. They unfortunately died, and from that moment it was
resolved to destroy the mission. It was immediately after burying
the remains of these three persons that they repaired to the
mission and murdered every man found there.”

Several other contemporary writers confirm this calm statement of events, which in themselves were enough to drive ignorant and desperate savages (for it must be borne in mind that Dr. Whitman had given up instructing them for some years to attend to his wheat and horses) to commit any act of murder or rapine. To show that the “horrible suspicion” of having been poisoned was not a mere groundless suspicion on the part of the Indians, we present the following testimony:

“I spent the winter of 1846 in Dr. Whitman’s employment. I 680
generally worked at the saw-mill. During the time I was there, I
observed that Dr. Whitman was in the habit of poisoning wolves. I
did not see him put the poison in the baits for the wolves; but
two of his young men of the house, by his order, were poisoning
pieces of meat, and distributing them in the places where the
wolves were in the habit of coming, at a short distance around
the establishment of the doctor. The doctor once gave me some
arsenic to poison the wolves that were around the saw-mill....
Some Indians who happened to pass there took the meat and ate it;
three of them were very sick, and were near dying.... Mr. Gray,
who was then [1840] living with the doctor, offered us as many
melons to eat as we liked, but he warned us at the same time not
to eat them indiscriminately, as some of them were poisoned. ‘The
Indians,’ said he, ‘are continually stealing our melons. To stop
them, we have put a little poison on the bigger ones, _in order
that the Indians who will eat them might be a little sick_.’”
(_Statement of John Young, corroborated by Augustine Raymond._)

In addition to these acts of imprudence, the doctor, it seems, had earned for himself an unenviable unpopularity. He was constantly extorting overpay in horses from them, and threatening them with soldiers and emigrants if they refused it. After having a quarrel with them on one occasion, “during which they insulted him, covered him with mud,” and even attempted his life, “he started for the United States, telling the Indians that he was going to see the great chief of the Americans, and that when he would return he would bring with him many people to chastise them; the Indians had been looking to his return with great fear and anxiety.”[143] At another time, in the fall of 1847, he said to the Indians at Walla Walla in the presence of several white men, “Since you are so wicked, such robbers, we shall send for troops to chastise you, and next fall we will see here five hundred dragoons, who will take care of you.” But even Doctor Whitman, “fickle and obstinate” as he was, could not entirely overlook the dangers that beset him for so many years, and at the solicitation of his friend had been preparing to leave his station long before the arrival of the Catholic missionaries. Mr. Thomas McKay, whom the doctor had invited to stop the winter of 1847-8 with him for protection, says, “He told me repeatedly, during the last two years especially, that he wished to leave, as he knew the Indians were ill-disposed toward him, and that it was dangerous for him to stay there; but that he wished all the chiefs to tell him to go away, in order to _excuse himself to the Board of Foreign Missions_.” Dangerous and fatal mistake, which cost the lives of thirteen innocent people, and closed the unfortunate man’s earthly career!

Now for the affair of the young woman Miss Bewley, who is described in _Pub. Doc. No. 37_, p. 35, indifferently as an “amiable young saint,” a “dear girl,” and “an angel.” It is charged that, when Five Crows demanded her for his wife, and she refusing to go with him, the bishops and priests urged her to go, and even thrust her out-of-doors when she refused. So little credence was given this specific calumny, for many years after the alleged occurrence, that the only mention we find made of it in _The Murder of Dr. Whitman_ is the following paragraph:

“Before taking leave of the chiefs, the bishop said to them all
publicly, as he had also done several times privately, that those
who had taken American girls should give them up immediately. And
then all entreated Five Crows to give up the one he had taken,
but to no purpose.”

Now let us hear Father Brouillet’s account of the affair in 681 contradiction to Miss Bewley’s deposition: