Chapter VIII: When We Fought the Japanese 277 (5)

With the extermination of the Texan garrisons, Santa Anna complacently assured himself that his work in the north was finished and prepared to return to the capital, where he was badly needed. It is never safe, you see, for a dictator to leave the chair of state for long, else he is likely to return and find a rival sitting in it. Now, however, Santa Anna felt that the Texan uprising was, to make use of a slangy but expressive phrase, all over but the shouting. But the Texans, as stout old John Paul Jones would have put it, had only just begun to fight. Learning that a force of Texan volunteers was mobilizing upon the San Jacinto, the “Napoleon of the West,” as Santa Anna modestly described himself, decided to delay his departure long enough to invade the country north of Galveston and put the finishing touches to the subjugation of Texas by means of a final carnival of blood and fire. Theoretically, everything favored the dictator. He had money; he had ample supplies of arms and ammunition; he had a force of trained and seasoned veterans far outnumbering any with which the Texans could oppose him. It was to be a veritable picnic of a campaign, a sort of butchers’ holiday. In making his plans, however, Santa Anna failed to take a certain gentleman into consideration. The name of that gentleman was Sam Houston.

The chronicles of our frontier record the name of no more picturesque and striking figure than Houston. The fertile brain of George A. Henty could not have made to order a more satisfactory or wholly improbable hero. Though his exploits are a part of history, they read like the wildest fiction. That is why, perhaps, the dry-as-dust historians make so little mention of him. The incidents in his life would provide a moving-picture company with material for a year. Born in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, his father, who had been an officer in the Revolution, answered to the last roll-call when young Sam had barely entered his teens. The support of a large and growing family thus falling upon the energetic shoulders of Mrs. Houston, she packed her household goods in a prairie-schooner and moved with her children to Tennessee, then upon the very edge of civilization. Here Sam, who had learned his “three R’s” in such poor schools as the Virginia of those early days afforded, attended a local academy for a time. Translations of the classics having fallen into his hands, his imagination was captured by the exploits of the heroes of antiquity, and he asked permission of the principal to study Latin, which, for some unexplainable reason, was curtly refused him. Whereupon he walked out of the academy, declaring that he would never repeat another lesson.

His family, who had scant sympathy with his romantic fancies, procured him a job as clerk in a crossroads store. Within a fortnight he was missing. After some months of anxiety his relatives learned that he was living among the Cherokee Indians across the Tennessee. When one of his brothers attempted to induce him to return home, young Sam answered that he preferred measuring deer tracks to measuring tape, and that, if he was not permitted to study Latin in the academy, he could at least dig it out for himself in the freedom of the woods. Houston dwelt for several years with his Cherokee friends, eventually being adopted as a son by the chieftain Oolooteka. Upon the outbreak of our second war with Great Britain he enlisted in the American army. Though his friends remonstrated with him for entering the army as a private soldier, his mother was made of different stuff. As he was leaving for the front she took down his father’s rifle and, with tear-dimmed eyes, handed it to her son. “Here, my boy,” she said bravely, though her voice quavered, “take this rifle and never disgrace it. Remember that I would rather that all my sons should lie in honorable graves than that one of them should turn his back to save his life. Go, and God be with you, but never forget that, while my door is always open to brave men, it is always shut to cowards.”

Houston quickly climbed the ladder of promotion, obtaining a commission within a year after he had enlisted as a private. He first showed the stern stuff of which he was made when taking part in General Jackson’s campaign against the Creek Indians. His thigh pierced by an arrow during the storming of the Indian breastworks at Tohopeka, Houston asked a fellow officer to draw it out. But it was sunk so deeply in the flesh that the attempt to extract it brought on an alarming flow of blood, whereupon the officer refused to proceed, fearing that Houston would bleed to death. Thereupon the fiery youngster drew his sword. “Draw it out or I’ll run you through!” he said. Out the arrow came. General Jackson, who had witnessed the incident and had noted the seriousness of the young officer’s wound, ordered him to the rear, but Houston, mindful of his mother’s parting injunction, disregarded the order and plunged again into the thick of the battle. It was a breach of discipline, however, to which Andrew Jackson shut his eyes.

Opportunity once more knocked loudly at young Houston’s door when the Creeks made their final stand at Horseshoe Bend. After the main body of the Indians had been destroyed, a party of warriors barricaded themselves in a log cabin built over a ravine in such a situation that the guns could not be brought to bear. The place must be taken by storm, and Jackson called for volunteers. Houston was the only man who responded. Snatching a rifle from a soldier, he shouted, “Come on, men! Follow me!” and dashed toward the cabin. But no one had the courage to follow him into the ravine of death. Running in zigzags, to disconcert the Indian marksmen, he actually reached the cabin before he fell with a shattered arm and two rifle-bullets through his shoulder. It was just the sort of deed to win the heart of the grim old hero of New Orleans, who until his death remained one of Houston’s staunchest friends and admirers.

Seeing but scant prospects of promotion in the piping times of peace which now ensued, Houston resigned from the army, took up the study of law, and was admitted to the bar within a year from the time he opened his first law book. He practised for a few years with marked success, gave up the law for the more exciting field of politics, was elected to Congress when only thirty, and four years later became Governor of Tennessee. As the result of an unhappy marriage, and deeply wounded by the outrageous and baseless accusations made by his political opponents, he resigned the governorship and went into voluntary exile. In his trouble he turned his face toward the wigwam of his adopted father, Oolooteka, who had become the head chief of his tribe and had moved from the banks of the Tennessee to the falls of the Arkansas. Though eleven eventful years had passed, the old chiefs affection for his white son had not diminished, and the exile found a warm welcome awaiting him in the wigwams and beside the council-fires of his adopted people. Learning of the frauds by which the Indian agents were enriching themselves at the expense of the nation’s wards, Houston, who had adopted Indian dress, went to Washington and laid the facts before Secretary Calhoun, who, instead of thanking him, rebuked him for presuming to appear before him in the dress of an Indian. Thereupon Houston turned his back on the secretary, and went straight to his old-time friend, President Jackson, who promptly saw to it that the guilty officials were punished. When the story of Calhoun’s criticism of Houston’s costume was repeated to the President, that rough old soldier remarked dryly: “I’m glad there is one man of my acquaintance who was made by the Almighty and not by the tailor.”

After three years of forest life among the Indians Houston decided to emigrate to Texas and become a ranchman, setting out with a few companions in December, 1832, for San Antonio. The romantic story of Houston’s self-imposed exile had resulted in making him a national figure, and the news that he had come to Texas spread among the settlers like fire in dry grass. Before reaching Nacogdoches he learned that he had been unanimously elected a member of the convention which had been called to meet at Austin in the spring of 1833 to draft a constitution for Texas. From that time onward his story is that of his adopted country. When the rupture with Mexico came, in 1835, as a result of the attempt to disarm the settlers at Gonzales, Houston was chosen commander of the volunteer forces to be raised in eastern Texas, and after the battle at the Mission of the Immaculate Conception he was appointed commander-in-chief of the Texan army.

When Santa Anna, flushed by his bloody successes at the Alamo and Goliad, started to invade central Texas, in the spring of 1836, Houston, who had been able to raise a force of barely five hundred untrained and ill-armed men, sullenly retreated before the advance of the dictator. On the 18th of April, however, his plan of campaign was suddenly reversed by the capture of two Mexicans, from whom he learned what he had not positively known before: that Santa Anna himself was with the advance column and that he was temporarily cut off from the other divisions of his army. The chance for which Houston was waiting had come, and he seized it before it could get away. If Texas was to be free, if the Lone Star flag and not the flag with the emblem of the serpent and the buzzard was to wave over the region above the Rio Grande, it was now or never. There were no half-way measures with Sam Houston; he determined to stake everything upon a single throw. If he won, Texas would be free; if he lost he and his men could only go down fighting, as their fellows had gone before them. Pushing on to a point near the mouth of the San Jacinto, where it empties into the Bay of Galveston, he carefully selected the spot for his last stand, mounted the two brass cannon known as “the Twin Sisters,” which had been presented to the Texans by Northern sympathizers, and sat down to wait for the coming of “the Napoleon of the West.” On the morning of the 20th of April his pickets fell back before the Mexican advance, and the two great antagonists, Houston and Santa Anna, at last found themselves face to face. The dictator had with him fifteen hundred men; Houston had less than half that number--but the Texans boasted that “two to one was always fair.”

At daybreak on the 21st Houston sent for his chief of scouts, the famous Deaf Smith,[D] and ordered him to choose a companion, take axes, and secretly destroy the bridge across the San Jacinto. As the bridge was the only means of retreat for miles around, this drastic step meant utter destruction to the conquered. Talk about Cortes burning his boats behind him! He showed not a whit more courage than did Houston when he destroyed the bridge across the San Jacinto. At 3 o’clock in the afternoon he quietly paraded his little army behind the low range of hills which screened them from the enemy, who were still drowsing in their customary siesta. At this psychological moment Deaf Smith, following to the letter the instructions Houston had given him, tore up on a reeking horse, waving his axe above his head, and shouted: “Vince’s Bridge is down! We’ve got to fight or drown!” That was the word for which Houston had been waiting. Instantly he ordered his whole line to advance. The only music of the Texans was a fife and a drum, the musicians playing them into action to the rollicking tune of “Come to the Bower.” And it was no bower of roses, either. As they swept into view, rifles at the trail and moving at the double, the Mexicans, though startled at the unexpectedness of the attack, met them with a raking fire of musketry. But the sight of the brown-faced men, and of the red-white-and-green banner which flaunted above them, infuriated the Texans to the point of frenzy. Losing all semblance of formation, they raced forward as fast as they could put foot to ground.

In front of them rode the herculean Houston, a striking figure on his white horse. “Come on, boys!” he thundered. “Get at ’em! Get at ’em! Texans, Texans, follow me!” And follow him they did, surging forward with the irresistibility of a tidal wave. “Remember the Alamo!” they roared. “Remember Goliad! Remember Travis! Remember Jim Bowie! Remember Davy Crockett! Kill the damned greasers! Cut their hearts out! Kill ’em! Kill ’em! Kill ’em!”

In the face of the maddened onslaught the Mexican line crumbled like a hillside before the stream from a hydraulic nozzle. Before the demoralized Mexicans had time to realize what had happened the Texans were in their midst. Many of them were “two-gun men,” who fought with a revolver in each hand--and at every shot a Mexican fell. Others avenged the murdered Bowie with the wicked knife which bore his name, slashing and ripping and stabbing with the long, savage blades until they looked like poleaxe men in an abattoir. In vain the terrified Mexicans threw down their arms and fell upon their knees, pattering out prayers in Spanish and calling in their broken English: “Me no Alamo! Me no Goliad!” Within five minutes after the Texans had come to hand-grips with their foe the battle had turned into a slaughter. Houston was shot through the ankle and his horse was dying, but man and horse struggled on. Deaf Smith drove his horse into the thick of the fight and, as it fell dead beneath him, he turned his long-barrelled rifle into a war-club and literally smashed his way through the Mexican line, leaving a trail of men with broken skulls behind him. An old frontiersman named Curtis went into action carrying two guns. “The greasers killed my son and my son-in-law at the Alamo,” he shouted, “and I’m going to get two of ’em before I die, and if I get old Santa Anna I’ll cut a razor-strop from his back.”

The commander of one of the Mexican regiments attempted to stem the tide of defeat by charging the Texan line at its weakest point with five hundred men. Houston, instantly appreciating the peril, dashed in front of his men. “Come on, my brave fellows!” he shouted, “your general leads you!” They met the charging Mexicans half-way, stopped them with a withering volley, and then finished the business with the knife. Only thirty-two of the five hundred Mexicans were left alive to surrender. Everywhere sounded the grunt of blows sent home, the scream of wounded men, the choking sobs of the dying, the _crack-crack-crack_ of rifle and revolver, the grating rasp of steel on steel, the harsh, shrill orders of the officers, the trample of many feet, and, above all, the deep-throated, menacing cry of the avenging Texans: “Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad! Kill the greasers! Kill ’em! Kill ’em! Kill ’em!”

In fifteen minutes the battle of the San Jacinto was over, and all that was left of Santa Anna’s army of invasion was a panic-stricken mob of fugitives flying blindly across the prairie. Hard on their heels galloped the Texan cavalry, cutting down the stragglers with their sabres and herding the bulk of the flying army toward the river as cow-punchers herd cattle into a corral. And the bridge was gone! Before the Mexicans rolled the deep and turbid San Jacinto; coming up behind them were the blood-crazed Texans. It was death on either hand. Some of them spurred their horses into the river, only to be picked off with rifle-bullets as they tried to swim across. Others threw down their weapons and waited stolidly for the fatal stroke or shot. It was a bloody business. Modern history records few, if any, more sweeping victories. Of Santa Anna’s army of something over fifteen hundred men six hundred and thirty were killed, two hundred and eight wounded, and seven hundred and thirty taken prisoners.

The finishing touch was put to Houston’s triumph on the following morning when a scouting party, scouring the prairie in search of fugitives, discovered a man in the uniform of a common soldier attempting to escape on hands and knees through the high grass. He was captured and marched nine miles to the Texan camp, plodding on foot in the dust in front of his mounted captors. When he lagged one of them would prick him with his lance point until he broke into a run. As the Texans rode into camp with their panting and exhausted captive, the Mexican prisoners excitedly exclaimed: “_El Presidente! El Presidente!_” It was Santa Anna, dictator of Mexico--a prisoner in the hands of the men whom he had boasted that he would make fugitives, prisoners, or corpses. Lying under the tree where he had spent the night, the wounded Houston received the surrender of “the Napoleon of the West.” The war of independence was over. Texas was a republic in fact as well as in name, and the hero of the San Jacinto became its president. The defenders of the Alamo and Goliad were avenged. From the Sabine to the Rio Grande the lone-star flag flew free.

THE PREACHER WHO RODE FOR AN EMPIRE

THE PREACHER WHO RODE FOR AN EMPIRE

This is the forgotten story of the greatest ride. The history of the nation has been punctuated with other great rides, it is true. Paul Revere rode thirty miles to rouse the Middlesex minutemen and save from capture the guns and powder stored at Concord; Sheridan rode the twenty miles from Winchester to Cedar Creek and by his thunderous “Turn, boys, turn--we’re going back!” saved the battle--and the names of them both are immortalized in verse that is more enduring than iron. Whitman, the missionary, rode four thousand miles and saved us an empire, and his name is not known at all.

Though there were other actors in the great drama which culminated in the grim old preacher’s memorable ride--suave, frock-coated diplomats and furtive secret agents and sun-bronzed, leather-shirted frontiersmen and bearded factors of the fur trade--the story rightfully begins and ends with Indians. There were four of them, all chieftains, and the beaded patterns on their garments of fringed buckskin and the fashion in which they wore the feathers in their hair told the plainsmen as plainly as though they had been labelled that they were listened to with respect in the councils of the Flathead tribe, whose tepees were pitched in the far nor’west. They rode their lean and wiry ponies up the dusty, unpaved thoroughfare in St. Louis known as Broadway one afternoon in the late autumn of 1832. Though the St. Louis of three quarters of a century ago was but an outpost on civilization’s firing-line and its six thousand inhabitants were accustomed to seeing the strange, wild figures of the plains, the sudden appearance of these Indian braves, who came riding out of nowhere, clad in all the barbaric panoply of their rank, caused a distinct flutter of curiosity.

The news of their arrival being reported to General Clarke, the military commandant, he promptly assumed the ciceronage of the bewildered but impassive red men. Having, as it chanced, been an Indian commissioner in his earlier years, he knew the tribe well and could speak with them in their own guttural tongue. Beyond vouchsafing the information that they came from the upper reaches of the Columbia, from the country known as Oregon, and that they had spent the entire summer and fall upon their journey, the Indians, with characteristic reticence, gave no explanation of the purpose of their visit. After some days had passed, however, they confided to General Clarke that rumors had filtered through to their tribe of the white man’s “Book of Life,” and that they had been sent to seek it. To a seasoned old frontiersman like the general, this was a novel proposition to come from a tribe of remote and untamed Indians. He treated the tribal commissioners, nevertheless, with the utmost hospitality, taking them to dances and such other entertainments as the limited resources of the St. Louis of those days permitted, and, being himself a devout Catholic, to his own church. Thus passed the winter, during which two of the chiefs died, as a result, no doubt, of the indoor life and the unaccustomed richness of the food. When the tawny prairies became polka-dotted with bunch-grass in the spring, the two survivors made preparations for their departure, but, before they left, General Clarke, who had taken a great liking to these dignified and intelligent red men, insisted on giving them a farewell banquet. After the dinner the elder of the chiefs was called upon for a speech. You must picture him as standing with folded arms, tall, straight and of commanding presence, at the head of the long table, a most dramatic and impressive figure in his garments of quill-embroidered buckskin, with an eagle feather slanting in his hair. He spoke with the guttural but sonorous eloquence of his people, and after each period General Clarke translated what he had said to the attentive audience of army officers, government officials, priests, merchants, and traders who lined the table.

“I have come to you, my brothers,” he began, “over the trail of many moons from out of the setting sun. You were the friends of my fathers, who have all gone the long way. I have come with an eye partly open for my people, who sit in darkness. I go back with both eyes closed. How can I go back blind, to my blind people? I made my way to you with strong arms through many enemies and strange lands that I might carry much back to them. I go back with both arms broken and empty. Two fathers came with us; they were the braves of many winters and wars. We leave them asleep here by your great water and wigwams. They were tired in many moons, and their moccasins wore out.

“My people sent me to get the white man’s Book of Life. You took me to where you allow your women to dance as we do not ours, and the Book was not there. You took me to where they worship the Great Spirit with candles, and the Book was not there. You showed me images of the good spirits and pictures of the good land beyond, but the Book was not among them to tell us the way. I am going back the long and sad trail to my people in the dark land. You make my feet heavy with gifts, and my moccasins will grow old in carrying them; yet the Book is not among them. When I tell my poor, blind people, after one more snow, in the big council that I did not bring the Book, no word will be spoken by our old men or by our young braves. One by one they will rise up and go out in silence. My people will die in darkness, and they will go on a long path to other hunting-grounds. No white man will go with them and no white man’s Book to make the way plain. I have no more words.”

Just as the rude eloquence of the appeal touched the hearts of the frontier dwellers who sat about the table in St. Louis, so, when it was translated and published in the Eastern papers, it touched the hearts and fired the imaginations of the nation. In a ringing editorial _The Christian Advocate_ asked: “Who will respond to go beyond the Rocky Mountains and carry the Book of Heaven?” And this was the cue for the missionary whose name was Marcus Whitman to set foot upon the boards of history.

His preparation for a frontiersman’s life began early for young Whitman. Born in Connecticut when the eighteenth century had all but run its course, he was still in his swaddling-clothes when his parents, falling victims to the prevalent fever for “going west,” piled their lares and penates into an ox-cart and trekked overland to the fertile lake region of central New York, Mrs. Whitman making the four-hundred-mile journey on foot, with her year-old babe in her arms. Building a cabin with the tree trunks cleared from the site, they began the usual pioneer’s struggle for existence. His father dying before he had reached his teens, young Marcus was sent to live with his grandfather in Plainfield, Mass., where he remained ten years, learning his “three R’s” in such schools as the place afforded, his education later being taken in hand by the local parson. His youth was passed in the usual life of the country boy; to drive home the cows and milk them, to chop the wood and carry the water and do the other household chores, and, later on, to plough and plant the fields--a training which was to prove invaluable to him in after years, on the shores of another ocean. I expect that the strong, sturdy boy of ceaseless activity and indomitable will--the Plainfield folk called him mischievous and stubborn--who was fonder of hunting and fishing than of algebra and Greek, must have caused his old grandfather a good deal of worry; though, from all I can learn, he seems to have been a straightforward and likable youngster. Very early he set his heart on entering the ministry; but, owing to the dissuasions of his relatives and friends, who knew how pitifully meagre was a clergyman’s living in those days, he reluctantly abandoned the idea and took up instead the study of medicine. After practising in Canada for several years, he returned to central New York, where, with but little help, he chopped a farm out of the wilderness, cleared it, and cultivated it, built a grist-mill and a sawmill, and at the same time acted as physician for a district fifty miles in radius. He was in the heyday of life, prosperous, and engaged to the prettiest girl in all the countryside, when, reading in the local paper the appeal made by the Indian chieftains in far-away St. Louis, the old crusading fervor that had first turned his thoughts toward the ministry, flamed up clear and strong within him, and, putting comfort, prosperity, everything behind him, he applied to the American Board for appointment as a missionary to Oregon. Such a request from a man so peculiarly qualified for a wilderness career as Whitman could not well be disregarded, and in due time he received an appointment to go to the banks of the Columbia, investigate, return, and report. The wish of his life had been granted: he had become a skirmisher in the army of the church.

Accompanied by a fellow missionary, Whitman penetrated into the Western wilderness as far as the Wind River Mountains, near the present Yellowstone Park. After familiarizing themselves through talks with traders, trappers, and Indians with the conditions which prevailed in the valley of the Columbia, Whitman and his companion returned to Boston, and upon the strength of their report the American Board decided to lose no time in occupying the field. Ordered to establish a station on the Columbia, in the vicinity of Fort Walla Walla, then a post of the Hudson’s Bay Company, Whitman turned the long and arduous trip across the continent into a wedding journey. The conveyances used and the roundabout route taken by the bridal couple strikingly emphasize the primitive internal communications of the period. They drove in a sleigh from Elmira, N. Y., to Hollidaysburg, a hamlet on the Pennsylvania Canal, at the foot of the Alleghanies, the canal-boats, which were built in sections, being taken over the mountains on a railway. Travelling by the canal and its communicating waterways to the Ohio, they journeyed by steamboat down the Ohio to its junction with the Mississippi, up the Mississippi to St. Louis, and thence up the Missouri to Council Bluffs, where they bought a wagon (bear that wagon in mind, if you please, for you shall hear of it later on), and outfitted for the journey across the plains. Accompanied by another missionary couple, Doctor and Mrs. Spalding, they turned the noses of their mules northwestward and a week or so later caught up with an expedition sent out by the American Fur Company to its settlement of Astoria, at the mouth of the Columbia. Following the North Fork of the Platte, they crossed the Wind River Mountains within sight of the landmark which came in time to be known as Frémont’s Peak, though these two young women crossed the Great Divide six years before Frémont, “the pathfinder,” ever set eyes upon it. Few women of our race have ever made so perilous or difficult a journey. Before it was half completed, the party, owing to a miscalculation, ran out of flour and for weeks on end were forced to live on jerked buffalo meat and tea. Crossing the Snake River at a point where it was upward of a mile in width, the wagon was capsized by the velocity of the current, and, the mules, on which the women had been put for safety, becoming entangled in the harness, their riders escaped drowning by what the missionaries devoutly ascribed to a miracle and the rough-spoken frontiersmen to “damned good luck.” Another river they crossed by means of a dried elkskin with two ropes attached, on which they lay flat and perfectly motionless while two Indian women, holding the ropes in their teeth, swam the stream, drawing this unstable ferry behind them.

At Fort Hall, near the present site of Pocatello, Ida., they came upon the southernmost of that chain of trading-posts with which the Hudson’s Bay Company sought to guard the enormous territory which, without so much as a “by-your-leave,” it had taken for its own. Here Captain Grant, the company’s factor, made a determined effort to induce Whitman to abandon the wagon that he had brought with him across the continent in the face of almost insuperable obstacles. But the obstinacy that had caused the folks in Plainfield to shake their heads when the name of young Marcus Whitman was mentioned stood him in good stead, for the more persistent the Englishman became in his objections the more adamantine grew the American in his determination to cling at all costs to his wagon, for no one knew better than Whitman that this had proved the most successful of the methods pursued by the great British fur monopoly to discourage the colonization of the territory wherein it conducted its operations. The officials of the Hudson’s Bay Company well knew that the colonization of the valley of the Columbia by Americans meant not only the end of their enormously profitable monopoly but the end of British domination in that region. Though they did not have it in their power to forcibly prevent Americans from entering the country, they argued that there could be no colonization on a large scale unless the settlers had wagons in which to transport their seeds and farming implements. Hence the company adopted the policy of stationing its agents along the main routes of travel with instructions to stop at nothing short of force to detain the wagons. And until Marcus Whitman came this policy had accomplished the desired result, the specious arguments of Captain Grant having proved so successful, indeed, that the stockade at Fort Hall was filled with abandoned wagons and farming implements which would have been of inestimable value to the settlers who had been persuaded or bullied into leaving them behind. But Whitman was made of different stuff, and the English official might as well have tried to argue the Snake River out of its course as to argue this hard-headed Yankee into giving up his wagon. Though it twice capsized and was all but lost in the swollen streams, though once it fell over a precipice and more than once went rolling down a mountainside, though for miles on end it was held on the narrow, winding mountain trails by means of drag-ropes, and though it became so dilapidated in time that it finished its journey on two wheels instead of four, the ramshackle old vehicle, thanks to Whitman’s bulldog grit and determination, was hauled over the mountains and was the first vehicle to enter the forbidden land. I have laid stress upon this incident of the wagon, because, as things turned out, it proved a vital factor in the winning of Oregon. “For want of a nail the shoe was lost,” runs the ancient doggerel; “for want of a shoe the horse was lost; for want of a horse the rider was lost; for want of a rider the kingdom was lost.” And, had it not been for this decrepit old wagon of Whitman’s, a quarter of a million square miles of the most fertile land between the oceans would have been lost to the Union.

Seven months after helping his bride into the sleigh at Elmira, Whitman drove his gaunt mule-team into the gate of the stockade at Fort Walla Walla. To-day one can make that same journey in a little more than four days and sit in a green plush chair all the way. The news of Whitman’s coming had preceded him, and an enormous concourse of Indians, arrayed in all their barbaric finery, was assembled to greet the man who had journeyed so many moons to bring them the white man’s Book of Heaven. Picture that quartet of missionaries--skirmishers of the church, pickets of progress, advance-guards of civilization--as they stood on the banks of the Columbia one September morning in 1836 and consulted as to how to begin the work they had been sent to do. It was all new. There were no precedents to guide them. How would you begin, my friends, were you suddenly set down in the middle of a wilderness four thousand miles from home, with instructions to Christianize and civilize the savages who inhabited it?

Whitman, in whom diplomacy lost an adept when he became a missionary, appreciated that the first thing for him to do, if he was to be successful in his mission, was to win the confidence of the ruling powers of Oregon--the Hudson’s Bay Company officials at Fort Vancouver. This necessitated another journey of three hundred miles, but it could be made in canoes with Indian paddlers. Doctor McLoughlin, the stern old Scotchman who was chief factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company and whose word was law throughout a region larger than all the States east of the Mississippi put together, had to be able, from the very nature of his business, to read the characters of men as students read a book; and he was evidently pleased with what he read in the face of the American missionary, for he gave both permission and assistance in establishing a mission station at Waiilatpui, twenty-five miles from Walla Walla.

Whitman’s first move in his campaign for the civilization of the Indians was to induce them to build permanent homes and to plough and sow. This the Hudson’s Bay officials had always discouraged. They did not want their savage allies to be transformed into tillers of the soil; they wanted them to remain nomads and hunters, ready to move hundreds of miles in quest of furs. The only parallel in modern times to the greed, selfishness, and cruelty which characterized the administration of the Hudson’s Bay Company was the rule of the Portuguese in Mozambique and Angola and of King Leopold in the Congo.

At this time Oregon was a sort of no man’s land, to which neither England nor the United States had laid definite claim, though the former, realizing the immensity of its natural resources and the enormous strategic value that would accrue from its possession, had long cast covetous eyes upon it. The Americans of that period, on the contrary, knew little about Oregon and cared less, regarding the proposals for its acquisition with the same distrust with which the Americans of to-day regard any suggestion for extending our boundaries below the Rio Grande. Daniel Webster had said on the floor of the United States Senate: “What do we want with this vast, worthless area, this region of savages and wild beasts, of shifting sands and whirlwinds of dust, of cactus and prairie-dogs? To what use could we ever hope to put these great deserts or these endless mountain ranges, impenetrable and covered to their base with eternal snow? What can we ever hope to do with the western coast, a coast of three thousand miles, rock-bound, cheerless, and uninviting, and not a harbor on it? Mr. President, I will never vote one cent from the public treasury to place the Pacific coast one inch nearer to Boston.”

The name Oregon, it must be borne in mind, had a very much broader significance then than now, for the territory generally considered to be referred to by the term comprised the whole of the present States of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, and a portion of Montana.

Notwithstanding the systematic efforts of the Hudson’s Bay Company to keep them out, a considerable number of Americans--perhaps two or three hundred in all--had settled in the country watered by the Columbia, but they were greatly outnumbered by the Canadians and British, who held the balance of power. The American settlers believed that, under the terms of the treaty of 1819, whichever nation settled and organized the territory that nation would hold it. Though this was not directly affirmed in the terms of that treaty, it was the common sentiment of the statesmen of the period, Webster, then Secretary of State, having said, in the course of a letter to the British minister at Washington: “The ownership of the whole country (Oregon) will likely follow the greater settlement and larger amount of population.” The missionaries, recognizing the incalculable value of the country which the American Government was deliberately throwing away, did everything in their power to encourage immigration. Their glowing accounts of the fertility of the soil, the balmy climate, the wealth of timber, the incalculable water-power, the wealth in minerals had each year induced a limited number of daring souls to make the perilous and costly journey across the plains. In the autumn of 1842 a much larger party than any that had hitherto attempted the journey--one hundred and twenty in all--reached Waiilatpui. Among them was a highly educated and unusually well-informed man--General Amos Lovejoy. He was thoroughly posted in national affairs, and it was in the course of a conversation with him that Doctor Whitman first learned that the Webster-Ashburton treaty would probably be ratified before the adjournment of Congress in the following March. It was generally believed that this treaty related to the entire boundary between the United States and England’s North American possessions, the popular supposition being that it provided for the cession of the Oregon region to Great Britain in return for fishing rights off the coast of Newfoundland.

Doctor Whitman instantly saw that, as a result of the incredible ignorance and short-sightedness of the statesmen--or rather, the politicians who paraded as statesmen--at Washington, four great States were quietly slipping away from us without a protest. There was but one thing to do in such a crisis. He must set out for Washington. Though four thousand miles of Indian-haunted wilderness lay between him and the white city on the Potomac, he did not hesitate. Though winter was at hand, and the passes would be deep in snow and the plains destitute of pasturage, he did not falter. Though there was a rule of the American Board that no missionary could leave his post without obtaining permission from headquarters in Boston, Whitman shouldered all the responsibility. “I did not expatriate myself when I became a missionary,” was his reply to some objection. “Even if the Board dismisses me, I will do what I can to save Oregon to the nation. My life is of but little worth if I can keep this country for the American people.”[E]

Whitman’s friends in Oregon felt that he was starting on a ride into the valley of the shadow of death. They knew from their own experiences the terrible hardships of such a journey even in summer, when there was grass to feed the horses and men could live with comfort in the open air. It was resolved that he must not make the journey alone, and a call was made for a volunteer to accompany him. General Amos Lovejoy stepped forward and said quietly: “I will go with Doctor Whitman.” The doctor planned to start in five days, but, while dining with the Hudson’s Bay officials at Fort Walla Walla, an express messenger of the company arrived from Fort Colville, three hundred and fifty miles up the Columbia, and electrified his audience by announcing that a party of one hundred and forty British and Canadian colonists were on the road to Oregon. A young English clergyman, carried away with enthusiasm, sprang to his feet, waved his napkin above his head and shouted: “We’ve got the country--the Yankees are too late! Hurrah for Oregon!” Whitman, appreciating that things had now reached a pass where even hours were precious, quietly excused himself, hurried back to the mission at Waiilatpui, and made preparations for an immediate departure. The strictest secrecy was enjoined upon all the Americans whom Whitman had taken into his confidence, for had a rumor of his intentions reached British ears at this juncture it might have ruined everything. So it was given out that he was returning to Boston to advise the American Board against the contemplated removal of its missions in Oregon--an explanation which was true as far as it went.

On the morning of October 3, 1842, Whitman, saying good-by to his wife and home, climbed into his saddle and with General Lovejoy, their half-breed guide, and three pack-mules set out on the ride that was to win us an empire. The little group of American missionaries and settlers whom he left behind gave him a rousing cheer as he rode off and then stood in silence with choking throats and misted eyes until the heroic doctor and his companions were swallowed by the forest.

With horses fresh, they reached Fort Hall in eleven days, where the English factor, Captain Grant--the same man who, six years before, had attempted to prevent Whitman from taking his wagon into Oregon--doubtless guessing at their mission, did his best to detain them. Learning at Fort Hall that the northern tribes were on the war-path, Whitman and his companions struck southward in the direction of Great Salt Lake, planning to work from there eastward, via Fort Uintah and Fort Uncompahgre, to Santa Fé, and thence by the Santa Fé trail to St. Louis, which was on the borders of civilization. The journey from Fort Hall to Fort Uintah was one long nightmare, the temperature falling at times to forty degrees below zero and the snow being so deep in places that the horses could scarcely struggle through. While crossing the mountains on their way to Taos they were caught in a blinding snow-storm, in which, with badly frozen limbs, they wandered aimlessly for hours. Finally, upon the guide admitting that he was lost and could go no farther, they sought refuge in a deep ravine. Whitman dismounted and, kneeling in the snow, prayed for guidance. Can’t you picture the scene: the lonely, rock-walled gorge; the shivering animals standing dejectedly, heads to the ground and reins trailing; the general, muffled to the eyes in furs; the impassive, blanketed half-breed; in the centre, upon his knees, the indomitable missionary, praying to the God of storms; and the snowflakes falling swiftly, silently, upon everything? As though in answer to the doctor’s prayers--and who shall say that it was not--the lead-mule, which had been left to himself, suddenly started plunging through the snowdrifts as though on an urgent errand. Whereupon the guide called out: “This old mule’ll find the way back to camp if he kin live long ’nough to git there.” And he did.

The next morning the guide said flatly that he would go no farther.

“I know this country,” he declared, “an’ I know when things is possible an’ when they ain’t. It ain’t possible to git through, an’ it’s plumb throwin’ your lives away to try it. I’m finished.”

This was a solar-plexus blow for Whitman, for he was already ten days behind his schedule. But, though staggered, he was far from being beaten. Telling Lovejoy to remain in camp and recuperate the animals--which he did by feeding them on brush and the inner bark of willows, for there was no other fodder--Whitman turned back to Fort Uncompahgre, where he succeeded in obtaining a stouter-hearted guide. In a week he had rejoined Lovejoy. The storm had ceased, and with rested animals they made good progress over the mountains to the pyramid pueblo of Taos, the home of Kit Carson. Tarrying there but a few hours, worn and weary though they were, they pressed on to the banks of the Red River, a stream which is dangerous even in summer, only to find a fringe of solid ice upon each shore, with a rushing torrent, two hundred feet wide, between. For some minutes the guide studied it in silence. “It is too dangerous to cross,” he said at last decisively.

“Dangerous or not, we _must_ cross it, and at once,” answered Whitman. Cutting a stout willow pole, eight feet or so in length, he put it on his shoulder and remounted.

“Now, boys,” he ordered, “shove me off.” Following the doctor’s directions, Lovejoy and the guide urged the trembling beast onto the slippery ice and then gave him a sudden shove which sent him, much against his will, into the freezing water. Both horse and rider remained for a moment out of sight, then rose to the surface well toward the middle of the stream, the horse swimming desperately. As they reached the opposite bank the doctor’s ingenuity in providing himself with the pole quickly became apparent, for with it he broke the fringe of ice and thus enabled his exhausted horse to gain a footing and scramble ashore. Wood was plentiful, and he soon had a roaring fire. In a wild country, when the lead-animal has gone ahead the others will always follow, so the general and the guide had no great difficulty in inducing their horses and pack-mules to make the passage of the river, rejoining Whitman upon the opposite bank.

Despite the fact that they found plenty of wood along the route that they had taken, which was fully a thousand miles longer than the northern course would have been, all the party were severely frozen, Whitman suffering excruciating pain from his frozen ears, hands, and feet. The many delays had not only caused the loss of precious time, but they had completely exhausted their provisions. A dog had accompanied the party, and they ate him. A mule came next, and that kept them until they reached Santa Fé, where there was plenty. Santa Fé--that oldest city of European occupation on the continent--welcomed and fed them. From there over the famous Santa Fé trail to Bent’s Fort, a fortified settlement on the Arkansas, was a long journey but, compared with what they had already gone through, an easy one. A long day’s ride northeastward from this lonely outpost of American civilization, and they found across their path a tributary of the Arkansas. On the opposite shore was wood in plenty. On their side there was none, and the river was frozen over with smooth, clear ice, scarce strong enough to hold a man. They must have wood or they would perish from the cold; so Whitman, taking the axe, lay flat upon the ice and snaked himself across, cut a sufficient supply of fuel and returned the way he went, pushing it before him. While he was cutting it, however, an unfortunate incident occurred: the axe-helve was splintered. This made no particular difference at the moment, for the doctor wound the break in the handle with a thong of buckskin. But as they were in camp that night a famished wolf, attracted by the smell of the fresh buckskin, carried off axe and all, and they could find no trace of it. Had it happened a few hundred miles back it would have meant the failure of the expedition, if not the death of Whitman and his companions. On such apparently insignificant trifles do the fate of nations sometimes hang.

Crossing the plains of what are now the States of Oklahoma and Kansas, great packs of gaunt, gray timber-wolves surrounded their tent each night and were kept at bay only at the price of unceasing vigilance, one member of the party always remaining on guard with a loaded rifle. The moment a wolf was shot its famished companions would pounce upon it and tear it to pieces. From Bent’s Fort to St. Louis was, strangely enough, one of the most dangerous portions of the journey, for, while heretofore the chief dangers had come from cold, starvation, and savage beasts, here they were in hourly danger from still more savage men, for in those days the Santa Fé trail was frequented by bandits, horse-thieves, renegade Indians, fugitives from justice, and the other desperate characters who haunted the outskirts of civilization and preyed upon the unprotected traveller. Notwithstanding these dangers, of which he had been repeatedly warned at Santa Fé and Bent’s Fort, the doctor, leaving Lovejoy and the guide to follow him with the pack-animals, pushed on through this perilous region alone, but lost his way and spent two precious days in finding it again--a punishment, he said for having travelled on the Sabbath.

The only occasion throughout all his astounding journey when this man of iron threatened to collapse was when, upon reaching St. Louis, in February, 1843, he learned, in answer to his eager inquiries, that the Ashburton treaty had been signed on August 9, long before he left Oregon, and that it had been ratified by the Senate on November 10, while he was floundering in the mountain snows near Fort Uncompahgre. For a moment the missionary’s mahogany-tanned face went white and his legs threatened to give way beneath him. Could it be that this was the end of his dream of national expansion? Was it possible that his heroic ride had been made for naught? But summoning up his courage he managed to ask: “Is the question of the Oregon boundary still open?” When he learned that the treaty had only settled the question of a few square miles in Maine, and that the matter of the northwest boundary was still pending, the revulsion was so great that he reeled and nearly fell. God be praised! There was still time for him to get to Washington! The river was frozen and he had to depend upon the stage, and an overland journey from St. Louis to Washington in midwinter was no light matter. But to Whitman with muscles like steel springs, a thousand miles by stage-coach over atrocious roads was not an obstacle worthy of discussion.

He arrived at Washington on the 3d of March--just five months from the Columbia to the Potomac--in the same rough garments he had worn upon his ride, for he had neither time nor opportunity to get others. Soiled and greasy buckskin breeches, sheepskin _chaparejos_, fleece side out, boot-moccasins of elkskin, a cap of raccoon fur with the tail hanging down behind, frontier fashion, and a buffalo greatcoat with a hood for stormy weather, composed a costume that did not show one inch of woven fabric. His face, storm-tanned to the color of a much-smoked meerschaum, carried all the iron-gray whiskers that five months’ absence from a razor could put upon it. I doubt, indeed, if the shop-windows of the national capital have ever reflected a more picturesque or striking figure. But he had no time to take note of the sensation created in the streets of Washington by his appearance. Would he be granted an audience with the President? Would he be believed? Would his mission prove successful? Those were the questions that tormented him.