Whitman's first Western trip was a hurried tour of observation made in company with the Rev. Samuel Parker, a graduate of Williams. Leaving St. Louis in the Spring of 1835, they reached the country of the Nez Percés and Flatheads in August. It is interesting to note that these men crossed the Great Divide by way of the South Pass, concerning which Mr. Parker made an astounding prophecy, as follows:
"Though there are some elevations and depressions in this valley, yet, comparatively speaking, it is level, and the summit, where the waters divide which flow into the Atlantic and into the Pacific, is about six thousand feet above the level of the ocean. There would be no difficulty in the way of constructing a railroad from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. There is no greater difficulty in the whole distance than has already been overcome in passing the Green Mountains between Boston and Albany; and probably the time may not be far distant when trips will be made across the continent, as they have been made to the Niagara Falls, to see Nature's wonders."
The interviews with the Indians were uniform in character, and showed that the missionaries would receive hospitality at the hands of the Nez Percés and Flatheads. Wrote Mr. Parker:
"We laid before them the object of our appointment, and explained to them the benevolent desires of Christians concerning them. We then inquired whether they wished to have teachers come among them, and instruct them in the knowledge of God, His worship, and the way to be saved; and what they would do to aid them in their labors. The oldest chief arose, and said he was old, and did not expect to know much more; he was deaf and could not hear, but his heart was made glad, very glad, to see what he had never seen before, a man near to God,—meaning a minister of the Gospel."
It took only ten days in the country of the Indians to assure the men of the rich promise offered by the field; whereupon Dr. Whitman turned his face eastward, to make his report and be ready in the following Spring to return with reënforcements with a caravan of the American Fur Company. A great enthusiasm had seized him. He wrote to Miss Prentiss,
"I have a strong desire for that field of labor.... I feel greatly encouraged to go on in every sense, only, I feel my unfitness for the work; but I know in whom I have trusted, and with whom are the fountains of wisdom.... You need not be anxious especially for your health or safety, but for your usefulness to the cause of Missions and the souls of our benighted fellow-men."
Dr. Whitman was married early in 1836, and the couple were driven by sleigh from Elmira, New York, to Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, where they took a canal-boat over the Alleghany Portage Railway on their way westward. Their principal companions were the Rev. Henry H. Spaulding, a graduate of Western Reserve College,—two or three years Whitman's junior,—and wife, and Mr. William H. Gray; there were also two teamsters and two Indian boys, whom Dr. Whitman had brought East with him. Joining the caravan of the American Fur Company at Council Bluffs, they reached Fort Laramie early in June, and the South Pass on the following Fourth of July, where six years later Fremont raised an American flag and gained the immortal name of "Pathfinder."
It is difficult to emphasize sufficiently the historic importance and significance of the advent of these women into the country beyond the Great Divide in Whitman's light wagon and cart; true, Ashley, Bridger, and Bonneville had taken wagons into the Rockies and left them there, but it was for this sturdy and determined physician to take a woman across the mountains in 1836, showing at once the practicability of a wagon road from the Atlantic to the Pacific. But the wagon seemed hardly less wonderful than the patient women in it. Rough mountaineers who had come to the rendezvous of the American Fur Company just westward of the "divide" were dumbfounded at the sight of the first white women on whom they had laid eyes since they had reached the States; tears came to the eyes of some of them as they shook hands with the first white women that ever crossed the Rocky Mountains; Mrs. Spaulding had been very ill, and the rough devotion of these men and their Indian wives gave her new hope and courage for the work. On the other hand, "From that day," one of these men said, "I was a better man." But it was for an old trapper to see the real national significance of the advent of these women into that far-flung country. "There," he said, pointing to the women, "is something which the honorable Hudson Bay Company cannot get rid of. They cannot send these women out of the country. They had come to stay."
Dr. Whitman chose his station at Waiilatpu, near Walla Walla, Washington, while Spaulding went a hundred miles and more eastward among the Nez Percés of the Clearwater Valley. A quart of wheat brought with them, cherished as were the twelve potatoes brought around Cape Horn by the pioneers of Astoria a quarter of a century before, was planted amid hopes and fears, and yielded, in less than a dozen years, nearly thirty thousand bushels in a season. Their few cows multiplied to a herd; gardens and orchards were laid out; a printing press and sheep were secured from the Hawaiian Islands, and upon the press was printed a code of laws, differing in no great degree from those issued in Zeisberger's sweet "Meadow of Light" on the Muskingum half a century before. Mrs. Spaulding's school numbered five hundred pupils, and a church had grown to a membership of one hundred.
It is not possible here to trace with faithfulness the brave successes now achieved, for we are seeking but one of the many lessons to be found in the Whitman story. There was labor and success for all, and trial for all as well; there were some differences of opinion among the workers, to be settled as the field grew large, for these men were independent thinkers, each one a man among his fellows. And then there was the rivalry with the missionaries to the northward, the Catholic priests located at Vancouver and extending their influence wherever the Hudson Bay Company, in turn, extended its interests. The priests, it should be observed, had been called in by the Company to take the place of the missionary of the Church of England, whom the Company had sent home. We cannot discuss here the tangled Oregon question and the tactics of America's rivals for that beautiful stretch of country. Two things stand fairly plain in it all: to be held, Oregon must have a strong American quota of settlers, and these missionaries were on the ground when the matter was precipitated.