"Evening Preached again but with as little liberty as in the morning, but still I find it is good to worship God in the public congregation."
"Mon. Sep. 29, 1834. This morning began to make preparations in good earnest for our departure to the W. [Willamette] and after dinner embarked in one of the Company's boats kindly maned for us by Dr. McLoughlin who has treated us with the utmost politeness, attention and liberality. The Gentlemen of the Fort accompanied us to the boat and most heartily wished us great success in our enterprise. Arrived at the lower mouth of the W. where Capt. Wyeth's Brig is late in the evening."...
"Wednes[day] Sep. 31, 1834. This morning put Br's D. Lee & Edwards on shore to go to Mr. MKay's place to get horses and we pursued our course up the river. Met Capt. Wyeth on his return from his farm and shall not see him again til summer. Camped on a small prairie about 9 mi. from the Falls and found here the men which the Dr. had sent with the cattle he has lent us 8 oxen 8 cows & 8 calves."
After November 9, 1834, there is no entry in this journal until August 18, 1837, where there is an entry by Jason Lee, saying that he has not kept up his journal. There is no further entry until July 28, 1838, which was written at North Fork, Platte River, when he was on his first trip to the eastern states. He says in his journal that on February 16, 1838: "The 16 Feb. [1838] I set out for Umpqua, and after 23 days, of toil and hard-ship reached home in safety, and after a few days rest found myself rather better for the trip. This was encouraging, considering the difficulties encountered such as being drenched in rain many times, fording creeks high enough to wet our feet, sleeping in wet clothes, and blankets, very bad roads and sometimes hard marching, &c. The subject of the necessity of some one of the Mission Family visiting the U. S. had been agitated during the winter, and it was at length decided by a majority that it was expedient for me to go. Previous to leaving for Umpqua, I had written Dr. McLoughlin, requesting a passage, in the companies Boats, with himself by the Hudson Bay route. This I greatly preferred to the route I came, as less fatiguing, less dangerous, better calculated to restore my debilitated system, and much more likely to afford new, interesting and useful information. The answer was near when I left, and was to be brought me by a man, who was to overtake us the second day, but by mistake he sent it to my house, hence I did not get it till my return. The Dr. could not grant my request, and expressed himself 'doubly mortified;' because he could not do me the favour, and should also be deprived of my company." The remainder of the journal is taken up with the account by Jason Lee of his trip East. March 26, 1838, there is an entry that he left the Mission House on the Willamette for the United States. March 28 he arrived at Fort Vancouver. On April 4 he left Fort Vancouver in company with a Hudson's Bay Company's party bound for the Rocky Mountains. The rest of the journal is taken up with his trip Eastward. The last entry in his journal says that on July 17, 1838, he was at Sweet Water River.
DOCUMENT E
Rev. Jason Lee's visit to the Eastern States in 1838; and his Report to the Missionary Board at New York in 1844.
On arriving in the Eastern States in 1838 Rev. Jason Lee seems to have become imbued with the zeal and fervor of an evangelist in regard to christianizing the Oregon Indians, and the necessity of more missionaries in Oregon. Rev. Dr. Hines in his Missionary History of the Pacific Northwest, p. 194, says: "Mr. Lee devoted the winter of 1838 and the summer of 1839 to traveling and delivering missionary addresses in the cities and larger towns of the Atlantic states. He was accompanied in his journeys by the two Indian boys, Wm. Brooks and Thomas Adams, brought with him from his missionary school in Oregon, whose presence and intelligent speeches added greatly to the popular enthusiasm. Lee's appeals were irresistible. The fire of his zeal caught on the altars of the church everywhere. Oregon and the Oregon Mission fired the heart of the church as no mission ever did before. The age of apostolic fervor seemed to have returned, and Lee was in the eye of the church like the great Apostle to the Gentiles building on no other man's foundation. The thought of distant wilds, where uncounted red men waited and longed for deliverance from the darkness of heathenism that had wrapped all their race for all these ages became an ever present vision to the church of the United States." In this History, p. 195, Dr. Hines also says: "Poverty donated its little; wealth gave its 'gold, frankincense, and myrrh.'... The culture of Boston responded; the pride of New York cast its jewels into the treasury. The staid sobriety of Philadelphia wept and shouted and gave. Baltimore out-did the renown of her ancient missionary fame. Lee, erst the lumberman of Canada, later the pioneer missionary, who had dipped his banner in the spray of the Pacific was the hero of the hour." But in his oral report to the Missionary Board in July, 1844, after quoting the following from the letter of a complaining fellow missionary who went to Oregon on the Lausanne: "And indeed they [the Indians] have no life or energy and are a melancholy, doomed race," Jason Lee said: "I think this is in part true, the Indians on the Willamette will become, as a distinct race, extinct. But I think there will be more Indian blood through amalgamation, running in the veins of white men a hundred years hence, than would have been running in the veins of the Indians, if they had been left to themselves."
In July, 1844, Rev. Jason Lee made an oral report to the Missionary Board in New York. This report was not reduced to writing in full but a brief statement of it was made. A copy of this report, as reduced to writing, corrected by, and in Jason Lee's handwriting, is in the possession of the Oregon Historical Society. The principal serious charges made against Jason Lee, and which caused his summary removal as Superintendent of the Oregon Methodist Mission, had been made secretly, and without notice to him, by members of the Oregon Mission. Lee answered these charges in detail, occasionally with some indignation. These charges against Jason Lee were: using the Mission's funds for speculation for his own use; misuse of Mission funds; and failure to report concerning the property of the Mission.
In this report Jason Lee said of certain Methodist missionaries: