“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 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?