“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 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.)