The Methodist Mission had extended their stations to Fort Nasqualla on Puget Sound and Clatsop Plains, and made an effort to establish a mission station on the Umpqua River. At this last-named place the Indians had been prepared by the instructions they had received through the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Jesuit priests to destroy Lee and Hines, and commence the slaughter of the settlement. (See Hines’ account of the trip, pages 100 to 110 inclusive, made in 1842.)
Messrs. Frost and Cowan had become disgusted with their missionary calling, and Rev. Dr. Richmond had also found his Nasqualla location not a suitable one, or at least, he by some means had become convinced that he could not benefit the Indians about the fort, and made up his mind to leave.
It will be remembered that Vicar-General Brouillet, of Wallawalla, in his attempt to prove that the “Catholic stations and stationary priests” were early in the country, says “almost every Indian tribe possessed some Catholic members” as early as 1840, and that Mr. Demerse’s labors among the Cayuses in 1840 “had made there a mission so fruitful that the Protestant missionaries had got alarmed and feared that all their disciples would abandon them if he continued his mission among them.” (Page 87 of “Protestantism in Oregon,” by Brouillet.) Neither Hines, Richmond, nor Smith could understand why it was that the Indians upon this coast and throughout the country were so different from the accounts they had heard and read of them up to 1840. In June, 1853, had either of those gentlemen picked up the New York Freeman’s Journal, they would have seen the statement that, as early as 1840, “almost every Indian tribe [on this coast] possessed some Catholic members.” A little further along they would have been startled with the announcement, that these Jesuit missions had become “so fruitful that the Protestant missionaries had got alarmed and feared that all their disciples would abandon them.” This was but the work of two years,—from 1838, late in the fall, to 1840. This was, without doubt, a great triumph, and well does this Jesuit blow his trumpet; and well he may, for he had the active aid of an unscrupulous monopoly who are said to be attempting the same thing with just such implements upon their own countrymen in British Columbia. Why, I ask, have states and countries in Europe found it necessary to suppress that order of the Roman Church? And why is England, to-day, hesitating to give this church in particular the same confidence she does to all others?
CHAPTER XXXV.
Meetings to oppose organization.—Address of the French-Canadians.—Criticisms on it by the author.—The Jesuits.—Jesuit oath.—Article from the Cincinnati Beacon.
Between the meeting of the committee of twelve at Wallamet Falls, about the 16th of March, and the called meeting by that committee on the 2d of May, the priests and the Hudson’s Bay Company were not idle. They held two distinct meetings, one at the falls and one at Vancouver, and two in the French Prairie at the Catholic church. At all of these meetings the course to be pursued by the company and the Catholic and French settlers was discussed and decided. The result of these meetings and discussions can be found on the 12th and 13th pages of the Oregon archives. The names of the signers should have been given. This document seems to be dated the 4th of March, 1843. The meeting at Gervais’ was on the first Monday of March. So this document seems to have been prepared by our Jesuit Blanchet, just about the time the “wolf meeting” was convening, and in anticipation of the move for a provisional government. I am certain it was not before any public meeting of the settlers, and that it was handed in to the committee of three appointed by the Legislative Committee to revise and arrange the laws for the meeting on the 5th of July, 1843.
G. W. Le Breton, clerk of the Legislative Committee, handed it in, when it was examined by the committee of three, and handed back to him with the remark “it was well enough to keep it with the public papers, as it would show the influences operating, and who were opposed to our organization, and the reasons they had for their opposition. At the meeting of May 2, all the signers of that document were present with their priests at their head, and voted to a man against the proposed organization.
“Address of the Canadian citizens of Oregon to the meeting at Champoeg, March 4, 1843,” It will be seen it should have been dated May 2. This mistake simply shows that it was prepared March 4, 1843, in anticipation of the action of the meeting to be held May 2, 1843.