In the communication signed by Mr. Geiger, he is asked, “What was the cause of discouragement with the Doctor and Mr. Spalding at that time?”
A.—“The influence of the Roman priests, exercised in talking to the Indians, and through the French half-breed, Lehai, Tom Hill, a Delaware Indian, and others.”
Q.—“What did the Indians mention was the instruction they received from Roman Catholics?”
A.—“That the Protestants were leading them in wrong roads, i. e., even to hell. If they followed the Suapies (Americans) they would continue to die. If they followed the Catholics, it would be otherwise with them; only now and then one would die of age. That they would get presents,—would become rich in every thing.”
We have a statement made by Brouillet as to their influence among the Indians on this coast, found on the 87th page of his narrative, “Protestantism in Oregon” (55th of Ross Browne.) He says:—
“Messrs. Blanchet and Demerse, the first Catholic missionaries that came to Oregon, had passed Wallawalla in 1838, where they had stopped a few days, and had been visited by the Indians. In 1839, Mr. Demerse had spent three weeks in teaching the Indians and baptizing their children. In 1840, he 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 missions among them. Father De Smet, after visiting the Flatheads in 1840, had come and established a mission among them in 1841; and from that time down to the arrival of the bishop, the Indians of Wallawalla and of the Upper Columbia had never failed to be visited yearly, either by Mr. Demerse or by some of the Jesuits, and those annual excursions had procured every year new children to the church. Almost every Indian tribe possessed some Catholic member.”
We can bear positive testimony as to the effect and influence of those teachings up to 1842 among the Upper Columbia Indians; and it is to illustrate the bearing and result of those teachings, continued for a series of years upon the savage mind, and the influence of a foreign monopoly in connection with such teachers, that we bring these statements before the reader.
The vast influence wielded by this foreign fur and sectarian monopoly was used to secure Oregon for their exclusive occupation. The testimony of Rev. Messrs. Beaver and Barnley, and Sir Edward Belcher, as given by Mr. Fitzgerald, and that of his Reverence Brouillet, as found on the 56th page of his narrative, all affirm the close connection of these two influences. Leaving out of the question the statement of many others, we have that of this priest. He says:—
“Some days after an express reached us from the fort, informing us that our lives were in danger from a portion of the Indians who could not pardon me for having deprived them of their victim; and this was the only reason which prevented me from fulfilling the promise which I had made to the widows and orphans of returning to see them, and obliged me to be contented with sending my interpreter” to the scene of the murder, to bring Miss Bewley to be treated as the evidence in the next chapter will show.