A History of Oregon, 1792-1849 / Drawn From Personal Observation and Authentic Information

by W. H. Gray

Did not Dr. Whitman, his wife, and all at his mission suffer, and many of them die, to save Oregon as a part of the great American Republic?

We know that a few of the poor miserably deluded Indians belonging to his mission have suffered an ignominious death by being hung like dogs (a death, of all others, the most odious to them), and for what? Simply because they were deceived by those who knew at the time they were deceiving them; and who have since so managed as to deceive the Christian world, and bring falsehood to cover their participation in the transaction.

We would not have been so particular, nor copied documents so extensively, had we not before us a narrative of 108 pages, written by one of these “holy fathers,” Vicar-General Brouillet, purporting to give the causes both remote and immediate of this horrible massacre; giving it the title of “Protestantism in Oregon, account of the murder of Dr. Whitman, and the ungrateful calumnies of H. H. Spalding, Protestant missionary,” in which he searches back even before the arrival of Dr. Whitman in the country, and cites Rev. Mr. Parker’s first supposed or imaginary statements to the Indians as a cause of the massacre, which we know to be false and unfounded from the six years’ early acquaintance we had with those Indians; and also from the personal allusions he makes to transactions with which we were intimately acquainted, and know to be false in fact and inference. These statements of this priest and his associates, McBean and Sir James Douglas, have induced us to extend the particulars of that massacre beyond our original design in giving the history of Oregon. As he claims great credit for himself and associates, Stanfield in particular, in burying the dead, and showing kindness to the widows and orphans, we will give another item to show the character of the thief, liar, and accomplice in that massacre, whom this priest is so ready in his narrative to claim as a saint.

Mrs. Catharine Bewley says: “Dr. Prettyman said to me that Joe Stanfield told him at his own house, when the sheriff had him in custody, that ‘the morning of the day when young Bewley was killed, he had gone into the room and had hid every thing in the room back of the bed he was upon.’ This, the doctor thought, showed that he was the cause of his being killed.”

Under date of Umatilla, December 21, 1847, Father Blanchet, bishop of Wallawalla, writes to Governor Abernethy as follows:—

“As soon as I had been informed what had happened, I instantly told the two chiefs near my house that I hoped the women and children would be spared until they could be sent to the Wallamet. They answered: ‘We pity them,—they shall not be harmed; they shall be taken care of, as before.’ I have since had the satisfaction to hear that they have been true to their word, and that they have taken care of these poor people.”

In Father Brouillet’s narrative, page 57 (Ross Browne, page 41), he says: “On the 3d, the bishop called for the Young Chief and his brother Five Crows, in order to express to them how deeply he had been pained by the news of the horrible affair at Wailatpu, and to recommend to their care the widows and orphans, as well as the men who had survived the massacre. They protested to have given no consent to what had happened at Wailatpu, and promised to do all in their power for the survivors.

“On the 10th we received the painful intelligence that two other young men, who, being sick, had been spared by the Indians at the time of the first massacre, had since been torn from their beds and cruelly butchered.”

The positive testimony in regard to these two young men is already before the reader. If this bishop and priest do not act and narrate falsely, we ask, What is falsehood?

After giving a description of the grand council held at the Catholic mission house by Tawatowe, Tilokaikt, Achekaia, and Camaspelo, Brouillet says, on page 67: “Before taking leave of the chiefs, the bishop said to them all publicly, as he had also done several times privately, that those who had taken American girls should give them up immediately. And then all entreated Five Crows repeatedly to give up the one whom he had taken, but to no purpose.” How does this compare with Miss Bewley’s testimony?