Old John Toupin, under the sanctity of a Roman Catholic oath, says, at St. Louis, of Wallamet, on September 24, 1848; “I have been seventeen years employed as interpreter at Fort Wallawalla. I was there when Mr. Parker, in 1835, came to select places for Presbyterian missions among the Cayuses and Nez Percés, and to ask lands for those missions. He employed me as interpreter in his negotiations with the Indians on that occasion.” Mr. Parker has just said “the interpreter I had been expecting did not arrive.” Toupin says: “Mr. Pambrun, the gentleman then in charge of the fort, accompanied me to the Cayuses and Nez Percés. Mr. Parker, in company with Mr. Pambrun, an American, and myself, went first to the Cayuses, upon the lands called Wailatpu, that belonged to three chiefs,—Splitted Lip, or Yomtip; Red Cloak, or Waptachtakamal; and Feather Cap, or Tilokaikt.” Having met them at that place, he told them that he was coming to select a place to build a preaching-house, to teach them how to live, and to teach school to their children, and that he would not come himself to establish the mission, but a doctor, or medicine man, would come in his place; that the doctor would be the chief of the mission, and would come in the following spring. “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 mission will bring you plows and hoes to learn you how to cultivate the land, and they will not sell, but give them to you.” From the Cayuses Mr. Parker went to the Nez Percés, and there he made the same promises to the Indians as at Wailatpu. “Next spring there will come a missionary to establish himself here and take a piece of land; but he will not take it for nothing, you shall be paid every year; this is the American fashion.” This statement is made by authority of Rev. J. B. A. Brouillet; vicar-general of Wallawalla.
Rev. Mr. Parker, as before remarked, and as his journal shows, soon understood all the maneuverings of this Hudson’s Bay Company. He had no confidence in their friendship or their interpreters. As a matter of policy they could do no less than treat him kindly, or, more properly, civilly, and allow him to leave the country, as he did. But mark the strictness and care of the company to impress the necessity of compliance with their arrangements upon the minds of those that followed Mr. Parker. Keep the massacre to which Vicar-General Brouillet refers before your mind. Life and blood and treasure have been expended. The fair land we inhabit was not secured without a struggle. The early Protestant missions were not defeated and broken up without outside influences. The Indians were not abandoned till they had dipped their hands in the blood of their best and truest friend, and “become seven-fold more the children of the devil than they were in their native state,” by the teachings they had received from malicious and interested parties to make them so.
Father P. J. De Smet, from Brouillet’s statements, was among the Flatheads and at Wallawalla in 1840. This priest boasted of his belonging to the Jesuit order of the Romish Church. He usually wore a black frock-coat, was of full habit, arrogant and bigoted in his opinions, and spoke with considerable sarcasm and contempt of all Americans, and especially of the missionaries, as an ignorant set of men to represent the American churches. He would be considered, in his church, a zealous and faithful priest of the order of Jesus. His religious instructions to the Indians were simple and easy to be understood: “Count your beads, hate or kill the Suapies (Americans), and kiss the cross.”
Rev. Harvey Clark was a man whose religion was practical, whose labors were without ceasing, of slender frame, black hair, deep, mellow voice, kind and obliging to all. He organized the first Congregational Church in Tualatin Plains, and one in Oregon City, and was the getter-up of the Pacific University at Forest Grove; a warm friend to general education and all objects calculated to do good to any and all of his fellow-creatures. But few who knew him did not respect and esteem him for his sincere piety and Christian conduct. He came to the country as a missionary sent out by some of the northwestern churches in the United States, without any definite organization further than sufficient to furnish the means for outfit for himself and associates,—Smith and Littlejohn and their wives,—trusting Providence and their own strong arms and willing hearts to labor and do all they could for a subsistence. Mr. Clark was perhaps the best man that could have been sent with the early settlers. He early gained their confidence and esteem, and was always a welcome visitor among them. He had not that stern commanding manner which is usual to egotists of the clerical order, but was of the mild, persuasive kind, that wins the rough heart and calms the stormy passions. The country is blessed by his having lived in it.
A. T. Smith, the associate of Rev. H. Clark was an honest and substantial farmer, a sincere and devout Christian, a man not forward in forming society, yet firm and stable in his convictions of right; liberal and generous to all objects of real worth; not easily excited, or ambitious of political preferment. His wife seemed, in all her life and actions, to be a suitable helpmeet for him. They came early to this country, and have ever been substantial and useful citizens, and supporters of morality and religion. They were among the earliest settlers at Forest Grove, and the first members of Rev. H. Clark’s church.
P. B. Littlejohn was the opposite of Smith, a confirmed hypochondriac; yet, under excitement that was agreeable to his ideas, a useful man. Owing to his peculiar temperament, or the disease with which he was afflicted, his usefulness, and that of an interesting and Christian wife, were cramped and destroyed. He returned to the States with his family in 1845.
At this point, perhaps a statement of all the names of persons I have been able to collect and recollect, and the year they arrived in the country, will not be uninteresting to the reader. A short history of most of them has already been given.
In the year 1834, Rev. Jason Lee, Rev. Daniel Lee, Cyrus Shepard, and P. L. Edwards, connected with the Methodist Mission; Captain N. Wyeth, American fur trader, and of his party in 1832, S. H. Smith, Burdet, Greeley, Sergeant, Bull, St. Clair, and Whittier (who was helped to or given a passage to the Sandwich Islands by the Hudson’s Bay Company); Brock, a gunsmith; Tibbets, a stone-cutter; Moore, killed by the Blackfeet Indians; Turnbull, who killed himself by overeating at Vancouver. There was also in the country a man by the name of Felix Hathaway, saved from the wreck of the William and Ann. Of this number, Smith, Sergeant, Tibbets, and Hathaway remained. Of the party in 1834, James A. O’Neil, T. J. Hubbard, and Courtney M. Walker remained in the country, making six of Wyeth’s men and one sailor. C. M. Walker came with Lee’s company. With Ewing Young, from California, came, in this year, John McCarty, Carmichael, John Hauxhurst, Joseph Gale, John Howard, Kilborn, Brandywine, and George Winslow, a colored man. By the brig Maryland, Captain J. H. Couch, G. W. Le Breton, John McCaddan, and William Johnson. An English sailor, by the name of Richard or Dick McCary, found his way into the settlement from the Rocky Mountains.
In the year 1835 it does not appear that any settlers arrived in the country. Rev. Samuel Parker visited and explored it under the direction of the American Board of Foreign Missions.
In 1836, Rev. H. Spalding, Dr. M. Whitman, W. H. Gray, Mrs. Eliza Spalding, and Mrs. Narcissa Whitman, missionaries of the American Board, and Rev. Mr. Beaver, Episcopal chaplain at Vancouver, and Mrs. Beaver. There appear to have been no settlers this year; at least, none known to us.