Thus ends, in American defeat, this first combat for possession of Oregon. Another combat and another champion for the Americans was due. Exit the trapper. Enter the missionary. Another chapter—and we shall see what the new actor could do and did do on the grand stage of Oregon history.
CHAPTER V
THE MISSIONARY PERIOD
In the preceding chapter we learned that the various attempts of American trappers and fur companies to control the fur trade of Oregon failed. The Hudson's Bay Company was too firmly entrenched in its vast domain to be loosened by any business of its own kind. Nor would there have been any special advantage to the United States or the world in dislodging the great British company and substituting an American enterprise of the same sort. The aims and policy of all fur companies were the same: i. e., to keep the country a wilderness, to trade with the natives and derive a fortune from the lavish bounty of wild animal life. The Hudson's Bay Company was as good as any enterprise of its type could be. The unfortunate fact was not so much that it was the British who were skimming the cream of the wilderness, as that the regime of any fur company was necessarily antagonistic to that incoming tide of settlers who would bring with them the home, the shop, the road, the church, the school, in short, civilization. Hence the necessary policy of the great fur company was to discourage immigration, or, in fact, any form of enterprise which would utilize the latent agricultural, pastoral, and manufacturing resources of Oregon. This policy existed, in spite of the fact (of which we shall see many illustrations later) that individual managers and officers of the company were often of broad and benevolent character and predisposed to extending a cordial welcome to the advance guard of American immigration. A few stray Americans had drifted to Oregon and California with the hope of inaugurating enterprises that would lead to American occupation. In general, however, the land beyond the Rockies was as dark a continent as Africa.
But in 1832 a strange and interesting event occurred which unlocked the gates of the western wilderness and led in a train of conditions which made American settlement and ownership a logical result. In 1832 a party of four Indians from the Far West appeared at St. Louis on a strange quest—seeking the "White Man's Book of Life." Efforts have been made by certain recent writers to belittle or discredit this event, for no very apparent reason unless it be that general disposition of some of the so-called critical school of investigators to spoil anything that appeals to the gentler or nobler emotions, and especially to appose the idea that men are susceptible to any motives of religion or human sympathy or any other spirit than the mercenary and materialistic. But there can be no question about the journey of these four Indians, nor can there be any reasonable doubt that their aim was to secure religious instruction for their people. The details of the journey and the nature of the expectations of the tribe and of the envoys might of course be variously understood and stated, but the general statements given by reliable contemporary authorities are not open to doubt.
To what tribe the Indians belonged seems uncertain. It has been stated by some that they were Flatheads and that tribe, though quite widely dispersed, had their principal habitat in what is now Northern Idaho and Northwestern Montana. Miss Kate McBeth, for many years a missionary to the Nez Percé Indians, and located at Kamiah and then at Lapwai, near Lewiston, thought that three of the Indians were Nez Perces and one a Flathead. Nor is it known how those Indians got the notion of a "Book of Life." Bonneville states in his journal that Pierre Pambrun, the agent at Fort Walla Walla, taught the Indians the rudiments of Catholic worship. Some have conjectured that the American trapper, Jedadiah Smith, a devout Christian, may have imparted religious instruction. Miss McBeth formed the impression that their chief hope was that they might find Lewis and Clark, whose journey in 1805-6 had produced a profound effect on the Nez Perces. It is interesting to note that Clark was at the very time of this visit of the Indians the superintendent of Indian affairs at St. Louis. He has left no statement as to the location of these Indians, though he referred to the fact of their visit to several passers who have recorded his statements. The first published account of this visit appeared in the New York Christian Advocate, of March 1, 1833. This was in the form of a letter from G. P. Disoway, who had charge of the removal of certain Indians to a reservation west of St. Louis. In his letter Disoway enclosed one from William Walker, an interpreter for the Wyandotte Indians. Walker had met the four Indians in General Clark's office in St. Louis. He was impressed with their appearance, and learned that General Clark had given them some account of the origin and history of man, of the coming of the Savior, and of his work for the salvation of men. According to Walker, two of the Indians died in St. Louis. As to whether the others reached their home he did not know.
Walker's account was confirmed in a most valuable way by George Catlin, the noted painter and student of Indian life. He was making a journey up the Missouri River on one of the first steamers to ascend that stream to Fort Benton. In the Smithsonian Report for 1885 can be found Catlin's account, as follows: "These two men, when I painted them, were in beautiful Sioux dresses which had been presented to them in a talk with the Sioux, who treated them very kindly, while passing through the Sioux country. These two men were part of a delegation that came across the mountains to St. Louis a few years since, to inquire for the truth of the representations which they said some white men had made among them, that our religion was better than theirs, and that they would all be lost if they did not embrace it. Two old and venerable men of this party died in St. Louis, and I travelled 2,000 miles, companion with these two fellows, toward their own country, and became much pleased with their manners and dispositions. When I first heard the objects of their extraordinary mission across the mountains, I could scarcely believe it; but on conversing with General Clark on a future occasion, I was fully convinced of the fact." Rather curiously Catlin speaks of these Indians as being Flatheads or Nez Perces, as though the two tribes were identical.