A History of Oregon, 1792-1849. Gray William Henry

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      It will be seen by the preliminary and following remarks and narrative of events, and by a careful study of all the histories and journals to which we have had occasion to refer, or from which we have quoted a statement, that the forming, civilizing, and political period in our Oregon history is all a blank, except that the Hudson’s Bay Company were the patron saints, the noble and generous preservers of the “knaves” and “ruffians” that came to this country to rob them of their pious and humane labors to civilize their accomplished native “concubines.” That, according to their ideas, the missionaries, such as came from the United States, “though bad,” could become “humanized, tolerant,” and even “honest,” by associating with such noble, generous, tolerant, virtuous, and pure-minded traders as controlled the affairs of that company, under the faithfully-executed and stringent rules of the honorable directors in London.

      At the present time there is an additional important reason for a better understanding and a more thorough knowledge of the influences and operations of this British monopoly than formerly. Notwithstanding they have been driven from Oregon by its American settlement, they have retired to British Columbia, and, like barnacles upon a ship’s bottom, have fastened themselves all along the Russian and American territories, to repeat just what they did in Oregon; and, with the savage hordes with whom they have always freely mingled, they will repeat their depredations upon our American settlements, and defeat every effort to civilize or Christianize the natives over whom they have any influence.

      Six generations of natives have passed away under their system of trade and civilization. The French, English, and Indians before our American revolution and independence could not harmonize. The French were driven from their American possessions and control over the Indians, and peace followed. The Indians, English, and Americans can not harmonize; they never have, and they never will; hence, it becomes a question of vast moment, not only to the Indian race, but to the American people, as to the propriety and expediency of allowing the English nation or British or foreign subjects to further exercise any influence among our American Indians.

      Mr. A. H. Jackson estimates the expense of our Indian wars, since 1831 to the present time, at one thousand millions of dollars and thirty-seven thousand lives of our citizens, not counting the lives of Indians destroyed by our American wars with them. If the reader will carefully read and candidly judge of the historical facts presented in the following pages, we have no fears but they will join us in our conclusions, that the Monroe doctrine is irrevocably and of necessity fixed in our American existence as a nation at peace with all, which we can not have so long as any foreign sectarian or political organizations are permitted to have a controlling influence over savage minds. A Frenchman, an Englishman, a Mormon, a Roman priest, any one, or all of them, fraternizing as they do with the Indian, can work upon his prejudices and superstitions and involve our country in an Indian war – which secures the Indian trade to the British fur company. This is the great object sought to be accomplished in nearly all the wars our government has had with them.

      One other remarkable fact is noted in all our Indian wars, the American or Protestant missionaries have been invariably driven from among those tribes, while the Roman Jesuit missionaries have been protected and continued among the Indians, aiding and counseling them in the continuance of those wars. It is no new thing that ignorance, superstition, and sectarian hate has produced such results upon the savage mind, and our Oregon history shows that a shrewd British fur company can duly appreciate and make use of just such influences to promote and perpetuate their trade on the American continent.

      CHAPTER XIII

      Occupants of the country. – Danger to outsiders. – Description of missionaries.

      In 1832, this entire country, from the Russian settlement on the north to the gulf of California on the south, the Rocky Mountains on the east to the Pacific Ocean on the west, was under the absolute and undisputed control of the Honorable Hudson’s Bay Company; and the said company claimed and exercised exclusive civil, religious, political, and commercial jurisdiction over all this vast country, leaving a narrow strip of neutral territory between the United States and their assumed possessions, lying between the Rocky Mountains and the western borders of Missouri. Its inhabitants were gentlemen of the Hudson’s Bay Company, – their clerks, traders, and servants, – consisting mostly of Canadian-French, half-breeds, and natives.

      Occasionally, when a venturesome Yankee ship or fur trader entered any of the ports of the aforesaid country for trade, exploration, or settlement, this honorable company asserted its licensed and exclusive right to drive said vessel, trader, explorer, or settler from it. Should he be so bold as to venture to pass the trained bands of the wild savages of the mountains, or, even by accident, reach the sacred trading-ground of this company, he was helped to a passage out of it, or allowed to perish by the hand of any savage who saw fit to punish him for his temerity.

      While this exclusive jurisdiction was claimed and exercised by the company, four wild, untutored Indians of the Flathead tribe learned from an American trapper, who had strayed into their country, that there was a Supreme Being, worthy of worship, and that, by going to his country, they could learn all about him. Four of these sons of the wilderness found their way to St. Louis, Missouri, in 1832. Mr. Catlin, a celebrated naturalist and artist, I believe not a member of any religious sect, learned the object that had brought these red men from the mountains of Oregon, and gave the fact to the religious public.

      This little incident, though small in itself, resulted in the organization, in 1833, of the Missionary Board of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the appointment of Rev. Jason Lee and associates, to the establishment of the Methodist Mission in the Wallamet Valley in 1834, the appointment of Rev. Samuel Parker and Dr. Marcus Whitman, by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, to explore the country in 1835, and the establishment of a mission by said Board in 1836.

      Rev. Jason Lee, of Stansted, Canada East, a man of light hair, blue eyes, fair complexion, spare habit, above ordinary height, a little stoop-shouldered, with strong nerve and indomitable will, yet a meek, warm-hearted, and humble Christian, gaining by his affable and easy manners the esteem of all who became acquainted with him, was the first to volunteer.

      Rev. Daniel Lee, a nephew of Jason, was the second; – the opposite of the former in every particular – of medium height. The general impression of outsiders was, that his moral qualities were not of the highest order, yet it is not known that any specific charges were ever brought against him.

      Cyrus Shepard, a lay member, was a devoted Christian, and a faithful laborer for the advancement of the objects of the mission and the general welfare of all in the country. We have never learned that he had an enemy or a slanderer while he lived in it. On his first arrival he taught the Hudson’s Bay Company’s school at Vancouver, consisting of children belonging to persons in the employ of the company, till the mission buildings were ready, when he gathered a large school of Indian and French half-breed children, and was quite successful in teaching the rudiments of an English education. Rev. D. Lee and Mr. Shepard were from New England.

      Mr. P. L. Edwards, of Missouri, also a lay member, was of the company. But little is known of him; the inducements to become a permanent settler in the country do not appear in his case.

      Rev. Samuel Parker, of Ithaca, New York, a man of good education and refinement, and exceedingly set in his opinions and conclusions of men and things, came to explore the country, and report to the American Board as to the feasibility of establishing missions among the Indians, one of the missionaries of the American Board, from the Sandwich Islands, having visited the coast in an American ship, several years previous, and made an unfavorable report on account of the fur-trade influence against American traders, giving the impression that American missionaries would not be tolerated in the country.

      Mr. Parker was inclined to self-applause, requiring his full share of ministerial approbation or respect, though not fully СКАЧАТЬ