Manifest Destiny in the West [pp. 148-159]

MA4NIFEST DESTINY IN THE WEST.
and nose of the Hudson's Bay Company, who had already begun to give
farms to some of its retired servants in
the Garden of the West, the Wallamet
Valley.
It was the policy of the Hudson's Bay
Company to treat all Americans who
came into their neighborhood, or demanded their hospitality, with the greatest courtesy. They only required that
none of these adventurers should attempt
to trade with the Indians, whom they
had brought into subjection to themselves. Competition they would not
have: it would ruin their business, and
open the way for American settlement.
But with missionaries -why, the case
was different. Accustomed as the English all are to revere the Church and its
ministers, the officers of the Hudson's
Bay Company were prepared to receive
the missionaries with even more than
their accustomed hospitality and courtesy. Plain men as they were, the right
hand at the Governor's elegant table,
and the best of lodging, with every privilege of gentlemen, were accorded to them,
and the kindest offers of assistance freely made to forward the establishment of
their mission.
Fatal misapprehension! In the next
ten years, in spite of the restrictions with
which the Company, now alarmed, sur-rounded the embryo settlement, it had
become a colony of actual settlers, tillers
of the soil, hardy American frontiersmen, who, with the mission-now a mission only in name- for a nucleus, had
already arrived at the consideration of
a plan for a Provisional Government.
The rapid secularization of the Methodist Mission had been an event entirely
unforeseen, and the British Government
was once more outwitted, or, as we contend, quietly set aside by Destiny.
But the Methodist was not the only
mission with which the Hudson's Bay
Company had to contend. The Presbyterian Church, moved by the same tales
of Indian aspirations which had inspired
the Lees to undertake their conversion,
had found a small company of devoted
souls willing to give their lives to the
service of God in the wilderness. Of
this company Dr. Marcus Whitman was
the leader and governing spirit. Choosing differently from the Lees, he stationed himself east of the Cascade Range,
between that and the foot of the Rocky
Mountains, where he built up a mission,
with several collateral ones, and faithfully taught the God-seeking savages, who
brutally murdered him in return, after
eleven years of labor.
Dr. Whitman, though a devoted Christian servant, was a no less ardent American. A favorite at Fort Vancouver, the
head-quarters of the Hudson's Bay Company, he had many opportunities of acquainting himself with the feeling which
animated its officers as subjects of Great
Britain; and no one more heartily desired a rapid American settlement than
he. Many were the efforts he put forth
to induce immigration by making the
proper representations to all who came
in his way, and by means of correspondence with the East.
Nor was Congress idle at this time.
Being pressed for a settlement of the
boundary question, Mr. Webster and
Lord Ashburton were holding long and
secret negotiations, while certain Congressmen and Senators were continually
" agitating" to prevent an ill-advised cession of territory, and to induce immigration to Oregon. Although little was
known of what was transpiring officially,
the secret rivalry ran high, and in I842-3
the interest felt in the question of the
Oregon boundary was intense. The following incident will best illustrate to
what expedients British and American
subjects were impelled by a desire to
come out ahead: "
In the autumn of 1842, Dr. Whitman
happened to be dining at one of the Hudson's Bay Company's posts, only a few
LAUGUST,
I54