The Oregon Indians, Part II [pp. 425-433]

THE OREGON INDIANS.
Whites? And when, year after year,
each autumn brought its large company
of Whites, to settle in the Willamette
Valley, they became aware of the fate of
their country, and their hearts were filled with rage and despair. The usefulness of the missionaries ceased from
this time. The Indians threatened, and
then relented; and the missions were
not broken up. But there was a feeling
of insecurity, which made the friends of
Dr. Whitman often counsel him to remove to the Willamette.
That he did not do so, was owing to
two or three causes. Some of the disaffected Indians had chosen Catholic
teachers, because they were unmarried,
required no land, did not want to colonize the country, and taught a religion
better adapted to the aboriginal mind.
These Indians remain Catholic to this
day, and ask the Government to send a
father of Rome to the Umatilla Reservation, in preference to a Protestant.
Dr. Whitman did not wish to yield to
the Catholics; nor did he wish to throw
up his mission at all. Besides, should
he do so, what could be done with the
mission property, or how account to the
Board for it? Nor, to tell the truth, did
he like to quit the station, which was of
such service to the emigrants, as a recruiting station. What would they do
for the provisions they were always so
much in need of, by the time they had
crossed the Blue Mountains, if he broke
up the mission farm?
Things went from bad to worse, with
the Indians, until the autumn of I847.
Threats, indignities, trials of every kind,
were heaped upon the missionaries; and
although the Indians still made use of
them for their own purposes, and even
kept up some religious forms, it was
plain they respected them not. In addition to their former complaints, they
had now another: that the grain which
Dr. Whitman raised, and the beef-cattle, were not for them, but for sale to
the emigrants. The Doctor was getting rich, so they said, from the products
of their lands. The footfall of doom
might have been heard above these murmurings; but it was not heeded. The
emigration of this year was large; and
quite a number of families decided to
winter at the Doctor's station, rather
than continue on down to the Willamette-the more so, because some of
them were sick of measles and dysentery.
The measles broke out among the Indians, and to them it was fatal. It was
a "White Man's disease," with which
they were unacquainted, and which they
were unable to treat. The disease spread
with fearful rapidity. The sick were
more numerous than the well. From
the practice of the Indians, of going out
of their sweating-ovens into the cold
water of the river, all who took this
course died. Even of those the Doctor
attended, very few recovered; yet he
ministered to them faithfully, doing every thing for them his skill suggested.
One day, about noon, when the sickness was at its height, a chief entered
his house-where he had gone for a few
minutes' rest-and inaugurated a general massacre of all the members of the
mission, and all the men of the emigrant party, by striking the Doctor senseless with a tomahawk. The attack being preconcerted, it was not long before
a frantic party of women and children
alone remained, and they prisoners. The
horrors of that bloody butchery, done by
Indian converts on their teachers, are
too sickening to recount. Suffice it to
say here, that the excuses given by the
Indians themselves were, that they believed the Doctor was poisoning them,
in order to get possession of their country to give it to the Whites. And what
more natural conclusion for the Indian
mind to arrive at? They were already
persuaded the Doctor wanted their lands.
They had been unable to drive him away
1871.]
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