Part 12
Doctor Whitman instantly saw that, as a result of the incredible ignorance and short-sightedness of the statesmen--or rather, the politicians who paraded as statesmen--at Washington, four great States were quietly slipping away from us without a protest. There was but one thing to do in such a crisis. He must set out for Washington. Though four thousand miles of Indian-haunted wilderness lay between him and the white city on the Potomac, he did not hesitate. Though winter was at hand, and the passes would be deep in snow and the plains destitute of pasturage, he did not falter. Though there was a rule of the American Board that no missionary could leave his post without obtaining permission from headquarters in Boston, Whitman shouldered all the responsibility. “I did not expatriate myself when I became a missionary,” was his reply to some objection. “Even if the Board dismisses me, I will do what I can to save Oregon to the nation. My life is of but little worth if I can keep this country for the American people.”[E]
Whitman’s friends in Oregon felt that he was starting on a ride into the valley of the shadow of death. They knew from their own experiences the terrible hardships of such a journey even in summer, when there was grass to feed the horses and men could live with comfort in the open air. It was resolved that he must not make the journey alone, and a call was made for a volunteer to accompany him. General Amos Lovejoy stepped forward and said quietly: “I will go with Doctor Whitman.” The doctor planned to start in five days, but, while dining with the Hudson’s Bay officials at Fort Walla Walla, an express messenger of the company arrived from Fort Colville, three hundred and fifty miles up the Columbia, and electrified his audience by announcing that a party of one hundred and forty British and Canadian colonists were on the road to Oregon. A young English clergyman, carried away with enthusiasm, sprang to his feet, waved his napkin above his head and shouted: “We’ve got the country--the Yankees are too late! Hurrah for Oregon!” Whitman, appreciating that things had now reached a pass where even hours were precious, quietly excused himself, hurried back to the mission at Waiilatpui, and made preparations for an immediate departure. The strictest secrecy was enjoined upon all the Americans whom Whitman had taken into his confidence, for had a rumor of his intentions reached British ears at this juncture it might have ruined everything. So it was given out that he was returning to Boston to advise the American Board against the contemplated removal of its missions in Oregon--an explanation which was true as far as it went.
On the morning of October 3, 1842, Whitman, saying good-by to his wife and home, climbed into his saddle and with General Lovejoy, their half-breed guide, and three pack-mules set out on the ride that was to win us an empire. The little group of American missionaries and settlers whom he left behind gave him a rousing cheer as he rode off and then stood in silence with choking throats and misted eyes until the heroic doctor and his companions were swallowed by the forest.
With horses fresh, they reached Fort Hall in eleven days, where the English factor, Captain Grant--the same man who, six years before, had attempted to prevent Whitman from taking his wagon into Oregon--doubtless guessing at their mission, did his best to detain them. Learning at Fort Hall that the northern tribes were on the war-path, Whitman and his companions struck southward in the direction of Great Salt Lake, planning to work from there eastward, via Fort Uintah and Fort Uncompahgre, to Santa Fé, and thence by the Santa Fé trail to St. Louis, which was on the borders of civilization. The journey from Fort Hall to Fort Uintah was one long nightmare, the temperature falling at times to forty degrees below zero and the snow being so deep in places that the horses could scarcely struggle through. While crossing the mountains on their way to Taos they were caught in a blinding snow-storm, in which, with badly frozen limbs, they wandered aimlessly for hours. Finally, upon the guide admitting that he was lost and could go no farther, they sought refuge in a deep ravine. Whitman dismounted and, kneeling in the snow, prayed for guidance. Can’t you picture the scene: the lonely, rock-walled gorge; the shivering animals standing dejectedly, heads to the ground and reins trailing; the general, muffled to the eyes in furs; the impassive, blanketed half-breed; in the centre, upon his knees, the indomitable missionary, praying to the God of storms; and the snowflakes falling swiftly, silently, upon everything? As though in answer to the doctor’s prayers--and who shall say that it was not--the lead-mule, which had been left to himself, suddenly started plunging through the snowdrifts as though on an urgent errand. Whereupon the guide called out: “This old mule’ll find the way back to camp if he kin live long ’nough to git there.” And he did.
The next morning the guide said flatly that he would go no farther.
“I know this country,” he declared, “an’ I know when things is possible an’ when they ain’t. It ain’t possible to git through, an’ it’s plumb throwin’ your lives away to try it. I’m finished.”
This was a solar-plexus blow for Whitman, for he was already ten days behind his schedule. But, though staggered, he was far from being beaten. Telling Lovejoy to remain in camp and recuperate the animals--which he did by feeding them on brush and the inner bark of willows, for there was no other fodder--Whitman turned back to Fort Uncompahgre, where he succeeded in obtaining a stouter-hearted guide. In a week he had rejoined Lovejoy. The storm had ceased, and with rested animals they made good progress over the mountains to the pyramid pueblo of Taos, the home of Kit Carson. Tarrying there but a few hours, worn and weary though they were, they pressed on to the banks of the Red River, a stream which is dangerous even in summer, only to find a fringe of solid ice upon each shore, with a rushing torrent, two hundred feet wide, between. For some minutes the guide studied it in silence. “It is too dangerous to cross,” he said at last decisively.
“Dangerous or not, we _must_ cross it, and at once,” answered Whitman. Cutting a stout willow pole, eight feet or so in length, he put it on his shoulder and remounted.
“Now, boys,” he ordered, “shove me off.” Following the doctor’s directions, Lovejoy and the guide urged the trembling beast onto the slippery ice and then gave him a sudden shove which sent him, much against his will, into the freezing water. Both horse and rider remained for a moment out of sight, then rose to the surface well toward the middle of the stream, the horse swimming desperately. As they reached the opposite bank the doctor’s ingenuity in providing himself with the pole quickly became apparent, for with it he broke the fringe of ice and thus enabled his exhausted horse to gain a footing and scramble ashore. Wood was plentiful, and he soon had a roaring fire. In a wild country, when the lead-animal has gone ahead the others will always follow, so the general and the guide had no great difficulty in inducing their horses and pack-mules to make the passage of the river, rejoining Whitman upon the opposite bank.
Despite the fact that they found plenty of wood along the route that they had taken, which was fully a thousand miles longer than the northern course would have been, all the party were severely frozen, Whitman suffering excruciating pain from his frozen ears, hands, and feet. The many delays had not only caused the loss of precious time, but they had completely exhausted their provisions. A dog had accompanied the party, and they ate him. A mule came next, and that kept them until they reached Santa Fé, where there was plenty. Santa Fé--that oldest city of European occupation on the continent--welcomed and fed them. From there over the famous Santa Fé trail to Bent’s Fort, a fortified settlement on the Arkansas, was a long journey but, compared with what they had already gone through, an easy one. A long day’s ride northeastward from this lonely outpost of American civilization, and they found across their path a tributary of the Arkansas. On the opposite shore was wood in plenty. On their side there was none, and the river was frozen over with smooth, clear ice, scarce strong enough to hold a man. They must have wood or they would perish from the cold; so Whitman, taking the axe, lay flat upon the ice and snaked himself across, cut a sufficient supply of fuel and returned the way he went, pushing it before him. While he was cutting it, however, an unfortunate incident occurred: the axe-helve was splintered. This made no particular difference at the moment, for the doctor wound the break in the handle with a thong of buckskin. But as they were in camp that night a famished wolf, attracted by the smell of the fresh buckskin, carried off axe and all, and they could find no trace of it. Had it happened a few hundred miles back it would have meant the failure of the expedition, if not the death of Whitman and his companions. On such apparently insignificant trifles do the fate of nations sometimes hang.
Crossing the plains of what are now the States of Oklahoma and Kansas, great packs of gaunt, gray timber-wolves surrounded their tent each night and were kept at bay only at the price of unceasing vigilance, one member of the party always remaining on guard with a loaded rifle. The moment a wolf was shot its famished companions would pounce upon it and tear it to pieces. From Bent’s Fort to St. Louis was, strangely enough, one of the most dangerous portions of the journey, for, while heretofore the chief dangers had come from cold, starvation, and savage beasts, here they were in hourly danger from still more savage men, for in those days the Santa Fé trail was frequented by bandits, horse-thieves, renegade Indians, fugitives from justice, and the other desperate characters who haunted the outskirts of civilization and preyed upon the unprotected traveller. Notwithstanding these dangers, of which he had been repeatedly warned at Santa Fé and Bent’s Fort, the doctor, leaving Lovejoy and the guide to follow him with the pack-animals, pushed on through this perilous region alone, but lost his way and spent two precious days in finding it again--a punishment, he said for having travelled on the Sabbath.
The only occasion throughout all his astounding journey when this man of iron threatened to collapse was when, upon reaching St. Louis, in February, 1843, he learned, in answer to his eager inquiries, that the Ashburton treaty had been signed on August 9, long before he left Oregon, and that it had been ratified by the Senate on November 10, while he was floundering in the mountain snows near Fort Uncompahgre. For a moment the missionary’s mahogany-tanned face went white and his legs threatened to give way beneath him. Could it be that this was the end of his dream of national expansion? Was it possible that his heroic ride had been made for naught? But summoning up his courage he managed to ask: “Is the question of the Oregon boundary still open?” When he learned that the treaty had only settled the question of a few square miles in Maine, and that the matter of the northwest boundary was still pending, the revulsion was so great that he reeled and nearly fell. God be praised! There was still time for him to get to Washington! The river was frozen and he had to depend upon the stage, and an overland journey from St. Louis to Washington in midwinter was no light matter. But to Whitman with muscles like steel springs, a thousand miles by stage-coach over atrocious roads was not an obstacle worthy of discussion.
He arrived at Washington on the 3d of March--just five months from the Columbia to the Potomac--in the same rough garments he had worn upon his ride, for he had neither time nor opportunity to get others. Soiled and greasy buckskin breeches, sheepskin _chaparejos_, fleece side out, boot-moccasins of elkskin, a cap of raccoon fur with the tail hanging down behind, frontier fashion, and a buffalo greatcoat with a hood for stormy weather, composed a costume that did not show one inch of woven fabric. His face, storm-tanned to the color of a much-smoked meerschaum, carried all the iron-gray whiskers that five months’ absence from a razor could put upon it. I doubt, indeed, if the shop-windows of the national capital have ever reflected a more picturesque or striking figure. But he had no time to take note of the sensation created in the streets of Washington by his appearance. Would he be granted an audience with the President? Would he be believed? Would his mission prove successful? Those were the questions that tormented him.
Those were days when the chief executive of the nation was hedged by less formality than he is in these busier times, and President Tyler promptly received him. Some day, perhaps, the people of one of those great States which he saved to the Union will commission a famous artist to paint a picture of that historic meeting: the President, his keen, attentive face framed by the flaring collar and high black stock of the period, sitting low in his great armchair; the great Secretary of State, his mane brushed back from his tremendous forehead, seated beside him; and, standing before them, the preacher-pioneer, bearded to the eyes, with frozen limbs, in his worn and torn garments of fur and leather, pleading for Oregon. The burden of his argument was that the treaty of 1819 must be immediately abrogated and that the authority of the United States be extended over the valley of the Columbia. He painted in glowing words the limitless resources, the enormous wealth in minerals and timber and water-power of this land beyond the Rockies; he told his hearers, spellbound now by the interest and vividness of the narrative, of the incredible fertility of the virgin soil, in which anything would grow; of the vastness of the forests; of the countless leagues of navigable rivers; of the healthful and delightful climate; of the splendid harbors along the coast; and last, but by no means least, of those hardy pioneers who had gone forth to settle this rich new region at peril of their lives and who, through him, were pleading to be placed under the shadow of their own flag.
But Daniel Webster still clung obstinately to his belief that Oregon was a wilderness not worth the having.
“It is impossible to build a wagon road over the mountains,” he asserted positively. “My friend Sir George Simpson, the British minister, has told me so.”
“There _is_ a wagon road over the mountains, Mr. Secretary,” retorted Whitman, “for I have made it.”
It was the rattletrap old prairie-schooner that the missionary had dragged into Oregon on two wheels in the face of British opposition that clinched and copper-riveted the business. It knocked all the argument out of the famous Secretary, who, for almost the first time in his life, found himself at a loss for an answer. Here was a man of a type quite different from any that Webster had encountered in all his political experience. He had no axe to grind; he asked for nothing; he wanted no money, or office, or lands, or anything except that which would add to the glory of the flag, the prosperity of the people, the wealth of the nation. It was a powerful appeal to the heart of President Tyler.
“What you have told us has interested me deeply, Doctor Whitman,” said the President at length. “Now tell me exactly what it is that you wish me to do.”
“If it is true, Mr. President,” replied Whitman, “that, as Secretary Webster himself has said, ‘the ownership of Oregon is very likely to follow the greater settlement and the larger amount of population,’ then all I ask is that you won’t barter away Oregon or permit of British interference until I can organize a company of settlers and lead them across the plains to colonize the country. And this I will try to do at once.”
“Your credentials as a missionary vouch for your character, Doctor Whitman,” replied the President. “Your extraordinary ride and your frostbitten limbs vouch for your patriotism. The request you make is a reasonable one. I am glad to grant it.”
“That is all I ask,” said Whitman, rising.
The object that had started him on his four-thousand-mile journey having been attained, Whitman wasted no time in resting. His work was still unfinished. It was up to him to get his settlers into Oregon, for the increasing arrogance of the Hudson’s Bay Company confirmed him in his belief that the sole hope of saving the valley of the Columbia lay in a prompt and overwhelming American immigration. He had, indeed, arrived at Washington in the very nick of time, for, if prior to his arrival the British Government had renewed its offer of compromising by taking as the international boundary the forty-ninth parallel to the Columbia and thence down that river to the Pacific--thus giving the greater part of the present State of Washington to England--there is but little doubt that the offer would have been accepted. But the promise made by President Tyler to Whitman committed him against taking any action.
Though Whitman was treated with respect and admiration by the President of the United States, the greeting he received when he reported himself at the headquarters of the American Board in Boston was far from being a cordial one.
“What are you doing here, away from your post without permission?” curtly inquired the secretary of the Board, eying his shaggy visitor with evident disapproval.
“I came on business to Washington,” answered Whitman, looking the secretary squarely in the eye. “There was imminent danger of Oregon passing into the possession of England, and I felt it my duty to do what I could to prevent it.”
“Obtaining new territories for the nation is no part of our business,” was the ungracious answer. “You would have done better not to have meddled in political affairs. Here, take some money and get some decent clothes, and then we’ll discuss this scheme of yours of piloting emigrants over the mountains.”
Meanwhile General Lovejoy had been busy upon the frontier spreading the news that early in the spring Doctor Whitman and himself would guide a body of settlers across the Rockies to Oregon. The news spread up and down the border like fire in dry grass. The start was to be made from Weston, not far from where Kansas City now stands, and soon the emigrants came pouring in--men who had fought the Indians and the wilderness all the way from the Great Lakes to the Gulf; men who had followed Boone and Bowie and Carson and Davy Crockett; a hardy, sturdy, tenacious breed who were quite ready to fight, if need be, to hold this northwestern land where they had determined to build their homes. The grass was late, that spring of 1843, and the expedition did not get under way until the last week in June. At Fort Hall they met with the customary discouragements and threats from Captain Grant, but Whitman, like a modern Moses, urged them forward. On pushed the winding train of white-topped wagons, crossing the sun-baked prairies, climbing the Rockies, fording the intervening rivers, creeping along the edge of perilous precipices, until at last they stood upon the summit of the westernmost range, with the promised land lying spread below them. Whitman, the man to whom it was all due, reined in his horse and watched the procession of wagons, bearing upward of a thousand men, women, and children, make its slow progress down the mountains. He must have been very happy, for he had added the great, rich empire which the term Oregon implied to the Union.[F]
For four years more Doctor Whitman continued his work of caring for the souls and the bodies of red men and white alike at the mission station of Waiilatpui. On August 6, 1846, as a direct result of his great ride, was signed the treaty whereby England surrendered her claims to Oregon. In those days news travelled slowly along the frontier, and it was the following spring before the British outposts along the Columbia learned that the British minister at Washington had been beaten by the diplomacy of a Yankee missionary and that the great, despotic company which for well-nigh two centuries had been in undisputed control of this region, and which had come to regard it as inalienably its own, would have to move on. From that moment Marcus Whitman was a doomed man, for it was a long-standing boast of the company that no man defied it--and lived.
The end came with dramatic suddenness. Early in the afternoon of November 20, 1847, Doctor Whitman was sitting in the mission station prescribing medicine, as was his custom, for those of his Indians who were ailing, when a blanketed warrior stole up behind him on silent moccasins and buried a hatchet in his brain. Then hell broke loose. Whooping fiends in paint and feathers appeared as from the pit. Mrs. Whitman was butchered as she knelt by her dying husband, their scalps being torn from their heads before they had ceased to breathe. Fourteen other missionaries were murdered by the red-skinned monsters and forty women and children were carried into a captivity that was worse than death. And this by the Indians who, just fifteen years before, had pleaded to have sent them the white man’s Book of Heaven! Though no conclusive proof has ever been produced that they were whooped on to their atrocious deed by emissaries of the great monopoly which had been forced out of Oregon as a result of Whitman’s ride, there is but little doubt. Whitman had snatched an empire from its greedy fingers, and he had to pay the price.
Within sight of the mission station, where for more than a decade they had worked together, and from which he had started on his historic ride, the martyr and his courageous wife lie buried. You can see the grave for yourself should your travels take you Walla Walla way. You will need to have it pointed out to you, however, for you would never notice it otherwise: a modest headstone surrounded by a picket fence. Though Marcus Whitman added to the national domain a territory larger and possessing greater natural resources than the German Empire, though but for him Portland and Tacoma and Seattle and Spokane would be British instead of American, no memorial of him can be found in their parks or public buildings. Instead of honoring the man who discovered the streams and forests from which they are growing rich, who won for them the very lands on which they dwell, unworthy discussions and acrimonious debates as to the motives which animated him are the only tributes which have been paid him by the people for whom he did so much. But he sleeps peacefully on beside the mighty river, oblivious to the pettiness and ingratitude of it all. When history grants Marcus Whitman the tardy justice of perspective, over that lonely grave a monument worthy of a nation builder shall rise.
THE MARCH OF THE ONE THOUSAND
THE MARCH OF THE ONE THOUSAND