addressed a letter to Shortess, April 13, 1843, asking for a copy of the petition circulated by him, and which he was informed contained charges injurious to himself and the company he represented; but Shortess refused his request.[1] Such were the methods by which the members of the Methodist Mission exhibited their hostility to the man who had pursued one unvarying course of kindness to them and their countrymen for eight years, with no other cause than their desire to deprive him of a piece of property which they coveted. "As might well be imagined," says one, "many of the brethren fell into temptation after buffeting Satan some years in Oregon."[2]
White was the only one who openly protested against this treatment. He wished to prevent the petition from being sent, and that it might be partly deprived of its force, wrote to the United States commissioner of Indian affairs that had any one not connected with the fur company been at half the pains and expense to establish a claim at the Willamette falls, there would have been few to object.[3] Some who signed the petition with too little care, or under the influence of its framers, years afterward wholly repudiated the sentiments therein contained.[4] The constant defamations with which he was pursued under the name of patriotism, for years after the arrival of the great Methodist reënforcement, must have warped any character less strong and generous than McLoughlin's, but with him it was not suffered to change his settled policy of benevolence toward all men, though it sometimes betrayed him into exhibitions of resentment, or of helpless protest against
- ↑ Gray's Hist. Or., 292–6; Niles' Reg., lxv. 26; Roberts' Recollections, MS., 21.
- ↑ Mrs Edwards, in Or. Sketches, MS., 23–4.
- ↑ White's Ten Years in Or., 200–1; Evans' Hist. Or., MS., 260.
- ↑ Says Medorum Crawford: 'The universal sentiment of the country then and now is, that Dr McLoughlin was a good man, . . . that his heart was right, and that he never did wrong; that he encouraged society to a greater degree than any other man in the country.' Missionaries, MS., 6, 7; Moss' Pioneer Times, MS., 20.
