Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 7/Jason Lee memorial address by William D. Fenton
ADDRESS
By Hon. W. D. Fenton
The history of Jason Lee and his contemporaries is a narrative of the commencement of the great struggle of American citizens for the possession and retention of the Oregon Country. Before that time this section was in practical control and under the governmental influence of Great Britain, although nominally the two countries shared in the power and responsibility of joint occupation. The primal object in the mind of Jason Lee may not have been an intent to assert and protect the sovereignty of the United States. This was perhaps incidental to his chief purpose—that of missionary effort and desire to establish the Christian religion in these remote parts of the world.
Lee was of New England stock, although immediately from Canada at the time of his coming to the Oregon Country. The spirit of adventure, discovery and conquest was everywhere dominant. The Northwest coast for nearly fifty years before his coming had been the goal towards which the British Admiralty had directed several voyages of discovery, and in which the navigators of France and Russia had been generous rivals. This spirit of the sea had taken deep root in New England, and had given to the world the discovery of the Columbia by Captain Gray in 1792. Hall J. Kelley in 1817 began agitation for the occupation of the Columbia, and Nathaniel J. Wyeth in 1832 had preceded Lee and his associates to this far West. The missionary followed closely the path of the trapper and hunter, of the voyager and the navigator.
On October 10, 1833, a missionary meeting was held in New York to arrange to send Jason Lee and Daniel Lee to the Flatheads, and $3,000 in money was appropriated for this purpose. On November 20, 1833, in Forsyth Street Church in New York a farewell meeting was presided over by Bishop Hedding and addressed by Dr. McAuley of the Presbyterian Church. The religious spirit of New England and the Atlantic seaboard was concentrating a determined effort in the direction of the Indian country. By direction of the Board of Missions the Lees visited Nathaniel J. Wyeth, who had just returned to Boston from his first attempt to establish a trading post on the Lower Columbia River. The men chosen to accompany Jason Lee were Cyrus Shepard of Lynn, Massachusetts, thirty-five years of age, Philip L. Edwards, a Kentuckian, lately of Richmond, Missouri, Courtney M. Walker of Richmond was engaged also for a year to assist in the establishment of the mission. Edwards was only twenty-three years old. They left New York early in March, 1834, proceeding west leisurely, and Jason Lee here and there lectured as he traveled. They left from Independence, Missouri, April 28, 1834, having in their company in all seventy men divided into three distinct parties, and took with them two hundred and fifty horses. Wyeth and Sublette led the party, and with them were Townsend and Nuttall, two scientists. On July 27, 1834, they held Sunday services at Fort Hall, a fort built by Wyeth; and on September 15, 1834, the party arrived at Fort Vancouver, Lee having preceded the party. The brig May Dacre, Wyeth's vessel, was then lying at anchor at Wapato Island, now Sauvie's Island. Dr. John McLoughlin, the father of old Oregon, and whose name is revered by Protestent and Catholic alike, sent them on horseback to the mission site, and also furnished a boat and crew to transfer their supplies from the brig in which they were successful about October 6, 1834. Lee preached a sermon at Vancouver on September 28, 1834, and again on December 14, 1834.
Mr. Bancroft, speaking of Jason Lee, says:
"At the time of his appointment to a position destined to be more conspicuous in Oregon's history than at that time he could have surmised, Jason Lee was about thirty years of age, tall and powerfully built, slightly stooping, and rather slow and awkward in his movements; of light complexion, thin lips, closely shut, prominent nose, and rather massive jaws; eyes of superlative spiritualistic blue, high, retreating forehead, carrying mind within; somewhat long hair, pushed back, and giving to the not too stern but positively marked features a slightly puritanical aspect; and withal a stomach like that of an ostrich, which would digest anything. In attainments there was the broad open pasture of possibilities rather than a well-cultivated field of orchard, grain and vine land. He believed in the tenets of his church; indeed, whatever may become of him, howsoever he may behave under those varied and untried conditions which providence or fortune holds in store we may be sure that at this beginning, though not devoid of worldly ambition, he was sincere and sound to the core. Strong in his possession of himself, there was nothing intrusive in his nature. Though talking was a part of his profession, his skill was exhibited as much in what he left unsaid as in his most studied utterances. Frank and affable in his intercourse with men, he inspired confidence in those with whom he had dealings, and was a general favorite. If his intelligence was not as broad and bright as Burke's, there was at least no danger of the heart hardening through the head, as with Robespierre and St. Just."
His subsequent work justifies the estimate of the historian. While his first and dominating purpose was the work of the mission, he saw at once the possibilities of government and its close relation to the cause in which he was ostensibly and directly engaged. He prepared a petition and forwarded the same to Congress, and Caleb Cushing of Massachusetts requested further information from him. Lee had returned to New England, and on January 17, 1839, wrote from Middletown, Connecticut, that there were in Oregon belonging to the Methodist twenty-five persons of all ages and both sexes who would shortly be reinforced by forty-five others, making seventy. "As a matter of fact," says Bancroft, "the number reached was seventy-seven. There were sixteen persons belonging to the missions of the American Board, and about twenty settlers, missionaries and others, going out from the Western States in the spring: In addition to which there were about forty-five men settled in the country who had Indian wives and half-breed children."
The memorial drawn up before Lee left Oregon was presented to the Senate by Linn of Missouri on January 28, 1839, and on December 11, 1838, Linn, as you will recall, had introduced a bill in the Senate for the occupation of the Columbia, or Oregon, River, and to organize a territory north of 42 degrees and west of the Rocky Mountains to be called Oregon Territory. This measure also provided for the establishment of a fort on the Columbia, the occupation by a military force, the establishment of a port of entry, and the extension of the revenue laws of the United States over the country. Senator Linn followed this formal action on his part by a speech on the 22d of February, 1839, supporting a bill to provide for the protection of citizens of the United States then in the Territory of Oregon, or trading on the Columbia River. It is a matter of history that Jason Lee was the unseen hand behind this first active effort at Washington, and he was regarded in a special sense as the noncommissioned representative of the government of the United States.
At this time an appropriation of considerable money from the secret service fund of the United States was made for the charter of the ship Lausanne. This was known only to Jason Lee and was not revealed or disclosed until the boundary question was settled between the United States and Great Britain by the Ashburton Treaty of June 15, 1846.It is not necessary at this time to recount prosy details of his life in the erection of the mission. In May, 1841, the first annual meeting of the Methodist Society was held here, and a committee appointed to select for the manual labor school a site not far from the mission mills on Chemeketa plain. Here a building costing ten thousand dollars was erected, and in this an Indian school was taught for about nine months, beginning in the autumn of 1842.
On the 17th of January, 1842, at the home of Jason Lee, a few men met to establish an educational institution for the benefit of white children, and I. L. Babcock, Gustavus Hines, and David Leslie were appointed a committee to undertake the work. A subsequent meeting was held at the old mission house on French Prairie on February 1, 1842, and it was there decided to name and found an institution of learning. The Oregon Institute thus became the first institution of learning upon the Pacific Coast. Its first board of trustees consisted of Jason Lee, Gustavus Hines, J. L. Parrish, L. H. Judson, David Leslie, George Abernethy, Alanson Beers, Hamilton Campbell, and I. L. Babcock. These men, under the leadership of Jason Lee, were building a commonwealth. They did not despise the day of small beginnings. They did their duty in the light of their opportunities, and although the site of this first American educational institution west of the Rocky Mountains has faded from the memory of all living men, and the timbers that entered into its frail structure have long since passed into dust, the efforts which they made and the example which they have set have left an imperishable impress upon the educational, political, and social institutions of the great Northwest.
It is also to the credit of Jason Lee that he suggested to Senator Linn the donation land law, and that the measure as suggested by him had no clause therein which prevented foreigners of any nation from becoming citizens of Oregon, but bestowed upon every white male inhabitant 640 acres of land, and the Act of Congress of September 27, 1850, commonly called the Donation Act, carried out this purpose and intention, but provided that the grant should be made to a citizen of the United States or one having made a declaration according to law of his intention to become such citizen, or who should make such declaration on or before December 1, 1851.
While thus Lee was actively engaged in the far-seeing work of his mission and assisting in the direction of ultimate American supremacy, those who remained at home and bad influence with the mission board secured his removal from the superintendency of the Oregon Mission. On reaching Honolulu, and before he stepped ashore, Doctor Babcock informed him that he had been superseded in the superintendency of the Oregon Mission by the Rev. George Gary, of the Black River conference, New York, who was then on his way to Oregon to investigate Lee's career since 1840, and he was given authority if he thought proper to close the affairs of the mission. Some of Lee's associates, and some of his rivals, whether from mistaken judgment or envy, had cut short his official career. Lee, while downcast and disappointed, was not discouraged. He was willing to face his accusers and render an account of his stewardship. It was Emerson, I believe, who said: "Cardinal Richelieu was not glaringly wrong, therefore, in the opinion that an unfortunate and an imprudent person are synonymous terms. Every man is placed, in some degree, under the influence of events and of other men; but it is for himself to decide whether he will rule, or be ruled by them. They may operate powerfully against him at times; but rarely so as to overwhelm him, if he bears up manfully, and with a stout, dogged will. In the battle of life we may be drawn as conscripts, but our courage or our cowardice, our gentleness or our cruelty, depends upon ourselves. 'The Admiralty,' wrote Nelson, when expecting to command the finest fleet in the world, 'may order me a cock-boat, but I will do my duty.'" Such was the misfortune and such the spirit of Jason Lee.
When he left Oregon it was his intention to wait at the Islands for a vessel going to New York or Boston, and with the expectation that Mr. and Mrs. Gustavus Hines and his little daughter would accompany him. For a decade he had been superintendent of the Oregon Mission, and while he was in the dawn of his usefulness as it seemed to him and his friends he was removed. He did not wait for an American vessel, but, leaving his child, hurried on to New York by the Hawaiian schooner Hoa Tita for Mazatlan, thence to Vera Cruz, and to his destination.
Jason Lee did not long survive the attempted disgrace, for he died March 12, 1845, at Lake Memphramagog in the Province of Lower Canada. His last act was to make a small bequest to the institution for which he was laboring, and for the advancement of education in the country of his adoption.
I do not share the feeling entertained by some that there was any enmity or rivalry between Dr. John McLoughlin and Jason Lee. While there was controversy between McLoughlin and his friends and some of the leading spirits of the Methodist Mission with respect to the donation land claim at Oregon City in later years, it did not destroy or impair the relations of confidence and respect between Jason Lee and Doctor McLaughlin. On March 1, 1836, Doctor McLoughlin sent a subscription to Jason Lee for the benefit of the mission amounting to $180.00 collected at Vancouver, and accompanied the subscription by this letter:
The Rev. Jason Lee:
Dear Sir: I do myself the pleasure to hand you the inclosed subscription, which the gentlemen who have signed it request you will do them the favor to accept for the use of the mission, and they pray our Heavenly Father, without whose assistance we can do nothing, that of his infinite mercy he may vouchsafe to bless and prosper your pious endeavors, and believe me to be, with esteem and regard, your sincere well wisher and humble servant.
The activity of Jason Lee and his immediate associates under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church was emulated by Blanchet, who came from Canada in 1838, and DeSmet, who came from St. Louis and set up the first Catholic missions. In 1835 Parker and Whitman came, later came Walker and Eells, and in all this great country the names of these men, Methodist, Presbyterian, Congregationalist, and Catholic, are honored with a hallowed memory for what they undertook to do, and for that which in great part they have succeeded. The important work of the Methodist Mission at Salem may have been,—in the annals of history,—regarded as a failure. Ten years of missionary effort, the primary object of which was to bring christianity to the Indians, cost the Methodist Episcopal Church a quarter of a million dollars, and this money thus expended, while wasted in the strict sense, in so far as its immediate work upon the Indian character and life was concerned, was not wholly lost. The mission brought nearly four score American citizens into the heart of the Oregon Country, and here they formed the nucleus of a great commonwealth. Here they founded an institution of learning. Here they introduced the customs and religion of civilized races. Here more than seventy years ago they planted the love of American institutions. If the Board of Missions in New York dismissed Jason Lee from the superintendency because of his patriotic effort to strengthen American influence here, they were less patriotic than he. If they dismissed him because of any alleged misappropriation of the funds of the society, they did not know the honesty of the man or the difficulties under which he labored. The historian Bancroft, further speaking upon this subject, says:
"That he had the ability to impress upon the Willamette Valley a character for religious and literary aspiration, which remains to this day; that he suggested the manner in which Congress could promote and reward American emigration, at the same time craftily keeping the government in some anxiety concerning the intention of the British Government and Hudson's Bay Company, when he could not have been ignorant of the fact that so far as the country south of the Columbia was concerned, there was nothing to fear; that he so carefully guarded his motives as to leave even the sagacious McLoughlin in doubt concerning them, up to the time he left Oregon—all of these taken together exhibit a combination of qualities which were hardly to be looked for in the frank, easy tempered, but energetic and devoted missionary, who in the autumn of 1834 built his rude house beside the Willamette River, and gathered into it a few sickly Indian children whose souls were to be saved though they had not long to remain in their wretched bodies. How he justified the change in himself no one can tell. He certainly saw how grand a work it was to lay the foundation of a new empire on the shores of the Pacific, and how discouraging the prospect of raising a doomed race to a momentary recognition of its lost condition, which was all that ever could be hoped for the Indians of Western Oregon. There is much credit to be imputed to him as the man who carried to successful completion the dream of Hall J. Kelley and the purpose of Ewing Young. The means by which these ends were attained will appear more fully when I come to deal with government matters. Taken all in all, I should say, "Honor to the Memory of Jason Lee."
And here I may be permitted to pay a word of tribute to the woman who gave her life as a sacrifice to the work of Jason Lee. By the courtesy of Miss Anna Pittman, a niece of Ann Maria Pittman, the first wife of Jason Lee, I have been permitted to read several autograph letters written by Mrs. Lee before she was married, and while she was preparing to come to Oregon. In her last letter of date June 9, 1836, written from New York to her brother, George W. Pittman, who was then at Troy, New York, but who in 1834 was at Fort Gibson, Arkansas River, Arkansas Territory, with the United States Dragoons, she said:
"I have taken my pen in hand to address you for the last time. The time is drawing nigh when I must bid along farewell to all I love. I quit the scenes of my youth, the land of my birth, and in a far and distant land among strangers I expect to dwell. Soon the rolling billows of the tempestuous ocean, and the towering mountains, rugged steep, will intervene between us, and perhaps we see each others face no more. * * As the hour approaches for my departure, I still remain firm and undaunted; I have nothing to fear, God has promised to be with me even to the end of the world. Dear brother, farewell; may Heaven bless you, and oh remember your sister who goes not to seek the honours and pleasures of the world, but lays her life a willing sacrifice upon the altar of God."
This letter written in a bold and firm hand and signed "Anna Maria Pittman" breathes the spirit of the martyr. In a postscript to the letter she says:
"In the ship Hamilton we leave Boston the 1st July. The mission family will be in this city the 20th June when a farewell missionary meeting will be held. We will leave sometime that week. The number is nine, five are females, three are married."
She came and paid the sacrifice with her life. She was married to Jason Lee on the 16th day of July, 1837, not far from where Salem now stands. She died on the 26th of June, 1838, and is buried in the old mission cemetery. In that sacred spot where we are about to reinter all that is mortal of Jason Lee, lies buried the wife of his youth and the infant son for whose birth her life was a sacrifice, the first white child born in the State of Oregon, the first white woman married, and as Mr. Gill has so well said, "the first to die in the Oregon Country." Upon her tombstone you will read to-day at Mission Cemetery, Salem, these words: "Beneath this sod, the first broken in Oregon for the reception of white mother and child, lie the remains of Ann Maria Pittman Lee." This man and this woman together will sleep at last. The work which they did has outlived them. She in her sphere, and he in his, performed well their part. Jason Lee was by birth, education and training a devout enthusiast and loyal patriot and the prophet of a new State. His life illustrates again the truth of the statement that to achieve success there must be a single purpose, and energies must not be wasted or dissipated in attempting to do well more than one thing.
"There is always room for a man of force, and he makes room for many. Society is a troop of thinkers and the best heads among these take the best places. A feeble man can see the farms that are fenced and tilled, the houses that are built. The strong man sees the possible houses and farms. His eye makes estates as fast as the sun breeds clouds."
Jason Lee with the eye of prophecy saw in 1834 the great commonwealth of 1906. He saw the march and power of empire, and that the flag of his country would in less than a century wave from Panama to Behring Straits. The republic was to reach the zenith of its power on these shores. His work is done. The record of his life has been written. We cannot add to or take from that record, and the simple ceremonies attending this hour but feebly record the final chapter in the life of the great Methodist missionary, educator, pioneer, and statesman. "What men most covet, wealth, distinction, power,
Are baubles nothing worth; they only serve
To rouse us up, as children at the school
Are roused up to exertion; our reward
Is in the race we run, not in the prize,
Those few to whom is given what they ne’er earned,
Having by favour or inheritance
The dangerous gifts placed in their hands,
Know not, nor ever can, the generous pride
That glows in him who on himself relies,
Entering the lists of life. He speeds beyond
Them all, and foremost in the race succeeds.
His joy is not that he has got his crown,
But that the power to win the crown is his."