the harmony of the Methodist colonists arose to a great degree from the unavoidable trials of a new settlement in the hands of inexperienced persons.
It does not appear, from anything discovered in the writings of the missionaries, that Jason Lee told his associates of his correspondence with agents of the government. Had the disaffected members of the Mission known that they had been used to carry out a colonization project, some expression of their resentment on finding themselves the victims of so worldly an artifice would somewhere appear. But the colonization scheme is never alluded to as a cause of their disappointment.[1]
White having resigned, Babcock was called from the Dalles to the Willamette, where the usual summer sickness was disabling the Mission. Chills and fever, ending in a low typhoid, prostrated the white population and carried off the natives.[2]
- ↑ Frost says that he does not in the least regret that he embarked in the enterprise although in the three years he remained in Oregon he ruined his health for life, for he believes he accomplished some good to the Indians by preventing murders, which were formerly frequent amongst them. Lee and Frost's Or., 331–2. Hines, who wrote later, when more was known about the facts, excuses the fraud on the missionary society by explaining that the Indians Lee expected to teach nearly all died during his visit east. Oregon Hist., 236.
- ↑ Parrish says 500 Indians died in the Willamette Valley in 1840. Undoubtedly an over-estimate, as this number of Indians could not be found within the range of observation of the missionaries in that valley. Or. Anecdotes, MS., 35. Of the personal affairs of the missionaries from 1840 to 1843, I have gleaned the following: In the summer of 1840 J. L. Parrish lost his eldest son by the prevailing fever. On the 18th of January, 1841, a daughter was born to Mr and Mrs Perkins. On the 16th of February of the same year David Carter of the late reënforcement married Miss Orpha Lankton of the same. Miss Lankton was daughter of Abra and Thankful Lankton of Burlington, Connecticut, born October 2, 1806. Mr Carter died in 1849 or 1850, and Mrs Carter again married Rev. John McKinney of the Methodist church. She had three sons by her first husband. She died at Sodaville, Linn County, September 26, 1873. Portland P. C. Advocate, Nov. 13, 1873. On the 23d of March Mrs Daniel Lee presented her husband with a son, who was named Wilbur Fisk. It was about this time that Mr Whitcomb married Mrs Shepard. On the 6th of May, a young man named Joseph Holman, whom I shall have occasion to mention in another place, and who arrived at Fort Vancouver on the day the reenforcement landed, married Miss Almira Phelps of the mission family. Miss Phelps was born July 29, 1814, at Springfield, Massachusetts, and educated at Wilbraham Academy in that state. Mrs Holman died at Salem, Oregon, October 23, 1874. Salem Mercury, Oct. 23, 1874; Portland Advocate, Nov. 13, 1874. On the 28th of February, 1842, Mrs Jason
