been, he still controlled the majority of American minds in the Willamette Valley. This being the position of affairs, it required no little skill to avoid the rocks placed in the current which White was obliged to navigate by the determined and often underhand opposition of his former associates of the Methodist Mission.
The importance of White's immigration has never been fully recognized. First, the missionary historians, Hines and Gray, were inimical to White, each in his way damning him either with faint praise or loud condemnation. After them, writers on immigration, finding White ignored, fell into the habit of speaking of the company of 1843 as the first immigrants. Against this injustice the authors of several manuscripts protest.[1] Hastings, who wrote so minutely about the journey, and who succeeded White in command of the company, mentions the name of his rival but once in his account of the migration, and then only to doubt his authority to employ a guide. From all of which we may learn that if a man desires to be properly represented in history, he must avoid coming in conflict with the ambitions of other men equally aspiring who may undertake the record of affairs.
Upon the same authority it is said that most of the immigrants were disappointed in the country. They found themselves more than two thousand miles from the land of their birth, without houses to shelter them, destitute of the means of farming, without provisions or clothing, surrounded by unfriendly natives, and without the protection of their government. What wonder, then, if discontent prevailed?[2] McLoughlin did his best to relieve this feeling, engaging many in labor at fair wages, and furnishing goods on credit to those who could not make immediate payment. The Mission, also, which was in need of laborers for
