"Fort Vancouver, 1st March, 1836.
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.
John McLoughlin."
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 patri-
