Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/253

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Jason Lee.
247

needed his service not less than the Indian who had gone had needed it, and he was not less willing to give it to the one than he had been to give it to the other. Accordingly, from 1840 on to the close of his life we find him addressing himself with untiring zeal and unflagging energy to the work of providing the opportunities of education for the children of the white settlers of Oregon.

The hope of redeeming a savage people had vanished with the people itself. In its place came the not less inspiring purpose of laying, in the education of the white people who were fast taking their places, deep and broad the foundations of the great state which he now foresaw must sooner or later occupy this favored region.

With this change in the conditions of the mission and in his purpose in the work came the great tragedy of his life. The necessity of his recognizing and addressing himself to the changed conditions of the mission was clear enough to him, as it must have been to all who like him were thoroughly acquainted with the rapid and remarkable change that within a half a decade had taken place in this region. But what he and others saw so clearly was not so easy to make clear to the officers of the mission board which commissioned him to work among the Indians. Distance and the representations of those who were less fully acquainted with them, or less clear-sighted and far-sighted than himself, made his task doubly difficult.

The making of himself right with the church which had commissioned him was his last earthly task. To this he addressed himself with the same courage and singleness of purpose which he carried into every task. Leaving behind his only child, a daughter of tender years, with trusted friends, and turning his back upon this land of his love and great and single purpose, with infinite toil and difficulty he made his way to the other side of the conti-