Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/260

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254
H. W. Scott.

more in 1844, which nominated Henry Clay for the Presidency. At Richmond, Missouri, he practiced law successfully till 1850, when he went overland to California, and in 1855 was in the legislature of that state as a representative from Sacramento. Wherever he lived he was always a man of note. He died at Sacramento in 1869.

The fifth member of this pioneer missionary party was Courtney M. Walker. He was engaged in Missouri, upon a contract for one year, to assist in establishing the mission. He never left Oregon, but took an Indian Wife, lived in Yamhill, and left a posterity now I think extinct. As I remember him he was a courtly gentleman who, towards the end of his life managed to dress well, and had the appearance of a man of culture and leisure. A daughter, Helen, married a lawyer in Yamhill, named John Cummins, who in 1862 was a representative of that county in the legislature. Cuminins and wife went to Washington City, where he practiced law. She died there, after a few years, leaving no children. The offspring of white marriages with Indians, though often worthy persons, seldom were long lived.

I give these details, picked up out of many sources of information, not readily accessible. But they possess an interest, since they lie at the basis of the creation of the states of the Pacific Northwest; and the smallest details of the beginning of great things have human interest and historic value.

All accounts of the missionary movement to Oregon begin with the story of the four Flathead Indians, who in 1832 made their way over mountains and plains to St. Louis, on a journey whose object the missionary spirit tells us was to obtain religious instruction for themselves and their people. I confess this story has always seemed to me to have a mythical element in it; and Daniel Lee in his book intimates that the later development of the