236 LOWNSDALE LETTER TO THURSTON
All things continued much in the same channel until the year 1847 when it appeared evident something was wrong. As Humbolt said would be, there appeared various priests mixed with the American congregation, some from Canada, others from France and as they were in the foremost com- panies, had time to spread out among the Indians before the whole of the emigration got into the Willamette valley. Either from former arrangement as explained by Humbolt, or some other view, the Hudson's Bay Company's managers at Fort Hall and Fort Walla Walla (being near Whitman's) made a proposal to that lamented victim to buy him out and let the Catholic Jesuits have it. This was refused by Whitman. They then advised him to leave or the Indians would murder him. He yet refused to abandon. The priests then, through the in- fluence of Mr. McBane, chief clerk at the fort, bought and obtained the privilege of settling for the priests in the Cayuse nation near the Utilla river, at the foot of the Blue Mountains, and within a short distance of Whitman's; and commenced giving lectures to the Indians on religious matters, and at the same time told the Indians that Doct. Whitman was a heretic and bad man and ought not to live. This fired their minds and anything which formerly appeared to them mysterious was turned into the works of the Devil, and particularly his giving medicine in sickness. They represented it as dangerous and that the Indians were punished by the Great Spirit in heaven with the diseases which had, that fall, been brought with the emigration, such as measles and whooping cough, and it was sent to punish them for obeying the American doctor and he should have said he would poison all the Indians when they came to him for medicine, and that the Americans only came into their country to steal and take their land and horses and cattle. To conclude the whole from good evidence, consider- able of which has been published in the Oregon-American, the aim appeared to remove the American and plant the Jesuits in their stead and we will find how it resulted, when the history of only about three months will show that Doctor Whitman was murdered with his whole family and a number of Amer- icans who had stopped for the season at and near his place, together with various robberies and such deeds of barbarism even in the presence and sanction of the biship and priests who yet remained at his station. These deeds that were done are here too horrid to appear before the public, not as a truth that should not be told, but deeds of the most atrocious nature, to be committed by those Indians on the persons of the young
