MISSION CLAIM TO THE DALLES 25
sum of $600.00 and actual possession was given. There was a kind of understanding that religious exercises and instruction for the Indians should be kept up, but there was no legal obliga- tion to that effect, nor did the Methodist people expect to re- turn to occupy the station if this was not done, for they were becoming very much discouraged in regard to converting the Indian.
Dr. Whitman was supposed to have "purchased the station primarily for himself and nephew, Perrin B., to whom he promised the west half of it if he would remain and take care of it until the spring, when his uncle expected to return and make his permanent home there."
So Perrin B. Whitman, nephew of Dr. Whitman, a youth of seventeen years, was placed in charge and Dr. Whitman unfortunately returned to his own mission station at Waiilatpu, about six miles west of the present city of Walla Walla, and where he was murdered November 29, 1847. The following month, December, 1847, Perrin B. Whitman became so alarmed at reports of Indian hostilities that he left The Dalles, taking with him Mr. Alanson Hinman, whom his uncle had sent there in October from Waiilatpu, as farmer and housekeeper.
From that time on no missionary work was done at The Dalles \ and no missionary occupation by either the Methodist or American Board was ever maintained there. A detachment of volunteers, with young Whitman's permission, was sta- tioned there and the provisional government continued to use it till the troops were withdrawn from the upper country after the Cayuse war closed in the summer of 1848. After that the premises remained unoccupied except by occasional "travelers and immigrants until the spring of 1850, when a military post was established there by the United States and the premises included in a military reserve."
Now, as I have endeavored to make plain, the occupancy of the mission and its changes, it is proper that I sketch the establishing of the town of Dalles City. Both claimed the site and out of these claims grew the contest.
