s minister.
fact that the war was against Americans only, and that, the Catholics were not only foreigners, but French-Cana dians, with whom the Indians had no quarrel whatever; and also overlooking the fact that all the help which had come to them in their distress, had been rendered by these same Catholic foreigners, whose only offense was that they knew the Indians well enough not to offend them by too open sympathy with their prisoners. To have provoked their resentment in this crisis, would have only had the effect to bring on a second massacre, in which none would have been spared.
Again, the Hudson's Bay Company was denounced as Catholic, its employes being French-Canadians, and its former head, Dr. McLoughlin (who about this time had retired from the service to settle among the Americans at Oregon City), having been converted to Catholicism soon after the coming of Blanchet to Oregon. It counted as nothing against these prejudices that Mr. Douglas, Mc- Loughlin s successor, Mr. Ogden, Mr. McKinlay, Mr. Erma- tinger, and many other officers and clerks of the company were Protestants all were under condemnation.
It is necessary to recall this condition of the public mind in Oregon at this time in order to make clear all that fol lowed. It should at the same time be remembered that the period at which the events here recorded occurred, was one of great religious feeling; that the average Christian of that day was pledged in his own conscience to be a bigot; and that the sensibilities of the Protestant world had been shocked only a few years before by the burning of bibles in New York City by Catholics. Under these circumstances and influences a large degree of intolerance was to be expected. It would be well to remember at the same time that one of the valued qualities of a strong man is to be a good hater. In this respect Colonel Gilliam and a number of the religious men in the country were un usually strong.
The politics of the Methodist mission, of which Gov-
