He went to his old home in central New York, sold whatever property he had there, and started for Oregon once more, in company with his nephew, a young lad, a riding horse apiece, and a pack horse. It was characteristic of the man. He always took these desperate chances. Proceeding westward, he visited some relatives, and afterwards one or two of the missions on the border. He was sent for to address a meeting at the emigrant rendezvous in Missouri about the middle of May, but returned to Westport, and did not overtake the emigration until it had reached the Platte in June.
Dr. Whitman had wished to bring back with him some
purpose they need not nor ought not to be military establishments. The trading posts in this country have never been of such a character, and yet, with very few men in them, have for years kept the surrounding Indians in the most pacific disposition, so that the traveler feels secure from molestation upon approaching Fort Laramie, Bridger s Fort, Fort Hall, etc. The same can be obtained without any considerable expenditure by government, while, by investing the officers in charge with competent authority, all evil-disposed white men, refugees from justice, or discharged vagabonds from the trading posts might be easily removed from among the Indians, and sent to the appropriate states for trial. The Hudson's Bay Company s system of rewards among the savages would soon enable the posts to root out these desperadoes. A direct and friendly intercourse with all the tribes, even to the Pacific, might be thus maintained, the government would become more intimately acquainted with them, and they with the government, and instead of sending to the state courts a manifestly guilty Indian to be arraigned before a distant tribunal and acquitted for the want of testimony by the technicalities of lawyers and of laws unknown to them, and sent back into the wilderness loaded with presents as an inducement to further crime, the posts should be enabled to execute summary justice, as if tho criminal had been already condemned by his tribe, because the tribe will be sure to deliver up none but the party whom they know to be guilty. They will in that way receive the trial of their peers, and secure within themselves, to all intents and purposes if not technically, the trial by jury, yet the spirit of that trial. There are many powers which ought to reside in some person on this extended route for the convenience and even necessity of the public.
In this the emigrant and the people of Oregon are no more interested than the resident inhabitants of the states. At present no person is authorized to administer an oath or legally attest a fact from the western line of Missouri to the Pacific. The emigrant cannot dispose of his property at home, although an opportunity ever so advantageous to him should occur after he passes the western border of Missouri. No one can here make a legal demand and protest of a promissory note or bill of exchange. No one can secure the valuable testimony of a mountaineer or of an emigrating witness after he has entered this, at present, lawless country. Causes do exist, and will continually arise, in which the private rights of citizens are and will be seriously prejudiced by such an utter absence of legal authority. A contraband trade from Mexico, the introduction from that country of liquors to be sold among the Indians west of the Kansas river, is already carried on with the mountain trappers, and very soon the teas, silks, nankeens, spices, camphor, and opium of the East Indies will find their way, duty free, through Oregon, across the mountains and into the states unless custom-house officers along this line find an interest in intercepting them.
