Page:Whitman's Ride through Savage Lands.djvu/52

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CHAPTER III


The Effect of the Banquet Speech. How it Stirred Christian People. The American Board Acts. Drs. Parker and Whitman Go on a Voyage of Discovery. His Indian Boys. His Marriage and Journey through Savage Lands to Oregon.

THE Indian oration at the St. Louis banquet was translated by a young man present, William Walker, who was an Indian chief, but a white man, and it was first published some months later in "The Christian Advocate" in New York, with a ringing editorial from its editor, Rev. Dr. Fiske, headed, "Who will Carry the Book of Life to the Indians of Oregon?"

The effect was electrical among religious people in the East. The Methodist Foreign Missionary Society were prompt to act, and the very next year sent two able-bodied, earnest Christian ministers, Jason and Daniel Lee, with one layman to aid them. They reached their field by the long, round-about waterway, via London and the Hawaiian Islands. For many years they did effective work, far up on the Willamette River. The American Board, then under the control of Congregational

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