Wheeling Sunday register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1882-1934, 1899-07-09
HOW OREGON WAS SAVED.


The Story of Ride Across the Continent.
There is story of ride, back in the
middle of the century, that should be
more familiar to our boys and girls.
1t was far more important ride than
Paul Reyere's. The hero of Longfel-
low's>famous poem rode eighteen miles,
one summer night, to arouse a few
sleeping patriots, and so saved the gun
powder at Concord. The ride of Mar
Gus Whitman was over snow-capped
mountains and along dark ravines,
travelled only by savage beasts and saw
age men. II was plunge through icy
rivers, and across trackless prairies. a
ride of four thousand miles across a
continent, in the dead OF winter, to
save mighty territory to the Union.
There are few events in American
history more striking than this. or more
deserving of remembrance. 1t is a
story that patriotic people ought
never to forget.
The country now constituting the
great States Of Oregon and Washington
was embraced in the territory ceded to
the United States by the Louisiana
purchase, in 1903; but our government
IL
the right Of discovery. In 1892, during
the first administration of Washington,
Captain Robert Gray, who had already
carried the American flag around the
globe, discovered the mouth of the CO.
lumbia river. He sailed several miles
up the great stream, and landed and
took possession in the name of the
United States.
In 1906, under Jefferson's admins
tration, this vast territory was explor-
ed by Captains Lewis and Clark, whose
reports were popular reading for our
grandfathers; but the extent and value
of this distant possession was very
slightly understood, and no attempt at
colonization was made, save the estab-
lishment of the fur-trading station of
Astoria in 1911.
Strangely enough, England, too,
claimed this same territory by virtue
of rights coded to it by Russia and also
by the Vancouver surveys of 1892 The
/ Hudson's Bay Company established a
number CT trading-posts, and filled the
country with adventurous fur-traders.
So here was a vast territory, as large
as New England and the State of In
diana combined, which seemed to be
without any positive ownership. But
for Marcus Whitman it would have
been lost to the Union.
1t was in 1886 that DR.. Whitman and
a man by the name of Spaulding, with
their young wives, the first white wo-
men that ever crossed the Rocky noun
tains, entered the valley of the Column
bia, and founded a mission of the
American Board. They had been sent
out to Christianize the Indians, but
Whitman was also to build a State.
He was at this time thirty-fve years
old. In his journeys to and fro for the
mission, he soon saw the vast possibil-
tiles of the country. and he saw too
that the English were already apprised
of this, and were rapidly pouring into
the territory. Under the terms of the
treaties of 1918 and 1928, it was the tacit
belief that whichever nationality set
tied and organized the territory, that
nation would hold it. II England and
the English fur-traders had been sue
cessful in their plans, the three great
States of Washington, Oregon and
Idaho would now cons titute a part of
British Columbia But it was not des-
tined to be.
In the fall Of 1912 it looked as If
there would be a great inpouring OF
English into the territory. and DIR.
Whitman took the alarm. There was
no time to lose. The authorities at
Washington must be warned. Hastily
bidding his wife adieu, DR.. Whitman
mounted his horse and started on his
hazardous Journey. Of the periIs.
hardships and delays he encountered on
the way we connot stop to tell. His
feet were frozen, he nearly starved, and
once came very near losing his life In
a great snowstorm. But nothing stay
ed him. He kept pushing right on.
and at the end Of FIVE terrible months
he reached Washington.
He arrived there worn. bearded.
strangely picturesque. clad entirely in
buckskin and fur. typical man of the
! prairies- He asked audience OF Presi-
dent Tyler and Secretary Of State
Webster, and II was accorded him. All
| clad as he was, with his frozen limbs,