Part 11 — CHAPTER XXII. (continued 3)

The Convent of Santa Maria al Prato was, on the contrary, in a deep valley, and surrounded by a landscape like those in which Perugino and Raphael placed their divine creations or their sacred representations. Afar off were mountains whose outlines were clearly defined on the horizon in soft and harmonious colors; a stream wound through olive groves, now and then encircling rustic dwellings—the evident handiwork of a people with an instinctive taste for the arts; the sombre verdure of a knot of pines or cypresses contrasted here and there with the azure of the morning sky or the purple tints of evening: such were the principal features of the landscape. The beauty of such a scene subdues and reposes, as that of sublime summits transports and exalts, and seems designed for meditation and labor, as the other for contemplation and ecstasy.

It was to this retreat Fleurange’s father was providentially led—perhaps guided by the protective inspiration we love to attribute to mothers who are fond of their children. It was in the hands of Madre Maddalena that he left his daughter as soon as she was five years old, and, until the day she was eighteen, he only saw her twice a year. But from year to year he felt more sure of having realized the aim he had proposed respecting her. Fleurange had, nevertheless, no proof to give him of her progress under the form of prizes obtained or crowns conferred. The solemn occasions when such trophies are distributed were unknown at Santa Maria al Prato, as well as the examinations for which the memory is burdened for a day with facts that are often remembered no longer. In fact, they did not aim at giving her varied instruction, but they taught her how to learn, and gave her a taste for study, work, and silence.

She was naturally sincere and courageous; she also became skilful and active. Madre Maddalena seemed to have foreseen that this young person, so sheltered in her early years, would one day be unusually exposed to the rough combat of life. She probably did not foresee that Fleurange would soon be left alone; but what she had read of her father’s nature, what she knew of his history, made her comprehend that prudence and a certain premature experience would serve as a safeguard to his daughter. What would have been true had her father lived, was no less so now his death left her entirely to herself.

Fleurange resisted the temptation of remaining in bed absorbed in sad thoughts. She hastily rose, and was quite ready when Mademoiselle Josephine entered her chamber for the third time. A smile enlivened the features of the elderly maiden when she saw the effect of a good night’s rest on the countenance of her protégée. The latter, affected and grateful, and retaining the Italian habits of her childhood, bent to kiss the hand of her benefactress.

“Do not kiss my old hand,” said Mademoiselle Josephine, “but my cheek, if you like; now, let us not keep my brother waiting. It is nine o’clock, our breakfast-hour which never varies.”

Fleurange followed her hostess to the breakfast-room, which was next the parlor. The furniture of these two rooms had not been renewed for more than fifty years, but nothing seemed dilapidated, thanks to the exquisite neatness that everywhere reigned.

The doctor was already seated at the table. His sister took her place

“You have quite recovered,” said the doctor, extending his hand to the young girl. “I am very glad to see it; but, for fear of relapse, you must remain under my eye for some days to come. Everything has been arranged, and from this time till your departure you will return no more to the fourth story.”

“What can I say, monsieur? You are both so kind, and I love you so much that I accept alms from your hands without shame and almost without pain.”

“I forbid you making use of so shocking a word,” said Mademoiselle Josephine.

“Yet it is really alms,” said Fleurange in a sad but firm tone, “for I have nothing of my own, and if in want of a piece of bread to-day, I should have to extend the hand of a beggar.”

“Come, come! you are not reduced to that yet, thank God! But let us drop this, and speak of something more important. You must answer your uncle’s letter without delay.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Fleurange. And after a short silence, she added: “I am going to ask him to be kind enough to receive me for a month.”

“But from his letter, he seems disposed to offer you a much more extended hospitality than that.”

“Perhaps so, but I am only willing to accept it till I have found the means of living without being a burden on him.”

“What is your intention, then?”

“I do not know,” said Fleurange; “but there are many means of gaining a, livelihood, are there not? Well, I shall endeavor to find one not beyond my strength.”

The doctor looked at her, and then said: “There are certainly many things not beyond your strength, but yet unsuitable for you.”

“Why?” asked Fleurange.

“They would be unsuitable for one of your age and condition.”

“Why so?” repeated she.

“I will explain myself after you tell me what you think of doing.”

“Come!” said Mademoiselle Josephine impatiently. “There is no need of so much circumlocution in telling her that, when one is young and pretty, caution is needful. If the child does not know that, the sooner she is warned, the better it will be for her.”

“Young and pretty,” repeated Fleurange quietly without the slightest embarrassment. “Yes, I know that will be a great obstacle to me in my position. It would be much better to be homely and ten years older. I had already thought of that. It is very unfortunate; but what can be done?”

The doctor smiled. He had never heard any woman admit her own beauty with so little vanity. Fleurange’s simplicity, the childlike candor of her large eyes, the expression of which was yet grave and thoughtful, struck him, and he felt an increase of the interest which up to this moment had been excited by the young girl’s destitute condition, rather than herself. He resumed, still smiling:

“As to this misfortune, you must resign yourself to it, at least for twenty years to come.” But seeing that Fleurange did not smile in return, but, on the contrary, became more and more thoughtful, he continued: “Besides, if you ever come to that, we will find a means for surmounting the difficulty.”

Fleurange’s face expanded. “Oh! thank you, monsieur; if you could realize how much courage I have. And then,” she added, “I assure

“For instance?” said the doctor.

“First, the instruction of children, to which I think myself adapted. I love them, and they are generally fond of me also, and readily obey me.”

“What else?”

“I know Italian and German (for I have made it a special point to understand my mother’s native language thoroughly). My father thought me also a good reader, and preferred my voice and accent to those of any of the numerous readers and speakers he had heard. His fondness perhaps blinded him to my defects; yet he might have been right, and I could try.”

“Hem!” said the doctor. “There is much to be said for and against that talent.”

“Finally, monsieur, I can do all kinds of work. I know how to sew well—to wash, iron, and sweep. I could even cook a little.”

The doctor again regarded the noble countenance of the young girl while she thus complacently enumerated the humble and laborious employments she thought herself capable of. She was evidently sincere. Her ability and willingness to do all she said could not be doubted. He was affected, and remained silent.

But Mademoiselle Josephine exclaimed with enthusiasm: “That is what I call an education! And who, my dear child, taught you so many reasonable and useful things?”

Tears of emotion filled Fleurange’s eyes. “It was my dear Madre Maddalena,” she replied.

This answer elicited fresh inquiries, to which Fleurange replied by minutely relating the way in which her childhood had passed. The doctor’s satisfaction increased with every word of her account, which, nevertheless, made a breach in two of his prejudices.

Without any antipathy to pretty faces, they inspired him with a kind of mistrust, or at least of solicitude, which his long experience had doubtless very often warranted. But in regarding this young girl, so self-reliant and so modest, so courageous and so delicate, and who seemed ready to struggle so bravely against the difficulties of life, how could he be angry with her for being beautiful, and how help overlooking it in one sense?

The doctor had also a singular and, considering his belief as a whole, an inconsistent prejudice against convents. He seemed to have retained this point of agreement with those whom he habitually opposed on every other subject. And here was an education which accorded not only with all his ideas, but with all his whims—a conventual education. He would be obliged to somewhat modify his opinions on this subject, as well as on some others, and he resigned himself to it with a good grace.

They finally resumed the subject of the letter to Frankfort. The doctor and his sister already began to look forward with sorrow to the departure of their young protégée, but they felt it was for her interest not to delay joining the relatives who had invited her at so opportune a moment. By their advice, Fleurange immediately began her letter. Short and to the point, it was soon completed, and she gave it to Mademoiselle Josephine. The latter began to read it with an air of satisfaction, but when she came to the signature, a cloud suddenly appeared on her face.

“What is it?” said Fleurange. “I have made some mistake or blunder?”

“No, you have not: the letter is

“What, then? Tell me frankly, I beg of you.”

“Well, it is—indeed, I dare not tell you.”

“Pray tell me,” said Fleurange, “what has displeased you? There is nothing in the letter I am not willing to correct according to your advice.”

“It is—but you cannot change that.”

But what is it, then, dear mademoiselle? You really frighten me,” insisted Fleurange with a disturbed air.

“You cannot change your baptismal name,” said the other, at length.

“My baptismal name?” exclaimed Fleurange with surprise. “Does my name displease you to such a degree? I am sorry, for Madre Maddalena liked it so much! She said it signified the flower of the angels—the fairest of all the angels—the angel Gabriel, whom she considered my patron. And she called me Gabrielle as often as Fleurange.”

“Gabrielle!” cried Mademoiselle Josephine eagerly. “Gabrielle! Ah! that is a name everybody can understand. So that is the meaning of Fleurange, according to your Madre Maddalena? Then I beseech, I conjure you, to assume that name and give up the other!”

The doctor had for some minutes been occupied in reperusing Professor Dornthal’s letter, which he kept the evening before; he now raised his eyes, and attended to the conversation. While Fleurange was still hesitating what reply to make to Mademoiselle Josephine’s singular request, he said:

“I do not understand my sister’s persistency on this point. As to my own opinion, it is opposed to hers. But it may be that the simpler of the two names will be more in conformity with the tastes of the good German family that awaits you, and perhaps Gabrielle would have a better reception than Fleurange. Besides,” he continued, smiling, “your young cousins beyond the Rhine would doubtless pronounce the name in a way to diminish its charm and deprive it of all meaning according to the pious and poetical interpretation you have just given it.”

“That might be,” said Fleurange, smiling in return. “Anyhow, I will do as you advise respecting it.”

“We will take it into consideration,” said the doctor. Then, glancing once more over the professor’s letter, he continued: “Do you know the name of the stranger who, by buying the last picture your father painted, has unwittingly rendered you so great a service?”

“I do not. That picture was sold with the remainder when, at the beginning of his fatal relapse, my father saw his finances diminishing, and lost the hope of ever repairing them. My poor father!” she continued with a trembling voice, “he was very ill the day he made me sit in order to finish that picture—” Fleurange suddenly stopped and blushed. The doctor’s look seemed to demand an explanation, and she continued artlessly, but not without confusion: “The owner of the picture is perhaps the stranger who visited the studio that day. At least, I acknowledge the idea has repeatedly occurred to me.”

“For what reason?”

“Because he was so delighted with Cordelia, and begged permission to see it after its completion. But my father, from that day, was obliged to give up the use of the brush, and the picture was sold as he left it, with the others.”

“I do not know. He spoke French very well, but with a slight accent, I know not what.”

“Was he some great lord?”

“I do not know—I have never seen a great lord.”

“But what kind of an air had this visitor—God bless him!” interrupted Mademoiselle Josephine.

“A lofty and noble air, a remarkable physiognomy, and a grave and sonorous voice,” replied Fleurange. “But, in spite of the gratitude I perhaps owe him, the remembrance of his visit always troubles and depresses me.”

“Why so?” said Josephine.

“Because it was the cause of the last and fatal crisis of my father’s malady, who at that time even could not bear the slightest agitation. I do not know the words the stranger murmured as he glanced at me, but they greatly excited my father, who requested me in a tremulous voice to leave the studio. As a general thing, he never allowed me to enter it at the hour for visitors. The evening of that day he spoke to me in an agitated manner of the lone condition in which I should soon be left, and gave me some incoherent counsels, which were his last words. He never recovered his full mind after that.”

“Poor man!” said the doctor; but he did not pursue the subject that led to this account. Fleurange’s fleeting blush disappeared, and she was again pale and calm as before, her pen in hand ready to correct her letter according to the doctor’s advice. After a final deliberation between the young girl and her elderly friends, it was decided that the letter should be sent after it was signed Gabrielle d’Yves.

III.

The day Margaret married Gerard d’Yves, the aged Sigismund Dornthal blotted out his daughter’s name from his will, and gave orders that it should never be uttered in his presence. Notwithstanding this, softened by illness, and urged by his second son Ludwig, Margaret’s favorite brother, he soon consented to send her his forgiveness and blessing, but when they reached Pisa poor Margaret had just expired! In the fury of his despair, which increased the impetuosity and thoughtlessness of his character, Gerard tore up the letter containing the long-delayed pardon, and only replied in these two words: “Too late!”

It was thus the aged Dornthal was informed of his daughter’s death. He himself died shortly after, ignorant of the existence of the child to whom she had given birth. His property was divided between his two sons, but Ludwig, devoted to study, and already in possession of a professor’s chair at Leipsic, entirely abandoned to his elder brother the administration of their common fortune, and Heinrich Dornthal became the sole head of the commercial and banking houses founded by Sigismund. He thenceforth made use of his brother’s capital as well as his own, paying him regularly his income, without any interference in his business on Ludwig’s part. The latter was at the same time pursuing so brilliant a career as to attract the attention of all the learned men of Germany to his labors. One of these, a resident of Frankfort, invited him to pass at his house the annual vacations of the numerous students who attended his lectures. The result of these visits was that this professor’s daughter became Ludwig Dornthal’s wife, and, in the course of time, the

Such was, in a few words, the condition of the new home that awaited Fleurange. A second letter came promptly in reply to hers. Her uncle expressed the liveliest joy at having found her, and invited her very particularly to arrive at Frankfort in time for Christmas, so dear to the Germans as the time of family reunions. To do this she would have to leave Paris, at the very latest, on the twenty-first of December, for at that time it took three days and nights for the journey to Frankfort. The doctor and his sister, though sorry to part with their young protégée, hastened the preparations for her departure. They were touched by the cordial tone of this unknown uncle’s letters, and predicted a happy life for her in his family, which they did not wish to defer. But every day added to their attachment to Fleurange and to her tender gratitude to them.

“If this continued a week longer,” said the doctor, “I could not part with that child.”

“Then she must start soon,” replied Mademoiselle Josephine; “it is for her good, and we should do wrong to keep her with us.”

Fleurange said nothing, but her eyes turned sadly from one of her old friends to the other. At length came the last day she was to pass with them. She made an effort to repress her tears, that she might not distress them, and quietly put up her modest packages, actively aided by the doctor and his sister.

“An English proverb which I think very reasonable,” said the doctor, “places the hospitality which speeds the parting guest on a level with that which welcomes his coming: it is that which I am now showing you, my dear Fleurange.”

Fleurange had just hastily finished the repast always so sad before a journey. The doctor perceived her courage failing. He was himself greatly affected by her pale and youthful countenance, and in thinking of the long and lonely journey she was about to undertake, at the end of which she would be received by people, perhaps kind, but wholly unknown. Nevertheless, he resumed with an encouraging voice:

“Come, come, child, everything looks favorable yonder; show your courage, and do not allow yourself to be cast down.”

“You are right,” said Fleurange, rising. “I feel I have reason to bless God, and I only desire to be grateful. Be sure, at all events, that I shall be courageous.”

It was eight o’clock in the evening: the fiacre was waiting at the door to take her to the diligence. She went out, accompanied by the doctor and his sister, who entered the carriage with her. The night was dark, and the snow falling in great flakes, which the young girl, reared beneath the sky of Italy, now saw for the first time in her life. The spectacle excited curiosity mingled with fear. The new and the unknown seemed to surround her on every side, and these two things, generally so attractive to those of her age, bore now an aspect more calculated to depress her young heart than to expand it. She involuntarily shivered, and drew around her slender form

Mademoiselle Josephine, on her side, with a faltering voice renewed a multitude of counsels, which had already been repeated a thousand times—among others, to write to them often and regularly. Then she slipped on her arm a small basket which her provident kindness had filled with everything that could be useful to her on the way, as well as more than one souvenir which, when far distant, would recall her old friends.

They arrived too quickly at their destination. “I have bespoken a place for you in the coupé,” said the doctor, getting out of the carriage. “You will be in company with one of my patients, still very feeble, but who will absolutely go to Germany to rejoin her husband. She has two children with her, and they will be your only travelling companions.”

“Thank you,” said Fleurange. “The prayers of the orphan are said to draw down blessings: may you both experience the effect of mine!” She could not utter another word. She threw her arms for the last time around Mademoiselle Josephine’s neck, and the next instant, leaning on the doctor’s arm, she was crossing with some difficulty the littered court at the end of which they found the diligence. The snow had delayed them on the way, and now rendered every step difficult. The other passengers had taken their places, and they were only waiting for Fleurange. The horses were harnessed, and to the noise of their stamping the driver added his impatient exclamations. “Come, come! We are off!” he repeated in a rough voice. Fleurange, hurried, pushed about, stunned, and frightened, had only time to press the doctor’s hand once more and spring into the coupé. The door was instantly shut. A fearful clashing of irons, mingled with cries, blows of the whip, and vociferations, above which could be heard: “Adieu! à revoir! à bientôt!” with other exclamations much less harmonious, and the heavy diligence was in motion. Fleurange, now free from the necessity of any restraint, allowed herself the solace of giving vent to her feelings and letting her tears flow freely and abundantly.

She continued to weep for a long time without the least attempt at repressing her emotion. Why should she? She was alone, entirely alone now. She had never been so to such a degree before. All the events of the past faded away in the distance, and the future offered nothing to replace them. She was separated from all whom she had loved from her infancy, either by death or indefinite absence. Would it be so always? Was that to be her lot on earth? Would she never be permitted to love with assurance, trust, and a sense of repose? Was she to be always thus torn from places and persons at the very moment her heart began to cling to them?—her heart, so tender and ardent, which she had so often felt beating with tenderness and joy, with admiration and enthusiasm? And while her eyes peered out through the darkness of night at objects that seemed in the obscurity like pale phantoms, her imagination set before her, as in a magic mirror, all the different scenes of her past life: the beautiful cloister of Santa Maria al Prato, with the terrace at the top, where the eye could wander so far, and the sweet and noble features of

It was impossible for Fleurange, at this moment, to control her sad thoughts. But, now and then, her reason recalled those who awaited her, the welcome she had a right to expect, and the goodness of Divine Providence in opening such a refuge; but in vain—consolation seemed unable to find an entrance into her soul, and, in spite of her nature, despondency obtained the mastery.

“If they are kind, and I love them,” she said to herself bitterly, “I shall soon have to leave them. If, on the contrary, they —” Here her imagination had free course and depicted the future in the darkest colors. But this new reverie had not the clearness of the first, and before long her anticipations began to mingle in vague confusion with her remembrances. Little by little, fatigue, the motion of the vehicle, and the influence of night lulled the young girl asleep, and transformed into uneasy and indistinct dreams all the thoughts that had successively assailed her.

Fifteen minutes after, she was suddenly awakened. Something quite heavy had fallen against her shoulder and thence into her lap. She sat up, and, groping in the obscurity, her hand came in contact with the long silky hair of a child. From the first, she had rather supposed than seen a pale, sick young woman in the opposite corner of the coupé, with her arm thrown around a child beside her, against whom slept another still smaller. It was the latter who had just suddenly changed his position. Fleurange began to comprehend the case, and bent down to raise him softly to a more comfortable seat in her lap. Then she drew his little sleepy head against her, and kissed the sweet face now near her own. This trifling incident had the sudden and unforeseen effect of putting to flight all the phantoms her imagination had been conjuring up to increase her sorrows. She recalled her interior murmuring with remorse.

“O my God!” she cried, pressing the child in her arms, “if I love this poor little one, whose features I have not yet seen, if I am ready to watch the night long over his slumbers, what wilt not thou, who art my Father, do for thy child?” She raised her eyes a moment in prayer, not with her lips, but in her heart. The snow had ceased falling. The clouds passing away, the heavens appeared brilliant with stars. The cloud had also passed away from Fleurange’s soul, and a mysterious light from on high was infused therein. She gazed at the starry sky with delight, then closed her eyes, and again slept sweetly, the child in her arms sleeping as profoundly as herself.

TO BE CONTINUED.

No. 37.[130]

In addition to the secular press, which seldom misses an opportunity of saying something ungracious of the Catholic Church, we have published in the United States over a hundred so-called religious newspapers, the principal stock-in-trade of which seems to be unlimited abuse of everything Catholic, and unqualified misrepresentation of all who profess or teach the doctrines of our faith. No dogma or point of discipline of Catholicity ever finds favor in the eyes of the individuals who fill the columns of those publications, and no man or woman who may see fit to devote his or her life to the dissemination of the Gospel is safe from the malice or scurrility of their pens.

For the honor of the American character we are sorry to say that we have daily evidence of this blind prejudice and reckless disregard of truth on the part of this class of editors, many of whom arrogate to themselves the title of “reverend”; but we have some consolation in knowing that the more intelligent members of the sects are fast growing tired and ashamed of such senseless appeals to their passions and ill-founded traditions and that the time is not far distant when such efforts to sustain a sinking and indefensible cause will be encouraged only by the ignorant and wilfully blind.

These repeated and continuous attacks on the church are not the work of any one sect or confined to any particular locality, but are general with all Protestants, and extended over the whole country. As long as they are confined to newspapers, and afford employment and remuneration to a number of persons who probably could not gain a livelihood in any other manner, we scarcely consider them worthy of serious attention; but we have had recently placed before us an official document, printed at the public expense for the edification of the United States Senate—and no doubt widely circulated throughout the Union under the convenient frank of many pious members of Congress—in which are reproduced calumnies so gross, and falsehoods so glaring, that we consider it our duty not only to call public attention to it, but to demand from our rulers in Washington by what right and authority they print and circulate under official form a tissue of fabrications, misrepresentations, and even forgeries, against the religion, and the ministers of that religion, which is professed by five or six millions of free American citizens.

This document, known as Executive Document No. 37, XLIst Congress, IIId Session, was furnished by Mr. Delano, Secretary of the Interior, in compliance with a resolution of the Senate, passed February 2, 1871, and is composed exclusively of information supplied by Rev. H. H. Spaulding to A. B. Meacham, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, who in his letter of transmittal says:

“I am respectfully requested by the Rev. H. H. Spaulding, the oldest living Protestant missionary in Oregon, to place on file in your department the accompanying documents, giving a history of the early missionary work and labors of Dr. Marcus Whitman, himself, and others; the progress and civilization of the Indians under their charge, without aid from the government; also, a history of the massacre of Dr. Whitman and others; also, resolutions of Christian associations Executive Document No. 38, House of Representatives, and a variety of historical information, which it would seem proper to have on file, or placed in some more permanent form for future history.”

It may be remarked that the letter from which the above is an extract is dated on the 28th of January, just five days before the passage of the Senate resolution, and evidently in anticipation of such action on the part of that body. “No one,” says a distinguished senator, “except the few in the secret, knew anything of the matter until the document was printed. All the previous proceedings were as of course.” The documents that were thus to be “placed in a more permanent form for future history,” apart from their uniformly infamous character, are perhaps the strangest in origin and composition that have ever been presented for the information of any deliberative body, much less one of the gravity and importance of the Senate of the republic. They consist mainly of extracts from the religious press, so-called; inflammatory letters from jealous and disappointed preachers, including the Rev. H. H. Spaulding himself; depositions written out by that indefatigable hater with his own hand, and changed in many essential points after having been sworn to and removed from the control of the deponents; false quotations from The Account of the Murder of Dr. Whitman, by the Very Rev. J. B. A. Brouillet, V.G., and others’ statements of the massacre; an address from the professors of that advanced educational institution called Oberlin College, Ohio; answers to leading queries addressed to Oregon officials, based on a false and supposititious statement of facts; and, lastly, a report adopted and endorsed by eight associations, including the Old School, New School, Cumberland, and United Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Congregationalists, and the “Christian Church of Oregon,” and claiming to represent thirty thousand brother members, all of whom, though differing radically in other respects, are suspiciously unanimous in denouncing the “Jesuits,” and equally positive in affirming a previous condition of affairs, their knowledge of which must of necessity have depended solely on the statements of the veracious Rev. H. H. Spaulding. In style, the documents are unique, and have a very strong family resemblance. It is a judicious mixture of sanctimonious cant seldom heard outside of a camp-meeting, with a dash here and there of Shakespeare and the modern poets, to give it variety, we suppose.

Now, whence this solemn assembly of presbyteries and conferences, this pile of affidavits and newspaper extracts, and the desire of the Senate to be enlightened as “to the early labors of the missionaries of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in Oregon, commencing in 1836”? Simply this. On the week commencing on the 29th of November, 1847, more than twenty-four years ago, a certain missionary to the Cayuse Indians, named Dr. Whitman, who had resided among them for several years, was, with his wife and twelve other Americans, brutally murdered by the savages; and it is now attempted by Spaulding, who was his friend, and missionary to the Nez Perces, a neighboring tribe, to fix the guilt of this foul outrage on the missionary priests who in that year accompanied the Rt. Rev. A. M. A. Blanchet, Bishop of Nesqualy, to Oregon, and who, it is alleged, instigated the Indians to commit the deed in order to get rid of the Protestant missions. At the

The slaughter of so many persons naturally created a great sensation in Oregon at the time, but for months after no one thought of attributing it to the interference of the Catholic missioners. However, Spaulding, whose mind had become disturbed by the contemplation of the dangers he had escaped, and having to abandon his mission among the Nez Perces, and finding himself unemployed, gradually began to give a new version of the affair, and in conversation, preaching, and writing at first hinted, and next broadly asserted, that the “Jesuits” were at the bottom of the whole matter. Considering that the shock to his nervous system was so great that he never entirely recovered from it, and that the repetition of the falsehoods was so persistent, it is charitable to suppose that he eventually came to believe them as truths; for no man in his right senses would persist in forcing on the world such a compilation of improbable statements and downright falsehoods as are contained in Pub. Doc. No. 37.

As there are always many persons, made credulous by ignorance or prejudice, willing to credit any anti-Catholic slander, the Rev. Father Brouillet, the only priest near the scene of the crime, wrote and published, in 1853, a full and authentic account of the whole transaction, which was so clear and circumstantial that even the greatest opponents of the Catholic priesthood were silenced. In 1857, a special agent of the Treasury Department, J. Ross Browne, made a tour in the far West, and in reporting on the condition of the aborigines, and the potent causes of war between them and the white settlers, embodied in his statement Father Brouillet’s pamphlet, which together formed Pub. Doc. No. 38, against which all the powers of the presbyteries and conferences of Oregon, under the fitting leadership of a crazy preacher, are now directed, after a silence of more than ten years. Is it any wonder that it is so often remarked that the only bond of union, the sole vitalizing principles, of the sects are their hatred to Catholicity?

A glance at the history of the early Indian mission in Oregon is necessary to a clear understanding of the subject. It is well known that for many years that portion of our common country was debatable ground, and, while our government claimed the sovereignty and appointed officials to administer its affairs, the Hudson Bay Company held possession and virtually controlled the inhabitants, nearly all of whom were Indians or half-breeds. Under the direction of the company, the natives were honest, peaceable, and well disposed. Captain Bonneville, who visited the Nez Perces in 1832, says of them:

“Simply to call these people religious would convey but a faint idea of the deep hue of piety and devotion which pervades their whole conduct. Their honesty is

“This was a very enthusiastic view to take of the Nez Perces’ character,” says a Protestant authority, Mrs. Victor, “which appeared all the brighter to the captain by contrast with the savage life which he had witnessed in other places, and even by contrast with the conduct of the white trappers. But the Nez Perces were intellectually and morally an exception to all the Indian tribes west of the Missouri River. Lewis and Clarke found them different from any others; the fur-traders and the missionaries found them the same. To account for this superiority is indeed difficult. The only clue to the cause is the following statement of Bonneville. ‘It would appear,’ he says, ‘that they had imbibed some notions of the Christian faith from Catholic missionaries and traders who have been among them. They even had a rude calendar of the fasts and festivals of the Romish Church, and some traces of its ceremonial. These have become blended with their own wild rites, and present a strange medley, civilized and barbarous.’”[131] It was in this happy and quiet condition that the first Protestant missionaries from the United States found the Indians. They were Methodist, and arrived in 1834, remaining for ten years. “No missionary undertaking,” says Rev. Stephen Olin, himself one of the laborers, “has been prosecuted by the Methodist Episcopal Church with higher hopes and more ardent zeal.... This particular mission, involved an expenditure of forty-two thousand dollars in a single year. At the end of six years, there were sixty-eight persons connected with this mission, men, women, and children, all supported by this society.”[132] And the same writer adds: “How such a number of missionaries found employment in such a field it is not easy to conjecture, especially as the great body of the Indians never came under the influence of their labors.” Dr. E. White, Sub-Indian Agent, writes, in 1843: “The Rev. Mr. Lee and associates are doing but little for the Indians.... With all that has been expended, without doubting the correctness of the intention, it is most manifest to every observer that the Indians of this lower country, as a whole, have been very little benefited.”[133]

The two Methodist stations established, at Clatsop’s Plains and Nesqualy were speedily abandoned, and that at the Dalles is described, in Traits of American Indian Life, as being in a most fearful condition. “The occurrence,” the author says, alluding to a murder by a converted Indian which he had witnessed, “is but the type of a thousand atrocities daily occurring among these supposed converts.” And we have the authority of Mr. Gray for saying that “the giving of a few presents of any description to them induces them to make professions corresponding to the wish of the donor.” The success of the missionaries at Willamette was, if possible, still more disheartening. Mr. Olin says that of those who held relations with them none remained in 1842; and Alexander Simpson, who visited the valley about the same time, found the mission to consist of but four families, those of a clergyman, surgeon, a schoolmaster, and an agricultural overseer. It is not strange, then, that two years afterwards The River of the West is justified in saying on this and other indisputable authority, “so far from benefiting the Indians, the Methodist mission became an actual injury to them”—the Indians.

Thus ended the first chapter in the history of the progress and civilization of the Indians in Oregon, to which we desire to call the respectful attention of the United States Senate. We have the testimony of Captain Bonneville, endorsed by Mrs. Victor, regarding the honesty and piety of the natives in 1832, before the arrival of the Methodists. After nine years of missionary labor, we have the following grave statement from no less an authority than one of their own clergymen:

“The Indians want pay for being whipped into compliance with Dr. White’s laws, the same as they did for praying to please the missionaries during the great Indian revival of 1839” (p. 157).

“As a matter of course, lying has much to do in their system of trade, and he is the best fellow who can tell the biggest lie—make men believe and practise the greatest deception” (p. 158).[134]

The Methodists having selected Lower Oregon as the field of their labors, the Presbyterians chose the upper or eastern portion of the territory. They arrived in 1836, three in number, afterwards increased to twelve, and backed up by the Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Dr. Marius Whitman settled at Wailatpu among the Cayuses and Walla Wallas, and Messrs. H. H. Spaulding and W. H. Gray at Lapwai, with the Nez Perces. In 1838, the Spokane mission was established by Messrs. Walker and Ellis. Their prospects of success were at first most brilliant. The savages received them kindly and listened to them attentively. “There was no want of ardor in the Presbyterian missionaries,” says The River of the West. “They applied themselves in earnest to the work they had undertaken. They were diligent in their efforts to civilize and christianize their Indians.” But they made a fatal mistake at the very beginning, which not only reflects on their personal honesty, but shows that they knew nothing of the character of the people they came to instruct. Mr. John Toupin, who was for many years interpreter at Fort Walla Walla, gave, in 1848, the following account of the establishment of those missions:

“I was there when Mr. Parker, in 1835, came to select places for Presbyterian missions among the Cayuses and Nez Perces, and to ask lands for these missions. He employed me as interpreter in his negotiations with the Indians on that occasion. Mr. Pombrun, the gentleman then in charge of the fort, accompanied him to the Cayuses and the Nez Perces. Mr. Parker, in company with Mr. Pombrun, an American, and myself, went first to the Cayuses upon the lands called Wailatpu, that belonged to the three chiefs—Splitted Lip, or Yomtipi; Red Cloak, or Waptachtakamal; and Tilankaikt. Having met them at that place, he told them that he was coming to select a place to build a preaching-house, to teach them how to live, and to teach school to their children; that he would not come himself to establish the mission, but a doctor or a medicine-man would come in his place; that the doctor would be the chief of the mission, and would come in the following spring. ‘I come to select a place for a mission,’ said he, ‘but I do not intend to take your lands for nothing. After the doctor is come,

“From the Cayuses Mr. Parker went to the Nez Perces, about one hundred and twenty-five miles distant, on the lands of Old Button, on a small creek which empties into the Clearwater, seven or eight miles from the actual mission, and there he made the same promises to the Indians as at Wailatpu. ‘Next spring there will come a missionary to establish himself here and take a piece of land; but he will not take it for nothing; you shall be paid for it every year: this is the American fashion.’ In the following year, 1836, Dr. Whitman arrived among the Cayuses and began to build. The Indians did not stop him, as they expected to be paid as they said.

“In the summer of the year 1837, Splitted Lip asked him where the goods which he had promised him were; whether he would pay him, or whether he wanted to steal his lands. He told him that, if he did not want to pay him, he had better go off immediately, for he did not want to give his lands for nothing.”[135]

But the doctor and his co-laborers did not pay for the lands, nor indeed fulfil any of the promises of Mr. Parker, and thus the expected neophytes received their first lesson in duplicity, which eventually destroyed all confidence in the honesty and truthfulness of their teachers, and led directly to the massacre of Whitman and some of his companions, and to the total destruction of the Presbyterian missions. This latter event occurred late in 1847. Let us see what had been done in the eleven previous years by the agents of the Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. In 1842, they had but three stations. “At each of these,” says The River of the West, “there was a small body of land under cultivation, a few cattle and hogs, a flouring and saw mill, and a blacksmith’s shop.” In 1843, Mr. Spaulding writes to Dr. White, the Sub-Indian Agent: “But two natives have as yet been admitted into the church. Some ten or twelve others give pleasing evidence of having been born again.”[136] It seems, then, that it took twelve missionaries seven years to convert two savages, at an expense of over forty thousand dollars for one year at least! Can the English Protestant mission for converting the Hebrews in Jerusalem show any return more preposterous than this?

But the years intervening between this time and their entire discontinuance show no converts at all. Business was entirely suspended, as far as spiritual affairs were concerned. Mr. Thomas McKay, an intimate friend of Whitman, under date September 11, 1848, says, “The doctor often told me that for a couple of years he had ceased to teach the Indians, because they would not listen to him”; and John Baptist Gervais about the same time assures us that “Mr. Spaulding told me himself, last fall, that for three or four years back he had ceased entirely to teach the Indians because they refused to hear him”—a fact which that unscrupulous apostle corroborated in a conversation with Dr. Ponjade, in the preceding August. “The Indians,” he said, “are getting worse every day for two or three years back; they are threatening to turn us out of the missions. A few days ago, they tore down my fences, and I do not know what the Missionary Board of New York means to do. It is a fact that we are doing no good: when the emigration passes, the Indians run off to trade, and return worse than when we came among them.”[137] Even as

The Catholic missions may be said to have commenced in 1838. In that year, two Catholic priests passed Walla Walla on their way from Canada to Fort Vancouver. In 1839 and 1840, one of them, Father Demers, occasionally visited Walla Walla, for a short time, to give instruction to the Indians, many of whom were in the habit of visiting him, particularly the Cayuses and Nez Perces at the fort. This presence excited the wrath of Dr. Whitman, and he presumed so far as to reprimand in severe language the gentleman in charge of the post. “From the time the Jesuits arrived,” says Gray, “his own [H. H. Spaulding’s] pet Indians had turned Catholics, and commenced a quarrel with him. These facts seemed to annoy him, and led him to adopt a course opposed by Smith, Gray, and Rodgers.” The visits of the Catholic missionaries were, however, few and far between, till the 5th of September, 1847, when the Rt. Rev. Bishop A. M. A. Blanchet arrived at Fort Walla Walla, accompanied by the Superior of the Oblates and two other clergymen, to establish permanent missions in Eastern Oregon. It was the design of the bishop to locate a mission on the lands of Towatowe (Young Chief), a Catholic Indian, who had offered him his own house for that purpose. The Young Chief, however, being absent hunting, Dr. Blanchet was delayed at the fort, longer than he anticipated, and while there was visited by Protestant missionaries and Indian chiefs alike. The former treated him with great incivility and disrespect. Dr. Whitman, we are told by an eye-witness, “made a furious charge against the Catholics, accusing them of having persecuted Protestants, and even of having shed their blood wherever they had prevailed. He said he did not like Catholics; ... that he should oppose the missionaries to the extent of his power.... He spoke against the Catholic Ladder (a picture explaining the principal points of Catholic faith), and said that he would cover it with blood to show the persecution of Protestants by Catholics. He refused to sell provisions to the bishop, and protested that he would not assist the missionaries unless he saw them in starvation.”[138] The temper of the savages was milder than their would-be evangelizers. On the 26th of October, Young Chief came to the fort, and asked for a priest to be sent to teach his young people. He repeated the offer of his house, but suggested as a substitute the lands of his relative Tilokaikt, upon which Dr. Whitman was settled. On November 4, the four chiefs of the Cayuses assembled at Walla Walla, and after a long “talk” agreed to let the bishop Pub. Doc. No. 37 would have us believe that the Catholics coveted Whitman’s Station, and were resolved to have it at any cost. On November 27, the bishop, with his secretary and Father Brouillet, proceeded to the new station at Umatilla. On the day following, Sunday, they were visited by Whitman, and on Monday by Spaulding, who remained for supper, both these gentleman, it seems, having modified their views during the previous two months’ intercourse with the missionaries. It was on this latter day, between two and three o’clock in the afternoon, that Whitman and his companions were murdered. The account of that horrible event, as related by Father Brouillet, who was on the ground two days after, is still highly interesting. In a letter to Colonel Gilliam, three months later, when the facts were fresh in his memory, and every resident of the neighborhood was in a position to disprove anything he might say that was false, he writes:

“Before leaving Fort Walla Walla, it had been decided that, after visiting the sick people of my mission on the Umatilla, I should go and visit those of Tilokaikt’s camp, for the purpose of baptizing the infants, and such dying adults as might desire this favor; and the doctor and Mr. Spaulding having informed me that there were many sick persons at their missions, I was confirmed in the resolution, and made preparations to go as soon as possible.

“After having finished in baptizing the infants and dying adults of my mission, I left on Tuesday, the 30th of November, late in the afternoon, for Tilokaikt’s camp, where I arrived between seven and eight o’clock in the evening. It is impossible to conceive my surprise and consternation when, upon my arrival, I learned that the Indians the day before had massacred the doctor and his wife, with the greater part of the Americans at the mission. I passed the night without scarcely closing my eyes. Early next morning I baptized three sick children, two of whom died soon after, and then hastened to the scene of death to offer to the widows and orphans all the assistance in my power. I found five or six women and over thirty children in a condition deplorable beyond description. Some had lost their husbands, and others their fathers, whom they had seen massacred before their eyes, and were expecting every moment to share the same fate. The sight of those persons caused me to shed tears, which, however, I was obliged to conceal, for I was, the greater part of the day, in the presence of the murderers, and closely watched by them, and, if I had shown too marked an interest in behalf of the sufferers, it would only have endangered their lives and mine; these, therefore, entreated me to be on my guard. After the first few

The reverend father then goes on to relate how, after comforting the women and children as well as he could, and having been told by the chief “to say to them that they need fear nothing, they shall be taken care of and well treated,” he set out toward his mission, in order to intercept Spaulding and warn him of his danger. He was accompanied by his interpreter, and closely followed by a son of the chief, who, it afterward appeared, was going to his uncle Camastilo to acquaint him of the slaughter. His meeting with Spaulding is graphic, and, if not for the hideous surroundings, would be amusing. He says:

“In a few minutes after, while they were thus engaged in smoking, I saw Mr. Spaulding coming toward me. In a moment he was at my side, taking me by the hand and asking for news. ‘Have you been to the doctor’s?’ he inquired. ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘What news?’ ‘Sad news.’ ‘Is any person dead?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Who is dead—is it one of the doctor’s children?’ (He had left two of them very sick.) ‘No,’ I replied. ‘Who, then, is dead?’ I hesitated to tell. ‘Wait a moment,’ I said, ‘I cannot tell you now.’ While Mr. Spaulding was asking me those questions, I had spoken to my interpreter, telling him to entreat the Indian in my name not to kill Mr. Spaulding, which I begged of him as a special favor, and hoped that he would not refuse it to me. I was waiting for his answer, and did not wish to relate the disaster to Mr. Spaulding before getting it, for fear he might by his manner discover to the Indian what I had told him, for the least motion like flight would have cost him his life, and probably exposed mine also. The son of Tilokaikt, after hesitating some moments, replied that he could not take it upon himself to save Mr. Spaulding, but that he would go back and consult the other Indians, and so he started back immediately to his camp. I then availed myself of this absence to satisfy the anxiety of Mr. Spaulding. I related to him what had passed. ‘The doctor is dead,’ said I; ‘the Indians have killed him, together with his wife and eight other Americans, on Monday last, the 29th, and I have buried them before leaving to-day.’ ‘The Indians have killed the doctor—they will kill me also if I go to the camp!’ ‘I fear it very much,’ said I. ‘What, then, shall I do?’ ‘I know not. I have told you what has happened. Decide now for yourself what you had best do. I have no advice to give you in regard to that.’ ‘Why has that Indian started back?’ he inquired. ‘I begged him to spare your life,’ said I, ‘and he answered me that he could not take it upon himself to do so, but that he would go and take the advice of the other Indians about it; that is the reason why he started back.’ Mr. Spaulding seemed frightened and discouraged. ‘Is it possible! is it possible!’ he exclaimed several times. ‘They will certainly kill me.’ And he was unable to come to any decision. ‘But what could have prompted the Indians to this?’ he inquired. ‘I know not,’ said I; ‘but be quick and decide, you have no time to lose. If the Indians should resolve not to spare your life, they will be here very soon, as we are only about three miles from their camp. ‘But where shall I go?’ ‘I know not; you know the country better than I. All I know is that the Indians say the order to kill all Americans has been sent in all directions.’ Mr. Spaulding then resolved to fly. His asked me if I were willing to take charge of some loose horses he was driving before him. I told him I could not, for fear of becoming suspicious to the Indians. I told him, however, that if the interpreter was willing to take them under his charge at his own risk, he was perfectly at liberty to do so. To this the interpreter agreed. I gave Mr. Spaulding what provisions I had left, and hastened to take leave of him, wishing him with all my heart a happy escape, and promising to pray for him.... The interpreter had not left [139]

This Spaulding escaped to tell the tale, and to traduce the character of the priest that saved his life at the risk of his own. At first, he was inclined to acknowledge the obligation, for in a letter to his “reverend and dear friend,” as he styles Bishop Blanchet, eight days after, he writes: “The hand of the merciful God brought me to my family after six days and nights from the time my dear friend furnished me with provisions and I escaped from the Indians.” This effort of gratitude was, however, too much for him to sustain, and, accordingly, we find published in The Oregon American (p. 13) the following choice specimen of bigotry and base ingratitude, “worse than the sin of witchcraft.” He says:

“It has been said by some of my friends in this country that they felt greatly mortified to see me in the dust at the bishop’s feet begging for my life.... This is not the first time that Protestants (that is, heretics) have lain prostrate at the feet of the Pope of Rome. I saw my life, under God, in the hands of the bishop and the priests. I had a right to ask it again. I seemed to see the hands of these priests wet with the blood of our associates.... I stopped not to ask whose hands placed the bishop’s foot upon my neck, the lives of so many human beings were worth the struggle.”

Can the force of prejudice and deception go further than this? Here is a man, who, if not an open enemy of the missionaries, was certainly a violent opponent, whose life was saved by one of them at a most critical moment at imminent danger to his own, who was shown the pathway by which he might escape the fury of the savages whose hatred he had awakened by long years of injustice, and who was even supplied with food from the poor priest’s scrip, turning round on his benefactors when he attained a place of safety, and vilifying the church and religion to whose lesson of charity he owed his miserable existence. This is the man, too, upon whose authority the “Christian Associations of Oregon” have undertaken to brand the heroic priests of that section as instigators of murder; and who has undertaken to inform the Senate, and provide Mr. Delano with matters for history “in a more permanent form.”

And here it may be well to dispose of some of the minor charges. Pub. Doc. No. 37, at page 30, says of the scenes of the Whitman massacre:

“They [the Indian children] leaped and screamed for joy, throwing handfuls of blood around, drinking down the dying agonies of their victims as a precious draught. These blood-stained little savages were to receive the sacred ordinance of baptism a few hours after, at the hands of the priest of God—the mangled bodies yet lying unburied around, the food of dogs and wolves by night, and of hogs and vultures by day, seeming to pay down to the Indians for what they had done.”

We are not aware that in the whole course of Protestant history there is to be found a more deliberate, cool, and atrocious tissue of falsehoods than the above. Two days, not a few hours, after the murder, three sick children were baptized, of whom two were so ill that they died the same day. Are those some of the children who leaped and screamed for joy? Rev. H. H. Spaulding’s imagination, and would, in vulgar parlance, be styled “piling on the agony.” Before the arrival of Father Brouillet, Joseph Stainfield had already washed the corpses, and, with the assistance of the good priest, they were buried. The insinuation in the last line is worthy of Spaulding, and shows to what extremes a man will go whose sense of truth and even decency has become completely blunted.

Another charge against the missionaries is that they acted inhumanly with the captives, and that Father Brouillet, who promised to return to them, neglected to do so. It is true he did not do so, and the prisoners may thank Mr. Spaulding for his not returning. Had he not been as solicitous about saving that individual’s life, and thereby enable him to go down to the grave at an old age with a load of falsehood and forgeries on his soul, he would never have incurred the ill-feeling of the Indians of Wailatpu, or be himself kept a prisoner in Young Chief’s tent for two or three weeks. But his thoughts and those of his fellow-missionaries were with the unfortunates, and his every effort was used, and successfully too, for their liberation. While Spaulding, from his mission with the Nez Perces, was writing lying letters to his “reverend and dear friend,” Bishop Blanchet, soliciting his good offices with the Indians with regard to the captives, amongst whom was his own daughter, that ecclesiastic was calling around him the chiefs of the Cayuses, admonishing them to treat their captives kindly, promising to write to the American governor for terms of peace, and attending a council at Fort Walla Walla, at which the Indians consented and actually did liberate the prisoners, the ransom being paid by the agents of the much abused Hudson Bay Company. Spaulding himself was then virtually a prisoner among the Nez Perces, with whom he lived eleven years, and “was very much beloved,” if we may believe his own statement.

We now come to what we may be permitted to call the first grand falsehood, as set forth in Pub. Doc. No. 37, for the information of the Senate and the benefit of history, namely, that the Whitman murderers were instigated by the “Jesuits.” This calumny is repeated in several places and in many forms in this extraordinary public document, and may be supposed to be crystallized in the two following paragraphs:

“When the Jesuits and English had, by means of Indian runners, excited the surrounding tribes to butcher the Protestant missionaries and American emigrants at Wailatpu, and to exterminate the American settlements on the Pacific, the Nez Perces refused to join them, and rushed at once to the defence of their beloved teacher, Mrs. Spaulding, and rescued her and her infants from a band of forty of the murderers; then, second, fled to the scene of the eight days’ carnage, and by their influence stopped the bloody work of the Jesuits.” (Resolutions adopted by the Pleasant Butte Baptist Church of Linn Co., Oregon, Oct. 22, 1869.)

“This Brouilette [Brouillet], it is proved in part by his own testimony, was present at the massacre, doing nothing to save the victims, but baptizing the children of the murdering Indians, and otherwise stimulating them to their work of death.” (Report of the Committee of the Presbytery of Steuben, adopted by the Christian Associations of Oregon, 1869.)

Surely this is history run mad. In fact, so gross are the misstatements that we are inclined to think that Spaulding either forged the signatures or interpolated Pub. Doc. No. 37), that the so-called “Jesuits,” namely, Bishop Blanchet and his priests, had only been in that part of the country a short time—Father Brouillet says two months, but Spaulding reduces it to six weeks; that no Catholic mission had been established within hundreds of miles of Whitman’s Station till two days previous to the mission, when one was commenced at Umatilla, twenty-five miles distant, among a tribe of the Cayuses, who had no act or part in the crime; that there never was a Catholic missionary, Jesuit or otherwise, in the camps of Tilokaikt, where Whitman resided till two days after the massacre, but once, and that for a short time when Father Brouillet was invited by the chief to go and procure a site for a mission, in which he failed; and, finally, that the Indians who did the bloody deed were near neighbors of the doctor, the worst being a member of his household; and that every one of them were Protestants, as Spaulding himself partly admits[140] (Ex. Doc. No. 37). Even the Rev. Gustavus Hines, who is named as one of the assistants in the compilation of this document, says in his History of Oregon, in describing a council of chiefs in 1843: “Tilokaikt, a Cayuse chief, rose and said, ‘What do you read the laws for before we take them? We do not take the laws because Tanitan says so. He is a Catholic, and as a people we do not follow his worship!” The story of Father Brouillet having been on the scene of massacre stimulating the Indians in their work of death is a poor fabrication, for the doctor visited the bishop and his two priests at Umatilla, twenty-five miles distant, late on Sunday, the 28th, and on the 29th, the day of the slaughter, Spaulding himself supped with them at the same place. The ridiculous reference to the Nez Perces, under the supposition that they were Protestants, is simply absurd. The fact is that Spaulding says, in his letter to his “reverend and dear friend” the bishop, the Nez Perces only promised to protect him and the American settlers if troops were not sent against the Cayuses, and that they demanded and received from Mr. Ogden, of Walla Walla, clothing, ammunition, and tobacco before they would release their “beloved teacher,” her husband and infants. The only Nez Perces who fled to the scene to stop “the bloody work of the Jesuits” were two messengers of that tribe who bore his treacherous letter to the bishop, begging him to assure the Cayuses that he would use every effort to prevent the troops from being sent against them, and which he afterwards declared was meant to deceive both the bishop and the Indians.[141] No sooner, however, was he out of danger than he used his best efforts to bring on a war. “I recollect distinctly,” says Major Magone, “that he was not in favor of killing all the he would have to share one fate.” Truly, this was strange advice from a minister of the Gospel of peace, and from one who wished the bishop to assure the Indians “that we do not wish Americans to come from below to avenge our wrongs,” etc.

But apart from the credibility of the witness Spaulding, and the impossibility of the Catholic missionaries stirring up the Protestant Indians to the work of death, even if they so desired, not to speak of their early, continuous, and indignant denials of every statement and assertion put forth by the Oregon fanatics, we have the evidence of several persons, all Protestants we are inclined to believe, who were either in the neighborhood at the time, or arrived soon after. R. T. Lockwood, an old resident of Oregon and a prominent contributor to the press, relates the following conversation which he had in 1851 with one of the Indians who was a spectator of the murder:

“Q. Do the Indians generally want the Catholic priests among them, and, if so, why do they prefer them to such men as Dr. Whitman?

“A. No, not generally; yet a considerable number do, and prefer them because they do not try to get our land away from us.

“Q. Did the priests that came among you, a little before the massacre, encourage the killing of Dr. Whitman and the others?

“A. No. The killing of Dr. Whitman was resolved on before the priests came.

“Q. Are you a Catholic Indian?

“A. No, sir.”

Some time after, Mr. Lockwood met a Mrs. Foster, one of the survivors. “I asked her,” he says, “if she thought the priest had anything to do with the massacre, and she said she did not think he did, as he appeared very much pained, and was very kind and tender towards the survivors. I asked her, also, if she thought that the priest did all he safely could, and she answered, ‘I do.’” This impartial and well-informed gentleman winds up his letter thus: “Suffice it to say that, in all I ever heard said in regard to this lamentable massacre (and it has been much) prior to the last two years, there was not the slightest intimation of you or any other Catholic priest being implicated, or in any way responsible therefor.”[142]

“Why is the Catholic exempt from danger? Why can the Hudson Bay Company employee remain amid these scenes of blood and Indian vengeance against the white race, at peace, undisturbed, and, what is more loathsome, neutral in such a conflict?” asks the Hon. Elwood Evans of Spaulding, in 1868. The answer is simple. Because the Catholic priests treat the Indians with uniform kindness and justice; because they neither deceive them with false promises nor appropriate their lands and labor without payment, and because, being ministers of peace, they are opposed to strife; all of which Whitman, Spaulding, and his missionary companions did not and were not. And this brings us to the real cause of the massacre. For the sake of the Senate which desires information, and for Mr. Delano’s future history, we will give a few extracts from authorities which, if at all prejudiced, would be on the side of the Protestant view:

“‘I came to select a place for a mission,’ said he, ‘but I do not intend to Mr. John Toupin’s Statement, in 1848, of the Foundation of the Presbyterian Missions by Mr. Parker, in 1835.)

“Two years ago. 1846, a Cayuse came to my house in the Willamette settlement, and stopped with me over two weeks. During that time he often spoke of Dr. Whitman, complaining that he possessed the lands of the Indians, on which he was raising a great deal of wheat, which he was selling to the Americans, without giving them anything; that he had a mill upon their lands, and that they had to pay him for grinding their wheat, a big horse for twenty sacks. He said they told him to leave, but that he would not listen to them.” (Ib.)

“A man of easy, don’t-care habits, that could become all things to all men, and yet a sincere and earnest man, speaking his mind before he thought the second time, giving his views on all subjects without much consideration, correcting them when good reasons were presented, yet, when fixed in the pursuit of an object, adhering to it with unflinching tenacity. A stranger would consider him fickle and stubborn.” (Character of Dr. Whitman by a brother missionary, Rev. W. H. Gray.)

“The Americans had done them much harm. Years before, had not one of their missionaries suffered several of their people, and the son of their chiefs, to be slain in his company, yet himself escaped? Had not the son of another chief (Elijah), who had gone to California to buy cattle, been killed by Americans for no fault of his own?... So far as regarded the missionaries, Dr. Whitman and his associates, they were divided, yet so many looked on the doctor as an agent in promoting the settlement of the country with whites, it was thought best to drive him from the country, together with all the missionaries, several years before. Dr. Whitman had known that the Indians were displeased with his settlement among them. They had told him of it; they had treated him with violence, they had attempted to outrage his wife, had burned his property, and had several times warned him to leave their country, or they should kill him.” (River of the West, p. 400.)

“The fulfilment of the laws which the agent recommended for their adoption, ... occasioned suspicions in the minds of the Indians generally that the whites designed the ultimate subjugation of their tribes. They saw in the laws they had adopted a deep-laid scheme of the whites to destroy them and take possession of their country. The arrival of a large party of emigrants about this time, and the sudden departure of Dr. Whitman to the United States, with the avowed intention of bringing back with him as many as he could enlist for Oregon, served to hasten them to the above conclusions.... The great complaint of the Indians was that the Boston people [Americans] designed to take away their lands, and reduce them to slavery.” (Rev. Gustavus Hines, D.D., assistant of Spaulding, in Pub. Doc. No. 37, on the Nez Perces in 1843, History of Oregon, p. 143.)

“They [the Indians] were demanding unreasonable pay for their lands upon which the stations were erected, and paying but little or no attention to their American teachers.” (Gray’s History of Oregon, p. 365.)

“The fact is also shown that, as far back as 1835, the Indians west of the Rocky Mountains protested against the taking away of their lands by the white races, and this was one of the alleged causes of the murder of Dr. Whitman.” (J. Ross Browne, Special Agent of the Treasury, Report to the Com. of Indian Affairs, Dec. 4, 1857.)

Thus we find that, whatever credit may be claimed for Dr. Whitman as a colonist, his course toward the people whom he was sent to evangelize was anything but just or Christian; for he not only did not pay for his own land, but helped others to steal also, and he admits himself that for some years he had utterly neglected the spiritual and mental duties of his mission. But there were other and not less potent causes at work. Of his “esteemed friend Dr. Whitman,”

“He hoped that time and instruction would produce a change of mind—a better state of feeling toward the mission, and he might have lived to have seen his hopes realized, had not the measles and dysentery, following in the train of immigrants from the United States, made frightful ravages this year in the upper country. Many Indians have been carried off through the violence of the disease, and others through their own imprudence. The Cayuse Indians of Wailatpu, being sufferers in this general calamity, were incensed against Dr. Whitman for not exerting his supposed supernatural power in saving their lives. They carried this absurdity beyond the point of folly. Their superstitious minds became possessed of the horrible suspicion that he was giving poison to the sick instead of wholesome medicine, with the view of working the destruction of the tribe, his former cruelty probably adding strength to their suspicions. Still, some of the reflecting had confidence in Dr. Whitman’s integrity, and it was agreed to test the effects of the medicine he had furnished on three of their people, one of whom was said to be in perfect health. They unfortunately died, and from that moment it was resolved to destroy the mission. It was immediately after burying the remains of these three persons that they repaired to the mission and murdered every man found there.”

Several other contemporary writers confirm this calm statement of events, which in themselves were enough to drive ignorant and desperate savages (for it must be borne in mind that Dr. Whitman had given up instructing them for some years to attend to his wheat and horses) to commit any act of murder or rapine. To show that the “horrible suspicion” of having been poisoned was not a mere groundless suspicion on the part of the Indians, we present the following testimony:

“I spent the winter of 1846 in Dr. Whitman’s employment. I generally worked at the saw-mill. During the time I was there, I observed that Dr. Whitman was in the habit of poisoning wolves. I did not see him put the poison in the baits for the wolves; but two of his young men of the house, by his order, were poisoning pieces of meat, and distributing them in the places where the wolves were in the habit of coming, at a short distance around the establishment of the doctor. The doctor once gave me some arsenic to poison the wolves that were around the saw-mill.... Some Indians who happened to pass there took the meat and ate it; three of them were very sick, and were near dying.... Mr. Gray, who was then [1840] living with the doctor, offered us as many melons to eat as we liked, but he warned us at the same time not to eat them indiscriminately, as some of them were poisoned. ‘The Indians,’ said he, ‘are continually stealing our melons. To stop them, we have put a little poison on the bigger ones, in order that the Indians who will eat them might be a little sick.’” (Statement of John Young, corroborated by Augustine Raymond.)

In addition to these acts of imprudence, the doctor, it seems, had earned for himself an unenviable unpopularity. He was constantly extorting overpay in horses from them, and threatening them with soldiers and emigrants if they refused it. After having a quarrel with them on one occasion, “during which they insulted him, covered him with mud,” and even attempted his life, “he started for the United States, telling the Indians that he was going to see the great chief of the Americans, and that when he would return he would bring with him many people to chastise them; the Indians had been looking to his return with great fear and anxiety.”[143] At another time, in the fall of 1847, he said to the Indians at Walla Walla in the presence of several white men, “Since you are so wicked, such robbers, we shall send excuse himself to the Board of Foreign Missions.” Dangerous and fatal mistake, which cost the lives of thirteen innocent people, and closed the unfortunate man’s earthly career!

Now for the affair of the young woman Miss Bewley, who is described in Pub. Doc. No. 37, p. 35, indifferently as an “amiable young saint,” a “dear girl,” and “an angel.” It is charged that, when Five Crows demanded her for his wife, and she refusing to go with him, the bishops and priests urged her to go, and even thrust her out-of-doors when she refused. So little credence was given this specific calumny, for many years after the alleged occurrence, that the only mention we find made of it in The Murder of Dr. Whitman is the following paragraph:

“Before taking leave of the chiefs, the bishop said to them all publicly, as he had also done several times privately, that those who had taken American girls should give them up immediately. And then all entreated Five Crows to give up the one he had taken, but to no purpose.”

Now let us hear Father Brouillet’s account of the affair in contradiction to Miss Bewley’s deposition:

“We did,” says the reverend gentleman, “all that charity could claim, and even more than prudence seemed to permit. We kept her for seventeen days in our house, provided for all her wants, and treated her well, and if she had minded us, and heeded our advice and entreaties, she would never have been subjected to that Indian. When she came first to our house, and told us that Five Crows had sent for her to be his wife, we asked her what she wanted to do. Did she want to go with him, or not? She said she did not want to go with him. ‘Stay with us, then, if you like; we will do for you what we can,’ was our offer. When the evening came, the Indian chief called for her. The writer then requested his interpreter to tell him that she did not want to be his wife, and that, therefore, he did not want her to go with him. The interpreter, who was an Indian, allied by marriage to the Cayuses, and knew the chiefs disposition well, would not provoke his anger, and refused to interpret. The writer, then making use of a few Indian words he had picked up during the few days he had been there, and with the aid of signs, spoke to the Indian himself, and succeeded in making him understand what he meant. The Indian rose furiously and without uttering a word went away. The young woman then got frightened, and wanted to go for fear he might come back and do us all an injury. The writer tried to quiet her, and insisted that she should remain at our house, but to no avail; she must go, and off she went. The Indian, still in his fit of anger, refused to receive her, and sent her back. She remained with us three or four days undisturbed; until one evening, without any violence on the part of the Indian, or without advising with us, she went with him to his lodge. She came back the next morning, went off again in the evening, and continued so, without being forced by the Indian, and part of the time going by herself, until at last she was told to select between the Indian’s lodge and our house, as such a loose way of acting could not be suffered any longer. That was the first and only time that she offered any

This is a very different account from that sworn to by Miss Bewley, but written by Spaulding, as he says himself, Ex. Doc. No. 37, p. 27: “I would go to an individual, and take down in writing what he or shete knew, and then go before a magistrate, and the individual would make an oath to the statement, the officer certifying.” There is no mention that the parties were permitted to read what their amanuensis took down, and all who are acquainted with such ex-parte depositions know how easily it would be to alter their sense and meaning by an unscrupulous person—which we are about to show Spaulding to be. In this very statement there are two interpolations, one of eight lines on page 35 of Ex. Doc. No. 37, beginning with the words “I arose,” and one of six on the following page, at “The next day,” which materially alter the whole meaning of the document. This alteration of a sworn statement by any but the affiant is at common law forgery, and ought to entitle the person who makes it to the delicate attention of the prosecuting attorney of his county. Whether the saint and angel, Miss Bewley, is now aware of the forgery connected with her name we know not, but we trust that the Senate will make a note of it for the benefit of future historians. But Spaulding, who is described by his co-missionary Gray as “quite impulsive and bitter in his denunciations of a real or supposed enemy,” in endeavoring to make out a case, is not content with altering one affidavit. That of Mr. Osborne (Ex. Doc. No. 37, p. 32) is also materially changed in several places from the original, and the official reports of Mr. McLane (Ex. Doc. p. 33) and of Dr. White are doctored in a manner that we venture to say would render it difficult for the writers themselves to recognize them. Even the plain statements of The Murder of Dr. Whitman are garbled in a most palpable and scandalous manner.

As to the other auxiliary charges against the Catholic missionaries, and the answers of Abernethy and a few others to questions propounded by Spaulding, we do not consider them worthy of serious attention. They are all directly or indirectly the creatures of Spaulding’s fertile imagination, who, if not crazy as Colonel Gilliam said, has allowed his hatred of Catholicity to carry him down to fearful depths of crime, to calumny, falsehood, and forgery. His motives are apparent, the gratification of his lust for revenge, and his hatred of our faith; that of the associations who have signed his outrageous statements is the present flourishing existence of the Catholic missions in every part of Oregon; and the end proposed is to compass their destruction by appealing to the religious prejudices of the authorities at Washington. We have too much confidence in the wisdom and good sense of the Executive and Congress to suppose that they will be influenced by such inflammatory appeals—bearing on their face the palpable impress of dishonesty and prejudice—and attempts to disturb the good fathers in their labor of love, as well as of hardships and suffering; and we expect soon to hear of those fanatics receiving a fitting rebuke in our Senate for attempting to make that august body the vehicle of perpetuating the vilest sort of falsehoods and slanders against the Catholics of this country.

AFFIRMATIONS.

“Why does man go about organizing systems, when he himself must be reorganized?”

“The thing to be done will not unite the doers.”

“When man forgets what he is, he soon is put into a state of uneasiness, and made to suffer in pain what was designed for him to be pleasure.”

“We are always learning the way that heaven acts, but are very shy to invite it to act upon us, and are very unwilling to submit to the preparatory process.”

“Self-improvement by the selfish spirit is the most deceitful of all deceits.”

“While you persevere in washing a man’s face with dirty water, it will never be clean; you must get pure water to wash with.”

“A child is a religious being prior to its being an intellectual being; and must not be turned away from the divine order.”

AN AFTERNOON AT ST. LAZARE.

St. Lazare, and all that we saw and heard there struck us as so interesting, and so entirely different from our preconceived notions concerning that ill-famed centre of crime and punishment, that we cannot but think our readers will likewise be interested in hearing a detailed and accurate account of it.

We had been told that the famous pétroleuse, charged with the murder of Monseigneur Surat, was still there, and we could not resist the opportunity offered us by a friend of going to see this extraordinary type of female ferocity—the woman who put a pistol to the prelate’s head, and, when he mildly asked her what he had done to her that she should hate him so, replied: “You are a priest!” and shot him on the spot. On arriving, however, we found that she had left for Versailles the night before. There were still fourteen of her terrible compeers remaining out of the four hundred and thirty that had been taken on the barricades and in the general saturnalia of the Commune and locked up in St. Lazare.

We visited the prison from beginning to end. Nothing surprised us so much as the gentleness of the régime, and the absence of all mystery or personal restraint in the management of the prisoners. The jail had nothing of the repulsive paraphernalia of a prison about it, and but for its massive walls, its vast proportions, and a certain indescribable gloom in the atmosphere, inseparable, we suppose, from the mere presence of such a population, one might very well

The salles are magnificently spacious and lofty, with broad, high windows opening on courts; there are four courts—préaux they are called—one after another, within the precincts of the prison; the beds are like hospital beds; and there was nothing in the dress of the women, or the manner of the nuns toward them, to tell an uninitiated visitor that they were not patients rather than prisoners and malefactors of the worst kind. There was the same silence brooding over the place, the same quiet regularity in all the arrangements, the same supernatural sort of cleanliness that one never sees anywhere but in convents. The population of the prison varies from 1,200 to 1,800, and the government of these dangerous and desperate subjects is committed to the sole charge of a community of religious called Sœurs de Marie-Joseph. They are fifty in all. Their dress is black serge, with a black veil lined with a light-blue one. They were founded at the close of the last century by a Lyonnese lady, whose name the superioress told us, but we forgot it.

It was just two o’clock when we arrived, and the superioress and another nun gave up assisting at vespers in order to show us over the house, which from its immense size takes two hours to visit in detail. The prisoners are divided into several categories, and are kept distinctly separate from each other. There are first the Prévenues, who are put in on an accusation which has not been investigated; then the Détenues, against whom proof is forthcoming, and who are awaiting their trial; then there are the Jugées, of whom the categories are various, as will be seen. These classes are never allowed to come in contact, even accidentally, with each other; they do not even meet at meals. Those who are condemned to one year’s imprisonment remain at St. Lazare, but if the sentence extends to a year and a day, they are sent off to one of the Succursales. When their term is expired (those who are sentenced to a year only), they may continue at St. Lazare if they choose. Many of them, touched with grace, and sincerely converted from their evil courses, dread going back to old scenes and temptations that have proved so fatal to them, and beg to be kept as filles de service for the work of the house, or in the workshops, etc., and they are never refused. The superioress said they made very active official servants, and it is very seldom they fall away from their good resolves, and have to be expelled or punished. We were passing through one of the passages when a sudden noise of voices from the court made us go to the window and look out. We saw a troop of prisoners pouring out into the yard; they were running about, laughing and chatting, and apparently enjoying their momentary liberty with the zest of school-boys.

“Who are these, ma mère?” we inquired.

“Hélas!” The exclamation was accompanied by a sufficiently expressive gesture.

“They are generally a very numerous class here,” she explained; “but just now there are but some two hundred of them; the pétroleuses were largely recruited from their

Some one asked if these unfortunates were more refractory than the other prisoners, thieves, etc.

“As a rule, they are less so,” replied the nun; “we hardly ever are obliged to have recourse to the gardiens with them, and we have more frequent conversions amongst them than any other class of prisoners. There comes a time to many of them, especially if they have had any seeds of religious belief sowed in their minds in childhood, when the future both of this world and the next comes on them with a sense of horror, and then grace has an easy task with them. I could tell you of miracles wrought in the souls of these poor sinners that would sound like tales out of the lives of the saints, and we have had deathbeds among them little short of saintly. But, again, we too often see all our efforts fail, and they reject grace with a sort of demoniacal obduracy, and go back to their old lives without a moment’s passing compunction: nothing seems to touch them or frighten them.”

We asked if the nuns were not afraid of them, if they never threatened or insulted them.

“Oh! never!” replied the superioress emphatically; “the command we have over them, and the way they yield obedience and respect to us, is almost miraculous. You see these poor outcasts down there; I suppose there is nothing in the world more lost or degraded than they are; they are the lowest specimens of the lowest stratum of vice and every species of depravity. Well, the youngest nun in the community is as safe in the middle of them as if they were all honest mères de famille. I have been a religious twenty-two years, and out of that ten years at St. Lazare, and I have never known them use an expression to any of us that called for reprimand.”

We may add that she said the great majority of these offenders were girls from the provinces, young and inexperienced for the most part, and who come to Paris expecting to make their fortune, and unprepared for the temptations awaiting them in this great trap for souls.

We saw the words Oratoire Israelite, Oratoire Protestant, painted over two doors, and the latter suggested the inquiry whether there were occasionally any English women amongst the inmates of St. Lazare.

“Oh! yes, I am sorry to say we have a good many English,” said the mother; and then, shaking her head and smiling, she added: “And I am sorry to tell you that they are the most unmanageable of all, for they are generally given to drink, and when this is the case they are like mad-women and we can do nothing with them. A little while ago we had one who got into such a fearful fit of fury that it was necessary to put her in the lock-up; her shrieks were so loud that they were heard half over the place, and terrified the young détenues; toward evening she grew so outrageous that the gardiens were sent to put her into the strait-waistcoat—they are powerful men with strong hands and iron nerves, and trained to the work—but she baffled four of them for two hours; they were not able to seize or hold her; at last they gave it up in despair, and said: It is no use, we must go for les sœurs! One of them came to fetch me, and beg me to come or send some one to help them. He was trembling in every limb, and the perspiration was pouring from his face as if he had been wrestling with a wild animal. I took one of the nuns with me, and we went down to the prison, where we were obliged to spend the whole

We asked to what class in life the English culprits generally belonged—if they were exclusively of the lowest? The superioress said, on the contrary, they were often persons very comme il faut in their manners, and evidently had had an education far above the class of domestic servants—some of them were in fact quite like ladies; she believed they were mostly governesses, or teachers who come over to Paris in search of situations or lessons, and, not finding either, are driven by hunger and despair to steal, or do worse; but theft is generally the offence of the English prisoners.

“Sometimes, indeed,” said the superioress, “it makes us laugh to hear the account of the thefts they commit, there is often something so comical in the way they do it, and the cunning and dexterity they display are beyond belief; the most accomplished French filou cannot hold a candle to them.”

Sad as this testimony was, it could not be quite a surprise to any one living in Paris who had seen much of the class of English alluded to, but it will come probably as a new and terrible revelation to many in England; and if this paper should fall into the hands of any lone, friendless English girl hesitating about coming to Paris to earn her bread, the writer prays God she may ponder on the foregoing statement, and think twice before embarking on so perilous a venture.

Several salles are filled with a class of prisoners called jeunes insoumises; they are all very young, some merely children of the day; they are not always actual criminals, sometimes they are only subjects with dangerous propensities beyond the control of parents, and they are sent here to be trained to better ways; especial pains are directed to these juvenile offenders, and the result is often very consoling. The superioress said they had lately had a baby of six years old brought in for stealing. “It was only a cake that tempted the poor little mite,” said the mother deprecatingly, “but she was very naughty and unmanageable otherwise, and the parents were glad of a pretext to get rid of her for a time.”

It was not only of such innocent culprits as this that the superioress spoke with indulgence, her large-hearted charity took in all the lost inhabitants of the dismal abode in which she dwelt and toiled; and there was something unspeakably touching in the way she every now and then seemed to try as it were to excuse the worst among them, to plead for them indirectly by showing up any remnant of good in them. We met the women we mentioned our seeing out at recreation on their way along a corridor; they walked singly, with their arms crossed; we were quite close to them as they passed us; and anything more ignoble than their features it would be difficult to conceive—the expression of the faces was scarcely human; they resembled vicious animals in human shape rather than women. This struck us all so forcibly that we could not help making the remark to the superioress. She seemed positively hurt, as if we had said something personally unkind to her, and, on my expressing some pagan surprise at it, she broke out into such a tender pleading for “those dear souls whom our Lord longs for and that cost him so dear” that, though I felt thoroughly rebuked, I could not be sorry for having called out her protest. It was like having laid one’s hand roughly and unawares on a vibrating instrument that sent out a strain of heavenly music.