Part 13
Those were days when the chief executive of the nation was hedged by less formality than he is in these busier times, and President Tyler promptly received him. Some day, perhaps, the people of one of those great States which he saved to the Union will commission a famous artist to paint a picture of that historic meeting: the President, his keen, attentive face framed by the flaring collar and high black stock of the period, sitting low in his great armchair; the great Secretary of State, his mane brushed back from his tremendous forehead, seated beside him; and, standing before them, the preacher-pioneer, bearded to the eyes, with frozen limbs, in his worn and torn garments of fur and leather, pleading for Oregon. The burden of his argument was that the treaty of 1819 must be immediately abrogated and that the authority of the United States be extended over the valley of the Columbia. He painted in glowing words the limitless resources, the enormous wealth in minerals and timber and water-power of this land beyond the Rockies; he told his hearers, spellbound now by the interest and vividness of the narrative, of the incredible fertility of the virgin soil, in which anything would grow; of the vastness of the forests; of the countless leagues of navigable rivers; of the healthful and delightful climate; of the splendid harbors along the coast; and last, but by no means least, of those hardy pioneers who had gone forth to settle this rich new region at peril of their lives and who, through him, were pleading to be placed under the shadow of their own flag.
But Daniel Webster still clung obstinately to his belief that Oregon was a wilderness not worth the having.
“It is impossible to build a wagon road over the mountains,” he asserted positively. “My friend Sir George Simpson, the British minister, has told me so.”
“There _is_ a wagon road over the mountains, Mr. Secretary,” retorted Whitman, “for I have made it.”
It was the rattletrap old prairie-schooner that the missionary had dragged into Oregon on two wheels in the face of British opposition that clinched and copper-riveted the business. It knocked all the argument out of the famous Secretary, who, for almost the first time in his life, found himself at a loss for an answer. Here was a man of a type quite different from any that Webster had encountered in all his political experience. He had no axe to grind; he asked for nothing; he wanted no money, or office, or lands, or anything except that which would add to the glory of the flag, the prosperity of the people, the wealth of the nation. It was a powerful appeal to the heart of President Tyler.
“What you have told us has interested me deeply, Doctor Whitman,” said the President at length. “Now tell me exactly what it is that you wish me to do.”
“If it is true, Mr. President,” replied Whitman, “that, as Secretary Webster himself has said, ‘the ownership of Oregon is very likely to follow the greater settlement and the larger amount of population,’ then all I ask is that you won’t barter away Oregon or permit of British interference until I can organize a company of settlers and lead them across the plains to colonize the country. And this I will try to do at once.”
“Your credentials as a missionary vouch for your character, Doctor Whitman,” replied the President. “Your extraordinary ride and your frostbitten limbs vouch for your patriotism. The request you make is a reasonable one. I am glad to grant it.”
“That is all I ask,” said Whitman, rising.
The object that had started him on his four-thousand-mile journey having been attained, Whitman wasted no time in resting. His work was still unfinished. It was up to him to get his settlers into Oregon, for the increasing arrogance of the Hudson’s Bay Company confirmed him in his belief that the sole hope of saving the valley of the Columbia lay in a prompt and overwhelming American immigration. He had, indeed, arrived at Washington in the very nick of time, for, if prior to his arrival the British Government had renewed its offer of compromising by taking as the international boundary the forty-ninth parallel to the Columbia and thence down that river to the Pacific--thus giving the greater part of the present State of Washington to England--there is but little doubt that the offer would have been accepted. But the promise made by President Tyler to Whitman committed him against taking any action.
Though Whitman was treated with respect and admiration by the President of the United States, the greeting he received when he reported himself at the headquarters of the American Board in Boston was far from being a cordial one.
“What are you doing here, away from your post without permission?” curtly inquired the secretary of the Board, eying his shaggy visitor with evident disapproval.
“I came on business to Washington,” answered Whitman, looking the secretary squarely in the eye. “There was imminent danger of Oregon passing into the possession of England, and I felt it my duty to do what I could to prevent it.”
“Obtaining new territories for the nation is no part of our business,” was the ungracious answer. “You would have done better not to have meddled in political affairs. Here, take some money and get some decent clothes, and then we’ll discuss this scheme of yours of piloting emigrants over the mountains.”
Meanwhile General Lovejoy had been busy upon the frontier spreading the news that early in the spring Doctor Whitman and himself would guide a body of settlers across the Rockies to Oregon. The news spread up and down the border like fire in dry grass. The start was to be made from Weston, not far from where Kansas City now stands, and soon the emigrants came pouring in--men who had fought the Indians and the wilderness all the way from the Great Lakes to the Gulf; men who had followed Boone and Bowie and Carson and Davy Crockett; a hardy, sturdy, tenacious breed who were quite ready to fight, if need be, to hold this northwestern land where they had determined to build their homes. The grass was late, that spring of 1843, and the expedition did not get under way until the last week in June. At Fort Hall they met with the customary discouragements and threats from Captain Grant, but Whitman, like a modern Moses, urged them forward. On pushed the winding train of white-topped wagons, crossing the sun-baked prairies, climbing the Rockies, fording the intervening rivers, creeping along the edge of perilous precipices, until at last they stood upon the summit of the westernmost range, with the promised land lying spread below them. Whitman, the man to whom it was all due, reined in his horse and watched the procession of wagons, bearing upward of a thousand men, women, and children, make its slow progress down the mountains. He must have been very happy, for he had added the great, rich empire which the term Oregon implied to the Union.[F]
For four years more Doctor Whitman continued his work of caring for the souls and the bodies of red men and white alike at the mission station of Waiilatpui. On August 6, 1846, as a direct result of his great ride, was signed the treaty whereby England surrendered her claims to Oregon. In those days news travelled slowly along the frontier, and it was the following spring before the British outposts along the Columbia learned that the British minister at Washington had been beaten by the diplomacy of a Yankee missionary and that the great, despotic company which for well-nigh two centuries had been in undisputed control of this region, and which had come to regard it as inalienably its own, would have to move on. From that moment Marcus Whitman was a doomed man, for it was a long-standing boast of the company that no man defied it--and lived.
The end came with dramatic suddenness. Early in the afternoon of November 20, 1847, Doctor Whitman was sitting in the mission station prescribing medicine, as was his custom, for those of his Indians who were ailing, when a blanketed warrior stole up behind him on silent moccasins and buried a hatchet in his brain. Then hell broke loose. Whooping fiends in paint and feathers appeared as from the pit. Mrs. Whitman was butchered as she knelt by her dying husband, their scalps being torn from their heads before they had ceased to breathe. Fourteen other missionaries were murdered by the red-skinned monsters and forty women and children were carried into a captivity that was worse than death. And this by the Indians who, just fifteen years before, had pleaded to have sent them the white man’s Book of Heaven! Though no conclusive proof has ever been produced that they were whooped on to their atrocious deed by emissaries of the great monopoly which had been forced out of Oregon as a result of Whitman’s ride, there is but little doubt. Whitman had snatched an empire from its greedy fingers, and he had to pay the price.
Within sight of the mission station, where for more than a decade they had worked together, and from which he had started on his historic ride, the martyr and his courageous wife lie buried. You can see the grave for yourself should your travels take you Walla Walla way. You will need to have it pointed out to you, however, for you would never notice it otherwise: a modest headstone surrounded by a picket fence. Though Marcus Whitman added to the national domain a territory larger and possessing greater natural resources than the German Empire, though but for him Portland and Tacoma and Seattle and Spokane would be British instead of American, no memorial of him can be found in their parks or public buildings. Instead of honoring the man who discovered the streams and forests from which they are growing rich, who won for them the very lands on which they dwell, unworthy discussions and acrimonious debates as to the motives which animated him are the only tributes which have been paid him by the people for whom he did so much. But he sleeps peacefully on beside the mighty river, oblivious to the pettiness and ingratitude of it all. When history grants Marcus Whitman the tardy justice of perspective, over that lonely grave a monument worthy of a nation builder shall rise.
THE MARCH OF THE ONE THOUSAND
THE MARCH OF THE ONE THOUSAND
Twenty-two centuries or thereabouts ago a Greek soldier of fortune named Xenophon found himself in a most trying and perilous situation. Lured by avarice, adventure, and ambition, he had accepted a commission in a legion of Hellenic mercenaries, ten thousand strong, who had been engaged by Cyrus to assist him in ousting his brother from the throne of Persia. But at Cunaxa Cyrus had met his death and his forces complete disaster, the Greek legionaries being left to make their way back to Europe as best they might. Under Xenophon’s daring and resourceful leadership they set out on that historic retreat across the plains of Asia Minor which their leader was to make immortal with his pen, eventually reaching Constantinople, after an absence of fifteen months and a total journey of about three thousand five hundred miles, with little save their weapons and their lives. Xenophon’s story of the March of the Ten Thousand as told in his “Anabasis,” is the most famous military narrative ever written; it is used as a text-book in colleges and schools, and is familiar wherever the history of Greece is read.
Yet how many of those who know the “Anabasis” by heart are aware that Xenophon’s exploit has been surpassed on our own continent, in our own times, and by our own countrymen? Where is the text-book which contains so much as a reference to the march of the _One Thousand_? How many of the students who can glibly rattle off the details of Xenophon’s march across the Mesopotamian plains have ever even heard of Doniphan’s march across the plains of Mexico? During that march, which occupied twelve months, a force of American volunteers, barely a thousand strong, traversed upward of six thousand miles of territory, most of which was unknown and bitterly hostile, and returned to the United States bringing with them seventeen pieces of artillery and a hundred battle-flags taken on fields whose names their countrymen had never so much as heard before. Because it is the most remarkable campaign in all our history, and because it is too glorious an episode to be lost in the mists of oblivion, I will, with your permission, tell its story.
Early in May, 1846, Mexico, angered by the annexation of Texas, declared war against the United States. Hostilities began a few days later, when the Army of Occupation under General Zachary Taylor, whom this campaign was to make President, crossed the Rio Grande at Matamoros and defeated the Mexicans in quick succession at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma. The original plan of campaign was for the Army of Occupation to penetrate directly into the heart of Mexico via Monterey; the Army of the Centre, under General Wool, to operate against Chihuahua, the metropolis of the north, two hundred and twenty-five miles below the Rio Grande; while an expeditionary force under Colonel Stephen Watts Kearny, known as the Army of the West, was ordered to march on Santa Fé for the conquest of New Mexico. Subsequently this plan was changed: General Scott captured Vera Cruz and used it as a base for his advance on the capital; General Wool, instead of descending on Chihuahua, effected a juncture with General Taylor at Saltillo; and Colonel Kearny, after the taking of New Mexico, divided his force into three separate commands. The first he led in person across the continent to the conquest of California; the second, under Colonel Sterling Price, was left to garrison Santa Fé and hold New Mexico; the third, consisting of a thousand Missouri volunteers under Colonel Alexander Doniphan, was ordered to make a descent upon the state of Chihuahua and join General Wool’s division at Chihuahua City. The march of this regiment of raw recruits from Fort Leavenworth to Santa Fé, El Paso, Chihuahua, Saltillo, and Matamoros is known as Doniphan’s Expedition.
When, echoing Mexico’s declaration of war, came President Polk’s call for fifty thousand volunteers, Governor Edwards, of Missouri, turned to Colonel Doniphan for assistance in raising the quota of that State. He could not have chosen better, for Alexander Doniphan combined practical military experience and remarkable executive ability with the most extraordinary personal magnetism. Though a citizen of Missouri, Doniphan was a native of Kentucky, his father, who was a comrade of Daniel Boone, having pushed westward with that great adventurer to “the dark and bloody ground,” where, in 1808, Alexander was born. Left fatherless at the age of six, he was sent to live with his elder brother at Augusta, Ky., where he received the best education that the frontier afforded. Graduating from the Methodist college in Augusta when nineteen, he took up the study of law and in 1833 moved to Liberty, Mo., where his pronounced abilities quickly brought him reputation and a large and profitable clientèle. A born organizer, he took a prominent part in building up the State militia, commanding a brigade of the expeditionary force which was despatched in 1838 to quell the insurrectionary movement among the Mormons at Far West. A polished and convincing orator, he met with instant success when he set out through upper Missouri to raise recruits for service in Mexico. The force thus raised was designated as the 1st Missouri Mounted Volunteers, and no finer regiment of horse ever clattered behind the guidons. Missouri, then on our westernmost frontier, was peopled by hardy pioneers, and the youths who filled the ranks of the regiment were the sons of those pioneers and possessed all the courage and endurance of their fathers. Though Doniphan was a brigadier-general of militia and had seen active service, he enlisted as a private in the regiment which he had raised, but when the election for officers came to be held he was chosen colonel by acclamation. If ever a man looked the _beau sabreur_ it was Doniphan. He was then in his eight-and-thirtieth year and so imposing in appearance that the mere sight of him in any assemblage would have caused the question: “Who is that man?” to go round. Six feet four in his stockings; crisp, curling hair, which, though not red, was suspiciously near it; features which would have been purest Grecian had not an aquiline nose lent them strength and distinction; a complexion as fair and delicate as a woman’s; a temperament that was poetic, even romantic, without being effeminate; a sense of humor so highly developed that he never failed to recognize a joke when he heard one; a personal modesty which was as delightful as it was unaffected; manners so courtly and polished as to suggest an upbringing in a palace rather than on the frontier; conversation that was witty, brilliant, and wonderfully fascinating--there you have Alexander Doniphan _en silhouette_, as it were. Small wonder that President Lincoln, when Colonel Doniphan was presented to him in after years, remarked: “Colonel, you are the only man I ever met whose appearance came up to my previous expectations.”
The Army of the West, of which Colonel Doniphan’s Missourians formed a part, was ordered to mobilize at Fort Leavenworth, where several weeks were spent in completing the equipment, collecting supplies, and teaching the recruits the rudiments of drill. Everything being complete down to the last horseshoe, on the morning of June 26, 1846, the expedition, comprising barely two thousand men in all, headed by Colonel Kearny with two squadrons of United States dragoons, smart and soldierly in their flat-topped, visored caps and their shell jackets of blue piped with yellow, and followed by a mile-long train of white-topped wagons, set out across the grassy prairies on a march which was to end in the conquest and annexation of a territory larger than all the United States at that time. It would be difficult to express the hopes and apprehensions of the volunteers and of those who watched and waved to them, when, with the bands playing “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” they moved out of Fort Leavenworth on that sunny summer’s morning and turned their horses’ heads toward the south--and Mexico. At that time the American people’s knowledge of Mexico was very meagre, for the geographies of the day, though indicating very clearly the Great American Desert, as it was called, stretching long and wide and yellow between Missouri and Mexico, showed little beyond the barest outlines of the vast unexplored regions to the west and south. The people of Missouri, however, knew more than any others, for their traders, for more than twenty years, had laboriously traversed the dangerous trail which led from Independence to the northernmost of the Mexican trading-posts at Santa Fé and thence on to Chihuahua. Thus they knew that the regions between the Missouri and the Great Desert were Indian country and dangerous, and that those beyond were Indian and Mexican and more dangerous still. No wonder that the volunteers felt that every mile of their advance into this _terra incognita_ would reveal perils, marvels, and surprises; no wonder that those who were left behind prayed fervently for the safety of the husbands and sons and lovers who had gone into the wild as fighters go.
There was no road, not even a path, leading from Fort Leavenworth into the Santa Fé trail, and, as the intervening country was slashed across by innumerable streams and canyons, bridges and roads had to be built for the wagons. The progress of the column was frequently interrupted by precipitous bluffs whose sides, often two hundred feet or more in height, were so steep and slippery that it was impossible for the mules to get a foothold, and the heavily laden wagons, with a hundred sweating, panting, cursing men straining at the drag-ropes, had to be hauled up by hand. As the column pressed southward the heat became unbearable. The tall, rank grass harbored swarms of flies and mosquitoes which attacked the soldiers until their eyes were sometimes swollen shut and clung to the flanks of the mules and horses until the tormented animals streamed with blood. In places the ground became so soft and marshy that the wagons sank to the hubs and the march was halted while a dozen teams hauled them out again. Numbers of the wagons broke down daily under the terrific strain to which they were subjected, and, as though this was not enough, the troubles of the teamsters were increased by the mules, which, maddened by the attacks of insects and made refractory by the unaccustomed conditions, stubbornly refused to work.
Preceding the column was a hunter train, commanded by Thomas Forsyth, a celebrated frontiersman. Leaving camp about eleven in the evening and riding through the night, the hunters and butchers would reach the site selected for the next camp at daybreak and would promptly get to work killing and dressing the game which swarmed upon the prairies, so that a supply of fresh meat--buffalo, elk, antelope, and deer--was always awaiting the troops upon their arrival at sundown, while along the banks of the Arkansas the men brought in quantities of wild grapes, plums, and rice. Arriving at the towering butte, standing solitary in the prairie, known as Pawnee Rock, Forsyth asked his hunters to ascend it with him. Even these old plainsmen, accustomed as they were to seeing prodigious herds of game, whistled in amazement at the spectacle upon which they looked down, for from the base of the rock straightaway to the horizon the prairie was literally carpeted with buffalo. Forsyth, who was always conservative in his expressions, estimated that five hundred thousand buffalo were in sight, but his hunters asserted that eight hundred thousand would be much nearer the number of animals seen from the summit of Pawnee Rock that morning.