Most stories – articles or books – discussing the Methodist Mission of Jason Lee to Oregon which lasted from 1834 until 1843, start with the same story.  The story of four Native Americans who came to St. Louis to ask Missouri governor William Clark – yes, the same “Clark” of the Lewis & Clark fame – for teachers to provide them with the power of white man’s religion. Of the Native Americans, three were of the Nez Percé tribe and one was a Flathead elder.  The two tribes were both neighbors and friends.  They reached St. Louis early in October 1831, soon after meeting with Governor Clark, also the superintendent of Indian Affairs.

THE MEETING

But Clark and his interpreter did not know Sahaptin or Salish.  The interactions thus needed conducting in sign.  Regardless, the delegation made their primary goals known.  They – as Clark understood – asked about the Bible and the potency of the Christian religion.  They also requested a minister to come to them to explain the intricacies involved.  Clark responded by telling them there indeed was a book which they described which held the key to a better life.  At the appropriate time, a minister would come to them to educate them about both the Bible and Christianity.

It was too late in the year for the four men to return to the west, so they stayed in St. Louis.  In due course, two of the older men – a senior Nez Percé chief and the Flathead – died of disease.  The two survivors – Rabbit-Skin-Leggings and No-Horns-on-His-Head – set off on the American Fur Company sidewheeler Yellowstone the following March.  With them on the boat was American painter George Catlin, out from New York.  The identity of the two Native Americans and their quixotic pilgrimage became known to the Sioux through whose homeland the Yellowstone moved through on the Missouri River.  They greeted the Nez Percé as regal ambassadors, lavishing them with gifts.  In their new outfits, Catlin painted.

One of the two died not long after. The other left the river at Fort Union to cut through the mountains alone.  His life afterward unrecorded.  Rabbit-Skin-Leggings drifted back into historical obscurity.

THE CALL IS ANSWERED

The Letters

The meeting with Governor Clark and the Native Americans became described in the 1 March 1833 Christian Advocate and Journal and Zion’s Herald through the publishing of two letters.  Gabriel Poillon Disosway, a New York merchant and prominent lay person within the Methodist movement, collaborated with his friend William Walker, a part-Native American (Wyandot) and Methodist agent to his tribe, to create the two letters.  Walker talks first about his Wyandot people, in the process of being moved from the area of the Great Lakes to the eastern edge of Kansas – the tribe eventually ended up in Oklahoma. 

While on an inspection tour of possible sites for the tribe in Kansas, Walker writes of meeting the western Native Americans and Clark.  He described their meeting and how Clark was able to give his visitors a history of man from Creation to Christ; all of the moral precepts contained within the Bible; an explanation of the Ten Commandments; a rundown of the life of Christ and his role as mediator between God and man and the Final Judgement. 

Curiouser and curiouser

All of this done in sign. One problem with Walker’s note is his visit to Kansas happened in the fall and winter of 1832 by which time the western Natives had died or left for home.  Walker was especially curious about the flattening of the head of the one. He supplied a picture showing the forehead as the part of the head deliberately flattened.

The University President

Wilbur Fisk attained the presidency of the Weslyn Academy in Wilbraham, Massachusetts in 1826. One of his students was Jason Lee, a tall strong young man coming from Stanstead, Quebec, once thought to be part of Vermont, but placed into Lower Canada after a border correction. Fisk thought of Lee as a personification of muscular Christianity – Fisk himself suffered from tuberculosis. Reading his copy of the 1 March 1833 Christian Advocate and Journal and Zion’s Herald, he mentioned to his wife he had the perfect candidate for a potential mission to the Flatheads. Quickly, he wrote out a letter to Lee asking whether he would think about heading up a mission to the west if the church should seek it.

WHO WILL GO?

Meanwhile, he also published a letter to Methodists in general: “ Hear! Hear! Who will respond to the call from beyond the Rocky Mountains? “Messrs. Editors, ‘The communication of Brother G. P. Disosway, including one from the Wyandotte agent on the subject of the deputation of the Flathead Indians to General Clarke, has excited in many in this section intense interest. And, to be short about it, we are for having a mission established there at once. I have proposed the following plan: Let two suitable men, unencumbered with families, and possessing the spirit of martyrs, throw themselves into the nation. Live with them; learn their language; preach Christ to them; and, as the way opens, introduce schools, agriculture, and the arts of civilized life. …

All we want is the men. Who will go? Who?. I know of one young man who I think will go, and of whom I can say I know of none like him for the enterprise. If he will go (and we have written to him on the subject), we only want another, and the mission will be commenced the coming season.” The call for a methodist mission had gone out.

JASON LEE

Working in the forests since he was 13, Jason converted to Methodism in 1826 at 23 years of age, helped along his path by his nephew Daniel. Three years later, he enrolled at Wilbraham to fill in his education and firm up his faith.  Older and more mature than most of the other young men at the academy, he impressed the headmaster-president Wilbur Fisk. Leaving after only a year, Lee continued to correspond over time with Fisk who moved on to become the first president at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut.

In 1832, Lee applied to the London – Ontario – Missionary Society for a missionary placement in western Canada. Still awaiting a reply, he got a letter from Fisk asking him if he would think about a spot as a missionary to the Flatheads. Both Fisk and Lee considered Jason to be the best candidate for the post.  Accepting, Lee – and Fisk – awaited the Missionary Board of the Methodist Episcopal Church to begin to organize such a mission. A little later, in August, Daniel also applied, and the duo formed.

THE MISSION BEGINS

Planning was never a strong suit for Lee’s mission, neither in the beginning nor any other time. He thought with his application, he would set out for the west that summer not realizing a certain amount of planning and finances needed first before setting out across the continent. $3000 were obtained for the purpose of the mission, but to get from New England all the way across the continent was another matter.

Luck was with them in the form of Nathaniel Wyeth.

Nathaniel Wyeth

Captain Nathaniel Wyeth had already gone across the Rocky Mountains to the Oregon Country before meeting the Lees. He had traveled to Fort Vancouver in 1832 hoping to develop farms, rival the fur monopoly of the Hudson’s Bay Company – HBC – and start a salmon fishing and processing industry. He had led an overland party while a chartered ship journeyed around South America to bring necessary supplies for his ventures.

Leaving Missouri in May, he arrived at Fort Vancouver at the end of October after many adventures. His party of 24 dwindled by then to only 12.  Then he learned his supply ship had sunk in the meantime. The remainder of his party bailed out in the succeeding months leaving Nathaniel to make his own way back across the mountains to St. Louis after overwintering at Fort Vancouver.

Back in Boston, Wyeth had plenty of new plans to replicate his previous expedition. It was here he met the two Methodist missionaries and allowed them to join his new enterprise. They would be joined by two well-known naturalists, Thomas Nuttall and John Kirk Townsend. Wyeth was in need of funds after his first failed trip. He was also an agnostic. His thoughts about the Methodist mission were that they would make little impression upon the Native American culture he already experienced. Fisk and Lee simply considered Wyeth, God’s answer to their problems.

Westward bound

The Lees slowly made their way west, speaking whenever they could in efforts to continue to raise funds. They were joined in mid-March 1834 by Cyrus Shepard, a personal convert of Jason as a lay person for the soon to form Methodist mission.  The duo, now a trio reached St. Louis by the end of March. Here Daniel paid a call on William Clark to find out more about the earlier visit made by the Native Americans. 

Here, he found out that William Walker’s “high wrought account” contained many inaccuracies, to say the least. They spent a week in the city giving talks and raising money. Two weeks later at Independence, they hired two others to help them join with them in the quest to establish a mission for the Flatheads. Finally, on 24 April, the party started off for the mountains. Jason Lee met his first “wild” Indians in early May an experience which changed the essence of the mission in his mind.

CHANGE OF MISSION

Behind their party as they crossed the Plains, a group of Kaws – cousins of the Osage tribe – followed in their wake. The half-naked, unwashed Kaws shadowed the Wyeth party, begging, looking for sustenance of any sort.  In place of sympathy, Jason was disgusted. He blamed them for the loss of a wandering cow.   Watching them closely for possible pilferage, Lee represented a people so alien to the New England he was used to. Even after he was informed of their starving state – due to a corn crop failure, driven from their homes by a cholera outbreak, Lee wrote he would not share an ounce of provisions, “Lest we should not have enough until we reach the buffalo.”  While sincere in his belief in Christianity, “he was unable to love the unlovable” as Malcom Clark, Jr puts it in his book The Eden Seekers.

CONVERSION?

The party eventually reached a fur trapper rendezvous on the Ham’s Fork of the Green River. Wyeth learned that some of the trappers were going to give the missionaries some troubles. The problem was avoided when Wyeth and Lee walked over – remember Lee stood six feet tall and a couple hundred pounds, ever as impressive as any mountain man there. 

After a quiet talk over some tea, problem solved. Lee then changed the course of events in a long letter he wrote back to Fisk:  “The Capt … came and informed me, that he had heard, that the Indians threatened to “give the Missionaries Hell,” and that he heard something f the kind himself, and advised us to say nothing to them on the subject of religion, for it was not possible to do them any good …” He went further later in his letter, “It is rather my opinion that it is easier to convert a tribe of Indians at a Missionary Meeting, than in the wilderness.”

A group of Nez Percé and Flatheads were also at the rendezvous. They tried to ask Lee if he would be their teacher and stop among them. He was politely evasive, and nothing came of their meeting.

On to the Northwest

Eventually, Wyeth’s party reached the HBC Fort Wall Walla at the confluence of the Columbia and Walla Walla Rivers on 1 September.  Two weeks later, they arrived at Fort Vancouver, where Chief Factor John McLoughlin greeted them. As to plans for a mission to the Nez Percé-Flathead country, Lee found the area too isolated and too costly and difficult to provision. They would be totally on their own. On the spot, Lee changed the mission location from eastern Oregon Country to the south on the Willamette River.

As the Lees decided upon where to set up their Methodist mission, Wyeth had set up Fort William to be his rival post to Fort Vancouver. He placed his fort on the site of the abandoned Native American village of Cathlanaquiah on Sauvie Island. He wrote “… mortality has carried off to a man its inhabitants and there is nothing to attest that they ever existed except their decaying houses, their graves and their unburied bones of which there are heaps. So you see as the righteous people of New England say, providence has made room for me.”

COMPLICATIONS

By the end of the month, Wyeth was not so ebullient. The malaria which had killed off the natives, soon did a number on Wyeth’s party, as well. His note from 20 September, “Our people are sick and dying off like rotten sheep of bilious disorders … one third of our people are on the sick list …17 dead to this date … I am but just alive after having been so bad as to think of writing up my last letters.” The fort was soon after abandoned.

The Lee’s had considered placing their mission at Scappoose across the Multnomah Channel from the island but decided to look elsewhere since the area was “subject to Fever & ague”. The site they chose at Mission Bottom would prove to be pestilential, as well.

MISSION BOTTOM

Mission Bottom was set in grasslands lying next to the Willamette River about sixty miles south of that river’s confluence with the Columbia. The site today is on an oxbow lake, the river taking a different course with time, as did the Methodists themselves. The Lees took out a claim of two miles north-to-south and a half-mile wide. On the northern end of the claim, they went about building a Mission House, one-story with a half-story above for storage. 

Eventually, another wing would add on as large as the original. A few cows, calves and a bull were loaned to them by McLoughlin as well as oxen to help clear their site. Plenty of seeds were thrown in and he let the missionaries hire HBC men – Kanakas (Hawaiians) to help get the mission going. The house was ready by November and by late the next spring, thirty acres were fenced and cultivated with a barn and pens for the livestock.

MALARIAL COMPLICATIONS

With spring, the malarial season returned with a vengeance. Everyone at the mission became infected. Daniel was so affected that McLoughlin sent him off to the Sandwich Islands to get him to recover. Cyrus Shepard spent the winter at Fort Vancouver, too ill from the overland journey to venture farther. He came up, still ill, to the mission in March to help clean and cook. Two extra men Lee had hired in left the mission over the summer leaving only Jason and Cyrus at the Mission House.

Lee’s missionary work was limited to Sunday meeting held at the nearby home of Joseph Gervais, one of the first French Canadians who had retired from the HBC to farm on the French Prairie. The meetings attended by local French Canadians and their families became a bit of a social event. By religion, the French Canadians were Catholic, but in lieu of priests, they let Lee marry, baptize and bury. Understanding little French, the evangelic discourses probably went over the heads of the locals who gathered – as Lee surmised – more for the social aspects.

Children

Indian children, mostly, began showing up at the Mission in November 1834. The missionaries took them in, fed them, worked them, exhorted them with an occasional teaching lesson thrown in if there was time. The children living there did so in an unloving environment. By the end of the first year of caring for the children, of seventeen who came, one had run away, one had been taken back by relatives and four had died.

By March 1836, Jason wrote in another letter to Fisk, he had no triumphs to relate.The hundreds of Indians he had hoped to convert were non-existent. Instead of hundreds, not even one conversion had taken place. Lee thought expectations for the mission had set up too high a level before they came west. He noted he was too busy simply trying to survive himself, that he had no time to venture out to the Indian villages. 

He needed help, help in the form of farmers with wives – better to show the advantages of Christian civilization to the natives. With help, the missionaries could be released from temporal duties to go out and evangelize. And while there was no place on earth where missionaries were needed than in Oregon, “… the Indians are a scattered, periled, and deserted race, I am more and more convinced; for it does seem, that unless the God of heaven undertake their cause, they must perish off the face of the Earth, and their name be blotted out from under Heaven …”

TEMPERANCE

Nathaniel Wyeth’s plan for a trading station to rival Fort Vancouver had not gone well. He sold off a large iron pot to newcomer Ewing Young before leaving.  Young came to Oregon in the fall of 1834 from California. Some of the men who joined his party were vicious men who murdered, raped and stole from the Indians on their way north – the results felt harshly by others taking the trail in the following years.

The governor of Alta California, Don José Figueroa, sent a letter north to McLoughlin accusing Young of stealing a herd of horses and mules from locals in California. He suggested Young apprehend and punish the party. Now, Young was an American citizen, so McLoughlin had no jurisdiction over him. But he could and did deny Young the right to have any business dealing with the company and forbade the HBC retirees in the Willamette to have any dealings, as well.

EWING YOUNG IN OREGON

Young denied the accusations when he met up with McLoughlin, but the ban remained in force.  Young, not happy, remained in Oregon, much to McLoughlin’s displeasure, taking up a claim on the west side of the Willamette building a cabin and setting his animals out to graze.

In early 1837, Young and Lawrence Carmichael used the iron pot bought from Wyeth to set up a still and make whiskey. In response, Lee called for an emergency meeting of the Oregon Temperance Society, a group he set up in 1836. Lee’s group offered to reimburse Young and Carmichael for their expenses to date if they ended their distillation plans.   Included in the letter sent were names of several of the French Canadiens on the French Prairie. McLoughlin allied himself with Lee to oppose alcohol in the Oregon Country. He offered to allow Young to trade at Fort Vancouver like any other settler.

William Slacum

An American “tourist” entered the scene just at this time. He enlivened McLoughlin’s notice with an offer of $150 for Young to drop the matter. The “tourist”, William Slacum, was actually on a fact-finding mission for President Martin Van Buren. His efforts are written on another post. Slacum helped the Willamette Cattle Company, offering free passage to California on his chartered ship, the Loriot. 

The cattle venture – to be led by none other than Ewing Young – was a chance for settlers to buy shares in the enterprise. The goal of the company, to increase the number of livestock in Oregon, helping settlers to have their own livestock not “loaned” cows from the HBC. The HBC officers were keen on the idea to increase their own flocks with McLoughlin putting in $500 while James Douglas and Chief Factor Duncan Finlayson both added in $300. Jason Lee added $600 from his mission funding pot.

FIRST REINFORCEMENT

Early in 1837, the first additions to the Oregon Methodist Mission arrived on the bark Diana. They left Boston on the Hamilton 29 July 1836 arriving in the Sandwich Islands after 148 days. The journey through several gales took place from 8 April until 11 May. Included were Dr. Elijah White, his wife and two children; Alanson Beers, a blacksmith, and his wife and three children; William Willson, a carpenter (He later became the founder and namer of the city of Salem); and three women teachers, including Anna Maria Pittman. Pittman came west, also to marry Jason Lee, though he had not been informed of this event before the group showed up.

susan downing

Susan Downing, one of the teachers, helped nurse Cyrus Shepard, the couple marrying later in the summer. Lee ended up marrying Pittman at the same time, though it took a while before he agreed to the nuptials. Shepard would be nursed by his new wife until he became bedridden from tubercular complications in his right knee. Dr. White decided to amputate the right leg on 11 December 1839 to see if Shepard could gain relief from his pains. The operation did not succeed with the patient dying just after the New Year leaving behind his widow and two small daughters. His memoir can be found online here.

One year later Susan remarried with Joseph Whitcomb, mission farm manager and former first mate on the Diana. His health also became problematic. In order to see if he could improve, the new family returned to Massachusetts. Whitcomb’s health worsened, however, and Susan became a widow for a second time. She and her daughters remained in Lynn, Massachusetts.

difficulties

Dr. White and Alanson Beers failed to get along during the long sea voyage. Beers wanted a hearing against White for “unchristian” language used. Jason Lee showed a failing which haunted him to the end of the clinic. He held three long hearings to try and decide who lay at fault and what to do about the problems. Malaria flared up again as spring became summer affected everyone.

In spite of the difficulties, it was decided to open a second mission at The Dalles – Wascopam. But the plans were put on hold with sickness reigning.

SECOND REINFORCEMENT

Another smaller group arrived in September 1837 with Reverend David Leslie, his wife and three children; another preacher from Maine, Reverend Henry K. W. Perkins; and Margaret Smith. Perkins’ writings soon got him trouble with the home church, gaining him a suspension for unsoundness of faith. 

Smith did not appreciate Reverend Leslie due to what Smith described as Leslie looking down upon her as a social inferior. Tired of the last episodes of hearings from the White-Beers difficulties, Lee refused to take up the matter.

Meanwhile, those who had come west became disillusioned finding no Native Americans to evangelize. White and Leslie both thought little of Jason. They managed to draw up a petition, in December, urging Lee to return to the States to take a sabbatical and improve his manners back among civilized folk. Jason reacted poorly, so the petition was withdrawn, but the disapproval of his management of the mission remained.

It took several months before Jason decided to head east. But to justify such a trip, he needed more of a reason than the withdrawn petition, especially with his new wife expecting a child. The reason he came up with was to establish a series of other missions – one near Astoria, one near Fort Nisqually, one at Willamette Falls and a last one at The Dalles. The thought was to serve the souls of the heathen, but also each place offered commercial potential. For such a large expansion of the mission scope, more people were needed. He knew he needed to be on hand to convince the Methodist Mission Board in person of the need and expenditures involved.

margaret jewett smith

William Willson became engaged to Smith for a short time before she learned he already asked another woman to come to marry him. Insisting on waiting to find if the other woman was actually coming. They lived together with separate beds awaiting their eventual marriage. Willson became impatient, asking Smith to falsely confess that they had slept together so they could marry immediately. After Smith refused, Willson told the other members of the mission that they had. Unable to prove her innocence, Smith left the mission. Willson married Chloe Aurelia Clark, the lady whom he earlier asked for, the following year.

The next year, Smith married William J. Bailey, an early pioneer and politician not with the mission. Willson married Chloe Aurelia Clark whom came out with Great Reinforcement the following year. Smith lived with Bailey on their farm in French Prairie. She became a regular contributor of prose and poetry to the Oregon Spectator in 1846. On April 12, 1854, Margaret divorced Bailey due to his drinking and abuse.

Smith wrote a thinly disguised memoir of her time with the Methodist Mission as a novel The Grains, becoming the first novelist from Oregon as well appearing as the first woman writer in the State. She ended up marrying two more times dying in Seattle in 188

EASTERN JOURNEY

Daniel Lee and Henry Perkins set out on 14 March 1838 to establish the Wascopam Station at The Dalles. Just less than two weeks later, Jason and two Native boys from the mission school set out for Fort Vancouver. With two others, they set out to cross the mountains to bring others to Oregon. James Douglas, back at the fort, an HBC chief factor, was dubious of Lee’s new mission.  He saw the Methodist mission transforming from an evangelical affair to more of a commercial-oriented venture. 

Jason stopped at Wascopam, as well as Waiilatpu – Dr. Whitman – and Lapwai – Henry Spalding. Impressed by the number of Natives converted if not to the Gospel, at least to the rudiments of farming.  Realizing some had gained some knowledge of the scriptures and looked for more, he wrote, “the truth is they are Indians.”

RETHINKING THE IDEA OF CONVERSION

Both Whitman and Spalding concurred with the hope of organizing a string of new missions from the Puget Sound to the Snake River Country. Spalding asked for 110 farmers, mechanics, teachers, physicians and ministers, all with wives and children. Along with this mass of people, plenty of supplies to create a New Eden in the west.

From the Congregational missions, Jason’s party headed east with the Snake Country HBC brigade led by Frank Ermatinger. At a fur trading rendezvous at the confluence of the Pop Agie and the Wind River, they met the only reinforcements which ever came west to help Marcus Whitman’s efforts – three Congregationalist ministers and their wives. These people joined up with Ermatinger to head west while Jason’s party joined a caravan packing furs to Missouri. 

Resting a few days at Westport before continuing east, they received word on 8 September by a special messenger sent from Dr. McLoughlin of the death of Anna and her newborn son. They had already been dead two months by the time the news reached Jason.

Recovery of Jason’s Self confidence

Lee continued east stopping at a series of towns where he conducted talks drumming up his crusade in the west – St. Louis, Chicago – steamer to New York State where he visited Utica and New York City. In Washington, statesmen consulted with him. At Middleton, Connecticut, Wilbur Fisk arose from his deathbed to share the stage with his pupil. His receptions in the east soothed his self-image wounded from his recent travails in the Willamette.

.Along the way, Jason found another woman – Lucy Thompson – to agree to marry him, before he returned to Oregon. He also found a wife for his nephew Daniel, Marie Ware. Among supporters he met in the east, none were more important than the shipping family of John Cushing. Through notes to Caleb Cushing, John’s son and a congressman from Massachusetts, Lee supported a petition he brought east which asked for the US government to help bring about American possession to Oregon. 

Jason noted some of his plans for a string of missions to convert the heathen. To bring about that end, he noted it was needed “to cultivate the soil, erect dwelling houses and school-houses, build mills, and, in fact, introduce all the necessities and helps of a civilized colony.”  And here, Lee noted in contrast to the stated mission of extending Christianity, “We need a guarantee from the Government that the possession of the land we take up, and the improvements we make upon it, will be secured to us.  These settlements will greatly increase the value of the Government domain in that country, should Indian title ever be extinguished.”

A New Mission

The Methodist Board of Foreign Missions approve the dispatch of an additional 17 missionaries with families. An initial $30,000 was appropriated for their travel. When calling for more volunteers in April 1839, the Board made a disclaimer of any intent to form a colony, though others saw so many heading out to Oregon could dramatically change the composition of the country. 

In October, after Lee had married his new wife, those making up the Great Reinforcement gathered in New York City to venture to the far west aboard the Lausanne. They reached the Columbia bar in May 1840. From Fort George, Jason left the ship as it slowly came up the Columbia with the rest of his group. Lee was paddled ahead to Mission Bottom to organize the group’s arrival and send off to the various missions he had in mind.

Reverend John Richmond, his sick wife and four children went north to establish a station at the Nisqually Plains. There were no Americans living in that area of the Puget Sound at the time. Even most of the Native Americans had relocated elsewhere. 

Dr. Ira Babcock with his family and Henry Brewer, a farmer, with his wife got sent to Wascopam to reinforce that station – Daniel Lee had earlier left for the Clatsop Plains where Reverend J. H. Frost became assigned to bring the good news to the Chinook tribes. Reverend W. W. Kone would join them. The rest stayed at Mission Bottom where most contracted malaria.

A New Mission House and a Send Off

Jason already planned to relocate the main mission upriver about ten miles to a plain called Chemeketa. The settlement became Mission Mills with sawmills and grist mills set up along Mill Creek. All of these plans and operations ran into difficulties soon after Jason and his new group arrived. Elijah White had been acting as the mission leader for the past two years in Jason’s absence. Asking to go over the mission’s accounting books, Jason started up an affair eventually dooming him and his mission. White became upset thinking that in Lee needing to go over the accounts so closely, implied a slur on the doctor’s character.

Next, White wrote a series of letters castigating Lee as a leader of the mission, ordering him to resign, offering to give him a character reference if he did so. White considered himself still in charge. The two went back and forth before White finally relented and offered to burn all of his letters. The problem now, Reverend Alvan Waller had introduced an indictment against the doctor. Eventually, this led to a vote for White’s expulsion from the mission. He and his family boarded the Lausanne when it was time for the ship to return to New York.  Jason’s problems with White did not disappear so easily.

Disillusionment

The members of the Great Reinforcement came west with the understanding they responsibility would include thousands of souls to save. The elemental problem seen as simply not enough Native Americans lived on the scene. Malaria, tuberculosis and other diseases left whole villages gone. The survivors had little interest in Christianity which they had to die to enjoy. For the new recruits, this realization came as a profound shock. Their sacrifices in leaving everything behind in the east had been done in vain.  Most now tried to merely survive in their new world. Some returned home when they could.

The mission’s focus became more about commercial business. Alvan Waller went to the Willamette Falls to set up a more commercial than religious mission. Frustration existed with the lack of local government and the HBC which served to monopolize all economical industries in the region – price of goods, price of wheat (they were the only “market” the locals could sell their surplus to). Some of the Methodist members turned to organizing politics on the local scale in response to a lack of governance from a federal level. The meetings at Champoeg were instigated and led by several men from their mission backgrounds, though Jason Lee was not one of them.

COLONY OR CONVERSION OF THE NATIVES?

One of the main push behind the Great Reinforcement was to bring a few more ministers, but also many more non-frocked men to help build the mission infrastructure. By relieving the ministers of their temporal works, they could gain more time to preach. Jason Lee, however, told McLoughlin before the Great Reinforcement came out, all the missionaries worked and afterwards, none worked. His ability to lead began to slip away in 1841 as people drifted away from his control. Waller and George Abernethy – the mission accountant and future governor of the Provisional Government – both began to develop the area around Willamette Falls with land claims, a mission store and milling company, further eroding the religious beginnings of the mission.

A few weeks after childbirth, Jason’s second wife Lucy died, though the little girl survived.  Reverend Richmond departed for the States after a tempestuous row with Lee. Reverend Kone had already left.  Others drifted away, as well. 

LEE’S RECALL

In the summer of 1843, the Methodist Mission had reached a breaking point. Even Daniel left with his term served and his wife’s health not good. Brother Kone and Dr. Richmond laid new charges against Lee upon their return to New York. And in September he received word of the Board’s disapproval of his governance which included his accounts being delinquent in disbursements to the amount of $100,000. He next heard from Dr. Whitman who had recently returned from the east that Jason was up for removal from his leadership role. Not happy to hear of this from other’s mouths instead of from the Board directly, Jason decided it was time to head east with his little daughter and Reverend Gustavus Hines and his wife.

Making it to the Sandwich Islands, Lee found out he was definitely out, and his replacement was en route. Leaving his daughter and the Hines to return to Oregon, he hurried east reaching New York at the end of May 1844. In July, he defended himself for three days in front of the board gaining acquittal of speculation and wrongdoing. Still, he gained no further position except as missionary to Oregon with his future up to the Board. The Board would not need to get back to him, however.  Lee was seriously sick with tuberculosis by now. Returning to his home in Stanstead, he died 12 March 1845 at the age of 42.

MISSION SHUT DOWN

Reverend George Gary showed up in Oregon City 1 June 1844. Sent by the Methodist Mission Board to ascertain the state of affairs of the mission both financially and spiritually. Gary had the ability to scale back the mission if needed. Two days after arriving, Gary sat with seven members of the mission council – lay and clerical members both present. He laid out the problems the Board had with the mission – benefits to Native Americans vastly overstated; as a result, financial outlays previously too generous from the Board; little information sent to the Board previously laid out the true nature of the mission by the Board.

Complaints began with the large numbers of immigrants arriving in Oregon. They put pressures on the Methodist Mission and its large numbers of land claims and the location of some of those. HBC officials were also seen as too generous with the new immigrants. The Waller-McLoughlin land claim dispute at Willamette Falls split the overall Oregon community. New immigrants arrived without prejudice against the mission but acquired it after reaching Oregon.

tour of the missions

Gary next took a tour of Methodist holdings. At Chemeketa, there was a sawmill, a gristmill, a parsonage, claims on 10,240 acres and a Native American manual-labor school. The school rose three stories without weatherboards or cornices in place yet. Some $8 to 10,000 already spent on the building with another $2,000 needed to complete a school which had graduated a grand total of four students in the preceding decade.  

The local missionaries agreed the chief good gained from the school was the many who died had gained some exposure to Christianity. This could put them in line to go to heaven. Gray became dismayed by the stern discipline administered. Runaway students who got caught and brought back were severely whipped. Boys and girls also known to engage in sexual intercourse from the medical evidence of sexually transmitted disease. The school superintendent, Hamilton Campbell, himself caught with one of the girl students.

Twenty-three students occupied the building – seven had died in the past seven months. Most were tubercular with several not expected to live much longer. Gary decided to sell the school to a group of Methodists who organized the Oregon Institute two years prior. That school – geared for the education of white children – had not erected a school building yet and were only too happy to buy it – the school was the forerunner of today’s Willamette University.

sell off

Clatsop Plains Mission was sold off to the last minister there, Reverend Josiah Parrish. The price was six months free preaching and Parrish’s foregoing of a free trip back to the east. Gary next sold off the mills at Mission Mills along with all of the cattle and horses and the Mission House farm. For Gary, the Oregon Mission had been a costly mistake, more secular than spiritual.

One of the biggest problems Gary found himself involved with was the land claim controversy at Willamette Falls. He soon sent the problem off to the Methodist general conference in New York washing him hands of the problem. Gary found himself dismayed at the “Methodists” who Jason Lee had to deal with in Oregon.  He continued to get rid of properties: the general store at Oregon City sold to George Abernathy in 1845 and Wascopam sold to Dr. Whitman in 1847 (Whitman hoped to move his mission from Waiilatpu in light of continuing problems with the local Natives in that area – his murder ended those hopes).

Last superintendent

Gary left Oregon in early July 1847 making the return journey to New England via the Sandwich Islands. Arriving early in 1848, now 54 years of age, he spent the rest of his life preaching in Vernon, New York where he lies buried. His successor, the third and final superintendent of the Oregon Mission was Reverend William Roberts. 

Roberts oversaw the change of the Mission to a regular church conference of the Methodist Church 5 September 1849. The organizing session held at Salem in the chapel of the Oregon Institute. The original conference – conferences are similar to diocese overseen by a bishop – included Oregon, California and New Mexico. Oregon and California split into two more conferences in 1853 – the Oregon Conference taking in all of the original Oregon Territory from 1846. 

Jason Lee established a mission; George Gary cleaned up the mess; William Roberts organized a church. Roberts spent most of the rest of his life serving as a missionary, a preacher and a pastor. In 1879, at the age of 67, Roberts bucked the political winds in Oregon taking an interest in the plight of the Chinese immigrants on the Pacific Coast. He established a night school for them. All told, the Northwest church historian Erle Howell estimates Roberts covered more than 200,000 miles on the circuit during his duties with the Methodist church.

SUCCESS OR FAILURE OF THE METHODIST MISSION TO OREGON

The effort of the Methodist Episcopal Church to convert mass numbers of Native Americans in the Oregon Country went for naught. Failure started at the top with Jason Lee becoming disenchanted with Native Americans in general on his overland journey from St. Louis. The simple effort in staying alive in the primitive conditions of the Oregon Country, made preaching and converting a luxury, Jason changed the impetus of the mission – without initially acknowledging it to the Board back in the States – from a converting mission to one of colonization.

A main problem with Methodist, or Protestant efforts, in general, was what was conversion. Protestant missionaries – both in Lee’s case and Marcus Whitman – strived to remake Native Americans as white Americans, in dress, custom, avocation and religious thought. The problem began with a general misunderstanding of what Native Americans were looking for when the initial party showed up on William Clark’s doorstep in St. Louis. They were not looking for a new religion to replace theirs, but for a better understanding of the white man’s religion with the thought of adapting parts to their own basic beliefs. Such an idea never even contemplated by the Methodists or other Protestant missionaries.

FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE

Methodists, like most other Protestants, did not seek to learn native languages or cultures. Only a few Methodist missionaries ever attempted to learn Native American tongues – specifically Reverend Parrish at Clatsop and Daniel Lee at Wascopam. Their belief, Natives needed to give up everything to become proper Christians. As a result, very few converts ever came from their efforts. Catholic priests were much more successful with their efforts. They learnt native languages and did not try and change lifestyles making the Natives into perfect White people. Catholic Christianity also had a malleability about it allowing for some fusion between the two cultures. For the Methodists, it was all or nothing. Either you were a Christian in the Methodist-model, or you were nothing.

VISTING THE SITES OF THE OREGON MISSION

Willamette Mission State Park

Just south of the Wheatland Ferry on the east bank of the Willamette River is the Mission Bottom State Park. Here, Jason and Daniel Lee set up the initial Methodist Mission House. The site of the original mission sits on an oxbow of the river abandoned by the main river course. Lots of trails course through the park with one opposite the former site. There is a viewpoint across to a ghost structure of the former mission long since lost to history. Today the park is surrounded by hop fields and the river to the west. Wander about to get a sense of the isolation that affected one and all during the time of the mission.

The Mission Hospital and home of Alan Beers still stands just to the south outside of the park, a private residence today. The other original mission buildings washed away in a large flood in 1861.  Day admission to the park is $10.

Mission Mills

Jason Lee, upon his return with the Great Reinforcement, moved the mission further south to what is now part of Salem. His house and a gristmill gone today. The house moved to its present site at the Willamette Heritage Center at the Mill across from Willamette University. There is only a tablet explaining the significance of the site. Presently, a law office and its parking lot takes up the place of Lee’s second mission site.

Across the street to the west, Boon’s Treasury sits. Rehabilitated by the McMenamin Brothers, the building erected in 1860 served as the State Treasury Office originally. It later became a general store and was restored to its present use as a tavern for the last 75+ years. Both President Herbert Hoover and Senator Charles McNary left their marks on the north side of the tavern. John Boon was the original owner. He served as both Territorial and State Treasurer. His house moved to the Willamette Heritage Center at the Mill in 1972 next to Lee’s former home. A Methodist, Boon moved his family of seven children to Oregon in 1842.

Lee Mission Cemetery

This cemetery is a little out of the way on D Street in northeast Salem. Originally placed on a little less than 5 acres – today it is over 15.5 acres – in 1869 on land given by Methodist missionary Reverend Josiah Parrish and his wife Elizabeth, the cemetery holds over 3,200 burials today with a large concentration of missionaries and men and women important with the Methodist church on the Pacific Coast.

Members buried at the old mission site at Mission Bottom were re-interred here, the most prominent of the mission members lying in a fenced off area known as the Diamond Square. Jason Lee reunited with his two wives and children and his other missionary families – Parrishes, Hines and Beers – in 1906. He was originally buried just north of his hometown of Stanstead. Though his remains exhumed, a cenotaph still lies in the Moulton Cemetery.

Outside of the Square are other important Methodist figures such as William Roberts, James Wilbur (he organized several churches and schools in Oregon) along with Erastus Haven, a former president of both the University of Michigan and Northwestern University as well as a Methodist bishop. Nearby lies the one vault found in the cemetery, that of Alvan Waller, one of the men responsible for today’s Willamette University and the foe of John McLoughlin over land claims at Willamette Falls in Oregon City.

Mission House – Willamette Heritage Center

For over sixty years, the Thomas Kay Woolen Mill produced woolen products from their large mill powered in part by the water from the adjacent Mill Stream. The mill shut down in the early 1960s. Locals established the Mission Mill Museum soon after in 1964.  

methodism on the move

The next year, the Jason Lee House moved here to the grounds of the Woolen Mill. The 1841 Methodist Parsonage had been acquired by the Marion County Historical Society in 1953. 

To make room for a new Salem School District office building, the Parsonage moved to the then-still operating grounds of the Woolen Mill. With the establishment of the Mission Mill Museum, the Parsonage moved to its current location in 1972. The John D. Boon house, thought as the oldest single-family dwelling in Salem, moved from its original site – next to Boon’s Treasury – to the Mission Mill Museum also in 1972. The Pleasant Grove Church, oldest Presbyterian church in the Pacific Northwest moved from near Aumsville here in 1984.

While the main focus at the Willamette Heritage Center remains the Woolen Mill, complete with exhibits fully explaining the intricacies of producing woolen products, the neighboring homes and the exhibits within give one of the more complete pictures found covering the histories of the 1834-1844 Methodist Mission to the Oregon Country. Exhibits cover the men and women involved with the Mission and the Native Americans whom they hoped to serve. The Marion County Historical Society also maintains a museum in the mill’s old retail store. Their online collections are invaluable to anyone seeking to find out more about the Mission and the people involved.

Prices vary from free to $10.

OUTLYING MISSIONS

CLATSOP PLAINS

Five of a planned-for six outlying missions were briefly developed in addition to the main Methodist Mission in the Willamette Valley. Little remains of these missions. Two missions of those planned actually attempted to proselytize Native Americans – the original focus of the entire mission – Clatsop Plains and Wascopam. Two other missions represented more of a commercial outreach by the Methodists – Willamette Falls and Nisqually Plains.

The mission to the Chinook tribes – Clatsop Plains – was formerly located on the east side of US 101 just south of the intersection with Oregon Highway 104 – Fort Stevens Highway – where Perkins Lane runs off to the east. Nothing of the mission exists today. The last missionary at Clatsop Plains was Josiah Parrish. He ended up back in the Willamette Valley after serving for a time as an Indian agent.

Nisqually Plains

In 1838, Jason Lee had Leslie Wilson establish a home on the Nisqually Plains near the HBC Fort Nisqually. When missionary John P. Richmond arrived as part of the Great Reinforcement, Lee sent him north to join Wilson and a teacher, Chloe Clark. Richmond quickly lost interest in proselytizing the local Natives. He saw them “fast sinking into the grave.  Extinction seems to be their inevitable doom…” After only two years, he and his family withdrew back to the States.  Catholic priest François Blanchet noted “His house was a little palace. I am told that a short time after his departure the natives set it on fire.” Richmond returned to Illinois from where he came before heading to Oregon. Eventually, he and his family ended up in South Dakota.

Nothing exists of the Methodist Mission nor the HBC fort at Nisqually. The mission house lay approximately near the trailhead of the Sequalitchew Trail in Dupont, Washington. That trail goes down to the shore of the Puget Sound near where Charles Wilkes set up a short-lived observatory during his stay. The trail also shows the former narrow-gauge rail track of the DuPont dynamite plant which succeeded the fort and mission here.

wascopam

Wascopam might have been the most successful Methodist Mission. Here, hundreds sometimes gathered to hear the missionaries’ words. But hearing the message and taking it to heart in the form of conversion was another thing entirely. Daniel Lee and Henry Perkins were one of the few Methodist missionaries taking the trouble to try and learn some of the Native American languages – Parrish was another. Lee lasted until 1843 before leaving. Perkins stayed on for another year. Both would end up next in the Sandwich Islands before finally returning to the east.

Their mission house was sold when the Oregon Mission began to close down by Reverend Gary to Dr. Marcus Whitman. Before the Whitmans could move here, however, they were murdered and the Methodists regained control. The grounds then became taken over by the US government and Fort The Dalles went up in place of the mission.  A nearby rock at the intersection of East 12^th Street and Court Street in the city of The Dalles known as Pulpit Rock, memorialized for its history of the missionaries preaching to the Natives from there.

Willamette Falls

Reverend Alvan Waller went to the Willamette Falls to establish both a mission among the Clackamas and Clowwawalla tribes and a sawmill to provide lumber for the mission enterprises. Waller remains best known here for his drawn-out squabble with John McLoughlin over land claims at the Falls. McLoughlin had laid a much earlier claim, but Waller claimed he never improved his claim, so the claim was null and void. Lee resented Waller’s fight with McLoughlin as was Gray when he succeeded Lee.  

Waller eventually returned to the main mission in Salem area where he would associate with the founding of the eventual Willamette University. He would also spend the latter part of his life as a circuit rider through the Willamette Valley. He succeeded in pulling together $40,000 for the construction of today’s Waller Hall on the campus of Willamette University.

While Abernethy lived on the east side of the Willamette, Waller lived on the west side. In September 1840, Rev. Alvin Waller and his family arrived at the Falls of the Willamette as missionaries to the natives.He built a temporary two-room dwelling at the edge of the falls. In December 1842, Waller and Rev. Jason Lee persuaded 27 Americans to pledge $837 to build this first Protestant church building west of the Rockies along with a bell donated by George Abernathy. Its corner post is now on display in the Museum of the Oregon Territory. 

CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS

While Waller’s claim lay at the Falls, George Abernethy and his wife built their home near the confluence of Abernethy Creek and the Willamette. The site of present-day End of the Oregon Trail Interpretative Center is also the site of Abernethy Green where many Oregon Pioneers would overwinter at the end of their journey. They would head off to make claims the following year.

While Waller was unsuccessful in contesting McLoughlin’s claim, Abernethy – Provisional Governor of the Oregon Country – and friends – Judge W. P. Bryant and Samuel R. Thurston the Oregon Territorial member to the US Congress – were able to block McLoughlin – but that is another story.

Abernethy Island and the Falls would become part of a general industrialization of the area, using hydropower. One might be able to wander these grounds in the future if the plans of the Grande Ronde Tribe – which now owns the grounds – comes to fruition. Nothing beyond the tablet at Abernethy Green at the parking lot of the End of the Oregon Trail Interpretative Center remain to note the Methodist efforts here.

FURTHER READING

The website for the Willamette Heritage Center includes several online books written by the early Methodist missionaries. Included are the diaries of Jason Lee; Daniel Lee’s book Ten Years in Oregon; books written by missionaries Elijah White – another Ten Years in Oregon; and by Gustavus Hines – Oregon: its history, condition and prospects: containing a description of the geography, climate and productions with personal adventures among the Indians during a residence of the author on the plains bordering the Pacific while connected with the Oregon mission: embracing extended notes of a voyage round the world; and the Methodist Annual Reports regarding the Oregon Mission.