Document E
Rev. Jason Lee’s visit to the Eastern States in 1838; and his Report to the Missionary Board at New York in 1844.
On arriving in the Eastern States in 1838 Rev. Jason Lee seems to have become imbued with the zeal and fervor of an evangelist in regard to christianizing the Oregon Indians, and the necessity of more missionaries in Oregon. Rev. Dr. Hines in his Missionary History of the Pacific Northwest, p. 194, says: “Mr. Lee devoted the winter of 1838 and the summer of 1839 to traveling and delivering missionary addresses in the cities and larger towns of the Atlantic states. He was accompanied in his journeys by the two Indian boys, Wm. Brooks and Thomas Adams, brought with him from his missionary school in Oregon, whose presence and intelligent speeches added greatly to the popular enthusiasm. Lee’s appeals were irresistible. The fire of his zeal caught on the altars of the church everywhere. Oregon and the Oregon Mission fired the heart of the church as no mission ever did before. The age of apostolic fervor seemed to have returned, and Lee was in the eye of the church like the great Apostle to the Gentiles building on no other man’s foundation. The thought of distant wilds, where uncounted red men waited and longed for deliverance from the darkness of heathenism that had wrapped all their race for all these ages became an ever present vision to the church of the United States.” In this History, p. 195, Dr. Hines also says: “Poverty donated its little; wealth gave its ‘gold, frankincense, and myrrh.’... The culture of Boston responded; the pride of New York cast its jewels into the treasury. The staid sobriety of Philadelphia wept and shouted and gave. Baltimore out-did the renown of her ancient missionary fame. Lee, erst the lumberman of Canada, later the pioneer missionary, who had dipped his banner in the spray of the Pacific was the hero of the hour.” But in his oral report to the Missionary Board in July, 1844, after quoting the following from the letter of a complaining fellow missionary who went to Oregon on the Lausanne: “And indeed they [the Indians] have no life or energy and are a melancholy, doomed race,” Jason Lee said: “I think this is in part true, the Indians on the Willamette will become, as a distinct race, extinct. But I think there will be more Indian blood through amalgamation, running in the veins of white men a hundred years hence, than would have been running in the veins of the Indians, if they had been left to themselves.”
In July, 1844, Rev. Jason Lee made an oral report to the Missionary Board in New York. This report was not reduced to writing in full but a brief statement of it was made. A copy of this report, as reduced to writing, corrected by, and in Jason Lee’s handwriting, is in the possession of the Oregon Historical Society. The principal serious charges made against Jason Lee, and which caused his summary removal as Superintendent of the Oregon Methodist Mission, had been made secretly, and without notice to him, by members of the Oregon Mission. Lee answered these charges in detail, occasionally with some indignation. These charges against Jason Lee were: using the Mission’s funds for speculation for his own use; misuse of Mission funds; and failure to report concerning the property of the Mission.
In this report Jason Lee said of certain Methodist missionaries:
“In one of Bro. Abernethy’s letters, he tells you that the Superintendent [Jason Lee] refused to send the report of the state of the property home. There is some error in this. I cannot, I will not, believe that A. intended to charge me with opposing the sending of that report.
“Before I had left Oregon I was aware that Bro. Hines had written to the Board. He had read part of his communication to some persons, who had hinted to me about it. He started from Oregon with me, and I was in hopes we should have met face to face before this Board. He returned, however, from the Sandwich Islands to Oregon.
“Bro. Kone complains of my treatment of him, and professes to know my secret reasons for wishing to keep all in the field. I never had any secret reasons.... Bro. Kone by his injudicious remarks caused great excitement among the laymen, and made much difficulty.
“He considered Dr. Richmond his enemy because he had so declared himself, and sent word to him [Mr. Lee] that he was his antagonist. And he hoped as they had heard his enemy they would hear him.
“Of Bro. Frost I cannot say much. He has made no thorough effort to bring sinners to God. I mean such an effort as would render it probable that these Indians could not be benefited by the Gospel.”
In this report Jason Lee also spoke of some other Methodist missionaries who had made charges against him, without giving their names.
As the Board seems to have exonerated Jason Lee from all charges, it must have found that these charges made in Oregon were untrue, or unfounded, or not justified. Exonerating Jason Lee was, in effect, condemning those persons who made the charges, and finding that their charges were false. In this report Rev. Jason Lee also said: “When the Board sent out its last large reinforcement, its object in my view and I believe in theirs was that Methodism should spread throughout Oregon; for what purpose else, I ask, did so large a number of laymen go out? If it was only to form one or two stations, it appears to me that both the Board and myself as their agent must have taken leave of our senses. If my associates had stood firm to their post, and persevered willingly in the work consigned them, I have not a doubt but far more favorable accounts would have reached you from that distant country. The plans I assert were well formed and had I been sustained the object would have been accomplished. A great mistake was made in selecting some of those who were sent out. I allude not to the number but the qualifications of certain individuals. I forewarned the Oregon Committee that if the persons who applied for situations were not examined by a proper committee the plan would fail. Such proved to be the case. As proof I aver that we had not reached our first stopping place in South America, before some desired to return to the United States, and even after touching at the S. [Sandwich] Islands before we had reached Oregon one wanted to return and secure the Chaplaincy at the Islands. I have had much to contend with, and I regret that men of more steadfast minds had not been chosen. Such persons do more injury to a distant Mission than they do good, and no one knows the difficulties I have had to pass through.”
In this report Rev. Jason Lee said further: “He [Dr. McLoughlin] is a Catholic. Previous to the Priests going there, I was his intimate friend,—his confidant. Such was my influence with the Canadian part of the settlement, that they would have been pleased to give me their church and have no Priest come. Since my return I have not time to instruct their children as we used to do, and the Priests have taken them.”