"Trophies" for God: Native Mortality, Racial Ideology, and the Methodist Mission of Lower Oregon, 1834-1844

Abstract

GRAY H. WHALEY "Trophies" for God NativeMortality,Racial Ideology,and the MethodistMission ofLowerOregon, 1834-1844 IN 1831, A GROUP OF NEZ PERCE and Flathead Indiansreversedthe familiar storyof theAmerican West by venturing eastward from theColum bia Plateau to St. Louis, theAmericans' "gateway to the West." Unfortunately, St. Louis residents did not recordmuch information about the Indians'visit east.According to one account by theChristian Advocate published two years later,however, theNez Perce and Flatheads had requested instruction in the Bible. This belated claim caused a considerable stir. Many Americans were swept up in a religious revivalmovement now known as the "Second Great Awakening." These evangelical Christians believed that theHoly Spirit could livewithin them ifthey adhered to a doctrinal view of theGospel, made the Word central to all their thoughts and actions, and exhorted the benefits of such a life to fellow Christians and non-Christians alike. Ideally, they could convert theworld to this true faith and begin the new millennium. In the excitement over theNez Perces' and Flatheads' supposed call for the Bible, theMethodist Mission Society attempted the expensive proposition of a mission in the little-known and distant "lower Oregon Country"?the vast expanse surrounding the lower and middle Columbia River of present-day Oregon and Washington ? and dispatched Rev. Jason Lee. In 1834,Lee situated his initialmission station upriver fromWillamette Falls, a comfortable distance from Fort Vancouver, theHudson's Bay Com pany establishment near the confluence of theWillamette and Columbia Rivers. His Willamette Valley location was far from the lands of theNez Perce Research for thisarticlewas supported by theOregon Historical Society'sDonald J. Sterling,Jr., Memorial Senior Research Fellowship. 6 OHQ vol. 107, no. 1 ? 2006 Oregon Historical Society OHS neg.,OrHi 46192 A sketchof the WillametteMission House, established byRev. JasonLee in 1834 and Flathead, but he chose it largely for its suitability for amission colony and an agricultural school. In the first decade, a more substantial central station was established nearby at present-day Salem and other stations were added at Clatsop near themouth of theColumbia River,Willamette Falls, Nisqually on Puget Sound, and The Dalles on themiddle Columbia. Despite the "clarion call" heralded by the Christian Advocate, Lee did not find aNative population clamoring for the Bible. Instead, theMethod ists encountered people reeling frommalaria epidemics that had begun in 1830. Their population continued to decline significantly for years because of inadvertently introduced diseases forwhich they had no immunities or effective treatments. As a result of the cataclysmic demise of theNative population, Lee adjusted his expectations: while themajority of Indians were doomed, some could be saved to take their place inChristian America as "trophies."1 Generally, however, their "blood" would only be preserved Whaley, "Trophies" forGod 7 through "amalgamation" (interracial marriage).2 Still, he never lost faith in themission's goal of "saving" theNative people of Oregon. Lee's faithwas not shared by all themissionaries. Other problems for the mission effort resulted because most Indians were simply disinterested in substituting a new religion and way of life for their own, and their several languages and dialects frustrated themissionaries who spoke only English. The Indians' demographic collapse and frustrations with limited conver sions weakened the resolve of some missionaries, particularly those of the "reinforcement" of 1840. Within a couple of years, thesemissionaries sought to close theMission, arguing that Indians would be replaced by Euro Americans. The view that Christians were destined to possess American lands and that Indians were destined to disappear dated back toPuritan New England in the 1600s.3 Two hundred years later, the history of the eastern United States and emerging beliefs about race added weight to it.By 1843, critics of theOregon Mission believed thatNative extinction was inevitable and, unlike Lee, that themission was a lost cause. Both Lee and his detractors drew on racialism, the growing body of folk beliefs and pseudo-science that attempted to explain perceived differences among peoples by their inherent physical traits.By the late 1700s, human dif ferences once thought tobe ethnic or cultural (i.e., Christian versus heathen or civilized versus barbarian) came to be seen as fixed by biological "race." Lee's racial beliefs were relatively benign insofar as he still saw a future for Indian people...