“My people sent me to get the white man’s Book of Heaven. You took me to where they worship the Great Spirit with candles, but the book was not there. You showed me the images of the Great Spirit and the pictures of the good land beyond, but the book was not among them to tell us the way. I am going back the long trail to my people in the dark land. You make my feet heavy with gifts and my moccasins will grow old with carrying them and yet the book is not among them. When I tell my poor blind people, after the more snow, in the Big Council that I did not bring the book, no word will be spoken by our old men or by our young braves. One by one they will rise up and go out in silence. My people will die in darkness and they will go a long path to other hunting grounds. No white man will go with them, and no white man’s Book of Heaven will make the way plain. I have no more words.” Among the early missionaries, who became inspired by a knowledge of the quest for the “White Man’s Book of Heaven,” were Francis McCormick, known as the “man with the fist and the ax,” and John Kobler, the first Methodist preacher north and west of the Ohio River. Another of these leaders was Thomas Hall Pearne, a young man of great culture. He practically received his commission from Bishop Janes in 1851. “Go to Oregon; live there; work there and die there for Jesus,” said the bishop. Young Pearne went west by way of Panama and landed in San Francisco. William Taylor was then leading the religious forces of the sunset city, and Pearne preached in the streets of San Francisco for Taylor; then he sailed to the mouth of the Columbia River and finally reached Portland. On the first Sabbath day the new missionary appeared in his wedding finery, for he had brought a wife to share in his labors, and the stalwart pioneers looked askance at the silk hat, kid gloves, silk necktie, and morocco shoes of the new preacher. “You do not look like the fortieth cousin of a Methodist,” said one of the men frankly. The young man asked to be given a hearing and preached with such spiritual power that the people gladly accepted him as their leader. Pearne erected the first Protestant house of worship on the Pacific coast from Cape Horn to the Straits of Juan de Fuca. When later this pioneer became presiding elder, his district included all of the United States from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean, the total area being 1,170,000 square miles, and it covered all that part now known as Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, North and South Dakota. The population was 13,294 white people and 100,000 Indians.