"The Indians have in no case obeyed the command to multiply and replenish the earth, and they cannot stand in the way of others doing so. A place will be left them to do this as fully as their ability to obey will permit, and the more we do for them the more fully will this be realized. No exclusiveness can be asked for any portion of the human family. The exercise of his rights are all that can be desired. In order for this to be understood to its proper extent, in regard to the Indians, it is necessary that they seek to preserve their rights by peaceable means only. Any violation of this rule will be visited with only evil results to themselves." This letter from Dr. Whitman to his wife's father, dated about seven months after his return from his memorable "Ride to Save Oregon," is for the first time made public in the published transactions of the State Historical Society of Oregon in 1893. It is important from the fact that it gives a complete key to the life and acts of this silent man and his motives for the part he took in the great historic drama, in which the statesmen of the two nations were to be the actors, with millions of people the interested audience. In another place we will show how Whitman has been misrepresented by modern historians, and an attempt made to deprive him of all honor, and call attention to the above record, all the more valuable because never intended for the public eye when written. In the same letter Whitman says, "As I hold the settlement of this country by Americans, rather than by English colonists, most important, I am happy to have been the means of landing so large an immigration on the shores of the Columbia with their wagons, families and stock, all in safety." Such sentiments reveal only the broad-minded, far-seeing Christian man, who, though many thousand miles away from its protecting influence, still loved "The banner of beauty and glory." He had gone to Oregon with only a desire to teach savages Christianity; but saw in the near future the inevitable, and, without lessening his interest in his savage pupils, he entered the broader field. Who can doubt that both were calls from a power higher than man? Or who can point to an instance upon historic pages where the great work assigned was prosecuted with greater fidelity? Having accomplished a feat unparalleled for its heroism and without a break in its grand success, he makes no report of it to any state or national organization, but while he talked freely with his friends of his work it is only now, after he has rested for forty-seven and more years, that this modest letter written to his wife's father at the time, strongly reveals his motives. Having accomplished his great undertaking, he was still the missionary and friend of the Indians, and at once dropped back to his work, and the drudgery of his Indian mission.