We have compared Whitman on the Walla Walla to Zeisberger on the Muskingum; and the terrible massacre of November 29, 1847, in which the brave hero of Oregon, with his wife and twelve others, gave their lives, belongs in history with the awful Gnadenhütten tragedy. The murder of these brave pioneers by Indians, to whom they had given the best of their lives and all their strength and prayers, is quite as fiendishly incongruous as the destruction of the Moravian band of corn-huskers by frenzied Monongahela frontiersmen; in each case the murderers knew not what they did. But Whitman's work was done, for we have it in his own hand that he would be contented if posterity would remember, not that he had influenced a President or a Congress or saved an Empire, but merely, as he wrote, that he was "one of the first to take white women across the mountains and prevent the disaster and reaction which would have occurred by the breaking up of the present emigration, and establishing the first wagon road across to the border of the Columbia."[13] And yet when you study this boast you will find that it contains in its essence all that any boast for Whitman could hold; for it was an army of axe-bearers that was to save Oregon; and if Meade won Gettysburg or Wolfe captured Quebec, then Whitman and the Americans who went in his track won for America the northern Pacific slope. FOOTNOTES: [5] See p. 46. [6] Dr. Cushing Eells's letter in archives of A. B. C. F. M., Boston. [7] "The Legend of Whitman's Ride," by Prof. E. G. Bourne, _American Historical Review_, January, 1901. [8] Dr. Whitman's route, as we have seen, in 1836. [9] "Letter of John Zachrey," _Senate Ex. Doc. No. 37_, Forty-first Congress, Third Session. [10] Letter file, office of Secretary of War, received June 22, 1844. [11] Friends of Whitman have unfortunately exaggerated this Winter's ride; though a daring feat, it has many parallels in the annals of the old Salt Lake Trail, on which Jim Bridger built the fort that bore his name as early as 1837. [12] The report of a worthy eyewitness of the Thirty-sixth Ohio. [13] Whitman to Secretary Greene, Nov. 1, 1843; Mowry, _Marcus Whitman_, 267. CHAPTER XIII