W. H. Gray, the secular agent, was a young, fine-looking, daring, and athletic man, very skilful in making and handling boats, teams, waggons, and anything else of a practical nature. He was so positive and even violent in his views as to alienate many with whom he came in contact. Yet he was one of the manliest men that ever came to Oregon, and was intimately connected with nearly every important event in the history of the Columbia River, navigation included. His four sons, all born in Oregon, became steamboat captains and pilots, and without question, no one family has been so intimately associated with the River as has the Gray family. If any one group of people could be said to have filed a claim on the River, it is the family of W. H. Gray. Gray's history is of high value, yet so intense was his hatred of the Hudson's Bay Company and of the British in general, as well as of Roman Catholics, that his book has been subjected to unsparing criticism by later writers. The little missionary band of five, accompanied by the two Nez Perce Indians who had gone East with Whitman the year before, joined the westbound caravan of the American Fur Company, and journeyed with them the greater part of the way. One of the most thrilling and suggestive moments in their journey was when they stood on the summit of the Rockies at South Pass. There they looked down the westward maze of mountains and valleys drained by the Snake River and its tributaries as these swept west to join the Columbia and thence proceed to the Pacific. With that vision before them, they spread the Stars and Stripes to the breeze and kneeling upon the turf, they took possession of the great unknown to the westward in the name of God and the American Union. Nobly was the claim maintained, though with it came the crown of martyrdom. Whitman desired above all other things to demonstrate the feasibility of a waggon road to the Pacific. He therefore insisted on taking his waggon,--"_Chick-chick-shaile-kikash_," the Indians called it, in attempted onomatopoeia. His demonstration was successful, though the trouble was infinite. He was compelled to leave the waggon at the Hudson's Bay Fort on the Boise, near the present site of Boise City, with the intention of getting it the next year. The Hudson's Bay people used every effort to discourage Whitman in his waggon enterprise, though according to Gray, they made much use of the vehicle in their fort. On September 2, 1836, the mission party reached the Hudson's Bay Company's fort at the mouth of the Walla Walla, a little more than four months and two thousand two hundred miles from the banks of the Missouri to those of the Columbia.