Walker and Eells visited the Spokan tribe that autumn and selected a site at Tshimakain (“the place of springs”). But winter was close at hand, and they returned to Waiilatpu to await spring. The Grays went to Lapwai, where Spalding and Gray quarreled throughout the winter. At Waiilatpu, the Whitmans’ little house was crowded to an uncomfortable degree. Although the new mission house was far enough along for the Smiths to move into it in December, the first house then had to make room for the arrival of Mary Walker’s first son. Such crowded conditions were to lead to severe irritations before the winter was over. The diaries and the letters home show that hurt feelings were an all too common occurrence, and feuds began to gnaw at the unity of the Oregon mission. There were forebodings, which later proved correct, that the antagonisms of that winter would hurt the future work of the missionaries. Among the disagreements was one between Whitman and Smith. It became evident that the two would not be able to work together. Always the pacifier, Whitman took the initiative by offering to leave Waiilatpu and begin a new station. But the arrival of spring brought a new spirit of cooperation. The Walkers and Eellses left for Tshimakain, and Whitman and Smith patched up their relations. Nevertheless, they did separate; but it was the Smiths who left. Asa and his wife moved to Kamiah, 50 miles up the Clearwater from Spalding, where they began a new mission among the Nez Percé. By the summer of 1839 there were four American Board stations in Oregon: Waiilatpu among the Cayuse; Lapwai and Kamiah among the Nez Percé, and Tshimakain in the country of the Spokan. Of these, the one most fully developed and the one destined to be the center for the Oregon field was Waiilatpu. _A Community Rises at Waiilatpu_ The number of people at Waiilatpu in the winter of 1838-39 convinced Whitman that work on the new mission house had to be speeded up. Fortunately, he was able to hire Asahel Munger, who was a skilled carpenter. Munger had come out to Oregon as an independent missionary only to find that a person could not be independent in that vast, unsettled country. He eagerly accepted Whitman’s offer.