Lasting Effects of the Missionary Era in Oregon

End of the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center
History 101

The End of the Missions

In the mid to late 1830s, missionaries came to the Oregon Country representing the Catholic, Congregational, Presbyterian, and Methodist-Episcopal Churches. Their primary mission was to convert the natives and minister to the spiritual needs of the fur trappers. Their success, however, came more in the area of serving the increasing number of emigrants. Jason Lee actively promoted emigration, and Marcus Whitman was instrumental to the success of the first wagon train that braved the Trail by leading them to his mission.

The Catholic Black Robes arrived first, followed by the Methodists under Lee and the Presbyterians and Congregationalists, representing the ABCFM, under Whitman and Spalding. These groups were reinforced in the late 1830s and early 1840s.

Although there were Catholic priests in the Oregon Country since the arrival of the Hudson's Bay Company in 1824, the first Catholic missionaries came to Oregon from Montreal in late 1838. The Rev. Father Francis Blanchet, later to become Archbishop of Oregon, and the Rev. Father Modeste Demers were both French-Canadians. Their parish was likewise comprised mostly of French-Canadians, either active or retired fur traders.

A mission church was started at St. Paul on French Prairie just north of Lee's mission. Branch missions were opened at Cowlitz and Nisqually. The Rev. Father P.J. DeSmet came to the Flathead Indians of northern Idaho from St. Louis a year later and built an Indian school and the beautiful church of the Sacred Heart near Couer D'Alene.

The Catholic missions were reinforced by ship from Belgium in 1844, including six Sisters of Notre Dame who started a convent at French Prairie. A convent and girls orphanage started by the Sisters of the Holy Names on the Willamette River has since become Marylhurst College. When Lee's Oregon Institute was suffering for lack of students, Blanchet offered to buy it and merge it with his boys school, but Lee turned him down. Father Blanchet's school became the University of Portland, while the Oregon Institute became Willamette University.

Several Independent Congregational missionaries also came to Oregon without the backing of the ABCFM. The Reverends J.S. Griffin and Asahel Munger and their wives were sent by the North Litchfield Congregational Association of Connecticut in 1839 because they were dissatisfied with the progress of the ABCFM missions. Griffin and Munger came west with fur trappers and wintered with the Spaldings and Whitmans. The journey caused Munger to become mentally deranged, so he was sent to work with Lee's older, more established Methodist Mission. It may be that they believed the larger community at Mission Bottom would be better able to deal with a madman in their midst. However, once there, Munger became obsessed with the belief that the Indians needed a miracle and, apparently attempting to provide one singlehandedly, impaled himself upon a spike over a blacksmith's forge. He was badly burned and died of his injuries the following day.

Griffin settled on the Tualatin Plains near Hillsboro, where in 1842 he started the First Congregational Church of Oregon. In 1840, Rev. Harvey Clark, also an Independent Congregational missionary, came across the Oregon Trail. His intentions were to labor among the Indians. As there were few surviving Indians in the Willamette Valley by this time, he settled on a claim near Griffin's in Forest Grove where he and Tabitha Brown (the Mother of Oregon) established the Tualatin Academy in 1848. In 1854, the Academy became Pacific University, the second-oldest college in Oregon. Willamette University, founded by Jason Lee as the Oregon Institute, is the oldest.

Not all of the missionaries were able to live out long and productive lives in Oregon. In July of 1843, the ABCFM recalled Jason Lee to Boston to answer for his low number of converts. Still seeking the vindication of his labors in Oregon, Lee died two years later. Without a population of Indians to focus their labors, the Methodist missions degenerated into gross commercialism and materialism.

Probably the low point of this materialism were the efforts made by Alvan Waller on behalf of the Methodists. To his credit was the establishment of the church at Oregon City and the revitalization of the mission at Wascopam; to his detriment were the efforts he made in cooperation with the anti-British faction of American settlers to deny John McLoughlin's claim to Mill Island, which Governor Abernethy subsequently claimed as Governors Island. Further, Waller cooperated with Jason Lee in his successful effort to include language in the Donation Land Act of 1850 that specifically denied McLoughlin his Oregon City claim.

One missionary who outlasted the others and had a profound effect on the development of Oregon was Dr. George Atkinson, the only missionary directly sponsored by the Congregational Church. He arrived in 1848 and spent his first 15 years in the Oregon Country serving the Congregational Church in Oregon City, which is today named for him. During that time, he was responsible for the creation of Pacific University and the Oregon City Women's Seminary, but his greatest contribution to the future was the creation of the state system of public education, for which he is today remembered as the "Father of Oregon Education." When Territorial Governor Joe Lane gave his inaugural address to the legislature, the section calling for a system of public schools was written by Dr. Atkinson at Lane's request. The first public school was Barclay School in Oregon City, housed in the former Women's Seminary that Atkinson had established some years earlier. By 1862, the system was in place: there were 125 academies, institutes, and seminaries accepting students in Oregon. One of them, St. Mary's Academy in Portland, is still open to this day.

All of the missions except the churches at St. Paul and Oregon City are relegated to history, but they made a lasting mark on Oregon.