iration to become a missionary pioneer on the Oregon had
been derived from a Boston schoolmaster whose name also the Northwest
should honor. An inspired soul with a prophet's vision usually goes before
the great movements of life; solitary men summon the march of progress,
then decrease while others increase. Hall J. Kelley was a teacher of the
olden time, well known in Boston almost a century ago. He became possessed
with the idea that Oregon was destined to become a great empire. He
collected all possible information about the territory, and organized
emigration schemes, the first of which started from St. Louis in 1828, and
failed. He talked of Oregon continually. The subject haunted him day and
night. It was he who inspired Rev. Jason Lee, the pioneer of the
Willamette Valley. Lee interested Senator Linn, of Missouri, in Oregon,
and this senator, on December 11, 1838, introduced the bill into Congress
which organized the Territory.

Some of the richly endowed new schools of Oregon would honor history by a
monumental recognition of the name of Hall J. Kelley, the old
schoolmaster, whose dreams were of the Columbia, and who inspired some of
his pupils to become resolute pioneers. Boston was always a friend to
Washington and Oregon. Where the old schoolmaster now rests we do not
know. Probably in a neglected grave amid the briers and mosses of some old
cemetery on the Atlantic coast.

When Marlowe Mann came to the Northwest he found the Indian tribes unquiet
and suspicious of the new settlements. One of the pioneers had caused a
sickness among some thievish Indians by putting emetic poison in
watermelons. The Indians believed these melons to have been conjured by
the white doctor, and when other sickness came among them, they attributed
it to the same cause. The massacre at Wauelaptu and the murder of Whitman
grew in part out of these events.

Mr. Mann settled near the old Chief of the Cascades. He sought the Indian
friendship of this chief, and asked him for his protection.

"People fulfill the expectation of the trust put in them--Indians as well
as children," he used to say. "A boy fulfills the ideals of his
mother--what the mother believes the boy will be, that he will become.
Treat a thief as though he were honest, and he will be honest with you. We
help people to be better by believing in what is good in them. I am going
to trust the friendship of the old Chief of the Cascades, and he will
never betray it."