This work grew out of a series of articles published in the Astoria Marine Gazette, 1865-1866, ref. Pref. "Mr. Gray, a missionary, reached Oregon in 1838. His history has been mercilessly criticized by Hubert Howe Bancroft [no.25] who declares that it would take a work equally as large to correct the mistakes in it" Published in 1870, William Henry Gray’s A History of Oregon, 1792-1849 provides a highly subjective, firsthand account of the territory's early pioneer era, the establishment of Protestant missions, and the contentious formation of the 1843 Provisional Government. Drawing upon his own experiences as a member of the 1836 Whitman missionary party, Gray chronicles the region's development while aggressively championing the American Protestant settlers as the sole heroic founders of the state. A keen insight drawn from the text is how its notorious lack of objectivity transforms the book from a reliable historical record into a fascinating psychological artifact of frontier sectarian paranoia. By conspiratorially blaming the British Hudson’s Bay Company and Catholic missionaries for instigating the tragic 1847 Whitman Massacre, Gray's narrative vividly exposes the intense, deeply ingrained religious and nationalist hostilities that fundamentally shaped early American colonization efforts in the Pacific Northwest.

pages 624. frontispiece 8vo