Oregon Mission - The Beginning

The Beginning

According to legend, in 1831 Indians walked from the Oregon Country to St. Louis, Missouri in hopes of meeting with General William Clark, the Indian agent at St. Louis. Upon meeting, they told Gen. Clark that they had come from the land of the setting sun in order to learn about the Christian’s book and the white man’s God. General Clark gave them religious instruction but did not give them a Bible. They were overheard by a man named William Walker. He wrote an article for a Christian magazine and started a wave of missionaries that would travel to Oregon Country and try and convert the "awaiting" Indians. They also happened to meet a Methodist of the Wyandot tribe who had been sent to St. Louis on business by the United States government. The Indians returned to Oregon disappointed. They were unaware of the stream of events that they had set in motion.

This unknown Wyandot Methodist sent letters that stimulated the Methodist Episcopal Church to begin the first transcontinental mission in America. News of the event was published in the Christian Advocate and Journal in New York, and Christian sympathy was aroused for the inquisitive unbelievers. President Wilbur Fisk of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut was the first leader to rise to the call. He played the key role in securing and preparing Jason Lee for a mission to Oregon Territory.

Jason Lee was a young teacher from Ontario, Canada and was involved in missionary work to Indians in that region. He answered Dr. Fisk’s call. Lee traveled to Boston awaiting further instructions. Bishop Elijah Hedding ordained Lee into the New England Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, now the United Methodist Church, and charged him to the so far nonexistent Oregon mission. The now Rev. Lee left Boston for St. Louis in March 1834.

Leaving Independence, Missouri on April 24, 1834, the historic missionary pilgrimage headed across the vast country to Fort Vancouver. On this Methodist mission, he was assisted by his nephew, Rev. Daniel Lee, and two laypersons, Cyrus Shepard from Boston, Massachusetts, and P. L. Edwards from Missouri. They traveled with a group of about seventy men, mostly hunters and fur traders. At Fort Hall they met Thomas McKay of the Hudson's Bay Company, who had traveled between the Fort Hall area to Fort Vancouver many times. McKay guided the group all the way to Fort Vancouver, and then helped Lee select the site for the Willamette Mission.

Lee and his companions arrived at Fort Vancouver, headquarters for the British Hudson's Bay Company, in what is now Vancouver, Washington, near Portland, Oregon. It is often said that on September 28, 1834, Rev. Jason Lee preached the first Protestant sermon on the Pacific coast yet, to be precise, he was perhaps fifty miles from the Pacific coast.