Henry H. Spalding - Mission in The West

Mission in The West

The Spaldings searched for a missionary station through the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and were initially assigned to the Osage in Missouri. Narcissa Prentiss Whitman knew Henry, as they had attended the same church in Prattsburgh, New York in the 1820s. Henry met Marcus Whitman in December 1835, and in February 1836 persuaded him to go instead to the Oregon Country. After praying on it, Eliza agreed. On February 29 in Pittsburg they boarded the steamboat Arabian for Cincinnati, arriving four days later, where they waited for the Whitmans. On March 22 they all boarded the steamboat Junius to St. Louis. Changing to the Majestic in mid-trip to avoid travel on the sabbath, they arrived March 29. Two days later they boarded another boat to Liberty, Missouri, with the journey taking another week.

In Liberty, the missionary group waited for the rest of their travel party, a group of fur traders with whom they would travel as far as the continental divide. After some logistical complications, on May 25 they joined the Fur Company caravan led by mountain men Milton Sublette and Thomas Fitzpatrick. The fur traders had seven wagons, each pulled by six mules. An additional cart drawn by two mules carried Sublette, who had lost a leg a year earlier and walked on a "cork" leg made by a friend. The combined group arrived at the fur-trader's rendezvous on July 6. Eliza and Narcissa were the first Euro-American women to make this overland trip.

In July 1836, while the company paused at the Rendezvous in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming, Spalding wrote a letter to a fellow minister and newspaper editor about the journey west. The letter, preserved in a transcript by the "Library of Western Fur Trade Historical Source Documents", provides one of the earliest first hand accounts about the route west and conditions found during this journey across the North American continent.