Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 1/Review: Missionary History of the Pacific Northwest

Missionary History of the Pacific Northwest. By H. K. Hines, D. D. (Portland: H. K. Hines, San Francisco: J. D. Hammond, 1899. Pp. 510.)

As the sub-title indicates, this is rather the "Story of Jason Lee" than a missionary history of the Pacific Northwest. There would have been no impropriety in giving it the title of "Jason Lee and the Methodist Missionary Effort in the Pacific Northwest." The title is positively misleading as it stands, for forty pages only are devoted to an account of the work of the missionaries under the "American Board," while some four hundred and fifty are taken up with the story of the Methodist Missions. The Methodist denomination was first in this field with wisely chosen representatives. It sustained and reinforced its movement to christianize the Indians of Oregon most munificently, considering the conditions of the times. As a memorial of these efforts conceived with such grand and consecrated spirit, nothing would have been more fitting than a volume by Doctor Hines.

No one could have been so unfair as to demand of Doctor Hines a cold and critical account of these missionaries and their work. A panegyric on Jason Lee and his colaborers was becoming from him. He was the man prepared through life-long schooling and natural inclination to do this, and Jason Lee's work deserved it. But for the title and an invidious comparison that crops out all too frequently, Doctor Hines has done in this book just what God had prepared him to do.

It is a pity that a work of so high general character, the best product of such fine literary ability as Doctor Hines possesses, could not have been one of some famous series by a strong publishing house of the East that would have pushed it into the markets of the world.

The fact that the critical historian will take issue with the conclusions of this book almost from the beginning constitutes no disparagement of the real worth of the author's work. It was a labor of love for a character and for a denomination. This, however, may be said: The Methodist missionary project in the Pacific Northwest was, soon after its inception, at all but one or two points, not distinctively a missionary station at all. But it was a colony with a strong secular spirit and exercised a most salutary influence upon the affairs of the Oregon community. This fact the work of Doctor Hines unwittingly proves.