The Forgotten Pioneer Missionary
Before Marcus Whitman, there was Samuel Parker, an elderly preacher who braved the frontier to map the way for the mission of 1836.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Rev. Samuel Parker, born in Ashfield, Massachusetts in 1779, was an early pioneer missionary who paved the way for the settlement of the Oregon Territory. Driven by a letter from the Nez Perce and Flathead tribes requesting 'the white man's God and Bible,' Parker offered himself to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. In 1835, at the age of 56, he traveled with Dr. Marcus Whitman, providing vital medical assistance during a cholera outbreak that saved the caravan. Parker eventually split from the party, traveling alone with Indian guides across the Salmon River Mountains to Fort Walla Walla. During his journey, he surveyed the land, studied the Nez Perce and Chinook languages, and in his subsequent book, became one of the first to publicly champion the possibility of a transcontinental railroad to the Pacific. He returned to the East in 1837, having traveled 28,000 miles, and lived until 1866.
“Fifty-six days journeying with Indians only, over the battle-grounds of Indians, and also where whites and Indians had often fought, months without bread and scarcely any vegetables, to an old man, fifty-six years of age... this surely was the pioneering of pioneer life.”
Samuel Parker's 1838 proposal for a transcontinental railroad mirrors the early boosterism that defined Seattle's identity as a western terminus. His story highlights the 'heroic' narratives early settlers built for themselves, often erasing the complexities of the Indigenous people who acted as their guides and survival instructors.
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