Professionalizing Providence

Abstract

This chapter focuses on another of Marcus Whitman's missionary associates, William Henry Gray, who participated in the first efforts to commemorate the Pacific Northwest's Anglo-American pioneers. It highlights the Oregonians' mythology of Whitman in their earliest attempts to create a regional history, which made Henry Harmon Spalding's providential history a part of broader struggles over regional identity. It also talks about the establishment of the Pioneer and Historical Society of Oregon, which is a Protestant-leaning organization that fashioned Whitman into a key symbol of Oregon's white Christian pioneer heritage. The chapter refers to detractors of the Whitman story who sought to demonstrate that the West was abandoning local legends in favor of modern historical methods. It emphasizes two conflicting historical methodologies: pioneer providentialism and pioneer secularism.