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Henry Harmon Spalding (1803–1874), and his wife Eliza Hart Spalding (1807–1851) were prominent Presbyterian missionaries and educators working primarily with the Nez Perce in the U.S. Pacific Northwest. The Spaldings and their fellow missionaries were among the earliest Americans to travel across the western plains, through the Rocky Mountains and into the lands of the Pacific Northwest to their religious missions in what would become the states of Idaho and Washington. Their missionary party of five, including Marcus Whitman and his wife Narcissa and William H. Gray, joined with a group of fur traders to create the first wagon train along the Oregon Trail.〔Gaston, Joseph, ''The Centennial History of Oregon, 1811-1911'' Vol. 1, p. 255, Chicago: Clarke, 1912.〕 Henry Spalding was born in Bath, New York, in either 1803 or 1804. He graduated from Western Reserve College in 1833, and entered Lane Theological Seminary in the class of 1837. He left, without graduation, upon his appointment in 1836 by the Boston-based American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) as a missionary to the Nez Perce Indians of Idaho. Eliza Hart was born August 11, 1807 to Levi Hart and Martha Hart (they were first cousins) in Kensington, Connecticut. In 1820 the family moved to Oneida County, New York. She was introduced to Henry from a mutual acquaintance who said that Henry "wanted to correspond with a young lady."〔Drury, Clifford Merrill. ''Henry Harmon Spalding: Pioneer of Old Oregon.'', p. 42, Caxton Printers, Caldwell, ID, 1936.〕 The couple were pen pals for about a year, and the relationship quickly deepened after they met in the fall of 1831. Eliza was as interested in participating in missionary work as was Spalding. They married on October 13, 1833 in Hudson, New York. ==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 Pittsburgh 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.〔Nunis, Doyce B. Jr., ''Milton G. Sublette'', featured in ''Trappers of the Far West'', Leroy R. Hafen, editor., 1972, Arthur H. Clark Company, reprint University of Nebraska Press, October 1983. ISBN 0-8032-7218-9〕 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. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Henry H. Spalding」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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