 Bishop Elijah Hedding ordained Lee into the New England Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, now the United Methodist Church.He was appointed superintendent of the newly created "Aboriginal Mission west of the Rocky Mountains" to preach to the Salish.The entrepreneur Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth was contacted by the Methodists to travel overland with his party and to ship supplies around Cape Horn on Wyeth's ship "May Dacre", a proposition he agreed to.