The Whitmans played an integral role in the settling of the West and made a lasting impression in history. The story surrounding the Whitman couple is of tragedy. They set out to do good but because of cultural differences, they did not fulfill their mission. In the course of the Whitmans lives in the Oregon Country, they encouraged and helped the westward expansion of America. They are one of the major factors of the settlement of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. Today, there are images across the country that remind us of what the Whitmans did out in the Oregon Country.
Marcus Whitman was born in 1802 in Rushville, a small town located in upstate New York. He studied under a local doctor and became interested in the medical practice. Later on, Marcus left home and went to Fairfield, New York to attend a medical school there during the early 1830?s. He received his degree and practiced medicine up north in Canada (Burns and Ives).
Marcus came back to New York after four years of practice in Canada and settled in the town of Wheeler. He also practiced medicine there (Morris) and became an elder of a Presbyterian church (Burns and Ives).
As an elder, Marcus organized temperance, or non-drinking meetings (Morris).
In the year of 1835, Marcus made a journey to the Oregon Country to look for possible mission sites (Burns and Ives).
Narcissa Prentiss was also born in upstate New York in a town called Prattsburg. She was born into a devout Presbyterian family and was very committed to her religion. At the age of sixteen, Narcissa pledged her life to missionary work (Burns and Ives).
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She was very interested in saving the sinful and ?heathen? souls, namely the Native Americans (Morris).
After finishing her education, Narcissa taught at a primary school in Prattsburgh. She moved to Belmont, New York along with her family in 1834. At that time, Narcissa was still awaiting the opportunity to receive her pledge to become a full-time missionary (Burns and Ives).
Prior to Marcus? trip to the Oregon Country, Narcissa volunteered her services to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. This was a group that commissioned Protestant missionaries to different Native American tribes. It was this group that was going to send Marcus westward. The Board didn?t allow unmarried women, which Narcissa was, to become missionaries. Seeing as that Marcus was unmarried, the Board thought of arranging Narcissa and Marcus to be married. He visited the Prentiss family for a weekend to have the family?s consent in the two being married. The family and the couple agreed to be married and did so in the year of 1836. It was then that the Board offered the two positions as being missionaries (Burns and Ives).
In the same year that they were married, Narcissa and Marcus made their way westward. The couple did not go alone though. An upcoming missionary by the name of William H. Gray joined the two and Narcissa convinced another missionary couple, Henry and Eliza Spalding, to come along with them. Their starting off point was St. Louis, Missouri and Oregon was their final stop (Burns and Ives).
The group of five was led by a group of fur traders for most of the way. They had taken their wagons farther West than any other American Expedition (Burns and Ives).
On the way to the West, Narcissa Whitman and Eliza Spalding became the first white women to cross the continental divide, the Rocky Mountains (Morris).
The missionary group reached the Walla Walla River on September 1, 1836 (Burns and Ives).
This is where the group went their separate ways. The Spaldings went to go settle with a Nez Perce tribe and establish a mission at Lapwai, near what is today Lewiston, Idaho. The Whitmans, along with William Gray went into the Walla Walla Valley and decided to build a mission to the Cayuse Indians at Waiilatpu (Morris).
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The Whitmans worked hard to make their a mission a success. Marcus led all the church services, put up a number of buildings (Burns and Ives), and served as a doctor to both the Cayuse and the whites in the area (Morris).
Narcissa tended to the household affairs, helped Marcus with the services, and ran the mission school. The couple felt that the mission would succeed and that what they were doing was challenging and exciting. This was clearly understood by Narcissa in a letter that she wrote home. ?We never had greater encouragement about the Indians than at the present time (Burns and Ives).? This outlook on their work would soon come to end. Their two-year-old daughter drowned in 1839, Narcissa?s eyesight gradually became poorer as the years went on, the couple?s isolation in the wilderness dragged on for years, and their efforts to convert the Cayuse proved unproductive (Burns and Ives).
The Whitmans didn?t have much luck in converting the Indians for several reasons. Most of the Cayuse weren?t open to Marcus?s teachings because he favored white immigration to the West. The Indians believed that it was because of fast white settlement, that their land and their food supplies were being diminished (Morris).
When the Whitmans came into the area, the Natives thought that Marcus? teachings were very strange. Unlike other missionaries, the Whitmans were not open to the Cayuse?s way of life. It is a standard missionary practice that missionaries learn the ways of the people they are dealing with and adapt Christianity to it. The Whitmans did little to teach their religion in terms that the Cayuse could understand. The couple was not even receptive to the Cayuse practices. A big part of the Cayuse social and political life was gift-giving but the two saw it as a form of blackmail. For the Cayuse, religion and domestic life is almost like one. Religion is a driving force in what they do each day. When an Indian proposed that a worship service was to be held in the Whitman household, Narcissa reacted negatively. A historian comments on her actions. ?Her attitude toward those among whom she lived came to verge on outright repugnance (Burns and Ives).? The Cayuse soon felt that the Whitman?s message was a threatening one (Burns and Ives).
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The Whitman mission proved to be very unsuccessful. Few conversions were being made and the Cayuse became intolerant of the couple?s message. The American Missionary Board saw that the mission was not working so they decided to shut the mission down in 1842 due to its failure (Burns and Ives).
In the year that the mission was closed up, the Whitmans traveled to the East Coast to try to convince the Board that the mission was needed. Marcus reversed the Board?s decision in 1843. The couple made their return journey that same year and led the first ?Great Migration? to the western territories of the country. They guided a wagon train numbering about one thousand settlers, using the Oregon Trail. The Whitmans ended up spending more time helping the white pioneers than converting the Cayuse people. In 1844, the couple adopted eleven children from dead immigrants, including the seven Sager children (Burns and Ives).
The continuing white colonization of the Oregon Country was closing the connections between the Cayuse Indians and the Whitman mission. With the number of whites now living in the former Cayuse land came many diseases that were unfamiliar to the Indians. Common sicknesses that whites were accustomed to were killing the Natives. The Cayuse became unresponsive to the Whitmans because the couple helped the people who were killing them. In 1847, Narcissa said something about the continued white settlement. ?the poor Indians are amazed at the overwhelming numbers of Americans coming into the country… They seem not to know what to make of it (Burns and Ives).? In 1847, a spread of measels infected both the settlers and the Cayuse (Morris).
When several Cayuse children attending the mission school died because of measels, the tribe became enraged (Emayzine).
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The Indians watched their family members die in front of them. They blamed Marcus because he couldn?t cure the sick Natives. Most of the sick white children lived but most of the Cayuse children died. The tribe became furious and the Whitman Massacre occurred (Burns and Ives).
On November 29, 1847, several Cayuse Indians, led by Chief Tiloukaikt, took their revenge on the Whitmans and the white settlers for the death of their people (Burns and Ives).
While at the mission to get some medicine, Tiloukaikit and a warrior named Tomahas tomahawked Marcus to death (Emayzine).
Other Cayuse stormed into the mission and burned it down and several other buildings down (Burns and Ives).
In the end, the raiders killed thirteen others, including Narcissa, and held forty-six others captive for several months (Morris).
The Oregon country raised a volunteer militia, led by Cornelius Gilliam. He was a fundamentalist clergyman who had fought Indians in the East because of his belief in the policies of extermination. As the militia was being formed, Peter Skene Ogden of the Hudson?s Bay Company negotiated with the group Natives to release the hostages (Emayzine).
In return for the release of the hostages, the band of Cayuse Indians received blankets, guns, and tobacco (Morris).
Even though the hostages were released, Gilliam and his militia went on attacking Cayuse Indian groups (Emayzine).
The attacking of uninvolved Cayuse Indian groups led to war between the Cayuse Indians and the militia (Burns and Ives).
Several Indian groups joined with the Cayuse Indians because they thought that there would be less white settlement in the Oregon Country. Gilliam was killed by his own gun in an accident. The militia disbanded when different tribes in the Columbia River Basin began to unite (Emayzine).
The war went badly for the Cayuse tribe. Many of its male members were either deceased or wounded extensively. The remaining Cayuse Indians eventually joined other tribes in the Walla Walla Valley area, such as the Nez Perce and Yakima (Burns and Ives).
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In 1850, after more than two years since the Whitman Massacre incident (Oregon) and two years after the attack on innocent Cayuse Indians (Burns and Ives), Chief Tiloukaikt, Tomahas, Clokamus, Isiaasheluckas, and Kiamasumkin, the other tribal members who participated in the Whitman Massacre, turned themselves in (Oregon).
They did so because of the fear that the entire Cayuse Indian tribe would be destroyed (Burns and Ives).
The now surrendered Indians were put under the protection of Joseph Lane, the new Governor of the Oregon Territory. Tiloukaikt and the others were brought Westward, past the Cascade mountain range, into Oregon City. In Oregon City, there was a U.S. District Court where the Indians would be put on trial (Oregon).
On May 24, after the trial had lasted for four days, the jury found Tiloukaikt, Tomahas, Clokamus, Isiaasheluckas, and Kiamasumkin guilty of murder. They were sentenced to have a public execution on June 3. The Indians? attorneys wanted to have another trial based on Judge O.C. Pratt?s rulings. The attorneys accused Judge Pratt of convincing the jury members to push for a guilty verdict. This motion was denied and the execution was carried out on its planned date (Oregon).
Their execution was in the form of hanging. Before the execution occurred, the Indians were given the chance to receive Presbyterian rites. Showing disregard for the Whitman?s religion, they accepted Catholic rites instead (Emayzine).
Just before Tiloukaikit was executed, he said something to the crowd gathered at their execution. ?Did not your missionaries teach us that Christ died to save his people? So we die to save our people (Morris).? The Whitman Massacre and the Cayuse War had its bad results for the remaining Cayuse Indians and other Indian groups living within the Oregon Country. The Cayuse Indian lands were now open to white settlers from the east. Congress established a territorial government in Oregon and made more military posts and forts. The other tribes living in the Walla Walla Valley region now distrusted whites and feared for the white settlement of their lands (Enmayzine).
There is still some bitter resentment between the existing Cayuse Indians and the white settlers. In Walla Walla, the citizens celebrate the efforts of the Marcus and Narcissa Whitman to convert the Natives to Christianity. Indians in the area see this parade as a ?slap? on their culture. Marjorie Waheneka, a Cayuse Indian descendant, is quoted as saying, ?They didn?t have enough patience to learn about the people. They didn?t try to learn about the Indians? lifestyle. Theirs was the superior one. That?s what made me so bitter (Morris).? Today, there are some reminders of the Whitmans in Washington state and elsewhere. A bronze statue of Marcus exists in the Capitol rotunda where each state is represented by one of its famous residents in D.C. In Walla Walla, there is another statue of Marcus in its city center. Ten years after the Whitman Massacre occurred, Cushing Eells, a colleague of Marcus, founded a school in his name. This school eventually became Whitman College (Morris).
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The Whitmans have played an important role in the settlement of the West. They led the first Great Migrations to the Oregon Territory. This encouragement of western expansion also lead to their untimely murders by the hands of the Indians whom they were working with. Even though they made mistakes, the Whitmans etched their names in American history.
Bibliography:
Bibliography Burns, Ken and Ives, Stephen. ?Marcus Whitman and Narcissa Whitman.? New Perspectives on the West 1996. http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/wpages/wpgs400/w4whitma.htm (30 Dec. 1998).
Mayer, Eric. ?Northwest Tribes.? Dr. E?s Social Science Webzine. Online. http://emayzine.com/lectures/nwtribes.htm (4 Feb. 1999).
Morris, Keiko. ?Uncomfortable history: the ?Whitman Massacre.?? The Seattle Times 16 Nov. 1997. Online. http://www.seattletiimes.com/extra/browse/html97/whit_111697.html (30 Dec 1998).
?The Whitman Massacre.? 50th Anniversary Exhibit Homepage 3 December 1998. Online. http://arcweb.sos.or.gov/50th/whitman/whitmanintro.html (26 Jan. 1999).
