The Name "Waiilatpu"

"Written by long-time Ranger Jack Winchell"

A young couple asked me to pronounce the Indian name for Whitman Mission. I said, "It's pronounced Why-ee-lat-poo, and the 't' in the 'lat' is half silent." They replied, "That's strange, we are from Hawaii and that is exactly how the word would be pronounced there. In Hawaiian, the 'wai' is pronounced as 'why', the extra 'i' is pronounced as 'e', and the rest of the word is pronounced la-poo. We don't have a 't' in our alphabet."

To me that was an interesting conversation because in 1838 the Hawaiian Mission sent a printing press to the Oregon missionaries, along with its twelve letter phonetic alphabet. Henry and Eliza Spalding, Cornelius Rogers, and Asa Smith added two letters, an 's' and a 't', to the alphabet and adapted it to the Nez Perce language.

According to some sources, the Indians and early settlers pronounced Waiilatpu with the more musical sound of Way-ee-let-poo; without any accent mark. Today, the Cayuse pronounce it Wah-eel-et-poo; also, without any accent mark. Marcus and Narcissa spelled it Wieletpoo in their early letters. But, after the phonetic alphabet was devised, they spelled it Waiilatpu. Waiilatpu is a Nez Perce word meaning, "people of the place of the rye grass", another translation by the Cayuse is reported to be "people of the shady place". Pu or Pum in a Nez Perce word means "people of."

The French Canadian trappers first saw the Waiilatpu Indians near the basalt outcroppings along the Columbia River. So, they called them Caiilloux, pronounced Cayuse, meaning "people of the rocks." Cayuse is the name they are known by today.

The native Cayuse name for themselves was probably Lík-si-yu. It is possible that Lík-si-yu was simply a name for a local group of Cayuse. The meaning of Lík-si-yu is not known, but according to legend, the Cayuse's native name meant "superior people."

The Whitmans settled in Cayuse country. And, whether you call it Whitman Mission, Waiilatpu, Wieletpoo, Te-taw-kin, or Lík-si-yu, or plain old Cayuse country, one thing is clear--the Whitmans were kind, generous, and courageous, with a clear vision of establishing a Christian community; a place where whites and Indians, settlers and Cayuse, could live, work, and farm together. The Cayuse were a proud, intelligent, and superior people caught in the tragic and misunderstood events that followed the coming of the white man--a religion they couldn't understand, a sickness that killed half the tribe, a treaty that took away most of their land, settlers that didn't abide by the treaty and took still more land, and the final shrinking of their reservation to its present size.

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Last modified on: January 31, 2004