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Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings
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WHITMAN MISSION NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE
Washington
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Location: Walla Walla County, on a short
connecting road leading south from U.S. 12, about 7 miles west of Walla
Walla; address: Route 2, Walla Walla, Wash. 99362.
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This national historic site preserves the remains of
the Whitman, or Waiilatpu, Mission (1836-47), the second Protestant
mission in the Oregon country. Enduring wilderness hardships and
dangers, Dr. Marcus and Narcissa Whitman worked among the Cayuse
Indians. In the 1840's their mission became a haven for Oregon Trail
emigrants. The invasion of emigrant-settlers and Indian-missionary
misunderstandings brought about the tragic death of the Whitmans at the
hands of the Cayuses only ll years after the founding of the
mission.
Early in the l9th century, stirred by accounts of
explorers and traders, missionaries began to turn their gaze toward the
Oregon country. As early as the 1820's the interdenominational American
Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions began to consider a program
there, but was discouraged by its remoteness. Finally, in 1835, spurred
by reports that a Nez Perce and Flathead delegation had visited
governmental officials at St. Louis seeking to learn of the white man's
religion, the board sent the Reverend Samuel Parker and Dr. Marcus
Whitman westward to investigate the possibilities. In Missouri the two
men joined a fur caravan heading for the fur traders' rendezvous along
Wyoming's Green River. Talks with the Flatheads and Nez Perces spawned
an enthusiasm on the part of the two men for missionary work in the
Northwest. Separating, Parker pushed on to Oregon, wintering at the
Hudson's Bay Co. post of Fort Vancouver, Wash., and investigating
mission sites before returning to the East by ship the next spring.
Whitman immediately returned there to recruit missionaries.
In April 1836 Whitman's party set out from Liberty,
Mo. It consisted of himself; his recent bride, Narcissa; the Reverend
Henry H. Spalding and his wife, Eliza; and the mechanic-carpenter
William H. Gray. In May they overtook an American Fur Co. caravan near
the junction of the Platte River and the Loup Fork, in Nebraska.
Traveling via Fort Laramie, Wyo., and across South Pass, they arrived at
the Green River Rendezvous in July. Escorted by two Hudson's Bay Co.
traders, the party then set out on a long journey via Fort Hall to Fort
Vancouver, where it arrived in September. The two wives were the first
American women to travel across the continent.
The men soon retraced their steps up the Columbia
River to choose mission sites, while the women enjoyed the hospitality
of Chief Factor John McLoughlin. Whitman chose a spot in south eastern
Washington on Mill Creek on the north bank of the Walla Walla River, 22
miles above its junction with the Columbia and the Hudson's Bay Co. post
of Fort Walla Walla. The local Indians, the Cayuses, called the spot
Waiilatpu ("Place of the Rye Grass"). Spalding chose a site 110
miles farther east, where he founded among the Nez Perce Indians what
came to be known as the Spalding Mission, Idaho.
The next March Mrs. Whitman gave birth to a daughter,
Alice Clarissa, the first American child born in the Pacific Northwest;
2 years later the child died in a tragic drowning accident. In 1838
missionary reinforcements arrived. Among them were the Reverends Elkanah
Walker and Cushing Eells and their wives, who the next year founded the
Tshimakain Mission about 135 miles to the north. That same year the
Reverend Asa B. Smith established among the Nez Perces the Kamiah
Mission, Idaho, about 50 miles up the Clearwater River from the Spalding
Mission; he maintained the mission only 2 years, abandoning it because
of disillusionment and a sick wife.
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Visitors at Whitman Mission
National Historic Site view the Great Grave and monument to William H.
Gray, also buried at the site. On the hilltop is the Whitman Memorial
Shaft. (National Park Service) |
Meantime, construction of the Whitman Mission,
informal headquarters of the mission field, had begun. In time it
included a large adobe mission house; Gray's adobe residence, in later
years a shelter for emigrants; a gristmill; a blacksmith shop; and a saw
mill, 22 miles away. Yet, despite Whitman's energy and devotion,
progress in educating and converting the Cayuses was slow. Rejecting his
plea to become farmers, most of them continued their nomadic way of
life. They were also less eager to learn than Whitman had anticipated
and were indifferent to Christianity. Furthermore, he and the Indians
were unable to understand each other's customs. In addition, he and all
the missionaries at the other mission stations quarreled continually.
Reports of this dissension and budgetary problems caused the American
Board in 1842 to order that the Whitman and Spalding Missions be closed.
It directed the Spaldings to return to the East, and the Whitmans to
move to the Tshimakain Mission. The missionaries ignored these
instructions. To plead their case before the board, Whitman returned to
Boston in a harrowing winter journey in 1842-43. After listening to his
arguments, the board rescinded its original orders.
On the return trip, at Independence, Mo., Whitman in
May 1843 intercepted a huge wagon train of about 1,000 emigrants, the
largest wagon train to that time on the Oregon Trail. As the
expedition's physician and part-time guide, he accompanied it to his
mission. There the members rested and replenished their supplies, as had
another expedition the previous year. From then on, Waiilatpu was a
major way station on the trail. Even though the main trail soon bypassed
it, sick and destitute emigrants headed there and received kind and
generous treatment.
After Whitman's return to Waiilatpu in 1843,
relations among the missionaries improved somewhat. Those between the
Indians and the missionaries, however, further deteriorated. The
increasing numbers of emigrants frightened the Cayuses, who were aware
that they were taking over Indian lands elsewhere and were bringing
measles epidemics that decimated entire tribes. Whitman was also
devoting more and more time to caring for emigrants and less to them.
Anyway, they were rapidly losing faith in the missionaries. Their
growing resentment was heightened in the autumn of 1847 when a measles
epidemic spread from the wagon trains to their villages and within 2
months killed about half of them. Because Whitman was unable to check
the epidemic, some of the Indians came to believe he was poisoning them
to make way for settlers.
On November 29 a small group of Cayuses assaulted the
mission, at the time sheltering 74 people, most of them emigrants. The
attackers killed 13 people, including Marcus and Narcissa Whitman. A few
of the survivors escaped. The Indians captured 49 people, mostly women
and children. Two of the young girls died; and the next month Peter
Skene Ogden, a Hudson's Bay Co. official, ransomed the rest. The
massacre, which set off the Cayuse War (1848), temporarily ended
Protestant missionary efforts in the Oregon country. In 1848 emissaries
of Oregon's provisional legislature, which had been seeking Territorial
status, carried news of the tragedy and petitions to Washington, D.C.
Congress reacted by creating the Oregon Territory, the first one west of
the Rockies.
Whitman Mission National Historic Site preserves the
foundation ruins of the mission buildings and the restored irrigation
ditch, millpond, and orchard. The Great Grave contains the remains of
the 1847 massacre victims. A marble slab, placed over the grave in 1897
to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the massacre, is inscribed with
their names. On a nearby hill stands a 27-foot-high memorial shaft,
dedicated in 1897. The visitor center houses artifacts uncovered by
archeologists and interprets the history of the mission and missionary
efforts in the Oregon country.
http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/soldier-brave/sitea27.htm
Last Updated: 19-Aug-2005
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