Whitman Mission captures history

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Whitman Mission captures history

By WANDA BRIGGS
Herald staff writer

Whitman Mission was doomed by a clash of two cultures.

Those differences between the white and Indian ways of life ended in violence and death in the Pacific Northwest's bloodiest massacre.

The killings took place in the fertile Walla Walla Valley, 40 miles east of the Tri-Cities off Highway 12.

Among the victims were Dr. Marcus Whitman and his wife Narcissa.

The Whitman killings 148 years ago shocked the nation, and today the missionaries who preached of God's grace, are martyrs in school history books.

The doctor and his wife are central figures in the story of a young idealistic couple who came to a new land to save souls, but lost their lives when the two cultures clashed.

They were married in 1836, and by that fall were part of a wagon train headed west with the Rev. Henry Spalding and his wife, Eliza and William Gray, according to Roger Trick, chief ranger at the mission.

The women were the first white women to cross the continent, and the missionaries' wagon, reduced over time to a cart, was the first vehicle to travel as far west as Fort Boise. Their trek inspired other families to follow. The Whitman's chose Waiilatpu, a Cayuse Indian name meaning "place of the people of the rye grass," along the Walla Walla River, while the Spaldings opened a settlement among the Nez Perce at Lapwai, 110 miles to the east.

The Whitman Mission became a way station for white settlers moving along the Oregon Trail to the Willamette Valley in the 1840s.

For the next 11 years, the Whitmans tried to introduce God to the Cayuse tribe. Tension grew when white settlers introduced measles, a disease for which the Cayuse had no resistance. When Whitman's medicine helped white children, but not theirs, many Cayuse believed they were being poisoned to make way for the emigrants, Trick said.

Then, on Nov. 29, 1847, a band of Cayuse attacked the mission, killing 13 and taking 50 people captive, most of them women and children.

Today, a museum, monument and grave commemorate the mission, which has been visited by about 85,000 people from throughout the world. Near the museum building are the mission grounds where the five original building sites are laid out with stations for recorded narrations along the foot path.

On a nearby hill, a memorial monument overlooks the mission grounds. Halfway down the hill is a common grave for the 13 who died on that winter day.

The massacre was reported to federal authorities in 1848, leading the United States government to create the Territory of Oregon, the first American territorial government west of the Rocky Mountains.

The visitor center at Whitman Mission is open daily except Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Nearby is a day-use picnic area where it's easy to imagine life as the first permanent Mid-Columbia settlement along the Oregon Trail.

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