Whitman Mission National Historic Site

Last updated

Whitman Mission National Historic Site
Oregon Trail Whitman Mission WA NPS.jpg
The Oregon Trail at Whitman Mission
USA Washington location map.svg
Red pog.svg
Usa edcp location map.svg
Red pog.svg
Location Walla Walla County, Washington, United States
Nearest city Walla Walla, Washington
Coordinates 46°2′24″N118°27′41″W / 46.04000°N 118.46139°W / 46.04000; -118.46139
Built1837
Website Whitman Mission National Historic Site
NRHP reference No. 66000749 [1]
Added to NRHPOctober 15, 1966

Whitman Mission National Historic Site is a United States National Historic Site located just west of Walla Walla, Washington, at the site of the former Whitman Mission at Waiilatpu. On November 29, 1847, Dr. Marcus Whitman, his wife Narcissa Whitman, and 11 others were slain by Native Americans of the Cayuse. The site commemorates the Whitmans, their role in establishing the Oregon Trail, and the challenges encountered when two cultures meet.

Contents

History

The first printing press in the Pacific Northwest was first used at the Whitman mission, initially to print religious texts and legal documents. First printing press in the Pacific Northwest.png
The first printing press in the Pacific Northwest was first used at the Whitman mission, initially to print religious texts and legal documents.

In 1836, a small group of Presbyterian missionaries traveled with the annual fur trapper's caravan into Oregon Country. Among the group, Narcissa Whitman and Eliza Hart Spalding became the first white women to travel across the continent.

The park's western facing memorial hill is a popular place for visitors to watch the sunset WhitmanMissionSunset1.jpg
The park's western facing memorial hill is a popular place for visitors to watch the sunset

Marcus Whitman and Narcissa Whitman established the Whitman Mission at Waiilatpu, near the Walla Walla River. The mission was in Cayuse territory. The Cayuse welcomed the Whitmans to their land in 1836 after learning of them the previous year from Samuel Parker. [3]

The Mission became an important stop along the Oregon Trail from 1843–1847, and passing immigrants added to the tension. With the influx of white settlers the Cayuse became suspicious of the Whitmans again, fearing that the white man was coming to take the land.

A measles outbreak in November 1847 killed half the local Cayuse. The measles also broke out in the Mission but more white settlers survived. Some of the Cayuse blamed the devastation of their tribe on Dr. Whitman and Mrs. Whitman. They were killed along with eleven others; forty-seven other mission residents were taken hostage. The deaths of the Whitmans shocked the country, prompting Congress to make Oregon a US territory, and precipitated the Cayuse War. Five Cayuse were hanged for murder; see Cayuse Five.

In more recent times, the site has been excavated for important artifacts, and then reburied. A memorial obelisk, erected fifty years after the event, stands on a nearby hill.

The historic site was established in 1936 as Whitman National Monument and was redesignated a National Historic Site on January 1, 1963.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cayuse people</span> Native tribe of present-day Oregon and Washington, US

The Cayuse are a Native American tribe in what is now the state of Oregon in the United States. The Cayuse tribe shares a reservation and government in northeastern Oregon with the Umatilla and the Walla Walla tribes as part of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. The reservation is located near Pendleton, Oregon, at the base of the Blue Mountains.

The Oregon missionaries were pioneers who settled in the Oregon Country of North America starting in the 1830s dedicated to bringing Christianity to local Native Americans. There had been missionary efforts prior to this, such as those sponsored by the Northwest Company with missionaries from the Church of England starting in 1819. The Foreign Mission movement was already 15 years underway by 1820, but it was difficult to find missionaries willing to go to Oregon, as many wanted to go to the east, to India or China. It was not until the 1830s, when a schoolmaster from Connecticut, Hall Jackson Kelley, created his "American Society for the Settlement of the Oregon Country," that more interest and support for Oregon missionaries grew. Around the same time, four Nez Perce arrived in St. Louis in the fall of 1831, with accounts differencing as to if these travelers were asking for "the book of life", an idea used by Protestant missionaries, or if they asked for "Blackrobes", meaning Jesuits, thus Catholic missionaries. Either way this inspired Christian missionaries to travel to the Oregon Territory. Oregon missionaries played a political role, as well as a religious one, as their missions established US political power in an area in which the Hudson's Bay Company, operating under the British government, maintained a political interest in the Oregon country. Such missionaries had an influential impact on the early settlement of the region, establishing institutions that became the foundation of United States settlement of the Pacific Northwest.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marcus Whitman</span> 19th-century American missionary

Marcus Whitman was an American physician and missionary. He is most well-known for leading American settlers across the Oregon Trail, unsuccessfully attempting to Christianize the Cayuse Indians, and was subsequently killed by the Cayuse Indians in a event known as the 1847 Whitman massacre, over a misunderstanding, resulting in the beginning of the Cayuse war (1847-1855).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Whitman massacre</span> 1847 murder of American missionaries by Cayuse Native Americans near Walla Walla, Washington

The Whitman massacre refers to the killing of American missionaries Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, along with eleven others, on November 29, 1847. They were killed by a small group of Cayuse men who accused Whitman of poisoning 200 Cayuse in his medical care during an outbreak of measles that included the Whitman household. The killings occurred at the Whitman Mission at the junction of the Walla Walla River and Mill Creek in what is now southeastern Washington near Walla Walla. The massacre became a decisive episode in the U.S. settlement of the Pacific Northwest, causing the United States Congress to take action declaring the territorial status of the Oregon Country. The Oregon Territory was established on August 14, 1848, to protect the white settlers.

The Cayuse War (1847-1855) was an armed conflict between the Cayuse people of the Northwestern United States and settlers, backed by the U.S. government. The conflict was triggered by the Whitman massacre of 1847, where the Cayuse attacked a missionary outpost in response to a deadly measles epidemic that they believed was caused by Marcus Whitman. Over the next few years, the Provisional Government of Oregon and later the United States Army battled the Native Americans east of the Cascades. This was the first of several wars between the Native Americans and American settlers in that region that would lead to the negotiations between the United States and Native Americans of the Columbia Plateau, creating several Indian reservations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry H. Spalding</span>

Henry Harmon Spalding (1803–1874) and his wife Eliza Hart Spalding (1807–1851) were prominent Presbyterian missionaries and educators working primarily with the Nez Perce in the U.S. Pacific Northwest. The Spaldings and their fellow missionaries were among the earliest Americans to travel across the western plains, through the Rocky Mountains and into the lands of the Pacific Northwest to their religious missions in what would become the states of Idaho and Washington. Their missionary party of five, including Marcus Whitman and his wife Narcissa and William H. Gray, joined with a group of fur traders to create the first wagon train along the Oregon Trail.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tiloukaikt</span>

Tiloukaikt (d.1850) was a Native American leader of the Cayuse tribe in the northwestern United States. He was involved in the Whitman Massacre and was a primary leader during the subsequent Cayuse War.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Narcissa Whitman</span> 19th-century American missionary

Narcissa Prentiss Whitman was an American missionary in the Oregon Country of what would become the state of Washington. On their way to found the Protestant Whitman Mission in 1836 with her husband, Marcus, near modern-day Walla Walla, Washington, she and Eliza Hart Spalding became the first documented European-American women to cross the Rocky Mountains.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joel Palmer</span> American pioneer, author, politician (1810–1881)

General Joel Palmer was an American pioneer of the Oregon Territory in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. He was born in Upper Canada, and spent his early years in New York and Pennsylvania before serving as a member of the Indiana House of Representatives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sager orphans</span>

The Sager orphans were the children of Henry and Naomi Sager. In April 1844 the Sager family took part in the great westward migration and started their journey along the Oregon Trail. During it, both Henry and Naomi died and left their seven children orphaned. Later adopted by Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, missionaries in what is now Washington, they were orphaned a second time, when both their new parents, as well as brothers John and Francis Sager, were killed during the Whitman massacre in November 1847. About 1860 Catherine, the oldest daughter, wrote a first-hand account of their journey across the plains and their life with the Whitmans. Today it is regarded as one of the most authentic accounts of the American westward migration.

Henry A. G. Lee was a soldier and politician in Oregon Country in the 1840s. A member of Virginia's Lee family, he was part of the Fremont Expedition and commanded troops during the Cayuse War in what became the Oregon Territory. He also was a member of the Oregon Provisional Government and the second editor of the Oregon Spectator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tshimakain Mission</span> Congregationalist mission in Washington, U.S.

The Tshimakain Mission started in September 1838, with the arrival of Congregationalist missionaries Cushing and Myra Fairbanks Eells and Elkanah and Mary Richardson Walker to the area along Chamokane Creek at the community of Ford, Washington. Fort Colvile Chief Factor Archibald McDonald recommended the area to Eells and Walker on their first visit to the area.

Pierre Chrysologue Pambrun was a French Canadian militia officer and later a fur trader in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company. Pambrun fought against the United States in the War of 1812, in particular the Battle of the Châteauguay. He joined the HBC during a time of turmoil with its competitors, the North West Company. After the Battle of Seven Oaks, he was among those held captive by men employed by the NWC.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cushing Eells</span>

Cushing Eells was an American Congregational church missionary, farmer and teacher on the Pacific coast of America in what are now the states of Oregon and Washington. His first mission in Washington State was unsuccessful. Eells and his family had to leave after the Native Americans massacred a group of neighboring missionaries. They spent the next fourteen years farming and teaching in Oregon, before returning to Washington, where Eells founded a seminary that later became the Whitman College. Eells continued to teach and preach in Washington for the remainder of his life.

Tom Hill (1811–1860) was a Lenape mountain man active in the American frontier. He first became prominent in the service of Kit Carson as a fur trapper during the 1830s. After that, he lived among the Nimíipuu, influencing them to mistrust ABCFM missionaries. Throughout 1847, Hill was In Alta California fighting in the service of John C. Frémont. Tom Hill returned to Kansas in 1854 to live among fellow Lenape, where he died in 1860. Several later historians have named Hill as the primary cause of the Whitman Massacre, earning him some notoriety.

The Walla Walla expeditions were organized during the mid-nineteenth century to enrich the Sahaptian peoples of the Columbian Plateau with cattle purchased in Alta California. Among the first expedition was Walla Walla leader Piupiumaksmaks, Garry of the Spokanes and Cayuse headman Tawatoy. They arrived at New Helvetia in 1844. A confrontation erupted with the son of Piupiumaksmaks, Toayahnu, being killed by an American. A second expedition was organized, returning to New Helvetia in 1846, where two thousand cattle was purchased. When the expedition returned to the Columbian Plateau, members were ill with measles. The disease was consequently spread across the Pacific Northwest and was a major cause of the Whitman massacre.

The history of Walla Walla, Washington begins with the settling of Oregon Country, Fort Nez Percés, the Whitman Mission and Walla Walla County, Washington.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary Augusta Dix Gray</span> American missionary

Mary A(u)gusta Dix Gray or Mrs. William H. Gray was an early American missionary to Nez Perce people in the Oregon Territory in 1838. She was one of the first six European American women to cross the Rocky Mountains on what would become the Oregon Trail.

The Cayuse Five were five members of the Cayuse of Oregon who were hanged for murder in 1850 following their attack on a mission settlement. Their names were Clokomas, Isiaasheluckas, Kiamasumkin, Telakite, and Tomahas—note how these names are spelled varies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mill Creek (Walla Walla River tributary)</span> River

Mill Creek is a 36.5-mile (58.7 km) long tributary of the Walla Walla River, flowing through southeast Washington and northeast Oregon in the United States. It drains from the western side of the Blue Mountains into the Walla Walla Valley and flows through the city of Walla Walla, which draws most of its water supply from the creek. The creek is named for the sawmill built in 1845 by Marcus Whitman, one of the first European settlers in the valley.

References

  1. "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service. April 15, 2008.
  2. Brosnan, Cornelius J. (Cornelius James) (May 9, 1918). "History of the state of Idaho". New York, Chicago [etc.] C. Scribner's sons. Retrieved May 9, 2019 via Internet Archive.
  3. Drury, Clifford (1973). Marcus and Narcissa Whitman and the Opening of Old Oregon. A. H. Clark Company. ISBN   9780870621048.