MARCUS AND NARCISSA WHITMAN

Pioneers of the Oregon Trail

Born in Rushville, New York, in 1802 and educated as a physician, Marcus Whitman was sent in 1836 to the Oregon country to work as a medical missionary among the Indians. His wife, Narcissa, and another missionary couple, Henry and Eliza Spalding accompanied him. Narcissa and Eliza were widely celebrated as the first white women to cross the Continental Divide.

The Nez Perce Indians had actually requested missionaries be sent to them. The Whitmans, however, based their mission station in Waiilatpu where they worked with the Cayuse Indians and sent the Spauldings on north to Lapwai to minister to the more responsive and peaceful Nez Perce people. Why they did this—since they had been warned that the Cayuse were an unstable and dangerous people—is not known. There was tension between the Whitmans and the Spaldings, so maybe it was in a spirit of generosity that Marcus sent the Spaldings north.

When the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions ordered a curtailment of missionary activity in 1842, Maracus traveled to Boston on horseback in the middle of winter to dissuade the commissioners. While "back east" he urged Americans to settle in the Oregon country, and when he returned in 1843 he not only brought his twelve-year-old nephew, Perrin Whitman, but he guided a large group of settlers along the "Oregon Trail" to his mission station at Waiilatpu near present-day Walla Walla, Washington.

Even larger numbers soon followed—until thousands clogged the trail. To the settlers whom the Whitmans helped, they were heroic pioneers. But not to the Cayuse. The Cayuse resented this influx of Americans and the fact that Marcus spent most of his "doctoring" on the white people. In 1847, after many Cayuse died during an outbreak of measles brought by white settlers, the tribe killed the Whitmans and several other settlers. (Perrin Whitman escaped being killed because he was away from the mission at the time.)

© 1998 Dave and Neta Jackson