Whitman Mission
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Whitman Mission (1836-1847) - A Protestant mission established in 1836 by Marcus Whitman and his wife Narcissa Prentiss Whitman near present day Walla Walla, Walla Walla County, Washington. Also known as [Waiilatpu Mission]]. HistoryIn 1836 the Whitmans headed West with another missionary couple, Henry Harmon Spalding and his wife Eliza. They departed from St. Louis for Oregon, travelled with fur traders for most of the . They took wagons farther West than had any American expedition before them. Narcissa and Eliza became the first white women known to cross the Rocky Mountains. The Whitmans reached the Walla Walla river on 1 Sep 1836, and founded a mission to the Cayuse Indians at Waiilatpu in the Walla Walla Valley. The Spaldings travelled on to present-day Idaho where they founded a mission along the Clearwater river at Lapwai. The Spaulding Mission served the Nez Perce Indians. In 1842, the American Missionary Board decided to close the Whitman Mission because the Whitman's efforts were largely unsuccessful. Marcus went back east in a successful attempt to convince the board to continue support for the mission. He returned in 1843, helping to lead the first large wagon train up the Oregon Trail. For a time the Oregon Trail passed by the Whitman Mission and they were busy assisting American settlers with food and supplies. They took in eleven children of deceased immigrants and the mission became an early boarding school. By 1845, other trails had become more popular and the wagon trains that came by the mission were mostly those in need of supplies or those who had problems with disease or other troubles. The troubles for the mission began in late 1847 as one of those wagon trains probably started a measles epidemic that struck both the white and Cayuse populations. The Whitmans nursed both but most of the white children lived because they had some immunity and nearly all the Cayuse children died because they had no immunity. It is easy to see how the Cayuse might view the onslaught of settlers and now the death of most of their children as treachery on the part of the mission. On 29 Nov 1847, the Cayuse sought revenge on the mission by killing the Whitmans and twelve other whites. They burned down the mission buildings and left the bodies lay where they fell. It was not until February or early March 1848 that Oregon Volunteers arrived at the site and buried the dead. The volunteers constructed a small fort from the mission ruins and set out to find the guilty parties. The hunt soon began the Cayuse War. The shock of the Whitman Massacre spread throughout the northwest and many feared that the violence would spread into other areas. Militias were formed and isolated settlers and communities prepared defenses. The Spaulding Mission closed and the couple moved away. The Cayuse War ended with the surrender, trial and execution of five of the accused Cayuse murderers on 3 Jun 1850. The Cayuse War was the first of several conflicts that arose in the northwest in the late 1840s and 1850s that represented a general uprising of the Indian populations which required both State and Federal troops to quell. The overall result was that the Indian populations were severely reduced and the survivors were placed on reservations and guarded in many cases by Federal troops. Current StatusPart of Whitman Mission National Historic Site near Walla Walla, Walla Walla County, Washington.
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Visited: 15 May 2010
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