Whitman Mission - August 26, 2004

Wagon Tracks (from Oregon Trail Travelers) at Whitman Mission

The Whitman Mission was established in the 1836 just west of what is now Walla Walla, Washington by Marcus Whitman and his wife, Narcissa. It was to minister to the Cayuse Indians, but it also became a stop for emigrants on the Oregon Trail. The Whitmans had traveled west with Henry Spalding and his wife, Eliza, who founded another mission to the east near present day Lewiston, Idaho. The Spaldings ministered to the Nez Perce Indians.

The Whitmans had little success in their efforts with the Indians, and the American Board of Foreign Missions, which had sponsered the mission, convened in 1842 and ordered both the Whitman and Spalding missions closed. However, Marcus Whitman persuaded the Board to allow the missions to remain open in 1843.

In 1844, the mission was no longer a stop on the main trail, but emigrants needing care did stop there. One such stop was made by a wagon which brought the Sager children to the mission; the seven children had been orphaned on the trail. Marcus and Narcissa Whitman adopted the children.

But Indian unrest had begun to grow for a variety of reasons - cultural differences, increased numbers of settlers on previously Indian land, and a measles epidemic which killed many Cayuse but largely spared the settlers (the Indians did not have any resistance or immunity to the disease having never encountered it before).

In November, 1847, a small group of Cayuse attacked the mission and killed the Whitmans, the Sager boys (the girls survived) and nine others. About fifty survivors were taken prisoner and later ransomed. This massacre, as it was called, ended missions in the Oregon territory and led to a war against the Cayuse.