Whitman Massacre -- It's Not Just About Indians, But An American Story Of Well-Meaning Men, Women Activists In The West

IT'S BEEN 150 YEARS since the Whitman Massacre and it's as controversial now as it was then. But instead of relegating it to tiny, inoffensive displays at a few area museums and pretending nothing happened, we have the opportunity to take a fresh in-depth look at the Whitman history using today's enlightened attitudes and a richer background of historical knowledge.

We need to examine the facts because the Whitman story is not only integral to our region's history, it is undoubtedly the most important event in the post-Lewis-and-Clark West other than the discovery of gold. But gold - and instant wealth - isn't controversial, doesn't take careful examination, and is a lot easier to understand.

The Whitman story was made of complex issues; even by today's standards, it takes some reading and understanding to get a grasp on what they were doing and why. It's not just about Indians and overeager Bible-thumpers setting up tidy New England cottages while they wiped out the locals. They were part of an activist movement that sprang up in western New York state as the Erie Canal was completed.

Eliza and Henry Spalding, and Narcissa and Marcus Whitman came from the same region that only a few years later spawned women's rights and anti-slavery movements. The mission women, particularly Mary Walker, were the first feminists in the West - women who wouldn't have married at all (Narcissa, Mary Walker, Mary Gray and Myra Eells only married in order to go into the foreign mission field), but would have been independent career women (that meant schoolteachers in the 1830s).

The Presbyterian missions were not about wiping out Indians. On the contrary, the people came to save the Indians from the onslaught of white settlers they knew were on the way. They wanted to teach them literacy, government, education (for women, too, something nearly unheard of in the rest of the world) and to apply the public-health standards of the day.

The members of the Oregon Mission (Waiilatpu, Lapwai and Tshimikain) had dreamed of going to other farther distant fields: Siam, Africa and Pacific Islands, but they were sent to Oregon, to assist Indians in the path of civilization. Like the Jesuits of Paraguay, they envisioned strengthening the people before civilization (and its evils) arrived.

As soon as they settled in the field, the mission's support from Boston collapsed because of a national depression. Funding didn't come, only barrels of worn-out clothing donated by frugal Yankee housewives. Though they were themselves penniless, with no money for a return trip by ship to Boston, they were unwilling to give up on a moral venture.

The mission families applied themselves to surviving, which meant farming and gardening. From a world where agriculture and ownership of a small farm was every rural person's dream, they did what they could to point the natives in that very direction. A reliable food supply maintained through agriculture was nothing new to Indians. North America was a garden continent well before the coming of white people. But the Cayuses weren't gardeners, they were traders.

The missionaries didn't have the assets of the Hudson's Bay Co. to provide natives with trade goods and they didn't have wealthy patrons in Europe. What did they have to offer in trade? Potatoes, crude plowshares, wornout shirts and Bible tracts. In the eyes of the Indian upper-class, who owned thousands of horses and dozens of slaves, these people were paupers with little potential for trade.

They didn't force farming on the Indians, in fact some Indians took to raising vegetables to sell to incoming wagon trains, hiring white men to work their fields for them.

Rather than forcing the English language on the natives, the mission meeting rooms were the first English-as-a-Second-Language classrooms: the missionaries tried to learn the Indians' language, translated little books that they hand-printed and stitched together by candlelight.

It was the attention to the standard of living of women and children that was the most controversial, then, as it is today. The class system, entrenched slavery and male domination of the social order created an insurmountable situation. When missionaries' efforts made the lives of Indian women easier, it became a direct affront to the Indian men. The missionaries also didn't make allowances for upper-class vs. slaves in church services. All natives were seated together, a social leveling that backfired.

Read about them. They're our common Northwest history, the story of people who didn't come here seeking gold or free land. (Both Catholic and Protestant missionaries kept gold discoveries quiet to keep out an influx of lawless, greedy miners.) We can learn about human nature, the importance of moral values and the power of religious ideals by studying the Oregon Mission era. These were the sort of people who would have joined the Peace Corps or Habitat for Humanity 150 years later.

The story has everything to pique one's interest today:

-- Greed - the Massacre occurred just after Marcus Whitman returned from Fort Vancouver with the largest supply train he'd ever brought back to Waiilatpu. It was plundered immediately after the Massacre.

-- A rapid influx of newcomers - word had reached the Indians about the 10,000-strong Mormon movement into the Salt Lake Valley only months before - were they on the way?

-- Intrigue - Was the Massacre instigated by fur trappers sent by Mormons? By Catholics? In the battle for the West, religion was part of the picture.

-- A multinational corporation - What part did the Hudson's Bay Co. play? Did they really turn away Massacre victims?

If all else falls to arouse interest, there's always sex. Henry Spalding's youthful marriage proposal to Narcissa gave the two of them (and their spouses) something to think about as they spent 11 years stuck in the same mission together, battling each other all the way.

It's not an "Indian" story and shouldn't be usurped by them to be disposed of or distorted. It's an American story of well-meaning men and women who were disappointed with their own culture's failings so they set out to create a finer world in the West. Today, we talk about a better world, donate to political causes or maybe cast a vote. Between 1836-1847, a small band of American families dedicated their lives to it.

Laurie Winn Carlson, of Cheney, is a graduate student in history at Eastern Washington University. Her book, "On Sidesaddles to Heaven: the Women of the Rock Mountain Mission," will be published by Caxton Printers in 1998. ------------------------------------------- Whitman bibliography

The story of the Oregon Mission effort at Waiilatpu, Lapwai and Tshimikain is a complicated yet intriguing topic. Suggested reading:

-- "Converting the West, a Biography of Narcissa Whitman," by Julie Roy Jeffrey

-- "Juggernaut, the Whitman Massacre Trial, 1850," Ronald B. Lansing.

-- "Mary Richardson Walker, Her Book," by Ruth Karr McKee.

-- "The Whitman Massacre of 1847," by Catherine, Elizabeth, and Matilda Sager.

-- "Memoirs of the West," by Eliza Spalding Warren

-- "The Letters of Narcissa Whitman," from Ye Galleon Press

-- Works by by Clifford Merrill Drury