History of Oregon (Bancroft)/Volume 1/Chapter 23

by Frances Fuller Victor

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE WHITMAN MASSACRE.

1847

Savages as a Handiwork of the Creator—They might have been Better Made—But They are not so much Worse than White Men, who are Bad Enough—Rival Claimants for the Rewards to Follow their Conversion—Portentous Clouds Hanging over Marcus Whitman—Strange He cannot See the Darkening Sky—The Natives Maddened by the White Man's Diseases, and by the Coming-in of so Many to Take from Them their Lands—Attitude of Catholics and Protestants—Rival Roads to Heaven—The Savages Prefer their Own Way—And thereupon They Perpetrate a Most Horrible Deed.

The origin of Indian wars is always much the same. Mother Nature is a capricious parent and feeds and clothes her children indifferently well. In 1805 Lewis and Clarke saw the Columbia Valley tribes at their best. They had apparently attained to as much comfort and were as healthy and powerful as under the circumstances they could be. Could they have remained in that condition for generations, there is no reason to doubt that they would have continued to enjoy such peace and prosperity as belongs to savage life. Nor would it be contrary to the course of things to expect them to advance morally and intellectually, even while living under such hard conditions. The savages of the upper Columbia were very good men, for savages. It is true, they were thieves, and if their natural benevolence prompted them to relieve the necessities of the white strangers, they rewarded themselves the first opportunity.^[1] Thieving was a legitimate means of securing themselves against want, and lying only a defence against discovery and loss.

When the pleasing ceremonies of the Catholic religion were introduced, giving them under certain restrictions the right of appeal to a superior intelligence and power, who would have compassion on their sufferings if they conformed to requirements which their reason showed them to be just, they seized willingly and even joyfully upon the prospect. After practising these forms for several years with remarkable constancy, and finding themselves better off than before, inasmuch as they were more at peace with each other, and enjoyed further the pleasures of human society and intercourse with something beyond the reach of the senses, the race from which they understood this beneficial religion to be derived began to make its appearance among them.

The first feeling that is awakened by the contact of the two races is covetousness. There are men who have everything desirable, and pretend to what they persist in calling the devil's gift, the knowledge of good and evil. The Indian wished to steal, to take these things at once, as soon as he saw them or learned their use; but was restrained by fear of the consequences.^[2] Then came to him in this dilemma the offer of knowledge, which he immediately seized upon as a legitimate means to the end he coveted, the possession of property. The offer of knowledge was accompanied by the tender of a new religion; but to that no objection was made. What they knew of the white man's religion was good; why should more of it harm them? If it made the others wise, powerful, and rich, why not adopt it? Thus there was no difficulty about introducing missionaries. Without doubt, there was a strong desire on the part of the natives to be taught. The mistake their teachers made was in believing it to be a proof of their spiritual susceptibility, when it was, in fact, an evidence of a natural emulation, to put themselves on a footing with the superior race. In this matter both teachers and pupils were deceived; the savage in expecting to acquire in a single life-time the civilization which was the slow growth of unknown ages; the missionary in believing that he could graft on this wild stock a germ whose fruit would not be tinctured with the bitter sap of the uncultivated tree.

Having once entered into relations of teacher and learner, it was not easy to dissolve them, unless by violence. The longer they remained in this position the more difficult it became. And yet in 1847, and for many years before, it had been evident that if a failure of mission usefulness was not certain, success in that direction was doubtful. The reason of the failure sprang in a great measure from the characteristic covetousness of the aboriginal, and his inability to understand why it was that he could not at once become the equal of his teacher. Here his self-love was mortified. He began to suspect that his teachers were governed by selfish and sinister motives in intruding into his country. The more white men he saw the more this conviction grew. They did not all practise what the missionaries taught; and why then should he? Was it not all a scheme to get possession of his country? They were losing faith in everything when the Catholic fathers began to interfere^[3] with the Protestant missions, reminding them of the good times when they were all Catholics, and no one had disturbed the old harmony of their lives.

It was difficult to control indolent, impatient, jealous, and overbearing savages, even when they were most strongly animated with a desire to be made acquainted with the white man's civilization. But the moment a controversy appeared among the white instructors, and it was observed that they denied the validity of each other's beliefs, and especially that they denounced each other as false teachers, the task became tenfold greater. The suspicion of the savages once aroused that some kind of deception had been practised upon them, it was not possible to allay it, particularly since so many circumstances confirmed it. A division, as I have previously shown, had almost immediately taken place, the Cayuses and Walla Wallas generally choosing the Catholic religion, and the Nez Percés the Protestant.

The mercenary nature of the aboriginal to which I have just referred led him to be governed somewhat by the example or advice of the traders to whom he brought his furs, and of whom he procured such goods as he most needed or desired. Where the teacher and the trader were of the same faith, it was easy to control, in appearance, the views and conduct of the natives. But where the trader was one thing and the teacher another in religious matters, the native according to his nature followed the trader. This had been illustrated at Fort Walla Walla, where while Protestant McKinlay was in charge Whitman had been able, though not without difficulty, to restrain the violence of the Cayuses, which broke out with increased force when Catholic McBean replaced him.

Ever since the return of Whitman, in 1843 from his unsuccessful mission to the American board, he had lived over a smouldering volcano. Year after year an army of white people came from east of the Rocky Mountains, on whom the aborigines looked with distrustful anger. It was true, they did not tarry in the Nez Percé or Cayuse country, but hastened to the Willamette. Yet how long should they continue to come in such numbers before the Willamette would not hold them?

From the immigrants the Indians stole horses and cattle, and pillaged and vexed them in various ways, while knowing well enough that these offences were deemed worthy of punishment, and were against the laws they had themselves subscribed to. The immigrants, being advised, bore these depredations as well as they were able, seldom coming to blows or retaliation, trading with them for vegetables or grain, and sometimes selling them cattle which they coveted. There was, indeed, nothing of which they could justly complain, their hostility proceeding rather from envy and suspicion than from wickedness innate in the red man more than in the white.

They were angry with Whitman because he did not leave the country, because he raised grain on their land and sold it to the immigrants, because he had mills and comfortable houses, and every year added to his facilities for reaping greater profits from his residence among them. This had been their temper all along; but in 1847 it had seemed to take a more aggressive form, either because they had been told that the United States then claimed sovereignty, or because in their own minds their disaffection was fully ripe, and the sword, so long suspended, was ready to fall.

As soon as the immigrants entered the Cayuse country at the foot of the Blue Mountains they were informed by Spalding of the unfriendly disposition of the Cayuses, and advised not to travel in small companies.^[4] That this was timely counsel subsequent events proved.

Whitman was at this time on a visit to the lower country to bring up machinery for his grist-mill, in order to make flour for the immigrants.^[5] So convinced was he that an outbreak must occur before long, that, as I have said, he purchased of the Methodists their station at the Dalles, from which they were willing to retire notwithstanding its prospective as well as present value, for the same reason—the fear of Indian troubles. This purchase was made in the spring of 1847, or at all events before the last of August. Waller was at that time contemplating a removal to the Willamette Valley,^[6] and Whitman, when bringing up from Vancouver his milling machinery, early in September, left his nephew, Perrin B. Whitman, at the Dalles, in company with a man from the Willamette Valley named Hinman.

It would seem from these arrangements that Whitman did not consider the Dalles Indians dangerous. The Dalles besides was within two days' travel by canoe of Fort Vancouver, which was a point in its favor as compared with Waiilatpu. It must forever trouble the student of history to reconcile with his characteristic good sense in ordinary matters Whitman's persistency in remaining at his station when repeatedly threatened by the Cayuses and remonstrated with by McLoughlin for his temerity; and Gray's verdict, that he possessed a great obstinacy, seems justified.^[7] There were, it is true, good reasons for wishing to remain. It was another case of the domination of the temporal over the spiritual. The Walla Walla Valley had been his home for eleven years. He had expended much labor and money upon improvements. He had taken rather high-handed measures with the American board in refusing to abandon the station in 1842–3, and did not now like to acknowledge himself in the wrong. He had hopes from the discussions in congress that he might be able to hold on until the United States should send an Indian agent to his relief, and until the promised territorial organization and land law should secure to the missions each their mile square of land, which would be lost by abandonment.

But there still remains a question of whether it was a justifiable determination, under the circumstances, to remain and imperil, not only his own life, but the lives of all those associated with him, and possibly involve the colony of the Willamette in savage warfare. That he did this with his eyes open to the danger is clearly apparent. For even while he was transporting his mill to Waiilatpu the Cayuses were committing acts portending an outbreak.^[8] Blood had been spilled at the Dalles, as soon as the first party of ten men arrived at that place, or on the 23d of August.

This affair was with the Dalles Indians, who had stolen some property from the camp of the white men. On making complaint to Waller, they were advised to retaliate by taking some Indian horses and holding them until the property was restored. The Indians attacked in consequence; there was a skirmish, a white man and a chief were killed, and several on both sides wounded; while four white men fled to the mountains in a panic, and were lost for several days, endeavoring to discover the trail to the Willamette Valley.^[9]

So alarmed was Waller that he sent for Abernethy, superintendent of Indian affairs, to quiet matters, and then hastened to overtake a company which had passed a few miles west of the Dalles, and request, them to return and protect his family and the wounded men.^[10]

A party did return, and Abernethy also came, who succeeded in procuring an audience with the principal chiefs, whom he induced, by paying them for the dead native, called Equator, to restore the property of the immigrants, and promise better behavior. But whether by these, or by the Walla Wallas and Cayuses, small parties of strangers continued to be plundered, and the property cached in the hills far away from the travelled road.^[11]

Whitman made a visit to the Dalles during the two months the companies were passing between the Blue and Cascade mountains. On his return from this journey, which Peter W. Crawford, to whom I am indebted for a voluminous narrative of pioneer events,^[12] says was in October, he again met the caravans at the Umatilla.^[13]

From the train to which Crawford belonged he selected several persons whom he engaged to aid him in various ways at Waiilatpu. He secured a man named Saunders as a teacher, who with his wife and children agreed to go to the mission; a tailor named Isaac Gilliland, and a farmer named Kimball, from Indiana, among whose family was a daughter of seventeen.^[14] There were already at the mission many who intended to winter there, part of a company from Oscaloosa, Iowa, and others,^[15] in all fifty-four, some of them having been detained by sickness, and some by the lateness of the season. All who remained were employed, as far as possible, by Whitman, who, notwithstanding the threatening circumstances, was making improvements on his mill. The doctor was a man of affairs; he loved work, and he liked to see others work. Thus absorbed, it was little wonder he failed to perceive the black shadow approaching.

As is usual with armies, large migrations, or any great bodies of people moving together without the ordinary comforts of life, disease broke out among the immigrants of 1847. A severe illness known as mountain fever, and apparently occasioned by the extremes of temperature encountered in the mountains during the latter part of the summer—hot days and cold nights—prostrated many of the adults, and measles attacked the younger portion of the people. This disease, usually considered simple and manageable, became malignant under the new conditions in which it was developed. It seems to have been at its height when the trains, all having some sick, were passing through the Cayuse country. What was malignant among the strangers, when it was imparted to the natives became fatal, whether from ignorance of proper modes of treatment, or from the character of the disease itself. The measles of 1847, like the intermittent fever of 1829–30 and 1834–7, became a scourge to the natives. The white men who introduced it could not be held to blame,^[16] but the natives made them responsible, not understanding that inscrutable law of nature which makes it fatal to the dark races to encounter the white race;^[17] or if they perceived its effects, not knowing that the white men were as ignorant as themselves of the cause.

When the mission Indians found that a disease which they could not control had been introduced among them, they became greatly alarmed and excited, as did also the natives on Puget Sound, to which district the measles had spread.^[18] Being a white man's disease, the Indians thought a white doctor should be able to cure it. In fact, they were witnesses to the fact that the white patients generally recovered, while their own did not. That they were much to blame for the fatal results in many cases, was true.^[19] Being ignorant of the injury they would receive from such a course, many sought to cool their fever by plunging into cold water, or, after coming out of their sweat-houses, bathing in the river, a procedure which caused almost immediate death.

When it is remembered that ever since 1842, and even earlier, the natives had been importuning the missionaries for pay for their lands, and that others, if not they, had repeatedly promised on the faith of the United States government that they should be paid when the boundary question was settled; and when it is remembered that this question had been settled for almost a year and a half, since which time two immigrations had arrived, without anything being done to satisfy the natives—the wonder is not that they were suspicious and turbulent, and ready to believe evil things of the white men, but that they were so long held in tolerable control by a few isolated missionaries.^[20]

The reader already knows the difficulty experienced by Whitman and Spalding from the first, in prosecuting their mission labor, owing to the unreasonable requirements of their pupils, their indolence, selfishness, and ingratitude for services. This was almost as much as could be borne before any sectarian differences arose to aggravate the disorder. After this the usefulness of the missions as schools of religion and morality was at an end. A few perceiving the benefit of agriculture and stock-raising tolerated the teachers, and so far imitated them as to raise supplies for their own families, besides selling to the immigrants. In the matter of cattle, also, they had eagerly acquired all they could purchase or steal from the passing caravans, and had attempted to form a cattle company to buy a herd in California, with what result the reader knows. Perhaps this attempt of the Walla Wallas is the highest imitation of civilization attained to by them or by any Oregon Indians, as it not only was a business organization, but partook something of the character of an invasion, or an act of colonization, since in 1847 we find the Walla Wallas in California assisting Frémont to capture the country.^[21] The chief of this expedition, Peupeumoxmox, was reputed to have so far benefited by his observations abroad as to give good counsel to his people and the Cayuses on his return,^[22] but the truth of his reported friendship for the white people is not well established by the evidence. Palmer met him in the spring of 1846, when he related the death of his son in California, and declared his intention of going there to avenge his loss. This desire accounts for his willingness to aid Frémont. Palmer also says that he was surly toward the immigration of 1845, and had even made hostile demonstrations.^[23]

There was, at the time under consideration, a number of dissolute characters, half-breeds from the mountains to the east, hanging upon the skirts of the travellers, men whose wild blood was full of the ichor of hatred of religion and civilization, and poisoned with jealousy of the white race, the worst traits only of which they had inherited. These men among the natives were like fire in tow, their evil practices and counsel scorching every shred of good the missionaries by patient effort had been able to weave into their habits of life.^[24] Every act of the missionaries was criticised. When Whitman, who was endeavoring to break up the custom of going to war, exhibited his disapprobation by refusing to shake hands with an offender, the accidental death of that young warrior was imputed to him,^[25] and though they pretended to be convinced to the contrary, their hearts were secretly bitter toward Whitman, whose 'evil eye' they were willing to believe had worked them harm.

It was unfortunate that at this juncture so many strangers had been allowed to gather at the mission, confirming the suspicion of the Cayuses that the Americans intended to settle in their country without first treating for their lands: unfortunate because it gave weight to a rumor circulated among them by one Joe Lewis, a half-breed, who was employed about the mission, that Doctor and Mrs Whitman were conspiring to exterminate them by poison, in order to come into possession of their lands for themselves and their countrymen^[26]—a rumor which was strengthened by the great number of deaths among the Cayuses, amounting to nearly one half the population.^[27]

That the natives murmured Whitman was aware; but he hoped that two deaths which had occurred in his house, of one of his adopted children and one of Osborne's, would have shown them that the disease carried off white people as well as Indians. Spalding asserts in the Oregon American, a small semi-monthly paper^[28] published in 1848, that not only Joe Lewis, but the Catholic priests who had arrived at Fort Walla Walla from Canada on the 5th of September, with the design of establishing missions among the tribes of eastern Oregon, assured the Cayuses that the Americans were causing them to die. This statement, which was the beginning of a controversy not yet ended between the Protestants and Catholics, he made on the word of a Cayuse chief named Tintinmitsi, who, however, professed not to believe the accusation.^[29] The mere intimation of such atrocity exposes the hearts of those who made them. The labors of Archbishop Blanchet in Canada, before spoken of, had resulted in the appointment of his brother, A. M. A. Blanchet, bishop of Walla Walla, who thereupon proceeded overland to Oregon, accompanied by nine persons, four fathers of the order of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, with two lay brothers; two secular priests, Brouillet and Rosseau; and Guillaume Leclaire, a deacon.^[30] After remaining at Walla Walla about a month, the Oblate fathers departed to establish a mission among the Yakimas in the Simcoe Valley; but it was not until the 27th of October that Blanchet and Brouillet, with Leclaire, removed from the fort to the camp of the Cayuse chief Tauitau, on the Umatilla River, about thirty miles distant, the chief having relinquished a house built for himself several years previous by Pambrun, in an attempt to civilize the Cayuses.

The establishment of this mission among the Cayuses, already so turbulent, and from their present temper so dangerous, was a sore trial to the Protestant missionaries, while it was, without doubt, an incentive to Dr Whitman to endeavor to remain. The pain and uneasiness the bishop was inflicting was not by any means unknown to him;^[31] but whether in Catholic or Protestant, religious zeal knows no mercy, and the inquisition of the sixteenth century only changes its form according to the time and place of its exhibition. Protestant and Catholic alike believed the other the emissary of Satan, whom to afflict was doing God service. There was a difficulty, however, in the way of the bishop's proselyting: he could communicate with the natives only through an interpreter. Then the Cayuses were very little about the fort while the caravans were passing, being engaged in trading with or stealing from the Americans.

The new-comers had all left the country east of the Cascade Mountains, except the little colony at Waiilatpu; the Catholic mission was established in a house furnished to the priests by Tauitau in the lovely valley of the Umatilla, and quiet reigned throughout the great wilderness of rolling prairie from the Dalles on the Columbia to Lapwai on the Clearwater. Ay, the quiet of death was there, broken only by the wails of the poor savage over the bodies of relatives and friends. Doctor Whitman's heart was full of pity for them, as he rode from camp to camp with medicines and advice, little imagining the sinister meaning attached to his conduct by the Cayuses.

In the month of November Spalding came from Lapwai, accompanied by his daughter Eliza, and a Mr Jackson who was stopping at his mission, bringing a train of horses loaded with grain to be ground at the mill. On the 25th, while en route to Walla Walla with Jackson and Rogers of the Waiilatpu mission, Spalding visited chief Peupeumoxmox, who resided not far from the fort on the Walla Walla River. After the manner of an Indian gossip, the illustrious savage referred to the subject of Catholic missionaries, taking occasion to remark that he had been solicited to give them a place for a station, but that he had refused; and repeating the assertion of Tintinmitsi that the Americans were charged with destroying the Cayuses, but professing not to credit the story. Peupeumoxmox added, with true Indian cunning, that the priests pronounced the diseases from which they were suffering an affliction from God on account of their heresy; knowing well the fever into which such a statement would throw Spalding, and probably deriving as much pleasure from it as a good Methodist or Catholic could do.

During the night of Spalding's visit, a niece of Peupeumoxmox died, and he conducted the funeral services at the fort next day, when he met Brouillet and his associates, also there on a visit, with whom he conversed on the manner of teaching by the 'Catholic ladder.'^[32] During the forenoon of the 27th he returned to Waiilatpu, where a messenger soon appeared from the camps of Five Crows and Tauitau, desiring the presence of Dr Whitman among their sick, a summons which the doctor with his customary alacrity obeyed. On this journey of thirty miles or more, Spalding accompanied him. It is easy to believe the latter when he says that as they rode they talked, far into the night, of their past trials and triumphs, and their present insecurity; or even that Whitman uttered the words put into his mouth, "If I am to fall by Roman Catholic influence, I believe my death will do as much good to Oregon as my life can."^[33] He was a man capable of such a declaration.

The 28th was Sunday. The two missionaries broke their fast in the lodge of Sticcas, the chief who had guided the immigration of 1843 over the Blue Mountains; and the doctor could not help remarking upon the meal of beef, bread, potatoes, and squash, as a gratifying proof that under his teaching the Cayuses had made some progress. Everything about the little village was orderly and still, as became the sabbath. It was the calm preceding the cyclone.

While Spalding remained to hold religious services, Whitman proceeded to the camps of Tauitau and Five Crows on the south side of the Umatilla, where, after calling on his patients, he dined with Bishop Blanchet at his mission in a friendly manner. According to Spalding, the doctor appeared to have been agreeably entertained, and to have considered certain negotiations for the sale of Waiilatpu to the Catholics if a majority of the Cayuses wished him to go away; an engagement having been entered into that the bishop or vicar-general should pay a visit to Waiilatpu in a few days.^[34] Leaving Spalding to visit and comfort the sick, Whitman left for home Sunday evening. Spalding himself visited the priests, taking tea with them, and on Tuesday evening returned to the lodge of Sticcas to sleep.

That evening Sticcas communicated to Spalding the significant information that a decree of outlawry had been passed by the Cayuses against the white people in their country, declining to explain any further.^[35] Filled with apprehension, the missionary cast himself upon his couch of skins, but sleep was impossible. On either side of him sat an Indian woman chanting the harsh and melancholy death-song of her people. When asked for whom they mourned, no answer could be obtained. At early dawn Spalding prepared to depart, his mind oppressed with misgivings. At a little distance from the lodge waited a native woman, who, laying her hand on the neck of his horse, in a few hurried words warned him to avoid Waiilatpu. Considering that his daughter was an inmate of that station, this hint was not calculated to ease his mind or to cause him to loiter, though his path lay directly in the way of danger, the road from the Umatilla to Waiilatpu leading past the camp of Tiloukaikt, a chief with whom Whitman had more than once had a serious rupture.^[36]

When Whitman reached home late on Sunday night he found things as he had left them. Mrs Osborne, who had lost a child by the measles, and recently been confined, was quite ill. Miss Bewley was down with intermittent fever. One of the Sager lads was partially recovering from measles. Two half-breed girls left with Mrs Whitman to be educated, a half-breed boy adopted by the doctor, Crockett Bewley, brother of Miss Bewley, and a young man named Sales, were all in bed with the epidemic, though convalescing.

During the forenoon of Monday Dr Whitman assisted at the funeral of an Indian who had died during his visit to the Umatilla, and was struck with the absence of the tribe, many of whom were mounted, riding about, and giving no attention to the burial; but as there had been a slaughter of a beef which was being dressed in the mission yard, an occasion which always drew the Indians about, the circumstance was in part at least accounted for. School was in session, several men and boys were absent at the saw-mill near the foot of the mountains; the women were employed with the duties of housekeeping and nursing the sick, and all was quiet as usual when Whitman, fatigued with two nights' loss of sleep, entered the common sitting-room of his house and sat down before the fire to rest, thinking such thoughts as—Ah! who shall say?^[37]

While he thus mused, two chiefs, Tiloukaikt and Tamahas, surnamed 'The Murderer,' from his having killed a number of his own people, presented themselves at the door leading to an adjoining room, asking for medicines, when the doctor arose and went to them, afterward seating himself to prepare the drugs. And now the hour had come! Tamahas stepped behind him, drew his tomahawk from beneath his blanket, and with one or two cruel blows laid low forever the man of God. John Sager, who was in the room prostrated by sickness, drew a pistol, but was quickly cut to pieces. In his struggle for life he wounded two of his assailants, who, at a preconcerted signal, had with others crowded into the house. A tumult then arose throughout the mission. All the men encountered by the savages were slain. Some were killed outright; others were bruised and mangled and left writhing back to consciousness to be assailed again, until after hours of agony they expired. Dr Whitman himself lived for some time after he had been stricken down, though insensible. Mrs Whitman, although wounded, with Rogers and a few others also wounded, took refuge in an upper room of the dwelling, and defended the staircase with a gun, until persuaded by Tamsucky, who gained access by assurances of sorrow and sympathy, to leave the chamber, the savages below threatening to fire the house. On her way to the mansion house,^[38] where the terror-stricken women and children were gathered, she fainted on encountering the mangled body of her husband, and was placed upon a wooden settee by Rogers and Mrs Hays, who attempted to carry her in this condition through the space between the houses; but on reaching the outer door they were surrounded by savages, who instantly fired upon them, fatally wounding Rogers, and several balls striking Mrs Whitman, who, though not dead, was hurled into a pool of water and blood on the ground. Not satisfied with this, Ishalhal, who had formerly lived in Gray's family, and who had fired the first shot at her before she escaped to the chamber from which Tamsucky treacherously drew her, seized her long auburn hair, now blood-stained and dishevelled, and lifting up the head, happily unconscious, repeatedly struck the dying woman's face with a whip, notwithstanding which life lingered for several hours.

Night came at last and drew a veil over the horrors of that afternoon. No one knew when the last breath left the body of the mistress of Waiilatpu. Ah! it was pitiful to see this pure and gentle woman, this pure and noble man, while in the service of God hewn down and cast into the ditch by other of God's creatures whom to benefit they had lived. In the general compensation it would seem to our poor faculties that the bestowal of the martyr's crown poorly recompensed the heart of Omnipotence for witnessing such atrocities.

It is needless further to describe the butcheries which lasted for several days, or until all the adult males except five, and several boys, were killed, some on their sick-beds, some on their way home from the mill, some in one place and some in another.^[39]

The butcheries were harldy more atrocious than the sufferings inflicted on the survivors. The helpless women and children were compelled not only to witness the slaughter of their husbands and fathers, but were forced to yield a hateful obedience to their captors while the yet unburied remains of those dearest to them lay mangled and putrefying in their sight.^[40]

Several of the women were taken for wives. Five Crows, who was declared not to have any hand in the massacre, and of whom Hines says in his Oregon History, published three years after the event, that he was a Protestant, and gave "good evidence of conversion," on the eleventh day after the outbreak sent for Miss Bewley to be brought to his lodge on the Umatilla. Nor was Five Crows an unfair sample of an Indian convert. He would have nothing to do with the destruction of the mission, but he would let it be destroyed. Being already wealthy, he cared nothing for the booty, but he could not withstand beauty. Miss Bewley was sent for, and having no one to protect her, she was torn from the arms of sympathizing women, placed on a horse, and in the midst of a high fever of both mind and body, was carried through a November snow-storm to the arms of this brawny savage. Five Crows behaved in a manner becoming a gentlemanly and Christian savage. He made his captive as comfortable as possible, and observing her opposition to his wishes, gave her a few days in which to think of it, besides allowing her to spend a portion of her time at the house of the Catholic bishop. But this generous mood was not of long duration, and nightly she was dragged from Blanchet's presence to the lodge of her lord, the priests powerless to interfere.^[41]

The position of the priests was made ground for serious accusation when the story became known; but it is difficult to see how they could have interfered without first having resolved to give up their mission and risk their lives. If the Americans at Waiilatpu could refuse to protest, and if Canfield could voluntarily seek to save his own life, leaving his wife and children in the hands of the natives, it was hardly to be expected that the power of the priests who had their own lives and purposes to be secured, and who were not allowed under ordinary circumstances to harbor women in their houses, should prove more efficacious.^[42]

It will be remembered that when Dr Whitman returned from the Umatilla he was expecting a visit soon from the bishop or vicar-general, with whom he hoped to make arrangements which, in a certain event, would enable him to sell the mission property. On the afternoon of the 30th Brouillet proceeded on this errand as far as the lodge of Tiloukaikt, with the intention of visiting the sick and baptizing the dying of that camp. Arriving late in the evening, he became apprised of what had happened on the 29th at Waiilatpu, and spent the night in much perturbation,^[43] but without neglecting in the morning to attend to his religious duties. Having done what he could for the dying Cay uses, he hastened to Waiilatpu and offered such consolation as he might venture upon to the widows and orphans, concealing his sympathy as directed by the captives, and procuring the burial of the dead.^[44]

On the afternoon of the 1st of December Brouillet departed from Waiilatpu and rode toward Umatilla, in the hope of intercepting Spalding, who was expected on that day for the conference which was to have taken place. Soon after crossing the Walla Walla River he discovered Spalding galloping toward him. Fortunately for his purpose, the interpreter and a son of Tiloukaikt's, who was following with the evident design of spying upon his actions, had stopped to light their pipes, which gave time for communicating the news of the massacre and for a moment's deliberation. Before any course could be decided upon, the chief's son Edward rejoined the priest, who interceded with him for the life of Spalding as a personal favor to himself. Not knowing what course to take, Young Tiloukaikt after some hesitation turned back to camp, saying he would consult with his father. Here was the hardly hoped for opportunity, which was quickly taken. Abandoning his horses to the interpreter, and taking a scrap of food which Brouillet carried in his wallet, the stricken missionary plunged on foot and alone into the wilderness over which a thick fog settling concealed him from his enemies.^[45] After six days of physical suffering from want and exposure, and great mental anguish,^[46] he arrived at Lapwai, and found that his family was in the care of some friendly chiefs at Craig's place ten miles away.

When the fugitive Canfield reached Lapwai he found the Nez Percés ignorant of what had taken place at Waiilatpu, and advised Mrs Spalding to allow them to remain so. But the knowledge she possessed of the Indian character, and the fact of the intimate relations between the Nez Percés and Cayuses, decided her to break the news at once and throw herself on their mercy. In the absence of her husband, and temporarily of her brother, she confided the matter to two chiefs, Jacob and Eagle, who happened to be present, and who promised protection, but counselled removal from Lapwai. One of them carried a letter to Craig, and the other volunteered to communicate the intelligence received from Canfield to the tribe. This was on Saturday. On Monday the 8th of December a messenger arrived from the Cayuses, who related what had occurred, stating the cause to be the belief that they were being poisoned. There was, as might have been expected, a division, the majority of the chiefs following the advice of Eagle and Jacob, while others evinced a readiness to join in the murdering and plundering course of the Cayuses.^[47]

On the same day Mrs Spalding, who had remained over Sunday at the mission with a guard of two or three faithful Nez Percés, removed to Craig's. She desired to send an express to Chemakane to inform Walker and Eells of the massacre at Waiilatpu, and also one to her daughter at the latter place, but no one could be found who would undertake either errand. The missionaries were, however, safe at the Chemakane station, the principal chief of the Spokanes on first hearing of the Cayuse outbreak promising to defend the inmates against attack, a promise which he faithfully kept^[48] by mounting guard over them till their departure to the Willamette the following spring. At Lapwai, the Nez Percés, under Joseph, and some of James' band pillaged the mission buildings, but were otherwise held in check by the chiefs before named.

As in all the emergencies which overtook the Americans in colonial times, the fur company now came to their relief. As soon as possible after learning what had taken place, McBean despatched a Canadian messenger to Vancouver to apprise Douglas and Ogden, and through them Abernethy. At the Dalles he found in charge Alanson Hinman,^[49] with his wife and child.

Besides Hinman there were Perrin Whitman, Dr Henry Saffarans, and William McKinney and wife, of the late arrivals. To none of these persons did the messenger breathe a word about the massacre, not even to Hinman, who accompanied him to Vancouver to procure medicines for the sick about the Dalles, until they were below the Cascades, so careful was he not to spread any excitement amongst the natives before means could be taken to rescue the prisoners.^[50]

The messenger arrived at Vancouver on the evening of the 6th, and the following day Douglas wrote to Governor Abernethy, enclosing a copy of McBean's letter to the board of management, and informing him that Ogden would leave at the earliest possible moment for Walla Walla with a strong party to endeavor to prevent further outrages.

1. 'There is no generosity in an Indian that I have ever seen in all my experience.' Strong's Hist Or., MS., 66. One might say the same with equal pertinence of white men.
2. Rev. Thomas Condon, at the Dalles, going away from home with his family, left a domesticated native in charge of his house. Returning, he found his servant sitting outside the house, shivering in the cold; and on asking him why he did not remain by the comfortable fire, was told that the temptation of seeing so many useful and desirable things, together with the opportunity of appropriating them, had been so tormenting to him, that he had voluntarily banished himself from their presence rather than take them and subject himself to the consequences.
3. I refer here to the visits of the priests several years earlier. There was at this time no Catholic mission in the Walla Walla Valley.
4. P. J. Ponjade, in Brouillet's Authentic Account, 90. Ponjade said that Spalding inquired anxiously whether the U. S. dragoons were not coming.
5. Palmer's Wagon Train, MS., 28–9; Grim's Emigrant Anecdotes, MS., 5.
6. Or. Spectator, Sept. 2, 1847.
7. Hist. Or., 108. Palmer says: 'He was going up with his machinery to put up a flour-mill, just as he intended, and if they continued their hostile policy he was going to break up that mission, abandon it, and go down to the Dalles, and make that his headquarters.' Wagon Train, MS., 29. This was what Palmer learned from the doctor himself whom he met on the Umatilla.
8. John E. Ross, an emigrant of 1847, describes the attitudes of the Cayuses and the Walla Wallas. He met Whitman on the Umatilla, who advised him to use great caution, which advice he followed by encamping early, taking the evening meal, and then, when it became dark, moving to a secluded spot away from the road for the night to avoid being molested and getting into an affray. After leaving the Umatilla he met a small party of natives, who appeared morose, and on the third day came to a place where it was evident an attack had been made. Beds, books, and various articles were scattered about and destroyed. Alarmed by this proof of hostility, his party, consisting only of men, travelled by night, and on coming to the mouth of Rock Creek, a branch of John Day River, were met by some Columbia River Indians, who notified them that there was trouble before them. About two miles from the crossing, in a cañon, they found four families who had been robbed of their cattle and stripped of their clothing. Six women and some children were left naked. They had, however, rescued a bolt of white muslin, out of which they had hastily made coverings, though they offered little protection against the cold air of evening. The outrage occurred while the men were absent from the wagon looking for the stolen cattle, and the perpetrators were Walla Wallas. Ross' company remained with the destitute families till another train came up, giving their blankets to the women and making them a bed, first building a fire on the sands to warm a place for them to lie upon. Ross' Nar., MS., 4–6. The names of tha families were Franklin, Rodgers, Warren, and Hoyt. Crawford's Nar., MS., 55. A petition was before congress as late as 1879 to reimburse Mrs Rodgers, then old and blind, for losses amounting to $2,500, incurred by the robbery of her goods on this occasion. The petition set forth that John Rodgers, his wife Margaret, Nelson Hoyt, and his wife Mary, emigrated from Illinois to Oregon in 1847, and that while at the John Day River they were attacked by savages, and robbed of goods, money, cattle, and one wagon, to the amount above stated. St Helen Columbian. Crawford's Narrative, MS., says that Mrs Rodgers stood in the opening of a wagon and defended it with an axe.
9. The young man killed was named Sheppard; he was from St Louis County, Missouri. A Mr Parker was seriously wounded, and a Mr Aram less seriously. Or. Spectator, Sept. 2, 1847.
10. T'Vault, in Or. Spectator, Sept. 2, 1847. T'Vault, Barlow, and Foster were on their way to the Dalles when they met this company of 16 wagons August 28th, under the command of Bowman, some of whose men returned to the relief of Waller.
11. James Henry Brown, an immigrant of 1847, and author of several manuscripts in my collection, in his Autobiography, MS., 20–5, a work from which I am able to gather much excellent information, gives an account similar to that by Ross, of the treatment of his train by the Cayuses. Geer, in his Waldo Hills, MS., 2, mentions that his wife nearly lost her life by an Indian at the crossing of Des Chutes River. Grim, in his Emigrant Anecdotes, MS., 5, says that the Indians were extremely insolent to the immigrants, and behaved in a belligerent manner on the Umatilla; and that Whitman, who met a large body of the immigrants there, asked them to tarry for a day, and delivered an address to them, prophesying an Indian war, and giving them advice. It is certain that he was aware of the danger. It is also certain, considering the numbers and mixed character of those who here sought a new home, that they were forbearing toward the Indians in an extraordinary degree.
12. P. W. Crawford was born on the right bank of the Tweed, in Roxburyshire, Scotland, not far from the home of Walter Scott. He was taught the elementary branches in this neighborhood, but studied mathematics at the University of Edinburgh, where he learned surveying. For a short time after leaving the university he was in the service of a large commercial firm in London, and again at Southampton. From there he went to Quebec, and thence to Toronto and other parts of Canada, after which he travelled through the northern tier of states on the south side of the lakes, living for some time in Michigan and Illinois. He came to Oregon in 1847 in company with a family named Cline, and took a land claim on the Cowlitz River in November 1847, where he lived long and happily. Crawford's Narrative of the Overland Journey, containing also a history of early and subsequent events, is, without regard to style, the most complete record extant of the times it represents, and manifests throughout the author's remarkable powers of observation.
13. Crawford says the doctor had been on 'a mission of benevolence, conveying and escorting a company of immigrants over a new and much improved route to the Dalles, and who gave us another cut-off so as to shorten our route and give us good grass and water all the way.' Nar., MS., 51. This affectionate reference, with which the historian even for truth's sake has no occasion to meddle, since the doctor could at the same time attend to his own business of establishing the new station at the Dalles, and pilot the immigration over the road to that place, comports with the general impression of his willingness to be of service. Crawford speaks of him as being at this time a stout and robust looking man, of a seemingly strong and intelligent mind. Nar., MS., 52.
14. Gilliland was from Long Island, and was an elderly man without family. L. Woodbury Saunders was a native of New Hampshire, but had resided in central New York, and also in Indiana, from which latter state he emigrated. His wife was from Vermont, her maiden name being Mary Montgomery, and her mother's maiden name Stickney, from an old English family. Mrs Saunders later married Alanson Husted.
15. The persons at Waiilatpu after the new selections had been made were Joseph and Hannah Smith and 5 children, the elder of them being a girl of 16; Mr and Mrs Saunders and 5 children, the elder a girl of 14; Mr and Mrs Kimball and 5 children, the elder a girl of 16; Joseph and Sally Ann Canfield and 5 children, the elder a girl of 16; Mr and Mrs Hall and 5 children, the elder a girl of 10; Josiah and Margaret Osborne and 3 children, the elder a girl of 9; Elam and Irene Young and 3 sons, the eldest aged 21; Mrs Rebecca Hays and one young child; Miss Lorinda Bewley and her brother, Crockett Bewley; Mr Marsh and daughter, E. Marsh, aged 11; Mr Hoffman, and Mr Sales—in all, 54 persons of the immigration. Besides these were a young man named Rogers, Eliza, daughter of Mr Spalding of Lapwai, and 6 children of the Sager family, adopted in 1844, 2 boys and 4 girls, besides 2 half-breed girls, daughters of J. L. Meek and James Bridger, and 2 sons of Donald Manson, whom the doctor was educating. Total at Dr Whitman's, 68 persons. At Lapwai there were only Mr and Mrs Spalding and 3 young children, Miss Johnson, Mr Hart, brother of Mrs Spalding, Mr Jackson, and William Craig. Or. Spectator, Jan. 20, 1848.
16. I have been told of a case where the disease was intended to be given: A party of immigrants while in the Cayuse country were much annoyed by some of the young braves, who, with Indian intrusiveness and insolence, hung about the wagons, daring the drivers or the young lads of the train to fight, seemingly ambitious to rival the white people in boxing and wrestling. One wagon thus intruded on contained a woman, whose half-grown children were all down with the measles, and the driver of the team also, an active young fellow, was in the height of the fever, though still compelled to drive. Seeing him so annoyed the woman ordered him to stop the team and wrestle with the Indian as desired, and to blow his hot breath in the Indian's face to give him the measles. Whether that particular Indian died in consequence is not known; probably the woman was unaware of the danger, and only wished to have him punished for the trouble he gave, but if the Indian died his friends would be apt to believe that some evil influence was purposely worked upon him, as in this case there indeed had been. In Mission Life Sketches, 41, written, I judge, by Mr Perkins, of the early Dalles mission, there is a complaint of the effect of settlement on mission operations, which is no doubt well founded, even though the new-comers should consist of missionaries only. The result of mingling the races in Oregon is conclusive evidence of its mischievous effects.
17. 'The experience of a century had shown that the indiscriminate admission of civilized men as traders in the territory of the Indians is destructive to the morals of the former, and not only the morals but the existence of the latter.' Edinburgh Review, July 1845, 238. See also Tribune Almanac, 1846, p. 19; Darwin's Voyage round the World, 435–6; McCulloch's Western Isles, ii. 32; Gibbs, in Powell's Geog. Sur., i. 239.
18. 'In 1847 the measles prevailed at Nisqually. A fugitive Indian from the Swinomish country brought intelligence to Nisqually that the Swinomish, believing that the whites had brought the measles to exterminate them, were coming to massacre the whites. At the time there were no stockades or bastions at Nisqually, but orders came from Fort Vancouver to erect the usual defences. The scattered white settlers on the Sound became timid, and the Indians consequently more forward and troublesome. Hostile demonstrations were made while the stockades and bastions were being erected, but nothing serious resulted.' Tolmie's Hist. Puget Sound, MS., 30–1.
19. 'In the winter of 1847–8 the measles overran the country. It was of a very malignant type, and the natives suffered from it severely. Dr Whitman, as a medical man, naturally endeavored to mitigate the ravages of the disorder; but notwithstanding his efforts many deaths took place among his patients, arising as much from the neglect of advice, and imprudent exposure during the height of the fever, as from the virulence of the disorder.' Anderson's Northwest Coast, MS., 265.
20. 'When the Americans came into what the Indians claimed as their own country, their number was considerable; they didn't come to carry on trade with the Indians, but to take and settle the country, exclusively for themselves. They went about where they pleased, and settled where they chose without asking leave of the Indians, or paying them anything. The Indians saw it quickly. Every succeeding fall the white population about doubled, and the American population extended their settlements, and encroached upon the Indian pastures and camass grounds, excluding Indian horses, etc. The Indians saw annihilation before them.' Burnett's Recol., MS., i. 104–5.
21. Says Johnson: 'A whole community of Walla Walla Indians left Oregon across the mountains and established themselves on the Sacramento River, near Sutter's Fort.' Cal. and Or., 123; Tuthill's Hist. Cal., 201.
22. This is what Parrish says, who talks of him as if he were a very distinguished personage; because, perhaps, he once sent his son to the Methodist mission school for a few months. Or. Anecdotes, MS., 86–7.
23. Journal, 124–5.
24. Palmer relates that three Delawares came and settled among the Nez Percés. One of them, named Tom Hill, succeeded in persuading about a hundred lodges to acknowledge him as their chief by telling them that they then could have as many wives as they chose; that it was not wrong to steal, only wrong to be detected in it, and that what the missionaries taught was false. Journal, 129.
25. This man was a half Nez Percé, half Cayuse, son of a Nez Percé often called Le Grande. Whitman refused to take him by the hand on account of some quarrel and misconduct at the Dalles; perhaps he was in the party who killed Sheppard. However that was, the young man died that night, being choked by a piece of dried buffalo-meat. Thereupon an accusation was brought against the doctor. Mrs Whitman endeavored to regain the confidence of the natives by giving a 'feast for the dead,' Le Grande and Peupeumoxmox being present and professing continued regard. Whether their sentiments were genuine admits of doubt, but there was a 'villain of an Indian called Tamsucky who fomented discontent, and threatened Whitman that he would be killed.' Tolmie's Hist. Puget Sound, MS., 27. Palmer says that Whitman regarded Tamsucky as a good Indian; and Palmer left his horses with him during the winter of 1845–6. He was called Aliquot by the white people. When Palmer asked him to name his reward for keeping the horses, he asked for some scarlet velvet, and other articles of adornment, which Palmer brought and gave to Whitman when he met him on the Umatilla. Palmer's Wagon Train, MS., 32–4.
26. This story of Joe Lewis is given by several witnesses. One of these, William Craig of Lapwai, no one would dispute. He says: 'A messenger came there [to Mr Spalding's station] from the Cayuses, and the Indians, when assembled, required him to state all he knew about the matter and to state the truth. I was present; and he said, in substance, that all the chiefs were concerned except Young Chief and Five Crows, who knew nothing of it; that the cause… was that Dr Whitman and Dr Spalding were poisoning the Indians… Joe Lewis said that Dr Whitman and Mr Spalding had been writing for two years to their friends in the east, where Joe Lewis lived, to send them poison to kill off the Cayuses and the Nez Percés; and they had sent them some that was not good, and they wrote for more that would kill them off quick, and that the medicine had come this summer. Joe Lewis said he was lying on the settee in Dr Whitman's room, and he heard a conversation between Dr Whitman, Mrs Whitman, and Mr Spalding, in which Mr Spalding asked the doctor why he did not kill the Indians off faster. "O," said the doctor, "they are dying fast enough; the young ones will die off this winter, and the old ones next spring." … The Indian messenger stated that Joe Lewis made this statement in a council of the Cayuses… Joe Lewis, the messenger said, told the Cayuses in the council that unless they [the Indians] killed Dr Whitman and Mr Spalding quick, they would all die. The messenger went on to say himself, that 197 Indians had died since the immigration commenced passing that summer. He said that there were 6 buried on Monday morning, and among the rest his own wife; he said he knew they were poisoned.' Brouillet's Authentic Account, 35–6.
27. 'It was most distressing to go into a lodge of some 10 fires, and count 20 or 25, some in the midst of measles, others in the last stages of dysentery, in the midst of every kind of filth of itself sufficient to cause sickness, with no suitable means to alleviate their inconceivable sufferings, with perhaps one well person to look after the wants of 2 sick ones. Everywhere the sick and dying were pointed to Jesus, and the well were urged to prepare for death.' H. H. Spalding, in Oregon American, July 19, 1848.
28. 'Devoted to American principles and interests; to evangelical religion and morals; to general intelligence, foreign and domestic; to temperance and moral instrumentalities generally; to science, literature, and the arts; to commerce and internal improvements; to agriculture and home manufactures; to the description and development of our natural resources; to the physical, intellectual, and moral education of rising generations; and to such well-defined discussions generally as are calculated to elevate and dignity the character of a free people.' Its devotion was indeed great—so great that there was little room left for anything else. 'The constituted nature and relation of things, our constitution,' was a motto which, if adhered to, would seem to do away with all that goes before. 'Edited by J. S. Griffin. Printed by C. F. Putnam.' See Honolulu Polynesian, v. 54; Friend, viii. 4; Burnett's Recollections of a Pioneer, 251.
29. Oregon American, July 1848.
30. None of these priests were Jesuits, though Gray and Spalding speak of them uniformly as belonging to that order.
31. 'The arrival of the bishop of Walla Walla,' says Archbishop Blanchet, 'with his clergy to the fort was a thunderbolt to the Presbyterian ministers, specially to Dr Whitman. He was wounded to the heart by it. He could not refrain from expressing his dissatisfaction, saying he would do all in his power to thwart the bishop.' Hist. Cath. Church in Or., 163–5.
32. Strong's Hist. Or., MS., 43–5. Spalding also practises some duplicity, where he says in the Oregon American that no one who had not witnessed it could conceive of the intense agitation caused among the Indians by the introduction of the Catholic ladder, a chart containing rudely drawn pictures of scriptural subjects, and illustrating the doom of heretics. 'My attention,' he says, 'has suddenly been arrested by the outcries and wailings of a whole camp, occasioned by the arrival of some one with an additional explanation of the Catholic ladder, always accompanied by the declaration, "The Americans are causing us to die!" This sounds like slander. At the time of which Spalding speaks, the Catholic ladder was too well known among the Cayuses to occasion any such outburst of alarm, if ever it had done so. The wailing he heard in November was the death dirge; and if the natives exclaimed, 'The Americans are causing us to die!' such was the truth, though they had brought death without knowledge or intention of doing so.
33. Oregon American, Aug. 1848, 66. This remark may have been called forth by the doctor's knowledge of an incident which occurred at the lodge of Peupeumoxmox while Spalding was there; a Nez Percé entered the lodge with the inquiry, 'Is Dr Whitman killed?' as if he expected an affirmative answer.
34. From a chance remark of Spalding's, and from a quotation from him in Brouillet's Authentic Account, 21, I have no doubt that Whitman was about to accept an offer for Waiilatpu, from which he was convinced he must now go. The quotation is as follows: 'Dr Whitman twice during the last year called the Cayuse together, and told them if a majority wished he would leave the country at once… Dr Whitman held himself ready to sell the Waiilatpu station to the Catholic mission whenever a majority of the Cayuses might wish it.' In 1866–7 Spalding revived the memories of twenty years before, and delivered a course of lectures on the subject of the Waiilatpu mission, which were published in the Albany Or. States Rights Democrat, extending over a period from November 1866 to February 1867. In one these he says: 'The same week—referring to his arrival at Whitman's station—I visited Walla Walla, and a conference was partly agreed upon with the priests. They asked and I agreed to furnish them all needed supplies from my station.' He, however, denied in these lectures, what he had admitted previously, that Whitman dined with the priests, and says he declined on a plea of hastening home to look after the sick. Such is the effect of sectarianism that the most religious feel justified in lying to sustain a point.
35. Yet this is the chief of whom several white men have said he was the only true friend of the white race among the Oregon Indians. His friendship did not extend to warning the missionaries distinctly of their peril.
36. The camp of Sticcas, as I have already intimated, was on the north side of the Umatilla, probably not far from the present town of Pendleton, while Five Crows, Tauitau, Camespelo, and Yumhawalis had their villages on the south side, but not far away. Peupeumoxmox lived on the road leading from Fort Walla Walla to Waiilatpu, and Tiloukaikt, Tamahas, and Tamsucky had their lodges between him and the mission; so that travel whichever way he would, Spalding must pass the camps of these chiefs to reach Dr Whitman's station.
37. Mrs Husted, then wife of the teacher at the mission, has avowed that Whitman had certainly received some information or intimation on Sunday, and that on arriving at home late that night the family was kept sitting up several hours in consultation, talking over the chances of escape in case of an attack. I think this may be true, but state it only as the evidence of one person, after many years, and the distraction of mind caused by what followed. Spalding, in his lectures before quoted, hints at some such thing by saying, 'The doctor and his wife were seen in tears much agitated.' It becomes difficult to account in that case for the neglect of the doctor to put each man about the mission upon his guard.
38. In Spalding's lectures there is a description of the mission premises as they appeared in 1847. 'The doctor's adobe dwelling-house stood on the north side of the Walla Walla River, and one half-mile above the mouth of Mill Creek, facing west, well finished, and furnished with a good library and a large cabinet of choice specimens. Connected with the north end was a large Indian room, and an L extending from the east 70 feet, consisting of kitchen, sleeping-room, school-room, and church. One hundred yards east stood a large adobe building. At a point forming a triangle with the above line stood the mill, granary, and shops.' The whole was situated upon the small area formed by the flat land between the river and the rolling hills to the west. The large adobe building spoken of was known as the mansion house.
39. Mr and Mrs Osborne with their children happened to be in a bedroom of the dwelling at the moment of the attack; and taking up a plank in the floor, they secreted themselves under the house. During the night they escaped, but Mrs Osborne and the children being unable to walk more than 3 miles during the dark hours, and afraid to travel by day, were in danger of starving before they could reach Fort Walla Walla. On Thursday forenoon Osborne arrived there, carrying the youngest child, and was received with hospitality by McBean, the agent in charge; Mrs Osborne being rescued by the help of persons belonging to the fort, who brought the family in on horses. There was much said subsequently about McBean's behavior; and his evident reluctance to harbor the men who had escaped, although he offered to take care of their families, was attributed to his Catholic faith. But I do not think that any one paused to think of sectarian differences then. McBean was afraid the Cayuses might attack the fort were they provoked to it by the presence of Americans, and the fort was not in a condition to withstand a siege. The first man who reached Walla Walla was Hall, who by walking all night arrived there Tuesday morning. A rumor being brought that the women and children were all killed, Hall's reason seemed to give away; but becoming calmer, he decided to attempt going to the Willamette; and being furnished with the dress of a Hudson's Bay employé, as well as ammunition, and every other necessary, set out to travel down the north side of the river to avoid the Cayuses. He proceeded safely until near the rapids at the Des Chutes River where taking a canoe to cross the Columbia he was drowned. Letter of McBean in the Walla Walla Statesman, March 16, 1866. McBean, who of course knew nothing of Hall's failure to cross the Dalks, proposed to Osborne to leave his family with him, and follow Hall's example; but Osborne refused. He would go down the river with his family in a boat with a trusty Indian crew from the fort, but not otherwise. No natives about the fort would take the risk, and therefore Osborne remained. In Brouillet's Authentic Account are the depositions of several persons on this subject; one of Josiah Osborne, who reflects severely on McBean for refusing him the things he demanded for the comfort of his family; but to one acquainted with the simple furnishing of the interior trading posts, these refusals seem natural. McBean could not furnish what he did not have. The truth was, that although McBean was 'below the salt' when compared with other gentlemen in the company he was not by any means a brute but earned more gratitude than he received from the half-demented persons who escaped from the horrors of Waiilatpu. Another fugitive was William D. Canfield, who was wounded in the hip, but succeeded in making his way to Lapwai, which place he reached on Saturday afternoon, as he himself says, 'without eating or sleeping.' Canfield was a native of Arlington, Vermont, where he was born Oct. 22, 1810. He married Sally Ann Lee, June 10, 1828, and after several removes westward finally arrived in Iowa, where he laid out the town of Oskaloosa. From that place he emigrated to Oregon. See Son. Co. Hist., 470. Joseph Smith and Elam Young also escaped. They were living with their families at the saw-mill. The natives ordered them to Waiilatpu the third day after the massacre began, but having glutted their revenge, and deeming it well to save some to grind the grain, they suffered them to live. The victims of the tragedy were 13: Dr and Mrs Whitman, Rogers, Saunders, Gillilland, Kimball, Hoffman, Marsh, Sales, Bewley, James Young, John Sager, and Francis Sager. Or. Spectator, Jan 20, 1848.
40. Spalding says in his lectures that the women were compelled to cook for large numbers of the savages daily, who called upon his daughter to taste the food and tell them if it were not poisoned. They were also ordered to sew and make garments for Indian families out of the goods belonging to the mission. Spalding also says that both the women and girls were subjected to the most revolting brutalities; 'girls so young that the knife had to be used,' is his language. Young in his deposition states that 'a few days after we got there two young women were taken as wives by the Indians, which I opposed, and was threatened by Smith, who was very anxious that it should take place, and that other little girls should be given up for wives.' Gray's Hist. Or., 483. There is no doubt from the evidence, although much was concealed from motives of delicacy toward the women, that for the time they were held prisoners at Waiilatpu, which was about a month, they were treated with the utmost brutality, the two white men being unable to defend even their own families.
41. Miss Bewley says in her deposition that she 'begged and cried to the bishop for protection; either at his house, or to be sent to Walla Walla,' but nothing availed. Gray's Hist. Or., 486–97. It is said that one of the priests, in a niece of injudicious pleasantry, asked her how she liked her new husband, an indiscretion which planted a thorn in his side that rankled longer, if we may judge by the wordy war which resulted from it, than the insult did in Miss Bewley's heart, which she said she 'thought would break. Brouillet's Authentic Account, 57.
42. A glance at the depositions shows charges even more grave which the survivors made against each other, and against the dead. Crockett Bewley was accused of saying indiscreet things which brought on the massacre. Even Rogers was declared to have confessed before he died that he had poisoned Indians. This was one of the peculiar features of the affair; men and women were made so craven by their fears that they hesitated at nothing when by lying they could, as they thought, avert danger from themselves. If the half they said about each other were true, they deserved death.
43. Authentic Account, 50.
44. Brouillet states that Joseph Stanfield, one of the half-breeds who had been in Whitman's service, was preparing the bodies for burial, but being alone, could not inter them. He therefore went to his assistance, though not without apprehension that he might be assassinated while thus engaged. Robert Newell, who visited Waiilatpu the following spring, and who kept a memorandum of the incidents of the expedition, says that Dr Whitman and wife were laid together in a single grave, with a neat paling about it; and that the other victims were placed in one common excavation, also enclosed by a fence; but that both had been torn open by wolves. The scattered remains were reinterred in one grave.
45. Brouillet says that almost immediately after Spalding left him 3 armed Cayuses overtook him, who said to the interpreter: 'The priest ought to have attended to his own business, and not to have interfered with ours.' Authentic Account, 52–5; Shea's Cath. Miss., 478.
46. There can be no doubt that Spalding's mind was injured by this shock. All his subsequent writings show a want of balance, which inclines me to regard with lenity certain erroneous statements in his publications. I find in the Oregon Statesman of August 11, 1855, this line: 'H. H. Spalding, a lunatic upon the subject of Catholicism, and not over and above sane upon any subject.' During all his after life, while narrating the events of that fearful time, his forehead was covered with great drops of sweat, and his eyes had a frenzied expression. Burnett mentions some of the survivors of the Donner party whose intellect was affected. Coleridge, in his Ancient Manner, well depicts this state of mind.
47. Spalding gives the names of the friendly and hostile chiefs. Besides Eagle and Jacob, the latter of whom was about to be received into the church, there were Luke and two of his brothers, and James, a Catholic chief, who were friendly. But Joseph, a chief who had united with the church 8 years previous and up to this time with few backslidings had lived like a Christian, and whose people constituted a good portion of the sabbath congregation and school, 7 of them being church-members, deserted to the enemy. Oregon American, Aug. 16, 1848.
48. Atkinson, in Or. Pioneer Assoc., Trans., 1877, 70.
49. Hinman was formerly of the state of New York. After coming to Oregon in 1844, he married a Martha Gerrish, whose father, an immigrant of 1845, resided in the Tualatin plains. Hinman was teacher in the Oregon Institute for a short time, but seems to have been engaged by Whitman to take charge of the station purchased from the Methodists at the Dalles.
50. Much capital was made out of this circumstance by the anti-Hudson's Bay writers, including Gray, who attempts to show that the intention of McBean was to allow the Indians to kill off those who were at the Dalles. The result showed that the caution used was justifiable and necessary. Had he alarmed the people at the Dalles, it would have informed the natives of what had happened, and have delayed him on his errand, whereas he was in the greatest possible haste to reach headquarters before the Dalles Indians should hear what the Cayuses had done. Gray points out that a letter written by Hinman to Abernethy after reaching Vancouver was dated December 4th, while a letter from Douglas to Abernethy was not written until the 7th; making it appear that Douglas had delayed 3 days to inform him, while the truth was that Hinman did not learn the news till the 6th, and that his letter is wrongly dated. As it appears in the Oregon Spectator of Dec. 10, 1847, from which Gray must have copied it, the date is Nov. 4th, more than 3 weeks before the massacre occurred, which should have been corrected, as the month was wrong as well as the day. No time was lost either at Walla Walla or Fort Vancouver in acquainting the governor with the situation. The correspondence in full is contained in the Or. Spectator, Dec. 10, 1846, and in Gray's Hist. Or. Other authorities on the subject of the massacre are the A. B. C. F. M. Annual Report, 1848, 239–44; Californian, April 19, 1848; Kane's Wanderings, 317–22; Marshall's Christian Missions, ii. 266–7; Sandwich Island News, ii. 54–5; Deady's Hist. Or., MS., 2; Ford's Road-makers, MS., 32; Johnson's Cal. and Or., 183–4; Kip's Army Life, 32; Walla Walla Statesman, Feb. 9 to April 13, 1866; Evans, in Trans. Or. Pioneer Assoc., 1877, 35–6; Atkinson's Or. Colonist, 5; Crawford's Nar., MS., 160–3. Brouillet's Authentic Account of the Murder of Dr Whitman and other Missionaries by the Cayuse Indians of Oregon in 1847, and the Causes which Led to that Horrible Catastrophe, is a pamphlet of 108 pages, in reply to a statement appearing in the Oregon American reflecting harshly on the Catholic priesthood in general, and the priests of the Umatilla camp particularly. It is not without the usual misrepresentations of sectarian writings, but is in the main a correct statement of events. A second edition, with some slight additions, was printed at Portland in 1869. Its first appearance, under the head of Protestantism in Oregon, was in the Freeman's Journal in 1853; being put in its present form in 1869. See also Catholic Magazine, vii. 490; Mullan's Top. Mem., 7; S. F. Daily Herald, June 1, 1850.