miles from Walla Walla Mrs. Narcissa Whitman and Dr. Marcus Whitman, simultaneously settled as Protestant Missionaries. Associated with them was W. H. Gray as secular agent and mechanic. Mr. Gray was the father of several sons, who in later years became prominent in steamboating on the Columbia. One of these, Capt. Wm. P. Gray of Pasco, is still an active participant in Open River activities.
Two years later another mission station was started in the Spokane country at Tsimakime. In mentioning these mission stations the names of the wives are given prominence because these were the first two white women who ever crossed the plains and mountains from "the States" and the first who ever passed over the Dalles-Celilo Portage. That event was on the 9th of September, 1836, when on their way to Fort Vancouver. Mrs. Whitman rode across the portage on a pony loaned by a gallant young chief of the Indians, but her experience with the fleas was far less courteous. She suddenly found herself covered with them. Her letter says : "We brushed and shook and shook and brushed for an hour, not stopping to kill for that would have been impossible." These women gladly, zealously and faithfully joined their devoted husbands in the attempt to teach the Indians the fundamentals of Christianity, education and civilized living. Their eleven years continuous residence, removed from the society of their sex and exposed to attempted outrage and death, marks an epoch in our history, and it served to practically direct the attention of the pioneers of the Willamette Valley to the fertility and natural advantages of the great region in the Interior. For it was from the Willamette and not from the East that the Inland Empire received its first population. The massacre at Waiilatpu( Nov. 29-30, 1847) which marked the end of this epoch served to emphasize its influence. That tragedy was the occasion of Peter Skene Ogden, an honored name on this Columbia River, passing hurriedly over this Portage early in December, 1847, en route to Fort Walla Walla and his return one month later with three bateaux carrying more than fifty women and children
