Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/461



THE CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF OREGON :J01

voted to their good. They expeet that eventually this eouutry will he settled by them, but they wish to see the Willamette filled up first."

The undertone of foreboding in this letter was not groundless. "Whether -Mrs. AVhitinan was conscious of it or not as she wrote, her letter describes a situation that boded ill for the mission. A proud tribe, accustomed in the past to dominate neighboring tribes, seeing its numbers decimated by war and by disease, and its lands each year more surely destined to pass into the hand of the white man — this was a situation that might easily on further provocation, pass into one of bitter hostility and open revolt.

Dr. Whitman had felt this for some time, but without taking measures for protection. In a letter to her sister in the spring of 18-i7, Mrs. Whitman writes of her husband's absence for several weeks at Vancouver. This absence J. Quiun Thornton, in his history of the provisional government of Oregon ex- plains in part at least. "lu the spring of 1847," he writes, "Dr. Whitman being at my residence in Oregon City spoke to me freely on the subject of his mission station, and of the perils to which he feared all connected with it were exposed. And he said that he believed nothing short of a territorial government would save him and his mission from falling under the murderous hands of the savages. And he urged me to yield to the solicitations I had received to go at ouL-e to Washington on behalf of the people and provisional government, for this and other purposes. ' '

This was no imaginary peril. It was the forecast of a clearsighted, fearless man, one whose courage did not blind him to impending danger. The stroke fell sooner than he had expected and with not less murderous effect. In the late summer and fall of this 3'ear an epidemic of measles prevailed among the In- dians about the Whitman mission, and among other tribes of the Columbia val- ley. Many of them died in spite of the utmost exertions of Dr. Whitman and his assistants. Dr. Whitman's very efforts to save the Indians only made his death at their hands more certain, such were their cruel supei-stitions regarding their medicine man or anyone else in whose hands any of their number died. Then, too, the presence among them at that time of a vicious and disaffected per- son (an Iroquois Indian )made it almost certain that this dreadful superstition would work disaster to the mission.

So it did. On the morning of November 29, with no immediate warning, the storm of savage passion broke with murderous effect on the devoted mission. Dr. Whitman, himself, fell first, then the others until fourteen in all were slain — including Mrs. Whitman, the one woman among the victims, and fifty-three taken captives, mostly women and children.

The causes of the massacre have already been indicated. As years remove us from the event, and passions cool and partisan feeling abates, historians grow less inclined to find in it any purpose other than that of which the Indians under the circum.stances already described were of themselves fully capable.

It was the death of the mission at Waiilatpu. The mission was never re- organized, or even sought to be re-established. The Cayuse Indians themselves decimated by disease and war, became scattered and soon were lost in other tribes. Estimated by the results of Dr. and Mrs. Whitman's united labors for the Indians, the mission can hardly be reckoned among the great missions of the country. Other neighboring missions may justly be regarded as having sur-