Page:Essays in Historical Criticism.djvu/23



years ago, Marcus Whitman, a physician in Wheeler, Steuben Co., N. Y., received an appointment from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to assist the Rev. Samuel Parker in establishing a mission among the Indians of the Oregon Territory. Upon their arrival at Green River (in Wyoming) Dr. Whitman decided to return to enlist more help. Early the next year he started out again with his bride, accompanied by the Rev. and Mrs. Henry H. Spalding and Mr. W. H. Gray, whom he had induced to join him in his arduous enterprise. Eleven years later, in November 1847, the energetic and faithful missionary with his wife and twelve other persons were massacred at their Station Waiilatpu, now Walla Walla, by the Cayuse Indians. The simple chronicle of Dr. Whitman's life as recorded in the obituary notice seven months later in The Missionary Herald, the official organ of the Mission Board, reads as follows:—

"Doct. Whitman was born in Rushville, in the State of New York, September 4, 1802. He joined the Church in that place in January, 1824; though he dated his conversion from a revival in Plainfield, Massachusetts, in 1819. He gave himself to the missionary work in 1834. In February, 1835, he went to Oregon for the first time. Having returned the same year, he was married in February, 1836; and in the following month he set out a second time for his chosen field