Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 11.djvu/251

   Volume XI  {{c|{{smaller block|[Copyright, 1910, by Oregon Historical Society] [The Quarterly disavows responsibility for the positions taken by contributors to its pages.]}}

{{c|{{x-larger block|PETER SKENE OGDEN, FUR TRADER}}

By T. C. Elliott. }}

On November 29th, 1847, at Wai-i-lat-pu, six miles west of where the City of Walla Walla, Washington, is now located, that worthy missionary and Oregon pioneer, Marcus Whitman, was murdered, an event anticipated even earlier by others then residing in Oregon who knew the existing conditions. But unexpectedly and unfortunately the murder became a massacre; Mrs. Whitman was killed also, and with her twelve others, immigrants who were located at the Mission for the Winter. And the remainder, women and children, over fifty in number, what of them? Confined to the adobe buildings of the Mission and closely watched by sullen and vengeful Indians of both sexes, they were held as captives for a whole month, shut off from outside communication and uncertain of their fate,—one of them in fact carried away to the lodge of Chief Five Crows, forty miles distant.

But about December 20th a change was noticed in the demeanor of the Indians, and on December 29th the captives were released and escorted to the Fort of the Hudson's Bay Company, twenty-five miles westward on the Columbia river, {{smallrefs}}