Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 37.djvu/270

 led to his destruction. Spalding wrote in February, 1847, nearly ten months before the massacre:

"... Medicine & care for the sick is an other source of trouble & perhaps of more real danger to our person than ony other. We often see it stated that a knowledge of medicine in the missionary & attention to the sick, go far to secure the favor of a heathen people. Strange as it may appear, the reverse is the case with these tribes. Doct Whitman is a skillful & most attentive physician, spends very much of his time in attending upon their sick, sometimes riding 30 miles neglecting important business at home spending much in the purchase & much time in the preparation of medicines. Yet it is all looked upon with a jealous eye and regarded as coming from sinister motives, yet claimed as a debt due from us. If we fail to have the medicine desired it is impossible to imagine the abuse which often heaped upon us. We are pronounced gamblers & robbers, i e we withold from them what is their just due, i e medicine. Medicine is made by white people therefore it is due to them. And it is our duty to have it on hand at all times in sufficient quantities to supply their demands. If any one article fails, not being to be had in the lower country, or the supply runing out, we ought to be reproached & shall be, for in that case we compel the sorcerers to resume their sorceries & compel the people to resort to them. This was publicly stated at a full meeting of the chiefs, sorcerers & people last spring at this place. Doct Whitman is regarded as the cause of many or all the deaths in that vicinity & his life has been frequently threatened. I know not that my life has been threatened but it is very frequently proclaimed publicly that I am the cause of numberous deaths which have occured among this people the last two years."

To add to the difficulties already encountered, an epidemic of measles visited the northwest in 1847. It is said to have been introduced by the immigrants, although other accounts trace the epidemic to the Montreal express. Like many other epidemics which affect the white man relatively slightly, the measles was very serious among the Indians. Their sweat baths and cold plunges made matters worse with this type of disease, and many died. The mutterings against the doctor became more threatening. The approved methods of treating measles in Whitman's day, namely, by protection against exposure, use of warm drinks, pennyroyal tea, gentle purging, etc., with bleeding and catharsis in severe cases, were beneficial, or at worst, comparatively harmless by the side of the heating and