Page:The Early Indian Wars of Oregon.djvu/118

 ny Indians

were iu the yard between the buildings, but as it was always so when a beef was being dressed, no notice was taken of this circumstance.

There had been an Indian funeral in the morning, which the doctor attended, since which he had remained about the house. Stepping into the kitchen, perhaps to look after John Sager, his voice was heard in altercation with Tiloukaikt, and immediately after two shots were fired, when Mrs. Whitman, who was in the dining-room adjoin ing, cried out in an anguished tone, "Oh, the Indians! the Indians!" as if what had occurred were understood and not unexpected. 1 Running to the kitchen she beheld her husband prostrate and unconscious, with several gashes from a tomahawk across his face and neck. The sound of the guns and the yelling of the Indians outside of the houses startled the women, who were in the Mansion house, who ran to the doctors house, and offered their assistance to Mrs. Whitman, who was then binding up the doctor s wounds. At that moment Mr. Rogers ran in, wounded, and gave such assistance as he could to the women in removing the doctor to the dining-room. The doors and windows were then fastened.

Meantime, outside, the slaughter of the several men, heads of families and others, was going on amid the blood-curdling noises of Indian warfare; and presently, the doctor s house was attacked. On going near a window Mrs. Whitman was shot in the breast, when she and all with her retreated to the chamber above. The Indians then broke in the doors and windows, and ordered the inmates of the chamber, including several sick children,

1 No clear account of the massacre at Waiilatpu was ever obtained. After sifting all the published statements, and the depositions taken at the trial of the Cayuses, it is still impossible to call up anything like a true mental impression of the scene. That this should be so is unavoidable. Taking the sixty, odd men, women, and children at the mission, and thirty Indians (the number given by one of the wit nesses), making nearly a hundred persons, divided into groups at different points, it Avould be impossible that any one spectator could have seen all or much of what transpired. Terror and grif colored the view of that which was seen, and subse quent events created many new impressions. Such as appears indisputable is alone presented here.