Page:The Early Indian Wars of Oregon.djvu/119



to come down and go to the Mansion house; and, on objections being made, Tamsucky informed them that their lives would be spared should they comply, but that they would perish if they refused; the "young men" being de termined to burn the mission residence.

Thus compelled, all descended, except Mr. Kimball, who had a broken arm, and had hidden himself and four sick children, who were to be sent for. Mrs. Whitman fainting at the sight of her dying husband, was laid upon a wooden settee, to be carried to the Mansion house. As the settee appeared, the Indians, who were now drawn up in line outside, fired several shots, fatally wounding Mrs. Whitman, Mr. Rogers, and Francis Sager. The " young- men " then lashed Mrs. Whitman s face with their whips, and rolled her body in the mud made by the late Novem ber rains about the door.

Following this scene was another almost equally har rowing, when the school children were compelled to stand huddled together in the kitchen to be shot at by the Cayuse braves. At this point, however, their purpose was suddenly changed by the interference of the- Frenchman, Stanfield, and by the opportunity to inflict further indig nities upon the still breathing victims on the ground.

Two friendly Walla Wallas, who had been employed about the mission, led the children away to a secluded apartment, and endeavored to comfort them. 2 Every one not killed was now a prisoner, and subject to any brutal caprice of their goalers, who robbed, but did not burn the the mission-house, and compelled the women they had made widows to wait upon them as servants, and this while the dying still breathed, whose groans were heard

2 In the sectarian controversies which followed the massacre of Waiilatpu, the interposition of Stanfield to save the children and women, was made to appear a proof of complicity with the murderers; but the facts show him at all times doing what he could to alleviate the misfortunes he had no power to avert. He was no more at liberty to leave the mission than the other prisoners ; and being there was able, by not laying himself open to suspicion of the Cayuses, to perform many acts of kindness, on one pretext or another, which should have been set down to his credit instead of proving him a miscreant.