USA > Oregon > History of Oregon, Vol. I, 1834-1848 > Part 65
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647
WHITE PEOPLE AT WAIILATPU.
am indebted for a voluminous narrative of pioneer events,12 says was in October, he again met the cara- vans at the Umatilla. 13
From the train to which Crawford belonged he selected several persons whom he engaged to aid him in various ways at Waiilatpu. He secured a man named Saunders as a teacher, who with his wife and children agreed to go to the mission; a tailor named Isaac Gilliland, and a farmer named Kimball, from Indiana, among whose family was a daughter of seven- teen.14 There were already at the mission many who intended to winter there, part of a company from Oscaloosa, Iowa, and others,16 in all fifty-four, some
. 12 P. W. Crawford was born on the right bank of the Tweed, in Roxbury- shire, Scotland, not far from the home of Walter Scott. He was taught the elementary branches in this neighborhood, but studied mathematics at the University of Edinburgh, where he learned surveying. For a short time after leaving the university he was in the service of a large commercial firm in London, and again at Southampton. From there he went to Quebec, and thence to Toronto and other parts of Canada, after which he tra velled through the northern tier of states on the south side of the lakes, living for some time in Michigan and Illinois. He came to Oregon in 1847 in company with a family named Cline, and took a land claim on the Cowlitz River in November 1847, where he lived long and happily. Crawford's Narrative of the Overland Journey, containing also a history of early and subsequent events, is, without regard to style, the most complete record extant of the times it represents, and manifests throughout the author's remarkable powers of observation.
13 Crawford says the doctor had been on 'a mission of benevolence, convey- ing and escorting a company of immigrants over a new and much improved route to the Dalles, and who gave us another cut-off so as to shorten our route and give us good grass and water all the way.' Nar., MS., 51. This affec- tionate reference, with which the historian even for truth's sake has no occa- sion to meddle, since the doctor could at the same time attend to his own business of establishing the new station at the Dalles, and pilot the immigra- tion over the road to that place, comports with the general impression of his willingness to be of service. Crawford speaks of him as being at this time a stout and robust looking man, of a seemingly strong and intelligent mind. Nar., MS., 52.
I+ Gilliland was from Long Island, and was an elderly man without family. L. Woodbury Saunders was a native of New Hampshire, but had resided in central New York, and also in Indiana, from which latter state he emigrated. His wife was from Vermont, her maiden name being Mary Montgomery, and her mother's maiden name Stickney, from an old English family. Mrs Saun- ders later married Alanson Husted.
15 The persons at Waiilatpu after the new selections had been made were Joseph and Hannah Smith and 5 children, the elder of them being a girl of 16; Mr and Mrs Saunders and 5 children, the elder a girl of 14; Mr and Mrs Kimball and 5 children, the elder a girl of 16; Joseph and Sally Ann Canfield and 5 children, the elder a girl of 16; Mr and Mrs Hall and 5 chil- dren, the elder a girl of 10; Josiah and Margaret Osborne and 3 children, the elder a girl of 9; Elam and Irene Young and 3 sons, the eldest aged 21; Mrs Rebecca Hays and one young child; Miss Lorinda Bewley and her brother,
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THE WHITMAN MASSACRE.
of them having been detained by sickness, and some by the lateness of the season. All who remained were employed, as far as possible, by Whitman, who, notwithstanding the threatening circumstances, was making improvements on his mill. The doctor was a man of affairs; he loved work, and he liked to see others work. Thus absorbed, it was little wonder he failed to perceive the black shadow approaching.
As is usual with armies, large migrations, or any great bodies of people moving together without the ordinary comforts of life, disease broke out among the immigrants of 1847. A severe illness known as moun- tain fever, and apparently occasioned by the extremes of temperature encountered in the mountains during the latter part of the summer-hot days and cold nights- prostrated many of the adults, and measles attacked the younger portion of the people. This disease, usually considered simple and manageable, became malignant under the new conditions in which it was developed. It seems to have been at its height when the trains, all having some sick, was passing through the Cayuse country. What was malignant among the strangers, when it was imparted to the natives became fatal, whether from ignorance of proper modes of treatment, or from the character of the disease itself. The measles of 1847, like the intermittent fever of 1829-30 and 1834-7, became a scourge to the natives. The white men who introduced it could not be held to blame,16 but the natives made them responsible, not
Crockett Bewley; Mr Marsh and daughter, E. Marsh, aged 11; Mr Hoffman, and Mr Sales-in all, 54 persons of the immigration. Besides these were a young man named Rogers, Eliza, daughter of Mr Spalding of Lapwai, and 6 children of the Sager family, adopted in 1844, 2 boys and 4 girls, besides 2 half-breed girls, daughters of J. L. Meek and James Bridger, and 2 sons of Donald Manson, whom the doctor was educating. Total at Dr Whitman's, 68 persons. At Lapwai there were only Mr and Mrs Spalding and 3 young children, Miss Johnson, Mr Hart, brother of Mrs Spalding, Mr Jackson, and William Craig. Or. Spectator, Jan. 20, 1848.
16 I have been told of a case where the disease was intended to be given: A party of immigrants while in the Cayuse country were much annoyed by some of the young braves, who, with Indian intrusiveness and insolence, hung about
649
THE WHITE MAN'S DISEASES.
understanding that inscrutable law of nature which makes it fatal to the dark races to encounter the white race;17 or if they perceived its effects, not know- ing that the white men were as ignorant as themselves of the cause.
When the mission Indians found that a disease which they could not control had been introduced among them, they became greatly alarmed and excited, as did also the natives on Puget Sound, to which dis- trict the measles had spread.18 Being a white man's disease, the Indians thought a white doctor should be able to cure it. In fact, they were witnesses to the fact that the white patients generally recovered, while their own did not. That they were much to blame for the fatal results in many cases, was true.19 Being
the wagons, daring the drivers or the young lads of the train to fight, seemingly ambitious to rival the white people in boxing and wrestling. One wagon thus intruded on contained a woman, whose half-grown children were all down with the measles, and the driver of the team also, an active young fellow, was in the height of the fever, though still compelled to drive. Seeing him so annoyed the woman ordered him to stop the team and wrestle with the Indian as desired, and to blow his hot breath in the Indian's face to give him the measles. Whether that particular Indian died in consequence is not known; probably the woman was unaware of the danger, and only wished to have him punished for the trouble he gave, but if the Indian died his friends would be apt to believe that some evil influence was purposely worked upon him, as in this case there indeed had been. In Mission Life Sketches, 41, written, I judge, by Mr Perkins, of the early Dalles mission, there is a complaint of the effect of settlement on mission operations, which is no doubt well founded, even though the new-comers should consist of missionaries only. The result of mingling the races in Oregon is conclusive evidence of its mischievous effects.
17 ' The experience of a century had shown that the indiscriminate admission of civilized men as traders in the territory of the Indians is destructive to the morals of the former, and not only the morals but the existence of the latter.' Edinburgh Review, July 1845, 238. See also Tribune Almanac, 1846, p. 19; Darwin's Voyage round the World, 435-6; McCulloch's Western Isles, ii. 32; Gibbs, in Powell's Geog. Sur., i. 239.
18 ' In 1847 the measles prevailed at Nisqually. A fugitive Indian from the Swinomish country brought intelligence to Nisqually that the Swinomish, believing that the whites had brought the measles to exterminate them, were coming to massacre the whites. At the time there were no stockades or bastions at Nisqually, but orders came from Fort Vancouver to erect the usual defences. The scattered white settlers on the Sound became timid, and the Indians consequently more forward and troublesome. Hostile demon- strations were made while the stockades and bastions were being erected, but nothing serious resulted.' Tolmie's Hist. Puget Sound, MS., 30-1.
19 ' In the winter of 1847-8 the measles overran the country .. It was of a very malignant type, and the natives suffered from it severely. Dr Whit- man, as a medical man, naturally endeavored to mitigate the ravages of the disorder; but notwithstanding his efforts many deaths took place among his
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THE WHITMAN MASSACRE
ignorant of the injury they would receive from such a course, many sought to cool their fever by plunging into cold water, or, after coming out of their sweat- houses, bathing in the river, a procedure which caused almost immediate death.
When it is remembered that ever since 1842, and even earlier, the natives had been importuning the missionaries for pay for their lands, and that others, if not they, had repeatedly promised on the faith of the United States government that they should be paid when the boundary question was settled; and when it is remembered that this question had been settled for almost a year and a half, since which time two immigrations had arrived, without anything being done to satisfy the natives-the wonder is not that they were suspicious and turbulent, and ready to believe evil things of the white men, but that they were so long held in tolerable control by a few isolated missionaries. 20
The reader already knows the difficulty experienced by Whitman and Spalding from the first, in prosecut- ing their mission labor, owing to the unreasonable requirements of their pupils, their indolence, selfish- ness, and ingratitude for services. This was almost as much as could be borne before any sectarian differ- ences arose to aggravate the disorder. After this the usefulness of the missions as schools of religion and morality was at an end. A few perceiving the benefit of agriculture and stock-raising tolerated the teachers, and so far imitated them as to raise supplies
patients, arising as much from the neglect of advice, and imprudent exposure during the height of the fever, as from the virulence of the disorder.' Ander- son's Northwest Coast, MS., 265.
20 ' When the Americans came into what the Indians claimed as their own country, their number was considerable; they didn't come to carry on trade with the Indians, but to take and settle the country, exclusively for them- selves. They went about where they pleased, and settled where they chose without asking leave of the Indians, or paying them anything. The Indians saw it quickly. Every succeeding fall the white population about doubled, and the American population extended their settlements, and encroached upon the Indian pastures and camass grounds, excluding Indian horses, etc. The Indians saw annihilation before them.' Burnett's Recol., MS., i. 104-5.
651
PEUPEUMOXMOX.
for their own families, besides selling to the immi- grants. In the matter of cattle, also, they had eagerly acquired all they could purchase or steal from the passing caravans, and had attempted to form a cattle company to buy a herd in California, with what result the reader knows. Perhaps this attempt of the Walla Wallas is the highest imitation of civilization attained to by them or by any Oregon Indians, as it not only was a business organization, but partook something of the character of an invasion, or an act of coloniza- tion, since in 1847 we find the Walla Wallas in Cali- fornia assisting Frémont to capture the country.21 The chief of this expedition, Peupeumoxmox, was reputed to have so far benefited by his observations abroad as to give good counsel to his people and the 'Cayuses on his return,22 but the truth of his reported friendship for the white people is not well established by the evidence. Palmer met him in the spring of 1846, when he related the death of his son in Cali- fornia, and declared his intention of going there to avenge his loss. This desire accounts for his willing- ness to aid Frémont. Palmer also says that he was surly toward the immigration of 1845, and had even made hostile demonstrations. 23
There were, at the time under consideration, a number of dissolute characters, half-breeds from the mountains to the east, hanging upon the skirts of the travellers, men whose wild blood was full of the ichor of hatred of religion and civilization, and poisoned with jealousy of the white race, the worst traits only of which they had inherited. These men among the natives were like fire in tow, their evil practices and counsel scorching every shred of good the missionaries by patient effort had been able to
21 Says Johnson: 'A whole community of Walla Walla Indians left Oregon across the mountains and established themselves on the Sacramento River, near Sutter's Fort.' Cal. and Or., 123; Tuthill's Hist. Cal., 201.
22 This is what Parrish says, who talks of him as if he were a very dis- tinguished personage; because, perhaps, he once sent his son to the Methodist mission school for a few months. Or. Anecdotes, MS., 86-7. 23 Journal, 124-5.
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THE WHITMAN MASSACRE.
weave into their habits of life.24 Every act of the missionaries was criticised. When Whitman, who was endeavoring to break up the custom of going to war, exhibited his disapprobation by refusing to shake hands with an offender, the accidental death of that young warrior was imputed to him,25 and though they pretended to be convinced to the contrary, their hearts were secretly bitter toward Whitman, whose 'evil eye' they were willing to believe had worked them harm.
It was unfortunate that at this juncture so many strangers had been allowed to gather at the mission, confirming the suspicion of the Cayuses that the Americans intended to settle in their country with- out first treating for their lands : unfortunate because it gave weight to a rumor circulated among them by one Joe Lewis, a half-breed, who was employed about the mission, that Doctor and Mrs Whitman were con- spiring to exterminate them by poison, in order to come into possession of their lands for themselves and their countrymen26-a rumor which was strengthened by the
24 Palmer relates that three Delawares came and settled among the Nez Percés. One of them, named Tom Hill, succeeded in persuading about a hun- dred lodges to acknowledge him as their chief by telling them that they then could have as many wives as they chose; that it was not wrong to steal, only wrong to be detected in it, and that what the missionaries taught was false. Journal, 129.
25 This man was a half Nez Perce, half Cayuse, son of a Nez Perce often called Le Grande. Whitman refused to take him by the hand on account of some quarrel and misconduct at the Dalles; perhaps he was in the party who killed Sheppard. However that was, the young man died that night, being choked by a piece of dried buffalo-meat. Thereupon an accusation was brought against the doctor. Mrs Whitman endeavored to regain the confi- dence of the natives by giving a 'feast for the dead,' Le Grande and Peupeu- moxmox being present and professing continued regard. Whether their sentiments were genuine admits of doubt, but there was a ' villain of an Indian called Tamsucky who fomented discontent, and threatened Whitman that he would be killed.' Tolmie's Hist. Puget Sound, MS., 27. Palmer says that Whitman regarded Tamsucky as a good Indian; and Palmer left his horses with him during the winter of 1845-6. He was called Aliquot by the white people. When Palmer asked him to name his reward for keeping the horses, he asked for some scarlet velvet, and other articles of adornment, which Palmer brought and gave to Whitman when he met him on the Umatilla. Palmer's Wagon Train, MS., 32-4.
26 This story of Joe Lewis is given by several witnesses. One of these, William Craig of Lapwai, no one would dispute. He says: 'A messenger came there [to Mr Spalding's station] from the Cayuses, and the Indians, when
653
ARRIVAL OF CATHOLICS.
great number of deaths among the Cayuses, amount- ing to nearly one half the population.27
That the natives murmured Whitman was aware; but he hoped that two deaths which had occurred in his house, of one of his adopted children and one of Osborne's, would have shown them that the disease carried off white people as well as Indians. Spalding asserts in the Oregon American, a small semi-monthly paper28 published in 1848, that not only Joe Lewis, but the Catholic priests who had arrived at Fort Walla Walla from Canada on the 5th of September, with the design of establishing missions among the
assembled, required him to state all he knew about the matter, and to state the truth. I was present; and he said, in substance, that all the chiefs were concerned except Young Chief and Five Crows, who knew nothing of it; that the cause ... was that Dr Whitman and Dr Spalding were poisoning the Indians .. . Joe Lewis said that Dr Whitman and Mr Spalding had been writ- ing for two years to their friends in the east, where Joe Lewis lived, to send them poison to kill off the Cayuses and the Nez Perces; and they had sent them some that was not good, and they wrote for more that would kill them off quick, and that the medicine had come this summer. Joe Lewis said he was lying on the settee in Dr Whitman's room, and he heard a conversation between Dr Whitman, Mrs Whitman, and Mr Spalding, in which Mr Spalding asked the doctor why he did not kill the Indians off faster. "O," said the doctor, "they are dying fast enough; the young ones will die off this winter, and the old ones next spring." ... The Indian messenger stated that Joe Lewis made this statement in a council of the Cayuses ... Joe Lewis, the messenger said, told the Cayuses in the council that unless they [the Indians] killed Dr Whitman and Mr Spalding quick, they would all die. The messenger went on to say himself, that 197 Indians had died since the immigration commenced passing that summer. He said that there were 6 buried on Monday morning, and among the rest his own wife; he said he knew they were poisoned.' Brouillet's Authentic Account, 35-6.
27 ' It was most distressing to go into a lodge of some 10 fires, and count 20 or 25, some in the midst of measles, others in the last stages of dysentery, in the midst of every kind of filth of itself sufficient to cause sickness, with no suitable means to alleviate their inconceivable sufferings, with perhaps one well person to look after the wants of 2 sick ones. Everywhere the sick and dying were pointed to Jesus, and the well were urged to prepare for death.' H. H. Spalding, in Oregon American, July 19, 1848.
28 ' Devoted to American principles and interests; to evangelical religion and morals; to general intelligence, foreign and domestic; to temperance and moral instrumentalities generally; to science, literature, and the arts; to commerce and internal improvements; to agriculture and home manufactures; to the description and development of our natural resources; to the physical, intellectual, and moral education of rising generations; and to such well- defined discussions generally as are calculated to elevate and dignify the character of a free people.' Its devotion was indeed great-so great that there was little room left for anything else. 'The constituted nature and relation of things, our constitution,' was a motto which, if adhered to, would seem to do away with all that goes before. 'Edited by J. S. Griffin. Printed by C. F. Putnam." See Honolulu Polynesian, v. 54; Friend, viii. 4; Burnett's Recollections of a Pioneer, 251.
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THE WHITMAN MASSACRE.
tribes of eastern Oregon, assured the Cayuses that the Americans were causing them to die. This state- ment, which was the beginning of a controversy not yet ended between the Protestants and Catholics, he made on the word of a Cayuse chief named Tintin- mitsi, who, however, professed not to believe the ac- cusation.23 The mere intimation of such atrocity exposes the hearts of those who made them. The labors of Archbishop Blanchet in Canada, before spoken of, had resulted in the appointment of his brother, A. M. A. Blanchet, bishop of Walla Walla, who thereupon proceeded overland to Oregon, accom- panied by nine persons, four fathers of the order of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, with two lay broth- ers; two secular priests, Brouillet and Rosseau; and Guillaume Leclaire, a deacon.30 After remaining at Walla Walla about a month, the Oblate fathers de- parted to establish a mission among the Yakimas in the Simcoe Valley; but it was not until the 27th of October that Blanchet and Brouillet, with Leclaire, removed from the fort to the camp of the Cayuse chief Tauitau, on the Umatilla River, about thirty miles distant, the chief having relinquished a house built for himself several years previous by Pambrun, in an attempt to civilize the Cayuses.
The establishment of this mission among the Cay- uses, already so turbulent, and from their present temper so dangerous, was a sore trial to the Protes- tant missionaries, while it was, without doubt, an in- centive to Dr Whitman to endeavor to remain. The pain and uneasiness the bishop was inflicting was not by any means unknown to him;31 but whether in Catholic or Protestant, religious zeal knows no mercy,
29 Oregon American, July 1848.
3ª None of these priests were Jesuits, though Gray and Spalding speak of them uniformly as belonging to that order.
31 ' The arrival of the bishop of Walla Walla,' says Archbishop Blanchet, ' with his clergy to the fort was a thunderbolt to the Presbyterian ministers, specially to Dr Whitman. He was wounded to the heart by it. He could not refrain from expressing his dissatisfaction, saying he would do all in his power to thwart the bishop.' Hist. Cath. Church in Or., 163-5.
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CATHOLIC MISSION.
and the inquisition of the sixteenth century only changes its form according to the time and place of its exhibition. Protestant and Catholic alike believed the other the emissary of Satan, whom to afflict was doing God service. There was a difficulty, however, in the way of the bishop's proselyting: he could com- municate with the natives only through an interpreter. Then the Cayuses were very little about the fort while the caravans were passing, being engaged in trading with or stealing from the Americans.
The new-comers had all left the country cast of the Cascade Mountains, except the little colony at Waiilatpu; the Catholic mission was established in a house furnished to the priests by Tauitau in the lovely valley of the Umatilla, and quiet reigned through- out the great wilderness of rolling prairie from the Dalles on the Columbia to Lapwai on the Clearwater. Ay, the quiet of death was there, broken only by the wails of the poor savage over the bodies of rela- tives and friends. Doctor Whitman's heart was full of pity for them, as he rode from camp to camp with medicines and advice, little imagining the sinister meaning attached to his conduct by the Cayuses.
In the month of November Spalding came from Lapwai, accompanied by his daughter Eliza, and a Mr Jackson who was stopping at his mission, bringing a train of horses loaded with grain to be ground at the mill. On the 25th, while en route to Walla Walla with Jackson and Rogers of the Waiilatpu mission, Spalding visited chief Peupeumoxmox, who resided not far from the fort on the Walla Walla River. After the manner of an Indian gossip, the illustrious savage referred to the subject of Catholic missiona- ries, taking occasion to remark that he had been solicited to give them a place for a station, but that he had refused; and repeating the assertion of Tin- tinmitsi that the Americans were charged with de- stroying the Cayuses, but professing not to credit the
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THE WHITMAN MASSACRE.
story. Peupeumoxmox added, with true Indian cun- ning, that the priests pronounced the diseases from which they were suffering an affliction from God on account of their heresy; knowing well the fever into which such a statement would throw Spalding, and probably deriving as much pleasure from it as a good Methodist or Catholic could do.
During the night of Spalding's visit, a niece of Peu- peumoxmox died, and he conducted the funeral ser- vices at the fort next day, when he met Brouillet and his associates, also there on a visit, with whom he conversed on the manner of teaching by the 'Catholic ladder.'32 During the forenoon of the 27th he re- turned to Waiilatpu, where a messenger soon appeared from the camps of Five Crows and Tauitau, desiring the presence of Dr Whitman among their sick, a sum- mons which the doctor with his customary alacrity obeyed. On this journey of thirty miles or more, Spalding accompanied him. It is easy to believe the latter when he says that as they rode they talked, far into the night, of their past trials and triumphs, and their present insecurity ; or even that Whitman uttered the words put into his mouth, "If I am to fall by Roman Catholic influence, I believe my death will do as much good to Oregon as my life can." >> 33 He was a man capable of such a declaration.
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