USA > Oregon > History of Oregon, Vol. I, 1834-1848 > Part 66
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32 Strong's Hist. Or., MS., 43-5. Spalding also practises some duplicity, where he says in the Oregon American that no one who had not witnessed it could conceive of the intense agitation caused among the Indians by the introduction of the Catholic ladder, a chart containing rudely drawn pictures of scriptural subjects, and illustrating the doom of heretics. 'My attention,' he says, 'has suddenly been arrested by the outcries and wailings of a whole camp, occasioned by the arrival of some one with an additional explanation of the Catholic ladder, always accompanied by the declaration, "The Americans are causing us to die! "' This sounds like slander. At the time of which Spalding speaks, the Catholic ladder was too well known among the Cayuses to occasion any such outburst of alarm, if ever it had done so. The wailing he heard in November was the death dirge; and if the natives exclaimed, 'The Americans are causing us to die !' such was the truth, though they had brought death without knowledge or intention of doing so.
33 Oregon American, Aug. 1848, 66. This remark may have been called forth by the doctor's knowledge of an incident which occurred at the lodge of Peupeumoxmox while Spalding was there; a Nez Perce entered the lodge with the inquiry, 'Is Dr Whitman killed?' as if he expected an affirmative answer.
657
ATTENDING THE SICK.
The 28th was Sunday. The two missionaries broke their fast in the lodge of Sticcas, the chief who had guided the immigration of 1843 over the Blue Moun- tains; and the doctor could not help remarking upon the meal of beef, bread, potatoes, and squash, as a gratifying proof that under his teaching the Cayuses had made some progress. Everything about the little village was orderly and still, as became the sabbath. It was the calm preceding the cyclone.
While Spalding remained to hold religious services, Whitman proceeded to the camps of Tauitau and Five Crows on the south side of the Umatilla, where, after calling on his patients, he dined with Bishop Blanchet at his mission in a friendly manner. According to Spalding, the doctor appeared to have been agreeably entertained, and to have considered certain negotia- tions for the sale of Waiilatpu to the Catholics if a majority of the Cayuses wished him to go away; an engagement having been entered into that the bishop or vicar-general should pay a visit to Waiilatpu in a few days.34 Leaving Spalding to visit and comfort the sick, Whitman left for home Sunday evening. Spalding himself visited the priests, taking tea with them, and on Tuesday evening returned to the lodge of Sticcas to sleep.
That evening Sticcas communicated to Spalding
34 From a chance remark of Spalding's, and from a quotation from him in Brouillet's Authentic Account, 21, I have no doubt that Whitman was about to accept an offer for Waiilatpu, from which he was convinced he must now go. The quotation is as follows: 'Dr Whitman twice during the last year called the Cayuse together, and told them if a majority wished he would leave the country at once. . . Dr Whitman held himself ready to sell the Waiilatpu station to the Catholic mission whenever a majority of the Cayuses might wish it.' In 1866-7 Spalding revived the memories of twenty years before, and delivered a course of lectures on the subject of the Waiilatpu mission, which were published in the Albany Or. States Rights Democrat, extending over a period from November 1866 to February 1867. In one these he says: 'The same week-referring to his arrival at Whitman's station-I visited Walla Walla, and, a conference was partly agreed upon with the priests. They asked and I agreed to furnish them all needed supplies from my station.' He, however, denied in these lectures, what he had admitted previously, that Whitman dined with the priests, and says he declined on a plea of hastening home to look after the sick. Such is the effect of sectarianism that the most religious feel justified in lying to sustain a point.
HIST. OR., VOL. I. 42
658
THE WHITMAN MASSACRE.
the significant information that a decree of outlawry had been passed by the Cayuses against the white people in their country, declining to explain any fur- ther.35 Filled with apprehension, the missionary cast himself upon his couch of skins, but sleep was impos- sible. On either side of him sat an Indian woman chanting the harsh and melancholy death-song of her people. When asked for whom they mourned, no answer could be obtained. At early dawn Spalding prepared to depart, his mind oppressed with misgiv- ings. At a little distance from the lodge waited a native woman, who, laying her hand on the neck of his horse, in a few hurried words warned him to avoid Waiilatpu. Considering that his daughter was an inmate of that station, this hint was not calculated to ease his mind or to cause him to loiter, though his path lay directly in the way of danger, the road from the Umatilla to Waiilatpu leading past the camp of Tiloukaikt, a chief with whom Whitman had more than once had a serious rupture. 36
When Whitman reached home late Sunday night he found things as he had left them. Mrs Osborne, who had lost a child by the measles, and recently been confined, was quite ill. Miss Bewley was down with intermittent fever. One of the Sager lads was par- tially recovering from measles. Two half-breed girls, left with Mrs Whitman to be educated, a half-breed boy adopted by the doctor, Crockett Bewley, brother of Miss Bewley, and a young man named Sales, were all in bed with the epidemic, though convalescing.
During the forenoon of Monday Dr Whitman
35 Yet this is the chief of whom several white men have said he was the only true friend of the white race among the Oregon Indians. His friendship did not extend to warning the missionaries distinctly of their peril.
36 The camp of Sticcas, as I have already intimated, was on the north side of the Umatilla, probably not far from the present town of Pendleton, while Five Crows, Tauitau, Camespelo, and Yumhawalis had their villages on the south side, but not far away. Peupeumoxmox lived on the road leading from Fort Walla Walla to Waiilatpu, and Tiloukaikt, Tamahas, and Tamsucky had their Lodges between him and the mission; so that travel whichever way he would, Spalding must pass the camps of these chiefs to reach Dr Whitman's station.
659
THE DAMNING DEED.
assisted at the funeral of an Indian who had died during his visit to the Umatilla, and was struck with the absence of the tribe, many of whom were mounted, riding about, and giving no attention to the burial; but as there had been a slaughter of beef which was being dressed in the mission yard, an occasion which always drew the Indians about, the circumstance was in part at least accounted for. School was in session, several men and boys were absent at the saw-mill near the foot of the mountains; the women were em- ployed with the duties of housekeeping and nursing the sick, and all was quiet as usual when Whitman, fatigued with two nights' loss of sleep, entered the common sitting-room of his house and sat down before the fire to rest, thinking such thoughts as-Ah! who shall say ? 37
While he thus mused, two chiefs, Tiloukaikt and Tamahas, surnamed ' The Murderer,' from his having killed a number of his own people, presented them- selves at the door leading to an adjoining room, ask- ing for medicines, when the doctor arose and went to them, afterward seating himself to prepare the drugs. And now the hour had come ! Tamahas stepped behind him, drew his tomahawk from beneath his blanket, and with one or two cruel blows laid low for- ever the man of God. John Sager, who was in the room prostrated by sickness, drew a pistol, but was quickly cut to pieces. In his struggle for life he wounded two of his assailants, who, at a preconcerted signal, had with others crowded into the house. A. tumult then arose throughout the mission. All the men encountered by the savages were slain. Some
37 Mrs Husted, then wife of the teacher at the mission, has avowed that Whitman had certainly received some information or intimation on Sunday, aud that on arriving at home late that night the family was kept sitting up several hours in consultation, talking over the chances of escape in case of an attack. I think this may be true, but state it only as the evidence of one person, after many years, and the distraction of mind caused by what fol- lowed. Spalding, in his lectures before quoted, hints at some such thing by saying, 'The doctor and his wife were seen in tears much agitated.' It becomes difficult to account in that case for the neglect of the doctor to put each man about the mission upon his guard.
660
THE WHITMAN MASSACRE.
were killed outright; others were bruised and man- gled and left writhing back to consciousness to be assailed again, until after hours of agony they expired. Dr Whitman himself lived for some time after he had been stricken down, though insensible. Mrs Whit- man, although wounded, with Rogers and a few others also wounded, took refuge in an upper room of the dwelling, and defended the staircase with a gun, until persuaded by Tamsucky, who gained access by assurances of sorrow and sympathy, to leave the chamber, the savages below threatening to fire the house. On her way to the mansion house,38 where the terror-stricken women and children were gath- ered, she fainted on encountering the mangled body of her husband, and was placed upon a wooden settee by Rogers and Mrs Hays, who attempted to carry her in this condition through the space between the houses; but on reaching the outer door they were surrounded by savages, who instantly fired upon them, fatally wounding Rogers, and several balls striking Mrs Whitman, who, though not dead, was hurled into a pool of water and blood on the ground. Not satisfied with this, Ishalhal, who had formerly lived in Gray's family, and who had fired the first shot at her before she escaped to the chamber from which Tamsucky treacherously drew her, seized her long auburn hair, now blood-stained and dishevelled, and lifting up the head, happily unconscious, repeatedly struck the dying woman's face with a whip, notwith- standing which life lingered for several hours.
Night came at last and drew a veil over the horrors
38 In Spalding's lectures there is a description of the mission premises as they appeared in 1847. 'The doctor's adobe dwelling-house stood on the north side of the Walla Walla River, and one half-mile above the mouth of Mill Creek, facing west, well finished, and furnished with a good library and a large cabinet of choice specimens. Connected with the north end was a large Indian room, and an L extending from the east 70 feet, consist- ing of kitchen, sleeping-room, school-room, and church. One hundred yards east stood a large adobe building. At a point forming a triangle with the above line stood the mill, granary, and shops.' The whole was situated upon the small area formed by the flat land between the river and the rolling hills to the west. The large adobe building spoken of was known as the mansion house.
661
AFTER THE MURDER.
of that afternoon. No one knew when the last breath left the body of the mistress of Waiilatpu. Ah! it was pitiful to see this pure and gentle woman, this pure and noble man, while in the service of God hewn down and cast into the ditch by other of God's creatures whom to benefit they had lived. In the general compensation it would seem to our poor facul- ties that the bestowal of the martyr's crown poorly recompensed the heart of omnipotence for witnessing such atrocities.
It is needless further to describe the butcheries which lasted for several days, or until all the adult males except five, and several boys, were killed, some on their sick-beds, some on their way home from the mill, some in one place and some in another.33
39 Mr and Mrs Osborne with their children happened to be in a bedroom of the dwelling at the moment of the attack; and taking up a plank in the floor, they secreted themselves under the house. During the night they escaped, but Mrs Osborne and the children being unable to walk more than 3 miles during the dark hours, and afraid to travel by day, were in danger of starving before they could reach Fort Walla Walla. On Thursday forenoon Osborne arrived there, carrying the youngest child, and was received with hospitality by McBean, the agent in charge; Mrs Osborne being rescued by the help of persons belonging to the fort, who brought the family in on horses. There was much said subsequently about McBean's behavior; and his evident reluc- tauce to harbor the men who had escaped, although he offered to take care of their families, was attributed to his Catholic faith. But I do not think that any one paused to think of sectarian differences then. McBean was afraid the Cayuses might attack the fort were they provoked to it by the presence of Americans, and the fort was not in a condition to withstand a siege. The first man who reached Walla Walla was Hall, who by walking all night arrived there Tuesday morning. A rumor being brought that the women and children were all killed, Hall's reason seemed to give away; but becoming calmer, he decided to attempt going to the Willamette; and being furnished with the dress of a Hudson's Bay employé, as well as ammunition, and every other neces- sary, set out to travel down the north side of the river to avoid the Cayuses. He proceeded safely until near the rapids at the Des Chutes River, where tak- ing a canoe to cross the Columbia he was drowned. Letter of McBean in the Walla Walla Statesman, March 16, 1866. McBean, who of course knew noth- ing of Hall's failure to cross the Dalles, proposed to Osborne to leave his family with him, and follow Hall's example; but Osborne refused. He would go down the river with his family in a boat with a trusty Indian crew from the fort, but not otherwise. No natives about the fort would take the risk, and therefore Osborne remained. In Brouillet's Authentic Account are the depositions of several persons on this subject; one of Josiah Osborne, who reflects severely on McBean for refusing him the things he demanded for the comfort of his family; but to one acquainted with the simple furnishing of the interior trading posts, these refusals seem natural. McBean could not furnish what he did not have. The truth was, that although McBean was 'below the salt' when compared with other gentlemen in the company, he was not by any means a brute but carned more gratitude than he received from the half-de-
662
THE WHITMAN MASSACRE.
The butcheries were harldy more atrocious than the sufferings inflicted on the survivors. The helpless women and children were compelled not only to wit- ness the slaughter of their husbands and fathers, but were forced to yield a hateful obedience to their cap- tors while the yet unburied remains of those dearest to them lay mangled and putrefying in their sight.40
Several of the women were taken for wives. Five Crows, who was declared not to have any hand in the massacre, and of whom Hines says in his Oregon His- tory, published three years after the event, that he was a Protestant, and gave "good evidence of conver- sion," on the eleventh day after the outbreak sent for Miss Bewley to be brought to his lodge on the Uma- tilla. Nor was Five Crows an unfair sample of an Indian convert. He would have nothing to do with the destruction of the mission, but he would let it be destroyed. Being already wealthy, he cared nothing for the booty, but he could not withstand beauty.
mented persons who escaped from the horrors of Waiilatpu. Another fugi- tive was William D. Canfield, who was wounded in the hip, but succeeded in making his way to Lapwai, which place he reached on Saturday afternoon, as he himself says, 'without eating or sleeping.' Canfield was a native of Arling- ton, Vermont, where he was born Oct. 22, 1810. He married Sally Ann Lee, June 10, 1828, and after several removes westward finally arrived in Iowa, where he laid out the town of Oskaloosa. From that place he emi- grated to Oregon. See Son. Co. Hist., 470. Joseph Smith and Elam Young also escaped. They were living with their families at the saw-mill. The natives ordered them to Waiilatpu the third day after the massacre began, but having glutted their revenge, and deeming it well to save some to grind the grain, they suffered them to live. The victims of the tragedy were 13: Dr and Mrs Whitman, Rogers, Saunders, Gillilland, Kimball, Hoffman, Marsh, Sales, Bewley, James Young, John Sager, and Francis Sager. Or. Spec- tator, Jan 20, 1848.
4º Spalding says in his lectures that the women were compelled to cook for large numbers of the savages daily, who called upon his daughter to taste the food and tell them if it were not poisoned. They were also ordered to sew and make garments for Indian families out of the goods belonging to the mission. Spalding also says that both the women and girls were subjected to the most revolting brutalities; 'girls so young that the knife had to be used,' is his language. Young in his deposition states that 'a few days after we got there two young women were taken as wives by the Indians, which I opposed, and was threatened by Smith, who was very anxious that it should take place, and that other little girls should be given up for wives.' Gray's Hist. Or., 483. There is no doubt from the evidence, although much was concealed from motives of delicacy toward the women, that for the time they were held prisoners at Waiilatpu, which was about a month, they were treated with, the utmost brutality, the two white men being unable to defend even their own families.
663
THE INDIAN'S BRIDE.
Miss Bewley was sent for, and having no one to pro- tect her, she was torn from the arms of sympathizing women, placed on a horse, and in the midst of a high fever of both mind and body, was carried through a November snow-storm to the arms of this brawny savage. Five Crows behaved in a manner becoming a gentlemanly and Christian savage. He made his cap- tive as comfortable as possible, and observing her op- position to his wishes, gave her a few days in which to think of it, besides allowing her to spend a portion of her time at the house of the Catholic bishop. But this generous mood was not of long duration, and nightly she was dragged from Blanchet's presence to the lodge of her lord, the priests powerless to inter- fere.41
The position of the priests was made ground for serious accusation when the story became known; but it is difficult to see how they could have interfered without first having resolved to give up their mission and risk their lives. If the Americans at Waiilatpu could refuse to protest, and if Canfield could volun- tarily seek to save his own life, leaving his wife and children in the hands of the natives, it was hardly to be expected that the power of the priests who had their own lives and purposes to be secured, and who were not allowed under ordinary circumstances to harbor women in their houses, should prove more efficacious. 42
41 Miss Bewley says in her deposition that she 'begged and cried to the bishop for protection, either at his house, or to be sent to Walla Walla,' but nothing availed. Gray's Hist. Or., 486-97. It is said that one of the priests, in a piece of injudicious pleasantry, asked her how she liked her new husband, an indiscretion which planted a thorn in his side that rankled longer, if we may judge by the wordy war which resulted from it, than the insult did in Miss Bewley's heart, which she said she 'thought would break.' Brouillet's Authentic Account, 57.
42 A glance at the depositions shows charges even more grave which the survivors made against each other, and against the dead. Crockett Bewley was accused of saying indiscreet things which brought on the massacre. Even Rogers was declared to have confessed before he died that he had poisoned Indians. This was one of the peculiar features of the affair; men and women were made so craven by their fears that they hesitated at nothing, when by lying they could, as they thought, avert danger from themselves. If the half they said about each other were true, they deserved death.
664
THE WHITMAN MASSACRE.
It will be remembered that when Dr Whitman re- turned from the Umatilla he was expecting a visit soon from the bishop or vicar-general, with whom he hoped to make arrangements which, in a certain event, would enable him to sell the mission property. On the afternoon of the 30th Brouillet proceeded on this errand as far as the lodge of Tiloukaikt, with the intention of visiting the sick and baptizing the dying of that camp. Arriving late in the evening, he be- came apprised of what had happened on the 29th at Waiilatpu, and spent the night in much perturbation,43 but without neglecting in the morning to attend to. his religious duties. Having done what he could for the dying Cayuses, he hastened to Waiilatpu and offered such consolation as he might venture upon to the widows and orphans, concealing his sympathy as directed by the captives, and procuring the burial of the dead. 44
On the afternoon of the 1st of December Brouillet departed from Waiilatpu and rode toward Umatilla, in the hope of intercepting Spalding, who was expected on that day for the conference which was to have taken place. Soon after crossing the Walla Walla River he discovered Spalding galloping toward him. Fortunately for his purpose, the interpreter and a son of Tiloukaikt's, who was following with the evident design of spying upon his actions, had stopped to light their pipes, which gave time for communicating the news of the massacre and for a moment's deliberation. Before any course could be decided upon, the chief's son Ed- ward rejoined the priest, who interceded with him for
43 Authentic Account, 50.
4 Brouillet states that Joseph Stanfield, one of the half-breeds who nad been in Whitman's service, was preparing the bodies for burial, but being alone, could not inter them. He therefore went to his assistance, though not without apprehension that he might be assassinated while thus engaged. Robert Newell, who visited Waiilatpu the following spring, and who kept a memorandum of the incidents of the expedition, says that Dr Whitman and wife were laid together in a single grave, with a neat paling about it; and that the other victims were placed in one common excavation, also enclosed by a fence; but that both had been torn open by wolves. The scattered re- mains were reinterred in one grave.
665
MR AND MRS SPALDING.
the life of Spalding as a personal favor to himself. Not knowing what course to take, Young Tiloukaikt after some hesitation turned back to camp, saying he would consult with his father. Here was the hardly hoped for opportunity, which was quickly taken. Abandoning his horses to the interpreter, and taking a scrap of food which Brouillet carried in his wallet, the striken missionary plunged on foot and alone into the wilderness over which a thick fog settling concealed him from his enemies.45 After six days of physical suffering from want and exposure, and great mental anguish,46 he arrived at Lapwai, and found that his family was in the care of some friendly chiefs at Craig's place ten miles away.
When the fugitive Canfield reached Lapwai he found the Nez Percés ignorant of what had taken place at Waiilatpu, and advised Mrs Spalding to allow them to remain so. But the knowledge she possessed of the Indian character, and the fact of the intimate relations between the Nez Percés and Cayuses, decided her to break the news at once and throw herself on their mercy. In the absence of her husband, and temporarily of her brother, she confided the matter to two chiefs, Jacob and Eagle, who happened to be present, and who promised protection, but counselled removal from Lapwai. One of them carried a letter to Craig, and the other volunteered to communicate the intelligence received from Canfield to the tribe.
45 Brouillet says that almost immediately after Spalding left him 3 armed Cayuses overtook him, who said to the interpreter: 'The priest ought to have attended to his own business, and not to have interfered with ours.' Authentic Account, 52-5; Shea's Cath. Miss., 478.
46 There can be no doubt that Spalding's mind was injured by this shock. All his subsequent writings show a want of balance, which inclines me to regard with lenity certain erroneous statements in his publications. I find in the Oregon Statesman of August 11, 1855, this line: 'H. H. Spalding, a lunatic upon the subject of Catholicism, and not over and above sane upon any subject.' During all his after life, while narrating the events of that fearful time, his forehead was covered with great drops of sweat, and his eyes had a frenzied expression Burnett mentions some of the survivors of the Donner party whose intellect was affected. Coleridge, in his Ancient Mariner, well depicts this state of mind.
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