An illustrated history of the state of Washington, containing biographical mention of its pioneers and prominent citizens, Part 30

Author: Hines, Harvey K., 1828-1902
Publication date: 1893
Publisher: Chicago, The Lewis publishing company
Number of Pages: 1056

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As everywhere on the frontier, the ingather- ing of the whites in ever increasing numbers early awakened the apprehensions of the Indi- ans. There was an instinctive prophecy in their hearts that it boded ill to theni. The whites came but never left. Their numbers never diminished. The forest was disappearing before their axes. The game melted away before their rifles. The Indians saw that all this meant that they themselves would soon be ontnumbered and overpowered unless they were able to drive out the invaders who were despoiling the graves of their forefathers, turn- ing their hunting grounds into grain fields, and

breathing the pestilence of a destructive civiliz- ation on their savage, yet beloved life. It was not strange, therefore, that there should be war.

What was called the "Caynse war," which followed immediately after the murder of Dr. and Mrs. Whitman, the devoted Presbyterian missionaries, at Waiiletpu, occurred before there was any settlement of whites within the bounds of what was afterward the Territory and subsequently the State of Washington. But the scene of that murder and the theater of that war was mainly within its boundaries. As it dates the beginning of the wars which afterward extended over so large a part of the Territory, this seems the place to give it some historic treatment. It was the most tragic event in the history of the northwest coast, and one that has cansed more historic discussion, especi- ally as to its causes, than any other. For this reason we need both to trace its causes as well as recite its facts, and these we shall blend in one line of treatment.

Waiiletpn was the Indian name of the place where Dr. Whitman in the late autumn of 1836 established his missionary station among the Cayuse people. It was situated on the Walla Walla river, about twenty-five miles from the Hudson's Bay fort of that name, which stood on the sonth bank of the Columbia river and just above the month of the Walla Walla. It was in the center of the tribe and was easy of access both to the Indians and the whites. His mis- sion for a time seemed to be among the most properous and promising of all Indian missions of the coast. The Cayuses were intelligent and active, though not considered as tractable and trustworthy as their relations the Nez Perces, whose territory joined theirs on the northeast. Quite a number of the tribe made a profession of Christianity under his labors, and Dr. Whitman and his co-laborers had high hopes that the whole tribe would pass under the influence of the Christian system and belief.

To his work as a Christian teacher Dr. Whit- man had added that of a medical practitioner, so that, to the superstitious Indian mind, he

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assnmed a much wider responsibility than he would have assumed as a mere teacher of re- ligions truths. As a physician he, like their own " medicine men," was supposed to have power to heal or to kill at pleasure, and however much he might endeavor to disabnse their minds of that belief it could never quite be done, for the Indian mind is remarkably tena- cious of its superstitions and they never quite lose their dominion over an Indian's action. As useful as the profession and practice of a doctor might really be, they added an element of dan- ger as well as an element of strength to the position of Dr. Whitman.

The doctor was a man to draw abont him a somewhat large following of assistants and de- pendents, for he was naturally a leader of men, with a strong personality and a broad and grasping mind. He planned more broadly than any of his associates in the missions of the American Board, and had more of the strong grip of executive power than they. Ile had opened quite an extensive farm and erected a sawmill and flouring-mill. The buildings for dwelling, school, church and other purposes were of quite a pretentions character for the country, and formed quite a hamlet in the midst of the wide, unhomed solitudes of these interior valleys and mountains. The dwelling-house was a large adobe, or sun-dried brick, build- ing, well finished and furnished, with a large library and an extensive cabinet. Connected with it was a large " Indian room," as it was called, built for the accommodation and use of the Indians who were constantly or occasionally about the mission, either as employes in any department or on business, or as mere loungers. It had also an addition, seventy feet in length, consisting of kitchen, sleeping-room, school- room and church. One hundred yards east stood a large adobe building, and at another point about the same distance stood the mill, granary and shops. Connected with the mis- sion was a sawmill situated on Mill creek on the edge of the Blue mountains, about fifteen miles from the station itself. Thus the mission was

situated at the end of ten years from its estab- lishment in 1836.

The special work and the genial relations of the various missionary establishments of the country having been elsewhere considered it is not needful to recur to them here further than to connect them with the events that opened the first Indian war of the Northwest. This we do in a simple statement of historic facts with only a very brief discussion of the natural, and perhaps inevitable, results of those facts.

The establishment of Roman Catholic mis- sions in the immediate vicinity of those of the Protestant boards inevitably confused the minds of the Indians, and led them to look very sus- piciously upon the Protestants. This was the more certainly and fatally the result as they fully understood that the people of the Hudson's Bay Company had joyfully welcomed the com- ing of the Romish priests, and extended to them, rather than to the Protestants, their sympathy and support. Though not gifted with any great capability of ratiocination, the Indian has quick perception from obvious and occult facts, and they could not but comprehend this, while they would entirely fail to comprehend the rationale of the historic and theological differences and agreements between the Roman Catholic and Protestant systems. Hence they would act from what they saw, not from the reason that was behind it.

The missionaries of the Roman Catholic Church had entered the country in 1838, as noted elsewhere. As they count success, their mis- sions had been very successful. They had baptized many Indians, some authorities say not less than 5,000 by the autumn of 1847,- and the priests were everywhere, and their zeal was admirable as they went on their mission of proselytism from California to British Colum- bia. Their leaders were astute and able men. Such names as Blanchet, Oecolti, DeSmet, Joset, Ravalli, Sandlois, Demers, Brouillet and Balduc were recorded among their twenty-six clergy- men employed in the field. As these names indicate, there was not an American among

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them,-hardly one who could speak or write the English language with respectable accuracy, -but they were disciplined and resolute and self-denying men. They brought with them no families. They established no communities. They lived with and as the Indians. They found them Indians, baptized them into the Roman Catholic Church, and left thein Indians, as they found them. Their presence, therefore, boded no change to awaken the apprehensions of the Indians, and hence they could go and come, teach and catechise, baptize and confirm at will, and their imposing ceremonies and easy moral exactions completely captured the minds of most of the Indians.

The more this was true the less could the Protestant missions succeed. Dr. Whitman's mission in particular was in a position to feel the blight of their influence the soonest and most fatally. From its beginning some of the Cayuses were hostile to the mission, more were indifferent, and a small number were favorable. Tam-sn-ky, an influential chief, who resided nut far from Waiiletpu, was the leader of the opposers of the mission. Their opposition became more bitter after the Romish priests entered the conntry, and was still more intensified after Dr. Whitman returned from the East with the great train of emigrants of 1843. To add to the impulse which was moving the Cayuse people toward murder and war, in 1845 " Tom Hill," a Delaware Indian, lived among the Nez Per- ces and told them that the missionaries first visited his people, but were soon followed by other Americans, who took away their lands. He visited Waiiletpu and repeated the same story to the Cayuse. Of course the Indians were still more alarmed.

In another year another Indian, or half-breed, came among them, whence and from whom history has failed to certify. His name was Joe Lewis. He reaffirmed the statements of Tom Hill. Under these influences, com - bined with a desire on the part of many if not most of the tribe to seenre the Roman Cath- olie religion, Dr. Whitman's work withered

away under them. His most trustworthy friends among the Indians, Um-howl-ish and Stick-us, warned him of his danger,, and advised him to abandon his work. Archibald MeKinley, then in charge of Fort Walla Walla, emphasized the warning and repeated the advice. Thomas Mc- Kay repeated it. Dr. Whitman knew the dan- ger, understood the influences that were destroy- ing his work and imperiling his life, but, brave man that he was, he faced them all. How could he have done otherwise?

Still, in the fall of 1847, Dr. Whitman decided to remove to the Dalles as soon as arrangements could be completed. He went there himself and received from the Methodist mission, which had decided to abandon that field, the premises it held at that place, as a gift to the American Board. On arriving at Walla Walla, about the 10th of September, he found four Romish priests at the place, arranging to establish a mission under the very shadow of Waiiletpu. At their head was Father A. M. A. Blanchet, a smooth, yet resolnte and able man, self-poised to a re- markable degree, and unrelenting in his par- poses and aims. With him was Brouillet, per- haps fully the equal of Blanchet in ability of every kind, though not his equal in rank. Com- ing just at this crisis in the work of Dr. Whit- man, they found it easy to win over to their cause much the larger part of the Indians. The faet that they came to supplant Dr. Whitman on the very field of his eleven years' toil could not but have the effect of making the Indians believe that these new religious teachers would be only too glad to see Dr. Whitman's mission destroyed, even if they did not desire his own death. It was not necessary that they should suggest or advise this conrse; the suggestion was in their very presence and in the nature of their work, and it is not probable that they made any other. Certainly this writer has never found any convincing evidence that they did. Still it seems tolerably certain that, with murder and destruction palpitating in the very air, they spoke no word and did no deed against it.

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Iloping that the storm of wrath that he saw plainly impending would not burst upon him before another year; Dr. Whitman, after his re- turn from the Dalles, settled down to the calm pursuit of his missionary work. Meantime the large immigration of 1847 came ponring down from the Blue mountains upon the plains of the Columbia. There was much sickness among the immigrants, the measles and dysen- tery prevailing to an alarming extent. These soon became epidemic among the Indians, many of whom, despite the remedies adminis- tered by Dr. Whitman and the most careful attention of Mrs. Whitman, died of these diseases. Joe Lewis took a horrible advan- tage of this situation to further prejudice the Indians' minds against the mission. He told them that the doctor was administering poison to them, and that he intended to kill them all off that the Americans might take their lands. He detailed conversations that he professed to have overheard between Dr. and Mrs. Whitman, in which the doctor complained because the Indians were not dying fast enough. He also asserted that Brouillete, the Roman Catholic priest, had told him that the doctor was giving the Indians poison. Falling upon the excited minds of the Indians, these statements were like fire in powder. The explosion was sure to come, and it meant destruction when it came.

Of course it is not necessary to say to the intelligent reader that there was no founda- tion for these statements. They were the sheer inventions of a murderous villain, who, after having shared the hospitality and care of Dr. Whitman and. Mrs. Whitman, was base enough to plot their destruction. The presence of the priest at this time, and his active proselytism of the Indians to Romanism, was indeed an incendiary influence sufficient to set the Indians into an unreasoning and fatal excitement, but it cannot be considered likely that he made to Lewis the statement averred, or even that he fully anticipated the terrible tragedy that so soon followed. The justice of history requires this statement, but it requires also the addition-

al one that he did state to the Indians that Dr. Whitman was a bad man, and that what he was teaching them was a false religion, and if they believed it they would certainly go to hell. In the blindness and prejudice of his sectarian zeal he might have believed all this, and even have justified to his own conscience, on the well- known principles of Jesuitism, the making of the statement, but it would be too severe a shock to our faith in humanity to believe that he eonnseled or songht the murder of these noble missionaries. The writer of this history has been for many years acquainted with quite a number of the Indians associated with Dr. Whitman before and at the time of the mass- acre, also with several of the sufferers in the terrible tragedy, and the sum of all the evidence he could gather from these, as well as the resi- duum of the testimony of all who have written on the subject, confirms him in this judgment. To array the évidences which have thus satis- fied his own mind, would be unnecessarily to weary the reader of this work.

As the autumn wore on Dr. Whitman fully recognized the impending danger. To avert it he endeavored to secure the presence of Thomas MeKay, one of the most influential and sensible of the early mountaineers, during the winter, but could not succeed. Meanwhile the story of Joe Lewis was working its direful way in the minds of the Indians. The wife of Tam-su-ky, the leader of those who were determined to drive off Dr. Whitman, was sick. Ile resolved to put the poison theory to a practical test by ob- taining some medicine of the doctor and ad- ministering it to her. If she recovered he would not believe the story; if she died the missionaries must also die. The test was made. The woman died: thus the fate of the mission- aries was decided.

Sabbath at the mission was a day when large numbers of the Indians gathered, some for worship, and some for the excitement of a crowd. The friends of the mission were sure to be there on that day. The 28th of Novem- ber, that year, was Sunday, and as usual relig-

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ious services were held, a considerable num- ber of the Indians participating in them. Tam-su-ky and his followers had fixed on Monday for their murderous deed, as they knew but few if any of the Indian friends of Dr. Whitman would be present. On that day, November 29, 1847, about fifty of the followers of Tam-sn-ky gathered at the mission. Their gathering awakened the apprehensions of the whites, as it was so unusual to see such numbers present except on Sunday. Still the work of the establishment, indoors and out, went on as usnal. Dr. Whitman was in his office, sitting in a chair and preparing a prescription for an Indian. Mrs. Whitman was in an upper room busied in her duties. The Indians were scat- tered about the yard, a few being in the doctor's office. Suddenly the murderous attack began. Dr. Whitman was cloven down by the blow of a tomahawk wielded by Tam-a-has, an Indian of such a cruel nature as to be known among his own people as "the murderer." Mrs. Whit- man was shot in the breast while standing at a window to which she had stepped on hear- ing the noise of the sudden outburst. But a few Indians were actively engaged in the mur- derous onslanght: the rest looked stolidly on. Only one or two of the Whitman Indians were present, and they were not permitted to interfere.

It would serve no good purpose to relate the actual details of the horrible tragedy. Indeed most that has been written of them is so tinged with the imagination of the writers that it would be impossible to give them as they oc- curred, even were it desirable to do so. The victims of the murderous fury of the Indians were Dr. Marens Whitman, Mrs. Narcissa Prentiss Whitman, John Sager, Frances Sager, Crocket Bewly, Mr. Rogers, Mr. Kimball, Mr. Sales, Mr. Marsh, Mr. Saunders, Mr. Young, Mr. Hoffman, and Isaac Gillem.

With the personal and sectarian criminations and recriminations that have arisen out of this most tragic event in Oregon history, we think it not wise to blur these pages. While the atti-

tude of the Hudson's Bay Company toward the American settlers and of the Roman Catholic Church toward the Protestant missions was such as to place such events as this as natural, and almost inevitable results of that attitude, no satisfactory evidence has appeared that they were planned or intended. Hence we are ready to leave their disenssion with this statement, feeling sure that, while a large moral responsi- bility for the destruction of the mission of Waiiletpn and the murder of those who had labored so earnestly and long for the welfare of Indians, must rest upon the unseemly zeal of these fierce sectaries of Romanism, as well as upon the well-known opposition of the Hud- son's Bay Company to everything American, the Indians were carried by their ignorance and passion far beyond the intentions of either the priests, whose teachings inflamed them, or the company whose desire, as they understood it, had been so long a law unto them. If, dur- ing the frenzy of that day of blood, neither party interfered to avert or soften the blow, or if, immediately following it, either or both declined assistance to the fugitive sufferers who had escaped massacre, we set it down more to the weakness of the individuals who, for the time, stood as representatives of the company and the church, than to these bodies themselves. Had Mckinley or Ogden or Douglas been in charge of Fort Walla instead of McBean when the fugitives from Waiiletpu lay at its gate ask- ing for succor, the suffering family of Osborn, hiding in the willows near Waiiletpu during those freezing nights, would have been at once sought out and cared for. The fugitive and frightened Hall would not have been put over the Columbia river and left in the win- try desert among the savages to starve or be killed, one of which must needs occur, as he was by the heartless cowardice of McBean. So much history must fairly record, but in the recording, this it must not forget that such men do not fitly represent all men, nor even most men, but stand for themselves alone. An express was sent at once from Fort Walla

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Walla to Mr. James Donglas, chief factor of the IIndson's Bay Company at Vancouver, with intelligence of the massacre. In harmony with his past want of comprehension and spirit, Mr. McBean instructed the courier carrying the message not to communicate the fact of the massaere to the whites at the Dalles as he passed, thus leaving them exposed, withont warning, to the fate that had befallen Waiilet- pn. On the arrival of the courier at Vancon- ver, the action of Mr. Douglas was prompt and effective, entirely sufficient to set at rest all question as to the complicity of the IIndson's Bay Company in any way with the sad events that had just occurred. He immediately sent a courier express with a message notifying Governor Abernethy, at Oregon City, of what had taken place. Without waiting for any action by the governor or the American settlers, he immediately dispatched Mr. Peter Skeen Ogden, one of the most influential and able factors of the company, with an armed force to the scene of the tragedy. Mr. Ogden held a council with the Cayuses at Fort Walla Walla. He declared the great displeasure of the eom- pany at their conduct. Ile proposed to ransom the forty seven prisoners, chiefly women and children, that they held in captivity. His prompt and decisive action resulted in the de- livery of these poor people from their captivity. On Jannary 1, 1848, fifty Nez Perces from Lapwai arrived with Mr. Spaulding and ten others, who had also been in great peril from the contagion of murder which had spread through all the neighboring tribes by the action of Cayuses, and who were also held as prison- ers by the Nez Perces. These were also ran- somed by Mr. Ogden, and thus all the whites in the infected district were delivered out of the hands of the savages by the resolute action of the Hudson's Bay Company, before the Americans had time to act. On January 10 the rescued prisoners were delivered over to Governor Abernethy by the Hudson's Bay Company's people, at Oregon City. Thus

closed the opening and bloody chapter of the Indian wars of the Pacific Northwest.

When the intelligence of the murder of Dr. and Mrs. Whitman and their associates reached Governor Abernethy at Oregon City, the Legislature of the provisional govern- ment was in session. A call for volunteers, to proceed at onee to The Dalles and take possession of that place, was at once issned. Great fears were entertained that the Indians of the interior might assail the settlements on the west of the mountains by the way of the Co. Inmbia river, the only way they could be reached by them in the winter. The extent of the de- fection of the Indians was not known at the capital; hence provision must be made for any contingency at once. On the night of the 8th of December, the very day the news of the massacre reached Oregon city, a public meeting was held in that place, and a company was or- ganized, under the name of the "Oregon Rifles,". to proceed at once to The Dalles and take posses- sion of that strategic point. Henry A. G. Lee was made captain, and Joseph Magone and John E. Ross, lieutenants of it. The legisla- lature pledged the credit of the provisional gor- ernment to secure equipments for the company, but the Hudson's Bay Company preferred the individual responsibility of the committee of the legislature who applied for the equipments. This was given, and arms and ammunitions were issned to the company, which arrived at Vancouver on the 10th, only two days after its organization, to receive them. On the 21st they reached The Dalles, and the danger of an Indian invasion west of the mountains was over for the winter. But this did not end, it only began, the war. The scattered people of Oregon could not rest, indeed they dared not rest, with the murders of Waiiletpu unavenged and the murderers still at large. To have done so would have been to invite a bloody Indian war from end to end of the country.

The action of the legislature and of Governor Abernethy was prompt and effective. On De- eember 9 an act was passed and approved for

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the organization of a regiment of fourteen com- panies, and their equipment for service. The brave pioneers responded with patriotic devo- tion to the call, furnishing their own arms, equipments and horses. The men who led were the meu of mark then and subsequently in the history of this country, and it seems only a proper recognition of their patriotismn and brav- ery to place their names on the pages of every history of those thrilling times in the story of the Northwest. Here is a roster of the officers:

FIELD AND STAFF.

Colonel, Cornelius Gilliam; Lientenant-Colo- nel, James Waters; Major, H. A. G. Lee; Adju- tant, B. F. Burch; Surgeon, W. M. Carpenter; Assistant Surgeons, F. Sneider and H. Safarans; Commissary, Joel Palmer; Quartermaster, B. Jennings; Paymaster, L. B. Knox; Judge Ad- vocate, J. S. Rinearson.

LINE OFFICERS.

Company A, fifty-five men. Captain, Law- rence Hall; First Lieutenant, H. D. O'Bayant; Second Lieutenant, John Engent.

Company B., forty-three men. Captain, J. W. Owens; First Lientenant, A. F. Rogers; Second Lieutenant, T. C. Shaw.

Company C, eighty-four men. Captain, H. J. G. Maxon; First Lieutenant, I. N. Gilbert; Second Lieutenant, W. P. Pugh.

Company D, thirty-six men. Captain, Thomas MeKay; First Lientenant, Charles Mckay; Sec- ond Lieutenant, Alexander McKay.

Company D, fifty-two men. Captain, Phil. F. Thompson; First Lieutenant, James Brown; Second Lieutenant, J. M. Garrison.

Company E, forty-four men. Captain, L. N. English; First Lieutenant, William Shaw; Sec- ond Lieutenant, M. F. Munkers.

Company E, thirty-six men. Captain, Will- iam Martin; First Lientenant, A. E. Garrison ; Second Lieutenant, David Waters.

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An illustrated history of the state of Washington, containing biographical mention of its pioneers and prominent citizens, Part 30

Author: Hines, Harvey K., 1828-1902 Publication date: 1893 Publisher: Chicago, The Lewis publishing company Number of Pages: 1056

Author: Hines, Harvey K., 1828-1902
Publication date: 1893
Publisher: Chicago, The Lewis publishing company
Number of Pages: 1056