USA > Washington > History of Washington the evergreen state : from early dawn to daylight with portraits and biographies Vol. II > Part 8
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" Outside is a scene of wild confusion. At the agreed signal all the members of the mission had been attacked. Gillan was shot on his bench ; Marsh was shot at the mill, he ran a few yards toward the house and fell ; Saunders had hurried to the door of the school-room, where he was seized by a crowd of Ind- ians, thrown to the ground, shot, and wounded with tomahawks. Being a powerful man, he threw off his assailants, regained his feet, and tried to run away, but was overtaken and cut down. Hall snatched a loaded gun from an Indian and escaped to the bushes. The men working at the ox received a volley from guns and pistols, which wounded them all, but not mortally. Kimball fled to the doctor's house with a broken arm. Canfield escaped to the mansion, where he hid until night. Hoffman lunged des- perately among the Indians with his butcher-knife, but was soon cut down, his body was ripped open and his vitals cut out. Rogers was shot in the arm and wounded on the head with a tomahawk, but managed to get into the doctor's house. Several women and children had fled in the same direction. To this place the Indians, who had been running to and fro, howling wildly as they pursued their prey, now assembled, led by Joe Lewis (the traitorous Canadian Catholic Indian to whom Dr. Whitman had given work) and Nicholas Finlay, both French half-breeds, Tamsaky and his son Waiecat, Tilokaikt and his sons Edward and Clark. Joe Lewis enters the school-room, and brings into the kitchen the children, who had hid in the loft. Among them is Francis Sagar, who as he passes his brother John kneels down and takes the bloody tippet from his throat. John attempts to speak, but in the effort only gasps and expires. The trembling children remain huddled together, surrounded by the savages, who point their guns at them and constantly cry, 'Shall we shoot ?' On the other side of the house an Indian approaches the window and shoots Mrs. Whitman in the breast," a breast that had never harbored an unkind thought toward them, whose heart had beat in sympathy for the sick and suffering, who in their cause had passed a life full of privation, showing more practical sympathy for these wretches than all the sentimental vaporings of the ignorant East combined. Forgive us if we seem to write too strongly, but experience is a wise though bitter
Eng by F G. Kernan, N.I.
Walter Thompson
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teacher ; and were we to dip our pen in gall, words would fail to express the very decided opinions born of that actual knowledge, engendered by some years of frontier residence. Old memories almost as revolting as the incidents we narrate crowd in upon us as we write-the recollection of sights our own eyes have be- held : of dead men scalped and namelessly mutilated, pierced after death by many arrows to " strengthen the hearts" of their slayers ; others hanging, still half consumed, to the stake where they suffered the torture fire ; husbands and fathers whose death agonies had been enhanced by being compelled to witness the brutal ravishment of their screaming daughters and wives. And yet another story, listened to with bated breath, when, forty years ago, in the far southwestern frontiers of Texas, we heard a rescued white woman relate how, by way of preface to her own unspeakable sufferings, they compelled her to dance on the body of her wounded and dying husband till, as she described it, she saw the blood gush out from his wounds beneath the pressure of her leaps. Do you wonder that language fails to express our disgust at the maudlin humanitarian policy which feeds, clothes, and coddles the captive Indian brute, sending him on ofttimes, at the Government expense, to be feasted and " pow-wow" with the " great father" at Washington, instead of promptly hanging to the most convenient tree every buck and squaw taken red- handed ?
To return to our story : "Upon receiving the shot, Mrs. Whitman fell, but managed to creep to a sofa, where her voice rises in prayer for her adopted children (three of whom were of the race of her slayers) and her aged father and mother. The fugitives above hear her, and help her up to them. There are now gathered in that upper chamber Mrs. Hays, Mrs. Whitman, Miss Bewley, Catherine Sager and her three sick sisters, three half-breed girls also ill (it must be remembered that the measles was then scourging both the Indians and whites), Mr. Kimball, and Mr. Rogers. Hardly had they closed and fastened the doors when the war-whoop sounds below. The Indians break in the lower doors and windows and begin plundering, while Tilokaikt goes to the doctor, who still breathes, and gashes his face, chop- ping it into shreds with his tomahawk.
" The people upstairs had found an old gun, and the Indians as they start to go up find it pointed in their faces. They retire
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in great alarm. A parley is held, and Tamsaky goes up." (It is evident that half a dozen well-armed and determined men would have routed this cowardly crew, who fell back in terror whenever menaced. Strange as it may appear, the Indian en- joys killing, but when it comes to a " return ball"' is eminently disinclined.) "He assures the fugitives that he is sorry for what he has done, and advises them to come down, as the young . men are about to burn the house. He promises them safety. They do not know of his part of the tragedy, and follow him. As they enter the dining-room, Mrs. Whitman catches sight of her husband's mangled face. She becomes faint and is laid upon a sofa. They pass on through the kitchen, Mrs. Whitman being carried on the sofa by Joe Lewis and Mr. Rogers. As they reach the outside Lewis drops his end of the sofa and the Indians fire their guns. Mr. Rogers throws up his hands and cries, ' Oh, my God, save me !' and falls groaning to the earth. Mrs. Whitman receives two balls and expires. The Indians spring forward, strike her in the face, and roll her body in the mud." (We commend the last sentence specially to the cham- pions of both sexes of the "poor abused Indian.") "They heighten the terror of the wretched survivors by their terrible yelling and the brandishing of their weapons. Miss Bewley runs away, but is overtaken and led back to the mansion. Mr. Kimball and the Sagar girls run back through the house and re- gain the chamber, where they remain all night. Darkness has now come on, and the Indians, having finished their plundering and perpetrated their customary indignities on the dead, retire to Finlay's and Tilokaikt's lodges to consult as to their future action. The first and great day of blood is ended.
" It may easily be imagined that the night was one of gloom and horror to the unfortunate captives, and yet it afforded security to some of those who were in peril. Under its friendly cover Mr. Canfield escaped and made some progress toward Lap· wai, which he eventually reached in safety. Mr. Osborn with his family stole forth from their place of concealment under the doctor's house and reached Fort Walla Walla on the following day." And here let us ask why did not those brave Britons, the men, if such they could be called, of the station, haste to the deliverance of these wretched women and children with every man and musket they could command ? Even these
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priests, one would suppose, as some of their armor-clad bishops had done once and again for far less cause in feudal days, might have unfrocked themselves to fight in such a quarrel. But no man stirred ; the next day-that is to say, on Tuesday-toward evening, Father-no, we beg his pardon, we should have written Vicar-General-Brouillet arrives ; it would almost seem, say the censorious, as if to discover if their work had been thor- oughly carried out and properly finished. He baptizes three Indian babes, and on Wednesday assists Joseph Stanfield, a brother in the faith, a French Catholic actively engaged in the massacre, yet by some miscarriage of justice unhappily escaping the rope he deserved, to bury the mutilated dead, and then- does it seem possible ?- proceeds to make a " sympathetic call" upon the newly made widows and orphans. He takes no means, however, to avoid the yet more dreadful outrages to come, to warn the fort, or even send his interpreter or the trusty Stanfield to do so, but calmly departs, bids farewell to his murderous Indian friends, and returns to Umatilla, where he again becomes the guest of the Five Crows' chief, of whom and his infamous doings more anon. To return to the earlier events of this dread- ful Tuesday following the carnival of blood : " A few hours pre- vious to the visit of this ' sympathetic' holy father and vicar of Christ, Mr. Hall reached Fort Walla Walla in the morning, nearly naked, wounded, and exhausted. He was put across the river by McBean, the factor (the same man who was selected, for his hatred to the Americans, to fill the place of his predecessor, McKinley, who had evinced too friendly a spirit toward the emi- grants), and never heard of afterward-turned out by a white man, a fit representative of Hudson's Bay, to perish in the woods, or meet a worse fate by Indian torture. Yet our Govern- ment finally paid $650,000-they asked millions-to extinguish the claims-not rights-of this company in Washington Terri- tory.
"It is probable that information of the massacre was sent that night to the other Cayuse villages, Camaspelos and the one on the Umatilla. The other chiefs were consulted before its oc- currence, and Five Crows was their leader. On the next day Mr. Kimball was shot as he went from his place of concealment in the chamber for water for himself and his sick children." Think of it, you who are fathers ! In all probability he had
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listened to their prayers and entreaties as, burning with the fever of disease, they begged for but a drop to moisten their parched lips, till his heart was so moved by their distress that he could no longer deny them, and taking his life in his hand, went forth to die. " The young Indian who shot him afterward claimed as his reward the eldest daughter of the murdered man for his wife, and forced her to submit to his horrible embraces. On the same day they killed Mr. Young, a young man ignorant of the out- break, who had come up on some errand from the saw-mill some miles away." Father Brouillet, possibly moved by his " sym- pathetic call"' upon the widows and orphans, met as he returned Mr. Spaulding making his way from Lapwai to visit his little daughter at the mission. Wonderful to relate, he informs him of the massacre, of which good deed he afterward made a vast parade. Spaulding immediately struck off through the woods, and reached Lapwai after six days of terrible exposure and suf- fering, without shoes, blanket, or horse. On Saturday night and repeatedly afterward the girls were dragged out and out- raged.
" On the Monday following young Bewley and Sales were murdered. On Thursday Miss Bewley was taken to the Uma- tilla, the residence of the 'sympathetic' Father Brouillet, and there turned over to the tender mercies of the lascivious Five Crows. At the same time two of the other older girls were taken as wives by the sons of Tilokaikt (called by the whites Edward and Clark), in pursuance of an agreement which had been made at the Umatilla. One of these young braves, Painted Shirt, became very much attached to his enforced bride, a beauti- ful girl of fourteen, and wanted her to remain with him when the other captives were delivered up. He said he was a great brave, and owned many horses and cattle, and he would give them all for her ; or, if she did not like his people, he would abandon them and live with the pale faces. How romantic ! How touchingly delicate ! Who shall dare to say that the age of barbaric chivalry is past ? It is needless to say, however, that with the way to escape once opened, the poor girl spurned the offers of the wretch whose hands were stained with the blood of her eldest brother, and who had only succeeded in forcing her to his arms by threatening to kill her younger sisters if she re- fused.
Mt. Pritchard
F. a. Churchill
J. J. Brewer
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" The news of the massacre reached the settlements through a messenger from the Hudson's Bay Company on December 7th. By the efforts of Mr. Ogden, of that company, the survivors were redeemed, a large amount of goods-including, of course, arms and ammunition-being paid for their recovery.
" On December 29th the captives, forty-six in number, arrived at the fort ; they were joined there on January 1st by Mr. Spaulding and wife, with the other whites from Lapwai." We have no space, nor does it come within our province, being part of the story of Oregon, to dwell upon the measures taken by Governor Abernethy and the Provisional Legislature to punish these savages. Something was done and well done in sending to their " happy hunting grounds" a choice selection of these bloodthirsty rascals ; but it was not until the spring of 1850 that the Cayuses, whom Governor James Douglas characterizes as the most treacherous and untractable of all the tribes of the Northwest, being hard pressed by our troops and made wander- ers among the mountains, were obliged to purchase peace by sur- rendering five of the leading offenders ; thus leaving them, even according to their own law of a life for a life, rather largely in our debt. There is some comfort, however, in the thought that two of the mainsprings of this villainy (outside of their Jesuit instigators) were, with three other companions in crime, prompt- ly tried, convicted, and on June 3d hanged ; their passage to the retribution beyond the grave being soothed and spiritually as- sisted by their Jesuit friends, the same Bishop Blanchet, who was their guest, and the witness without remonstrance of their after atrocities at Umatilla, baptizing them and dismissing them to the unseen with the consolatory but somewhat doubtful ad- vice, elsewhere quoted, to ascend to heaven. We mean no irreverence when we say that even regarded from an orthodox point of view, we have a strong suspicion that they went-the other way.
The buildings of the mission were all burned by the Indians. To-day the sunken walls of its old adobes, melted by the ele- ments, are all that remain to tell the story of the massacres, if we except the common grave, a few rods away, in which, wait- ing the day of final revelation, when the true story of their un- timely taking off shall be fully told and its secret instigators made known, rest the mouldering remains of its slaughtered victims.
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On the site of the doctor's house, however, stands a mansion, erected by one of his old friends and co-laborers. The visitor who leaves the city of Walla Walla to seek the spot made memorable by such sufferings will be rewarded by the sight of one touching and living memento of these Christian martyrs- two or three weather-beaten apple-trees and a rank growth of scarlet poppies, as if nature herself wished to testify with dumb but ever-recurring protest against acts which disturbed her serenity and blood-stained the verdant sod now all aflame with these gaudy flowers. But save the poppies, the beholder will seek in vain for
" One rose of the wilderness left on the stalk To tell where the garden had been."
It is a significant fact that during all these days of slaughter and the deeds that followed in its footsteps no employé of the Hudson's Bay Company, no relative of such employé, no Catho- lic, and no one who professed friendship for Catholicism was in any way injured.
We have no time to enter into the heated discussions and controversies as to the extent of the Hudson's Bay Company and Jesuit missionary influence, and possible advisory criminality in this matter, which afterward filled volumes and take high rank among similar questions of sectarian persecution. It has occupied the attention of boards and Presbyteries ; it has filled reports and given birth to pamphlets and newspaper articles in- numerable, yet remains unsettled to this day. The Jesuits claim that the murders grew out of the Indians believing that the doc- tor was taking advantage of his treatment of the measles to poison his patients ; and Governor Douglas (representing the Hudson's Bay Company's views) intimates the same in his report to the Governor of Oregon. But when the Indian kills his " medicine man," which frequently follows the loss of his patient, he is never known to destroy his family likewise, so this plea falls to the ground. Had they confined themselves to the killing of Dr. Whitman it might have been advanced with some show of truth. Certain it is that the Factor McBean's mes- senger, dispatched to carry the news of the slaughter to Gov- ernor and Chief Factor Ogden (whose philanthropic services were afterward handsomely acknowledged by the Governor of Ore-
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gon), magnified their success to the Indians of the Dalles, but, under direction from McBean, concealed it from the whites, say- ing that the only cause of his journey was to fill the places of certain dead French employés. Moreover, in 1848, during our operations against the Cayuses and other hostiles, our troops seized at Wascopum 1080 pounds of powder, 1900 pounds of balls, 300 pounds of buckshot, and three cases of guns, con- signed by the Hudson's Bay Company to the Jesuits. At the same time the friendly Indians sent away their families to hide in the mountains, giving as their reason for so doing that the Cayuses had told them that the French priests were going to furnish them with plenty of ammunition, and they were going to kill all the Bostons (Americans) and friendly Indians. The priest Brouillet, but not till years afterward, tried to explain away his action by acknowledging that he was a poltroon, and tells quite an affecting story of his mental (we regret that they were not personal) sufferings while baptizing Indian babies and helping the murderers bury the victims at the mission. It is needless for him to add liar to his self-incriminations, for it is written on the face of every page of his confessional lamenta- tions. His admirers may choose, in summing up his want of character, between cowardice, hypocrisy, and the absence of common-sense. To us it suggests a strong infusion of all three.
With some little hesitancy, because it involves very plain talking, we venture to quote from the testimony of the in- famously injured Miss Bewley, taken under oath. After stating that the priests told the Indians that they had found among the doctor's medicines a certain vial which, if broken, would de- stroy the whole Indian nation-a statement which of course strengthened the Indians' plea that he was trying to poison them -she goes on to answer questions as follows :
Q. " Where did you spend your time when at the Umatilla ?"
A. "Most of the time at the house of the bishop; but Five Crows most of the nights compelled me to go to his lodge and be subject to him during the night. I obtained the privi- lege of going to the bishop's house before violation on the Uma- tilla, and begged and cried to the bishop for protection either at his house or to be sent to Walla Walla. I told him I would do any work by night or day for him if he would protect me. He said he would do all he could. Although I was taken to the
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lodge, I escaped violation the first four nights-there were the bishop, three priests, and two Frenchmen at the house. The first night Five Crows came I refused to go, and he went away apparently mad, and the bishop told me I had better go, as he might do us all an injury, and the bishop sent an Indian with me"
Unhappy Christian maiden ! cowardly hound of a Romish prelate ! Where was the manly spirit which others of your faith had exhibited with far less cause ? Where the chivalry of which Frenchmen so loudly boast ? Where that common man- hood which in the breast of anything but a cur like yourself would have interposed and risked life itself for the protection of this poor, friendless, defenceless American girl ? But, to save your worthless carcass and those of your fellow-hypocrites, who, after all, are in no danger in the house of their and your friends, you not only abandon her to the brutal lust of this hea- then, but yourself send a fellow-savage to bind your victim to the horns of the altar. Miss Bewley goes on :
" He took me to Five Crows' lodge. Five Crows showed me the door." It seems that, with some show of relenting, he, In- dian as he was, was not yet ready to accept the good bishop's sop to the wolf, lest he himself might feel his fangs. "He" (Five Crows) " told me I might go back and take my clothes, which I did. Three nights after this Five Crows came for me again. The bishop finally ordered me to go. My answer was, ' I would rather die.' After this he still insisted on my going as the best thing I could do." Yet this mitred scoundrel must have had a mother, though one might imagine he had been turned out of the litter of a coyote as unfit to mingle with his fellow. wolres. "I was then," she says, " in the bishop's room ; the three priests were there. I found I could get no help, and had to go, as he turned me out of his room. Then Five Crows seized me by the arm and jerked me away to his lodge."
Q. " How long were you at the Umatilla ?"'
A. " Two weeks, and from Friday till Monday. I would return early in the morning to the bishop's house. The bishop provided kindly for me while at his house. On my return one morning one of the young priests asked me with a good deal of glee how I liked my companion." Oh, you poor, outraged, and insulted girl ! Five Crows, the savage ravisher, grows re-
Thor Carroll
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spectable when compared with this anointed servant of Satan, who could thus insult your enforced degradation with his filthy jeers. What wonder that she adds, "I felt that this would break my heart, and cried much during the day. . . . When the tall priest (Brouillet), that was at the doctor's at the first, was going to Walla Walla, after hearing of Mr. Ogden's arrival there, he called me to the door, and told me if I went to the lodge any more I must not come back to his house." We presume that his priestly purity could no longer endure the sight of the unfortu- nate sacrificed by his spiritual superior on the altar of heathen lust to save their own worse than worthless lives, or, rather, in- terfere with their scheme for making " Christians" out of their promising associates. Poor child ! in her utter desertion and desolation she asks him, "' What shall I do ?' He said I must insist or beg of the Indian to let me stop at his-the priest's - house, and if he would not let me, then I must stay at his lodge. I did not feel well, and toward night I took advantage of this and went to bed, determined I would die there before I would be taken away. The Indian came, and on my refusing to go, hauled me from my bed, and threw my bonnet and shawl at me, and told me to go. I would not, and at the time his eyes were off me I threw them under the table, and he could not find them. I sat down, determined not to go, and he pushed me nearly into the fire. The Frenchmen (?) were in the room, and the bishop and priests were passing back and forth to their rooms. When the Indian was smoking I went to bed again, and when he was through smoking he dragged me from my bed with more vio- lence than the first time. I told the Frenchman to go into the bishop's room and ask him what I should do. He came out and told me the bishop said it was best for me to go. I told him that the tall priest said if I went I must not come back again to this house. He said the priests dared not keep women about their house." Poor innocents ! strange that such saintly grace and self-sacrificing courage should so dread the contamination of woman's presence ; stranger still that the malevolence of scandal should whisper tales of those who came not only as in- vited, but lingered as welcome guests. He then generously adds if Five Crows sent her back she might come. "I still would not go," she continues. Brave girl ! Were you, with a courage that these frocked miscreants never knew, striving to provoke
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the knife-thrust or the stroke of the deadly tomahawk before which your brother and your friends had already fallen, think- ing it were better so ?
" The Indian then pulled me violently away without bonnet or shawl. Next morning I came back, and was in mnuch anguish and cried much. The bishop" (kind, fatherly man ! possibly just from curiosity) " asked me if I was in much trouble. I told him I was. He said it was not my fault" (no, you renegade, venerable " father in God ;" it was yours), "that I could not help myself ; that I must pray to God and Mary." Good, pious man ; he asks her next if she did not believe in God. She answered that she did ; and verily her faith must have been iron-clad, for regarding these priests as His specially anointed representatives, we should be inclined to choose Baal by a large majority.
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