How Marcus Whitman saved Oregon/Chapter 5

by Oliver Woodson Nixon

CHAPTER V.

MISSION LIFE IN WAIILATPUI.

Most writers speak of the Mission at Waiilatpui, as "The Presbyterian Mission." While it does not much matter whether it was Presbyterian or Congregational, it is well to have the history correct. The two great churches at that time were united in their foreign missionary work, and their missionaries were taken from both denominations. A year or more ago I asked the late Professor Marcus Whitman Montgomery, of the Chicago Theological Seminary (a namesake of Dr. Whitman), to go over Dr. Whitman's church record while in Boston. He sends me the following, which may be regarded as authentic:

Ravenswood, Chicago, Jan. 5, 1894.

Dr. O. W. Nixon:

Dear Sir—The record of Dr. Whitman's church membership is as follows: Converted during a revival in the Congregational Church at Plainfield, Mass., in 1819, Rev. Moses Hallock, pastor. His 84 first joining of a church was at Rushville, Yates County, N. Y., where he joined the Congregational Church in 1824, Rev. David Page, pastor. He was a member of this church for nine years, then he removed to Wheeler Center, Steuben County, N. Y. There being no Congregational Church there he joined the Presbyterian Church of Wheeler Center, Rev. James T. Hotchkiss, pastor. He was a member of this Presbyterian Church for three years, then he went to the Pacific Coast. This mission church was Presbyterian in name and Congregational in practice, while Whitman and the other missionaries were supported by the American Board. The American Board was always Congregational, but, at that time, the Presbyterians were co-operating with the American Board.

These are the bottom facts as I have every reason to believe. Very truly yours,

MARCUS WHITMAN MONTGOMERY.

The Rev. H. H. Spalding was a Presbyterian, and the Mission Church was Presbyterian in name, but was Congregational in practice, and had a confession of faith and covenant of its own. While the record shows Whitman to have been a Congregationalist, it also shows that he united with the Presbyterian Church when he settled at Wheeler Center, N. Y., where there was no Congregational 85 Church. But the fact remains that his memory and the acts of his grand life are amply sufficient to interest both these great denominations.

Mrs. Whitman joined the Presbyterian Church when a young girl of eleven.

Dr. Whitman was born at Rushville, N. Y., September 4, 1802, and was thirty-three years old when he entered upon his work in Oregon. When first converted he resolved to study for the ministry, but a chain of circumstances changed his plans and he studied medicine. The early hardships and privations educated him into an admirable fitness for the chosen work of his life.

Picture that little missionary band as they stood together at Fort Walla Walla in September, 1836, and consulted about the great problems to solve. It was all new. There were no precedents to guide them. They easily understood that the first thing to do was to consult the ruling powers of Oregon—the Hudson Bay Company officials at Fort Vancouver. This would require another journey of three hundred miles, but as it could be made in boats, and the Indians were capital oarsmen, they resolved to take their wives with them, and thus complete the wedding journey.

The gallant Dr. McLoughlin, Chief Factor of the Hudson Bay Company, was a keen judge of human nature, and read men and women as scholars read books, and he was captivated with the 86 open, manly ways of Dr. Whitman and the womanly accomplishments of the fair young wife, who had braved the perils of an overland journey with wholly unselfish purposes. Whitman soon developed to Dr. McLoughlin all his plans and his hopes. Perhaps there was a professional free masonry between the men that brought them closer together, but, by nature, they were both men endowed richly with the best manly characters.

Dr. McLoughlin resolved to do the best thing possible for them, while he still protected the interests of his great monopoly. Dr. Whitman's idea, was to build one mission at the Dalles so as to be convenient to shipping; McLoughlin at once saw it would not do. He had already pushed the Methodist Mission far up the Willamette out of the way of the fort and its work, and argued with Whitman that it would be best for him to go to the Walla Walla country, three hundred miles away, and Spalding, one hundred and twenty-five miles farther on.

He argued that the river Indians were far less hopeful subjects to deal with, and that the bunch grass Indians, the Cayuse and Nez Perces, had expressed a great anxiety for teachers. This arrangement had been partially agreed to by Mr. Parker the year before. After a full canvass of the entire subject, Dr. McLoughlin promised all 87 the aid in his power to give them a comfortable start.

At his earnest petition, Mrs. Whitman and Mrs. Spalding remained at Vancouver while their husbands went back to erect houses that would shelter them from the coming winter. To make Mrs. Whitman feel at ease, and that she was not taxing the generosity of their new friends, Dr. McLoughlin placed his daughter under her instruction, both in her class work and music. Every effort was made to interest and entertain the guests; the afternoons were given to excursions on the water, or on horseback, or in rambles through the great fir forests, still as wild as nature made them.

There is a grandeur in the great forest beyond the Stony Mountains unequaled in any portion of the world. In our Northern latitudes the undergrowth is so thick as to make comfortable traveling impossible, but in the fir woods and in the pine and redwood forests of Oregon, there are comparatively few of such obstructions. The great giants ten or twelve feet in diameter, two hundred and seventy feet high, and one hundred feet without a limb, hide the sun, and upon a summer day make jaunts through the forest delightful to a lover of nature.

It was a grand rest and a pleasing finale to the hardships of the wedding journey for these heroic women, and Mrs. Whitman, in her diary, never a 88 day neglects to remember her kind benefactors. They rested here for about one and a half months, when Mr. Spalding came after them and reported the houses so far advanced as to give them shelter. We read the following note in Mrs. Whitman's diary, 1836:

"December 26th. Where are we now, and who are we, that we should be thus blessed of the Lord? I can scarcely realize that we are thus comfortably fixed and keeping house so soon after our marriage, when considering what was then before us.

"We arrived here on the 10th, distance twenty-five miles from Fort Walla Walla. Found a house reared and the lean-to enclosed, a good chimney and fireplace and the floor laid. No windows or doors, except blankets. My heart truly leaped for joy as I lighted from my horse, entered and seated myself before a pleasant fire (for it was now night). It occurred to me that my dear parents had made a similar beginning and perhaps a more difficult one than ours.

"We had neither straw, bedstead or table, nor anything to make them of except green cottonwood. All our boards are sawed by hand. Here my husband and his laborers (two Owyhees from Vancouver, and a man who crossed the mountains with us), and Mr. Gray had been

MISSION STATION AT WAIILATPUI.

encamped in a tent since the 19th of October, toiling excessively 89 hard to accomplish this much for our comfortable residence during the remainder of the winter.

"It is, indeed, a lovely situation. We are on a beautiful level peninsula formed by the branches of the Walla Walla River, upon the base of which our house stands, on the southeast corner, near the shore of the main river. To run a fence across to the opposite river on the north from our house—this, with the river, would enclose three hundred acres of good land for cultivation, all directly under the eye.

"The rivers are barely skirted with timber. This is all the woodland we can see. Beyond them, as far as the eye can reach, plains and mountains appear. On the east, a few rods from the house, is a range of small hills covered with bunch grass, very excellent food for animals and upon which they subsist during winter, even digging it from under the snow."

This section is now reported as among the most fertile and beautiful places in Washington. Looking away in a southeasterly direction, the scenic beauty is grandly impressive. The Indians named the place Wai-i-lat-pui (the place of rye grass). For twenty miles there is a level reach of fertile soil through which flows like a silver thread the Walla Walla River, while in the distance loom up toward the clouds as a the picturesque Blue Mountains. The greatest 90 drawback was the long distance to any timber suitable for making boards, and the almost entire lack of helpers.

The Cayuse Indians seemed delighted with the prospect of a Mission church and school, but they thought it disgraceful for them to work. The doctor had to go from nine to fifteen miles to get his timber for boards, and then hew or saw them out by hand. It was not, therefore, strange, as Mrs. Whitman writes in her diary, December 26th: "No doors or windows." From the day he entered upon his work, Dr. Whitman was well-nigh an incessant toiler. Every year he built an addition to his house.

T. J. Furnham, who wrote a book of "Travels Across the Great Western Prairies and Rocky Mountains," visited the Whitman Mission in September, 1839. He says: "I found 250 acres enclosed and 200 acres under good cultivation. I found forty or fifty Indian children between the ages of seven and eighteen years in school, and Mrs. Whitman an indefatigable instructor. One building was in course of construction and a small grist mill in running order."

He says again: "It appeared to me quite remarkable that the doctor could have made so many improvements since the year 1836; but the industry which crowded every hour of the day, his untiring energy of character, and the very 91 efficient aid of his wife in relieving him in a great degree from the labors of the school, enabled him, without funds for such purposes, and without other aid than that of a fellow missionary for short intervals, to fence, plow, build, plant an orchard, and do all the other laborious acts of opening a plantation on the face of that distant wilderness, learn an Indian language, and do the duties, meanwhile, of a physician to the associate stations on the Clearwater and Spokane."

People who give their money for missionary work can easily see that in the case in hand they received faithful service. This is no prejudiced report, but facts based upon the knowledge of a stranger, who had no reason to misrepresent or exaggerate.

One of the first efforts of Dr. Whitman was to induce his Indians to build permanent homes, to plow, plant and sow. This the Hudson Bay Company had always discouraged. They wanted their savage aids as nomads and hunters, ready to move hundreds and hundreds of miles away in search of furs. They had never been encouraged to raise either grain or fruit, cattle or sheep.

Dr. Jonathan Edwards says, in speaking of The Whitman Mission in 1842: "The Indians were cultivating from one-fourth to four acres of land, had seventy head of cattle, and some of them a few sheep." The same author gives a graphic 92 description of the painstaking work of Dr. and Mrs. Whitman, not only in the school room, but in the Indian home, to show them the comforts and benefits of civilization. Every Indian who will plant is furnished the seed.

He also describes the orderly Sunday at the Mission. Up to the year 1838 the principal meat used as food by the Mission was horse flesh. The cattle were too few to be sacrificed in that way. In 1837 Mrs. Whitman writes in her diary: "We have had but little venison furnished by the Indians, but to supply our men and visitors we have bought of the Indians and eaten ten wild horses."

In 1841 their stock of hogs and cattle had so increased that they were able to make a partial change of diet.

Another witness to the value of Dr. Whitman's missionary work is Joseph Drayton, of Commodore Wilkes' exploring expedition of 1841.

He says of the Mission: "All the premises looked comfortable, the garden especially fine, vegetables and melons in great variety. The wheat in the fields was seven feet high and nearly ripe, and the corn nine feet in the tassel." He marks the drawbacks of the Mission: "The roving of the Indians, rarely staying at home more than three months at a time." "They are off after buffalo," and "again off after the salmon," and "not 93 more than fifty or sixty remain during the winter."

These Cayuse Indians were not a numerous band, but they were born traders, were wealthy, and had a great influence over other tribes. Their wealth consisted mainly in horses; a single Indian Chief owned two thousand head. One of their good qualities Mrs. Whitman speaks of, is, "there are no thieves among them." She has to keep nothing locked out of fear from thieves; but they had one trying habit of which Mrs. Whitman had great trouble to break them—that was, they thought they had a right to go into every room in the house, and seemed to think that something was wrong when deprived of visiting the bedrooms of the family.

In June, 1839, a great sorrow came to Dr. and Mrs. Whitman. They had but one child, a little girl of two years and three months old. In their isolated condition one can easily imagine what a large place a bright and attractive child would have in the heart of father and mother in such a home. In the pursuance of his duties the doctor was absent night after night, and some of his more distant patients occupied him frequently many days.

It was at such times that Mrs. Whitman found great comfort and happiness in her little daughter. The child had learned the Indian language and spoke it fluently, to the delight of the Indians, 94 and had learned all the songs sung in the Nez Perces dialect, having inherited the musical talent of her mother. It was in September, 1839, that she was accidentally drowned in the Walla Walla River. In her diary Mrs. Whitman writes to her mother:

"I cannot describe what our feelings were when night came and our dear child a corpse in the next room. We went to bed, but not to sleep, for sleep had departed from our eyes. The morning came, we arose, but our child slept on. I prepared a shroud for her during the day; we kept her four days; it was a great blessing and comfort to me so long as she looked natural and was so sweet I could caress her. But when her visage began to change I felt it a great privilege that I could put her in so safe a resting place as the grave, to see her no more until the resurrection morning.

"Although her grave is in sight every time I step out of the door, my thoughts seldom wander there to find her. I look above with unspeakable delight, and contemplate her as enjoying the full delights of that bright world where her joys are perfect."

One seldom reads a more pathetic story than this recorded by Mrs. Whitman, and yet, the almost heartbroken mother in her anguish never murmurs or rebels. On the morning of the day she was drowned, Mrs. Whitman writes, the little daughter was permitted to select a hymn for the family worship. She made a selection of the old-time favorite:

"ROCK OF AGES."

"While I draw this fleeting breath,
When my eyelids close in death;
When I rise to worlds unknown,
And behold Thee on Thy Throne;
Rock of ages cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee."

When the Indians came in for the afternoon service Dr. Whitman turned to the same hymn and the baby girl again with her sweet voice joined in the singing. Says Mrs. Whitman:

"This was the last we heard her sing. Little did we think that her young life was so fleeting or that those sparkling eyes would so soon be closed in death, and her spirit rise to worlds unknown to behold on His Throne of glory Him who said: 'I will be a God to thee and thy seed after thee.'"

They got water for the household use from the running river, and the two little tin cups were found on the edge of the water. An old Indian dived in and soon brought out the body, but life was extinct.

The profoundly Christian character of the mother is revealed in every note of the sad event.

She writes: "Lord, it is right; it is right. She is not mine, but thine; she was only lent to to comfort me for a little season, and now, dear Savior, Thou hast the best right to her. Thy will, not mine, be done." Perils and hardships had long been theirs, but this was their great sorrow. But it only seemed to excite them to greater achievements in the work before them. Not a single interest was neglected.

The sudden death of "The Little White Cayuse," as the Indians called her, seemed to estrange the Indians from the Mission. They almost worshiped her, and came almost daily to see her and hear her sing the Cayuse songs. The old Chief had many times said: "When I die I give everything I have to the 'Little White Cayuse.'" From this time on the Indians frequently showed a bad spirit. They saw the flocks and herds of the Mission increasing, and the fields of waving grain, and began to grow jealous and make demands that would have overtaxed and caused fear in almost any other man than a Whitman.

Both before and after his memorable ride to Washington, his good friend, Dr. McLoughlin, many times begged him to leave the Mission for a while, until the Indians got in a better frame of mind. No man knew the Indians so well as McLoughlin, and he saw the impending danger; but no entreaties moved Whitman. Here was his life work and here he would remain.

In these sketches there is no effort to tell the 97 complete Oregon Mission story, but only so much of it as will make clear the heroic and patriotic services of Dr. and Mrs. Whitman. The reader will find a most careful study of the whole broad field of pioneer mission work upon the Pacific Coast in the Rev. Myron Eells' two books, the "History of Indian Missions," and the "Biography of Rev. Cushing Eells."

How much or how little the work of the Oregon Missionaries benefited the Indians eternity alone will reveal. They simply obeyed the call "to preach the gospel to every creature."

A train of circumstances, a series of evolutions in national history which they neither originated nor could stop, were portending. But that the Missionaries first of all saw the drift of coming events, and wisely guided them to the peace and lasting good of the nation is as plain as any page of written history.

With the light of that time, with the terrible massacre at Waiilatpui in sight, it is not strange that good people felt that there had been great sacrifice with small good results. All the years since have been correcting such false estimates. The American Board and the Christian people of the land have made their greatest mistake in not rallying to the defense of their martyr heroes.

No "forty thousand dollars" ever spent by that organization before or since has been so prolific in 98 good. The argument to sustain this assertion will be found in other sketches.

The United States Government could well afford to give a million dollars every year to the American Board for fifty years to come, and to endow Whitman College magnificently, and then not pay a moiety for the benefit it has received as a nation, and never acknowledged.

The best possible answer of the church and of the friends of missions to those who sneeringly ask, What good has resulted to the world for all the millions spent on missions? is to point to that neglected grave at Waiilatpui, and recite the story of heroism and patriotism of Dr. Marcus Whitman.