great number of deaths among the Cayuses, amounting to nearly one half the population.[1]
That the natives murmured Whitman was aware; but he hoped that two deaths which had occurred in his house, of one of his adopted children and one of Osborne's, would have shown them that the disease carried off white people as well as Indians. Spalding asserts in the Oregon American, a small semi-monthly paper[2] published in 1848, that not only Joe Lewis, but the Catholic priests who had arrived at Fort Walla Walla from Canada on the 5th of September, with the design of establishing missions among the
- ↑ 'It was most distressing to go into a lodge of some 10 fires, and count 20 or 25, some in the midst of measles, others in the last stages of dysentery, in the midst of every kind of filth of itself sufficient to cause sickness, with no suitable means to alleviate their inconceivable sufferings, with perhaps one well person to look after the wants of 2 sick ones. Everywhere the sick and dying were pointed to Jesus, and the well were urged to prepare for death.' H. H. Spalding, in Oregon American, July 19, 1848.
- ↑ 'Devoted to American principles and interests; to evangelical religion and morals; to general intelligence, foreign and domestic; to temperance and moral instrumentalities generally; to science, literature, and the arts; to commerce and internal improvements; to agriculture and home manufactures; to the description and development of our natural resources; to the physical, intellectual, and moral education of rising generations; and to such well-defined discussions generally as are calculated to elevate and dignity the character of a free people.' Its devotion was indeed great—so great that there was little room left for anything else. 'The constituted nature and relation of things, our constitution,' was a motto which, if adhered to, would seem to do away with all that goes before. 'Edited by J. S. Griffin. Printed by C. F. Putnam.' See Honolulu Polynesian, v. 54; Friend, viii. 4; Burnett's Recollections of a Pioneer, 251.
assembled, required him to state all he knew about the matter and to state the truth. I was present; and he said, in substance, that all the chiefs were concerned except Young Chief and Five Crows, who knew nothing of it; that the cause… was that Dr Whitman and Dr Spalding were poisoning the Indians… Joe Lewis said that Dr Whitman and Mr Spalding had been writing for two years to their friends in the east, where Joe Lewis lived, to send them poison to kill off the Cayuses and the Nez Percés; and they had sent them some that was not good, and they wrote for more that would kill them off quick, and that the medicine had come this summer. Joe Lewis said he was lying on the settee in Dr Whitman's room, and he heard a conversation between Dr Whitman, Mrs Whitman, and Mr Spalding, in which Mr Spalding asked the doctor why he did not kill the Indians off faster. "O," said the doctor, "they are dying fast enough; the young ones will die off this winter, and the old ones next spring." … The Indian messenger stated that Joe Lewis made this statement in a council of the Cayuses… Joe Lewis, the messenger said, told the Cayuses in the council that unless they [the Indians] killed Dr Whitman and Mr Spalding quick, they would all die. The messenger went on to say himself, that 197 Indians had died since the immigration commenced passing that summer. He said that there were 6 buried on Monday morning, and among the rest his own wife; he said he knew they were poisoned.' Brouillet's Authentic Account, 35–6.
