Tragedy at the Whitman Mission, Washington - Infamous Crime Scenes on Waymarking.com

I traveled The Oregon Trail with an Elderhostel group from Kansas City/Independence, Missouri to Oregon City, Oregon June 13-28, 2007. On Tuesday, June 26, we visited the Whitman Mission Historic Site on the banks of the Walla Walla River. While the group listened to a talk by the Park Ranger, I explored the historic site.

According to "Whitman Massacre - Wikipedia" and "HistoryLink.org Essay 5192," Marcus Whitman (1802-1847) and Narcissa Prentiss Whitman (1808-1847), the missionary couple who had settled near present-day Walla Walla on land known by the Cayuse Indians as Waiilatpu ("place of the people of the rye grass") and were promoting Christianity, were killed near this spot along with 12 others by a small band of Cayuse Indians on November 29, 1847.

The killings are usually ascribed in part to a clash of cultures and in part to the inability of Dr. Whitman, a physician, to halt the spread of measles among the Cayuse Indians. Other factors that may have contributed to the killings were outbreaks of cholera, conflict between the Protestant missionaries and local Catholic, the contempt shown by Narcissa Whitman toward the Indians and their way of life, resentment over missionaries' attempts to transform the Indians' lifestyle, and the killing of a Walla Walla chief’s son.

Although fatally wounded, Dr. Marcus Whitman lived for several hours after the attack, mostly unconscious. Narcissa was shot in the chest, but died from multiple gunshot wounds after she had been coaxed to leave the house. Besides Whitman and his wife, those killed included Andrew Rogers Jr, adult, James Young Jr, age 24, Lucien W. or W. L. Saunders, adult, Nathan Kimball, adult, Crockett A. Bewley, age 18, Isaac Gillen or Gilliland, adult, John Sager, age 17, Francis "Frank" Sager, age 15, Jacob Hoffman, adult, Walter Marsh, adult, Amos Sales, adult, and Jacob D. Hall.

Another 54 women and children were captured and held for ransom, including the daughter of Jim Bridger and the Sager orphan girls. Several of the prisoners died in captivity, including Helen Meek, age 10, and Louise Sager, age 6, usually from illness such as the measles. One month following the killings, on December 29, on orders from Fort Vancouver’s Chief Factor James Douglas, Peter Skene Ogden, an official of Hudson's Bay Company, arranged for an exchange of 62 blankets, 63 cotton shirts, 12 Hudson Bay rifles, 600 loads of ammunition, seven pounds of tobacco and 12 flints for the return of the now 49 surviving prisoners.

It was one of the most notorious episodes in the U.S. settlement of the Pacific Northwest. The incident began what would become known as the Cayuse War (1848).

A few years later, after further violence in the Cayuse War, some of the settlers insisted that the killings were still unresolved. The new governor, General Mitchell Lambertsen, took a group to go back to the Cayuse and demanded the surrender of those who carried out the Whitman Mission killings. The head chief attempted to explain why they had killed the whites, and that the war that followed (the Cayuse War) had resulted in a greater loss of his own people than the number killed at the mission.

The explanation was not accepted. Eventually, tribal leaders Tiloukaikt and Tomahas, who had been present at the killings, and three additional Cayuse men consented or were chosen to go to Oregon City (then capital of Oregon), to be tried for murder. In the lengthy trial by newly appointed Territorial Marshall Joseph Meek, seeking revenge for the death of his daughter Helen, the Americans Indians were found guilty of murder. The decision was controversial because it was suspected that the witnesses in the trial had not actually been present at the Whitman Mission killings. On June 3, 1850, Tiloukaikt, Tomahas, Kiamasumpkin, Iaiachalakis, and Klokomas were publicly hanged for their involvement in the tragedy.

The news of the Whitman Mission tragedy shocked the U.S. Congress into action concerning the future territorial status of the Oregon Country. The Oregon Territory--without slaves--was finally established on August 14, 1848.

The Cayuse tribe was removed to the Umatilla Reservation in Oregon and dissolved among other tribes, eventually losing its identity and its language.

Instructions for logging waymark: A photograph is required of you (or your GPS receiver, if you are waymarking solo) and the grave sign.

Date of crime: 11/29/1847 Public access allowed: yes Web site: [Web Link] Fee required: Not Listed

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