At Waiilatpu
The Great Grave as it appeared in the 1860's.
The first Great Grave in which the Whitmans and the others were
hurriedly buried was a shallow grave that was dug up by wolves
or wild dogs. The Volunteers reburied the bones. The burial site
was covered with a wagon box and a large mound of earth to prevent
animals from digging them up again.
On December 29, 1847, after a month of terror,
the hostages left the Waiilatpu mission. They had been ransomed
by Peter Skene Ogden, Chief Factor of the Hudson's Bay Company at
Ft. Vancouver. The ransom consisted of "fifty blankets, fifty
shirts, ten guns, ten fathoms of tobacco, ten handkerchiefs, and
one hundred balls and powder." [1] It was paid when all
the captives, including the three teenage girls who had been taken
as wives, were freed. The group traveled to Fort Walla Walla.
The Spaldings abandoned the Lapwai station on
December 28. A group of Nez Perce traveled with them in order to
guarantee their safety. The Spaldings joined the others at Ft. Walla
Walla on January 1, 1848. The following day the group - Ogden and
his 16 boatmen, 14 other men, 11 women, and 42 children - left for
Ft. Vancouver.
Mary Walker, of the Tshimakain mission, gave birth to her sixth
child on December 31, 1847. The Spokanes wanted their missionaries
to stay. The trouble of traveling with small children in winter
along with this support from the tribe convinced the people at the
Tshimakain station to stay at their site.
Meanwhile the settlers in the Willamette Valley
had raised a group of 500 Volunteers to avenge the death of the
Whitmans and bring the guilty to justice. Enroute to the Whitman
Mission some of the Volunteers burnt Indian lodges on the Deschutes
River. The Cayuse retaliated by burning the buildings at the Waiilatpu
mission.
The full Volunteer contingent arrived at the destroyed mission on
March 3, 1848. They used bricks from the burnt buildings to construct
a wall around the site, which they named Fort Waters after Lieutenant-Colonel
James Waters. Over the next few months groups were sent out from
the fort to search for the guilty individuals.
Failure to capture the culprits and the approaching end of the ten
month enlistment period of the troops prompted Colonel Waters to
evacuate all Americans from the upper Columbia River country. On
June 5, 1848, the remaining missionaries were escorted from the
Tshimakain station.
A month later Colonel Waters disbanded the Volunteers, except for
fifty-five who stayed through September to help that year's emigrants.
The temporary fort at Waiilatpu was abandoned. Historian Clifford
Drury described what the area probably looked like:
"Only a small grove of locust trees, heaps
of rubbish where buildings once stood, the outlines of the millpond
and the irrigation ditches, perhaps some remnants of rail fences,
and the graves in the cemetery remained as visible evidence of
the fact that for eleven years Marcus and Narcissa Whitman had
lived there." [2]
Clifford
M. Drury in
Marcus and Narcissa Whitman
And the Opening of Old Oregon
History marched on . . .
The Whitman-Eells Memorial Congregational Church
as it appeared around the turn of the century. The memorial on
Shaft Hill can be seen in the background. The church was built
in 1896 south of the Great Grave.
The tragedy at Waiilatpu set several events in
motion. On August 13, 1848, in response to the killings at the mission,
Congress passed legislation officially making Oregon a U. S. territory.
For two years the Cayuse were hunted and harassed. This conflict
was the beginning of a series of Indian wars in the Pacific Northwest
that lasted for eleven years. The Cayuse eventually gave up five
of their members, who were then tried and hanged in 1850.
The deaths of the Whitmans did not stop the flow of emigrants. The
Treaty of 1855 set aside certain reservation lands for area tribes,
opening the rest for homesteading. The town of Walla Walla was established
in 1859. Also in 1859, Rev. Eells laid claim to the Waiilatpu mission
site and established a school there in honor of his fallen friend
and associate. This school, Whitman Seminary, was soon moved to
the new town of Walla Walla. It was eventually renamed Whitman College.
The Whitmans were not forgotten. In 1897, fifty
years after their deaths, a ceremony was held in their honor. Soon
after the ceremony a monument to the Whitmans was erected and the
bodies were reburied under a marble slab. Local residents looked
after the site for many years. The site became part of the National
Park Service on June 29, 1936.
Citations
-
Brouillet, House Document, pg. 47. Quoted
in Clifford Drury, Marcus and Narcissa Whitman and the Opening
of Old Oregon vol. II, pg.289.
-
Drury, Clifford, Marcus and Narcissa Whitman
and the Opening of Old Oregon vol. II, pg.314.
References
Drury, Clifford. Marcus and Narcissa Whitman
and the Opening of Old Oregon.
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