Among the first American settlers in the West, Marcus Whitman and his wife Narcissa Whitman played an important role in opening the Oregon Trail and left a tragic legacy that would continue to haunt relations between whites and Indians for decades after their deaths. Marcus and Narcissa Whitman were both from upstate New York. Narcissa Prentiss was born in 1808 in Prattsburgh, New York, into a devout Presbyterian family. She was fervently religious as a child, at age sixteen pledging her life to missionary work. After she completed her own education, she taught primary school in Prattsburgh. In 1834, still awaiting the opportunity to fulfill her pledge, she moved with her family to Belmont, New York. Marcus Whitman was born in 1802 at Rushville, New York. After studying under a local doctor, he received his degree from the medical college at Fairfield, New York, in 1832. He practiced medicine for four years in Canada, then returned to New York, where he became an elder of the Presbyterian church. In 1835 he journeyed to Oregon to make a reconnaissance of potential mission sites. Shortly before Marcus' trip westward, Narcissa had also volunteered her services to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, the umbrella group for Protestant missions to Indian peoples. The Board, however, was unwilling to send unmarried women as missionaries. After Marcus visited the Prentiss family for a weekend, the couple -- who may have had a passing acquaintance beforehand -- agreed to be married and the Board in turn offered them positions as missionaries. In 1836 the Whitmans headed West with another missionary couple, Henry Harmon Spalding (who had been jilted by Narcissa) and his wife Eliza and with a prospective missionary named William H. Gray. St. Louis was their departure point and Oregon their ultimate destination. The group traveled with fur traders for most of the journey and took wagons farther West than had any American expedition before them. Along the way, Narcissa and Eliza became the first white women to cross the Rocky Mountains. The Whitmans reached the Walla Walla River on September 1, 1836, and decided to found a mission to the Cayuse Indians at Waiilatpu in the Walla Walla Valley, seven miles west of present-day Walla Walla, Washington. In addition to evangelizing, the missionaries established schools and gristmills and introduced crop irrigation. However, their work advanced slowly, jeopardizing funding. In 1842, in response to a letter ordering the Whitmans to leave Waiilatpu, Marcus Whitman journeyed East and convinced the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to continue supporting the work of the mission. Returning the following year, he joined the “Great Migration of 1843”, approximately 1,000 settlers traveling to Oregon Territory. With the sudden influx of settlers, tension between Native Americans and the pioneers escalated. Trouble erupted in 1847 when a measles epidemic killed a disproportionate number of Native American children. A practicing physician, Whitman was accused of using magic to eliminate Native Americans in order to make way for new immigrants. On November 29, 1847, several Cayuse, under the leadership of the chief Tiloukaikt, took revenge for what they perceived as treachery. They killed fourteen whites, including the Whitmans, and burnt down the mission buildings. A subsequent white militia attack on a band of uninvolved Cayuse escalated the conflict into a war which went very poorly for the Cayuse. Two years after the attack, Tiloukaikt and several others involved in the Whitman Massacre voluntarily surrendered themselves in an effort to avoid the destruction of the entire tribe. Already weakened by disease and subjected to continued white raids, the remnants of the Cayuse joined nearby tribes, especially the Nez Percé and Yakima. Thus the Whitmans' efforts ended in both their own deaths and the end of the Cayuse as an independent people.
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