by H. W. Brands
The weather was as wet and cold as Decembers can be in the Willamette Valley. Meek and the others needed shelter, and to find it they sought land they could claim for farms. They journeyed the short distance to Willamette Falls, where they found another associate from the mountains, a man named Doughty. The group crossed the river and set up a temporary camp on the west bank, plotting their next move. Word apparently got out that they were there, for shortly two more veterans of the mountains joined them. Together the trappers considered how to become farmers and where to commence the process.
Newell took the lead, being the best-educated of the bunch and the most experienced in the land business. Besides, it was Newell’s money that had bought the horses and mules and provisions for the journey from the Snake River, and he retained financial primacy over the others. Newell proposed that they head twenty-five miles northwest to some open, rolling land along the Tualatin River, where Doughty had built a cabin and where a scattering of farms had been established by a handful of those who had found their way to the Willamette.
Meek and the others assented, and they reached the Tualatin Plains on the dreariest Christmas Day most of them had ever experienced. The Rocky Mountains were cold in winter, but the sun often shone and the air was dry. In the Willamette Valley, the thermometer might show forty degrees warmer than on the Green River, but the rain soaked everything and made hypothermia a constant threat. Worse, the eating on the Willamette was poorer than in the mountains. There the trappers had feasted on buffalo meat; here there were no buffalo and precious few other game animals, at least that Meek and his companions could find. Food was fuel to outdoorsmen, and when the fuel consisted of paltry rations of boiled wheat kernels, the engines of activity slowed dramatically. Spirits sank in comparable measure.
Meek bore the wet and cold and hunger as long as he could, but finally determined to better his state, if only marginally. He crossed the ridge that separated the Tualatin from the Willamette and sought food from a retired Hudson’s Bay man and his wife who lived on a large island where the Willamette meets the Columbia. The man was still eligible to buy provisions from Fort Vancouver, just several miles up the Columbia. Meek could have gone to the fort himself and bought provisions on credit, but he was too stubborn to accept John McLoughlin’s help. He traded his skills as a hunter—of waterfowl, in this case—for dried salmon and hardtack, and both he and the island couple ate better that winter than either would have eaten apart.
The winter rains eased with the coming of spring. Meek and the others staked claims to promising parcels of land and, with seed grain and tools acquired from Fort Vancouver—there was no alternative—they sowed their first crop.
In that moment Joe Meek was transformed. For a decade he had been a nomad, a chaser after animals for his means of subsistence. Now he was a farmer, a tiller of the soil. Ownership had been a hindrance to a man on the move; ownership was now the foundation of his life. His nationality had hardly mattered in the mountains, for government—British or American—touched his life only rarely and in passing. Nationality meant much now, for government—American or British—would honor his land claim or deny it. Rootless since fleeing his Virginia home, Meek put down roots in Oregon.
20
WAIILATPU
MISSION LIFE WAS HARD ON NARCISSA WHITMAN. SHE and Marcus, with the help of William Gray, had built the physical structures of their mission, but building the community of believers they envisioned was more difficult. The Whitmans and the Spaldings had split up, the better to proselytize the Nez Perce and their neighbors, the Cayuse Indians. Partly because of Whitman’s stubbornness—no challenge daunted him—he and Narcissa got the Cayuse, who were indeed the greater challenge. They were slow to come to the mission, and the tribe’s leaders didn’t disguise their distrust of the whites. They hadn’t requested any missionaries from the East, they reminded the Whitmans.
Marcus busied himself with the labors of the mission, which were endless. Narcissa’s chores were myriad, too, and included the care of a young daughter, Alice—the first child born to an American woman in the Oregon country. Alice was the pride of her mother and father, their hope for an American future in the West. “She is a large, healthy and strong child,” Narcissa wrote a week after Alice’s second birthday. “She talks both Nez Perces and English quite fluently, and is much inclined to read her book with the children of the family, and sings all our Nez Perces hymns and several in English.” Alice flitted about the mission house, charming the whites and Indians alike.
And then she vanished.
“Last Sabbath, blooming in health, cheerful and happy in herself and in the society of her much loved parents, yet in one moment she disappeared, went to the river with two cups to get some water for the table, fell in and was drowned,” Narcissa wrote her sister two months later, still in shock. “Mysterious event! We can in no way account for the circumstances connected with it, otherwise than that the Lord meant it should be so. Husband and I were both engaged in reading. She had just a few minutes before been reading to her father; had got down out of his lap, and as my impression, was amusing herself by the door in the yard. After a few moments, not hearing her voice, I sent Margaret to search for her. She did not find her readily, and instead of coming to me to tell me that she had not found her, she went to the garden to get some radishes for supper. On seeing her pass to the water to wash them, I looked to see if Alice was with her, but saw that she was not. That moment I began to be alarmed, for Mungo had just been in and said there were two cups in the river. We immediately inquired for her, but no one had seen her. We then concluded she must be in the river. We searched down the river, and up and down again in wild dismay, but could not find her for a long time. Several were in the river searching far down. By this time we gave her up for dead. At last an old Indian got into the river where she fell in and looked along by the shore and found her a short distance below. But it was too late; she was dead.”
Narcissa blamed herself. She had been inattentive. Her own memories accused her. “It came to my recollection that I had a glimpse of her entering the house and saying, with her usual glee, ‘ha, ha, supper is most ready’ (for the table had just been set), ‘let Alice get some water,’ at the same time taking two cups from the table and disappearing. Being absorbed in reading I did not see her or think anything about her—which way she went to get her water. I had never known her to go to the river or to appear at all venturesome until within a week past. Previous to this she has been much afraid to go near the water anywhere, for her father had once put her in, which so effectually frightened her that we had lost that feeling of anxiety for her in a measure on its account. But she had gone.” And she would never return.
Narcissa’s theology provided her both solace and punishment. “My Saviour would have it so. He saw it necessary to afflict us, and has taken her away. Now we see how much we loved her, and you know the blessed Saviour will not have His children bestow an undue attachment upon creature objects without reminding us of His own superior claim upon our affections.”
THE LOSS OF HER DAUGHTER COLORED NARCISSA’S ATTITUDE toward everything around her. She found life on the edge of civilization more difficult than ever. The Indians wouldn’t come to services at the mission, but she couldn’t keep them out of her house. “The greatest trial to a woman’s feelings is to have her cooking and eating room always filled with four or five more Indians—men—especially at meal time,” Narcissa wrote her mother. “They are so filthy they make a great deal of cleaning necessary wherever they go, and this wears out a woman very fast.”
She tried to keep them away, saying her house was off limits. The Cayuse reacted as though they had been horribly insulted. They accused the missionaries of stealing their land. Nor did the missionaries feed them well, which was the least they should do as uninvited guests. And now they tried to bar them from the house.
Narcissa couldn’t stand it. “They are an exceedingly proud, haughty and insolent people, and k
eep us constantly upon the stretch after patience and forbearance,” she wrote indignantly. “We feed them far more than any of our associates to their people, yet they will not be satisfied.”
Her uneasiness grew. Catholic missionaries arrived in the region, causing the Methodist Whitmans to fear for the souls of those deluded by the rival dogma, and to fear for themselves as their own doctrine found fewer adherents among the Cayuse and neighboring tribes. The efforts of her husband to minister to the illnesses of the Indians put him at risk when those efforts failed, as they inevitably did at times. “These men are all firm believers in the te-wats, or medicine men,” Narcissa said of the Cayuse. “This is a crying sin among them. They believe that the te-wat can kill or make alive at his pleasure.”
A recent event made plain how her husband was at risk. A young Nez Perce had died of an illness while under the care of a te-wat, and his brother and friends had blamed the medicine man for the death. They said they would exact vengeance unless they were compensated in horses and other property. Marcus Whitman, on hearing of this, had berated the brother and his friends, saying they were bad men to attempt extortion. “They did not like such plain talk,” Narcissa wrote. They said that anyone who could speak to them in such a way was evil and should be punished. “One of them, more daring than the others, gathered twelve or fourteen of his friends and came in the forenoon to frighten us. One had a bow and arrows with iron points; another had a rope and another had the war club. When they first made their appearance these things were concealed under their blankets. The head man commenced the talk by saying that he was always good and that husband”—Marcus Whitman—“was bad and was always talking bad to them; that he had brought in his friends that were very powerful. This he said to frighten us and excite his allies.”
Marcus Whitman told him to stop. He refused. “After a little, one of them took down a hair rope that was hanging near, and threw it down near the doctor; one of them that stood near put his foot on it. I began to be suspicious of that movement and thought they were intending to tie him.” Meanwhile two of the others moved forward menacingly. “A tall Indian advanced as the conversation increased in spirit; under his blanket I saw another rope and one behind him had a bow and arrows. I asked husband if I had not better call help; he said no, he was not afraid.” But Narcissa was. “I had not yet discovered the war club, but I had seen enough to excite my fears greatly.”
In this case the Indians were simply trying to scare Whitman. They broke off without doing him or Narcissa physical harm. “The aim, doubtless, was to frighten us,” Narcissa commented. They had succeeded, certainly with her.
21
FOR GOD AND COUNTRY
IN THE AUTUMN OF 1842 MARCUS WHITMAN MADE A DIFFICULT decision. He resolved to travel back east in search of reinforcements. The trip itself, in the teeth of the approaching winter, would be perilous; not even experienced mountain men crossed the Rockies in winter if they didn’t absolutely have to. Leaving Narcissa, basically defenseless, was hardly easier. But Whitman’s faith let him believe no ill would befall her, or himself, that heaven didn’t ordain.
Even so, he wouldn’t have set out had he not believed the work of the last six years was in dire jeopardy. The dismal pace of conversions and the continuing expense of supporting the missions had prompted the mission board to propose closing the Waiilatpu mission and sending Marcus and Narcissa to another mission. Marcus thought this a terrible idea and believed that he alone, in person, could change the minds of the board members. He would travel to Boston to do so.
In making his argument to the board, he would cite the growing threat from Roman Catholic priests who had arrived in Oregon in the last couple of years. Whitman knew that nothing fired the zeal of Protestants like Catholic competition, and the reason he knew this was that he felt the zeal himself. He and most of his fellow Protestants considered the Catholics heretics and a greater danger to the eternal welfare of Indians than their native paganism. For the mission board to retrench would be to surrender ground and souls to the papists; this must not happen.
Patriotism entered Whitman’s reckoning as well, allied to his Protestantism. The priests in Oregon ministered to the French Canadians associated with the Hudson’s Bay Company, which itself operated in the interests of the British government. The future of Oregon remained diplomatically unresolved between Britain and the United States, and Whitman feared that the arrival of the priests portended an influx of Canadians, whose presence would bolster the British claim to Oregon, which in turn would secure the future of the Catholics there. In the 1840s American nationalism was scarcely distinguishable from militant Protestantism; the emerging ideology of Manifest Destiny portrayed Columbia, the spirit of America, advancing west with the flag in one hand and the Protestant Bible in the other.
So Marcus Whitman set his face to the East. He would rally his coreligionists in Boston and his compatriots in Washington. He would save Oregon for Protestant Christianity and American republicanism.
THE JOURNEY WAS AS ARDUOUS AS WHITMAN IMAGINED. HE left the mission in early October with a single companion. They reached Fort Hall on the Snake River in eleven days, intending to proceed to South Pass. But the Hudson’s Bay head there told them that the Snake Indians were on the warpath and would make quick work of a party of two whites. Whitman opted to skirt south, toward Taos and the Santa Fe Trail to St. Louis. By doing so he and his partner avoided the Indians but not the winter. They hit deep snow and lost their way. Whitman nearly drowned crossing an ice-clogged river. They killed some of their mules for food. But after five grueling months, they staggered into St. Louis.
Whitman continued east by steamboat. He got to Washington, where he buttonholed as many government officials as he could, stressing the need for haste in making Oregon securely American. He spoke with President John Tyler, whose interest in Oregon was tempered by the deepening sectional rift, which made acquisition of any new territory problematic for its effect on the balance between free and slave states. Oregon was the hobby of a few members of Congress, notably Thomas Hart Benton and Lewis Linn, the two senators from Missouri, the state that would benefit the most from any new traffic across the plains and mountains to Oregon. Most other lawmakers were apathetic at best.
Whitman received a warmer, or at least more curious, welcome in New York, his stopping point en route to Boston. “We were most agreeably surprised yesterday by a call from Doctor Whitman from Oregon, a member of the American Presbyterian Mission in that country,” wrote Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York Daily Tribune. “A slight glance at him when he entered our office would convince any one that he had seen all the hardships of life in the wilderness. He was dressed in an old fur cap that appeared to have seen some ten years’ service, faded, and nearly destitute of fur; a vest whose natural color had long since faded, and a shirt—we could not see that he had any—an overcoat, every thread of which could be easily seen, buckskin pants, etc.—the roughest man we have seen this many a day—too poor, in fact, to get any better wardrobe.” Whitman’s unprepossessing attire made his character the more impressive to Greeley. “A noble pioneer we judge him to be, a man fitted to be chief in rearing a moral empire among the wild men of the wilderness. We did not learn what success the worthy man had in leading the Indians to embrace the Christian faith”—Whitman had kept silent on this sensitive point—“but he very modestly remarked that many of them had begun to cultivate the earth and raise cattle.”
Boston counted souls more closely than cattle. Whitman presented himself to the members of the mission board, who immediately asked why he had left his station and incurred the costs of this unauthorized journey. Yet in the next moment the treasurer of the board slipped him several dollars and muttered, “Go get some decent clothes.”
When Whitman returned, he convinced the board that the prospects in Oregon were better than they had been led to believe. He exaggerated in saying that three hundred Indians regularly attended the services at the mission; he
doubtless judged that God would forgive a fib if it helped save Cayuse souls—even if the Cayuse didn’t yet realize they needed saving. The board members likely discounted his exaggeration; these hard-headed Bostonians hadn’t learned to manage their sprawling mission empire by believing every word their missionaries said. Almost certainly Whitman’s presence, more than his argument, was what won them over. A crossing of the Rocky Mountains in the dead of winter was a feat that manifested moral courage of the first order; the board, for all its fiscal rectitude, couldn’t let down such a man as Whitman. They told him to return to Oregon and continue his good work.
“MY DEAR HUSBAND,” NARCISSA WHITMAN WROTE ON October 7, 1842, just days after Marcus had left for the East. “I got dreadfully frightened last night. About midnight I was awakened by some one trying to open my bedroom door. At first I did not know what to understand by it. I raised my head and listened awhile and then lay down again. Soon the latch was raised and the door opened a little. I sprang from the bed in a moment and closed the door again, but the ruffian pushed and pushed and tried to unlatch it, but could not succeed; finally he gained upon me until he opened the door again.” Narcissa had been screaming for help; at the last minute her calls frightened the intruder and he ran from the house. “Had the ruffian persisted I do not know what I should have done,” she told Whitman. “I did not think of the war club, but I thought of the poker.”
The assault shook Narcissa deeply. Though her sense of duty made her reluctant to abandon her post, she was quietly relieved when Archibald McKinley, the Hudson’s Bay Company chief at Fort Walla Walla, insisted that she take refuge there. McKinley personally came to Waiilatpu with a wagon and carried her away.