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Cayuse attack mission in what becomes known as the Whitman Massacre on November 29, 1847.

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On November 29, 1847, Cayuse tribal members attack white settlers and missionaries at Waiilatpu in what will become known as the Whitman Massacre. Thirteen whites are killed during three days of bloodshed, most of them on the first day; another is believed to have drowned after escaping the initial attack. 

The Waiilatpu and Lapwai missions were established in 1836 by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in Boston, which believed that the Native Americans of the Oregon country desired conversion to Christianity. Marcus Whitman was a Presbyterian elder trained as a physician, and a lumber mill operator. Waiilatpu was on the Walla Walla River near Fort Walla Walla. The mission converted few Indians, but it served as an important rest stop for immigrants from the United States using the Oregon Trail. Whitman built a farm and a gristmill, which tribal members burned in 1844. Whitman rebuilt the operation 20 miles away and added a sawmill.

By 1847, Waiilatpu had grown to a community of 50 to 75 persons including a number of orphans left with the Whitmans. Word of threats against the settlement reached Whitman, but he refused to evacuate. On November 29, Tilaukait and Tamsuky of the Cayuse called Whitman into his kitchen and killed him with a tomahawk. The Cayuse then embarked on a killing spree catching whites at their places of work. Narcissa Whitman was wounded in the shoulder by a bullet. Narcissa and others barricaded themselves into a second floor room, then surrendered when they were assured that they would be safe. Cayuse warriors renewed the attacks and killed Narcissa and other prisoners. Those whites who did not escape were taken hostage. Some of the wounded hostages were killed later. The hostages were ransomed with blankets, shirts, guns, and ammunition supplied by the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Walla Walla.

Those killed were:

• Marcus Whitman, age 44
• Narcissa Prentiss Whitman, age 39
• John Sager, age 17
• Francis "Frank" Sager, age 15
• Andrew Rogers, adult
• Crocket Bewley, age 18
• W. L. Saunders, adult
• Peter D. Hall, adult (died after escaping to Fort Walla Walla and being refused entry)
• Nathan Kimball, adult
• Walter Marsh, adult
• Isaac Gilliland, adult
• Jacob Hoffmann, adult
• Amos Sales, adult
• James Young, 24

Ruth Kirk and Carmela Alexander write in Exploring Washington's Past that it was common practice throughout the Columbia Plateau to kill a person believed to be misusing his or her spirit power. In the early 1890s a Nez Perce whose brother lived at Waiilatpu at the time of the massacre told photographer Edward Curtis:

"[A man] was crying because his wife had died of the sickness: she had taken some of the Doctor's medicine, and spots came out on her face .... One of the Indians made himself sick in order to test the Doctor, saying that if the Doctor's medicine killed him they would know he was the cause of the deaths of the others.

"He took the medicine and died. Then the headmen met in council and made an agreement that the Doctor should be killed because two hundred of the people had died after taking his medicine" (Kirk and Alexander).

Retaliation

Settlers in the Willamette Valley responded by raising a force of volunteers. Settler Joe Meek, whose daughter had been taken hostage and had died of measles during captivity, was dispatched overland to Washington, D.C., to plead for assistance. Meek arrived in May 1848 with the story of the massacre. After much debate over the issue of slavery, Congress created Oregon Territory -- without slaves -- on August 13, 1848.

The Oregon Volunteers scattered the Cayuse tribe into the mountains. The other tribes refused to join the violence against the whites. Chief Tilaukait chose five men to surrender themselves to the whites as the principal murderers at Waiilatpu in order to protect the rest of the tribe. On June 3, 1850, the six were convicted of murder and hanged by U.S. Marshal Joe Meek. The Cayuse tribe was removed to the Umatilla Reservation in Oregon and dissolved among other tribes, eventually losing its identity and its language.

In 1936, Congress established the Whitman Mission National Historic Site at Waiilatpu.

Sources:
George W. Fuller, A History of the Pacific Northwest (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948), 143-169; Whitman Mission National Historic Site website, (www.nps.gov/whmi/history/timeline9.htm); "History and Culture of the Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla Indians," Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation website (http://www.umatilla.nsn.us/hist1.html#conflict); Ruth Kirk and Carmela Alexander, Exploring Washington's Past: A Road Guide to History (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1990), 186-187; Clifford M. Drury, Marcus and Narcissa Whitman and the Opening of Old Oregon, Vol, 2 (Seattle: Northwest Interpretive Association, [1986], 1994), 202.
Note: This essay was expanded slightly on April 24, 2006, and corrected on March 5, 2009.

By David Wilma, February 14, 2003

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