THE MASSACRE AT WAIILATPUI.
In all the years since the terrible tragedy at Waiilatpui, historians
have been seeking to find the cause of that great crime.
Some have traced it to religious jealousies, but have, in a great
measure, failed to back such charges with substantial facts. It seems
rather to have been a combination of causes working together for a
common purpose.
For nearly half a century, as we have seen in the history of Oregon,
the Indians and the Hudson Bay Company had been working harmoniously
together. It was a case in which civilization had accommodated itself
to the desires of savage life. The Company plainly showed the Indians
that they did not wish their lands, or to deprive them of their homes.
It only wanted their labor, and in return it would pay the Indians in
many luxuries and comforts. The Indians were averse to manual labor,
and the great Company had not seen fit to encourage it. They did not
desire to see them plant or sow, raise cattle, or build houses for
themselves and their families. That would directly interfere with
their work as fur gatherers, and break in upon the source of wealth to
the Company. To keep them at the steel trap, and in the chase, was the
aim of the Hudson Bay policy, and such was congenial to the Indian,
and just what he desired.
The Jesuit priests who were attached to the Hudson Bay Company,
seconded the interest of the Company, and attempted to teach religion
to the Indian and still leave him a savage. Upon the coming of the
Protestant Missionaries, the Indians welcomed them and expressed great
delight at the prospect of being taught. They gave their choice
locations to the Missions, and most solemn promise to co-operate in
the work. But neither they nor their fathers had used the hoe or the
plow, or built permanent houses in which to live. They were by nature
opposed to manual labor. Squaws were made to do all the work, while
Indian men hunted and did the fighting. The Missionaries could see but
little hope of Christianizing, unless they could induce them to adopt
civilized customs.
It was right there that the breach between the Indians and the
Missionaries began to widen. They were willing to accept a religion
which did not interfere with savage customs, which had become a part
of their lives. It was the custom of the Hudson Bay Company, by giving
modest bribes, to win over any unruly chief. It was the best way to
hold power; but the Missionaries held the tribes which they served up
to a higher standard of morals.
The Cayuse Indians made a foray upon a weaker tribe, and levied on
their stock in payment for some imaginary debt. Dr. Whitman gave the
Chiefs a reprimand, and called it thieving, and demanded that they
send back everything they had taken. The Indians grew very angry in
being thus reminded of their sins.
We mention these little incidents as illustrations of the strained
conditions which speedily made their appearance in the government of
the Indians, and made it easy work for the mischief-makers and
criminals, later on. It was the boast of English authors that "The
English people got along with Indians much better than Americans."
This seems to be true, and it comes from the fact that they did not
antagonize savage customs. As long as their savage subjects filled the
treasury of the Hudson Bay Company, they cared little for aught else.
As a matter of policy and self defense, they treated them honestly and
fairly in all business transactions. They were in full sympathy with
the Indians in their demand to keep out white immigration, and keep
the entire land for fur-bearing animals and savage life.
Dr. Whitman's famous ride to the States in the Winter of 1842-43, and
his piloting the large immigration of American settlers in 1843, made
him a marked man, both with the Indians and the Hudson Bay Company.
When the Treaty was signed in 1846, and England lost Oregon, Whitman
was doubtless from that hour a doomed man. Both the Hudson Bay Company
and the Indians well knew who was responsible.
First, "The great white-haired Chief," Dr. McLoughlin, was sacrificed
because he was a friend of Whitman and the Missionaries. There was no
other reason. If Dr. McLoughlin could have been induced to treat the
Protestant Missionaries as he treated the American fur traders, his
English Company would have been delighted to have retained him as
Chief Factor for life. But with them it was a crime to show kindness
to a Protestant Missionary, and thus foster American interests. If
McLoughlin had not resigned and got out of the way, he would doubtless
have lost his life by the hands of an assassin.
The Treaty was signed and proclaimed August 6th, 1846, and the
massacre did not occur until the 29th of November, 1847. In those days
the news moved slowly and the results, and the knowledge that England
and the Hudson Bay Company had lost all, did not reach the outposts
along the Columbia until late in the Spring of 1847. If the English
and Hudson Bay Company had nothing to do in fanning the flame of
Indian anger, it was because they had changed and reformed their
methods. How much or how little they worked through the cunning and
duplicity of Jesuit priests has never been demonstrated. After the
Revolutionary War, England never lost an opportunity to incite the
Indians upon our Northern frontier to make savage assaults. Her humane
statesmen denounced her work as uncivilized and unchristian.
General Washington, in a published letter to John Jay, in 1794, said:
"There does not remain a doubt in the mind of any well-informed person
in this country, not shut against conviction, that all the
difficulties we encounter with the Indians, their hostilities, the
murders of helpless women and children along our frontiers, result
from the conduct of the agents of Great Britain in this country."
At no time then had the English as much reason for anger at American
success and prosperity as in the case of Oregon, where a great
organization, which has been for well-nigh half a century in supreme
control, was now compelled to move on. To have shown no resentment
would have been unlike the representatives of England in the days of
Washington.
Undoubtedly the sickness of the Indians, that year, and the charge
that the Americans had introduced the disease to kill the Indians off
and get their land, was a powerful agent in winning over to the
murderers many who were still friendly to the Missionaries. The
Indians had fallen from their high mark of honesty of which Mrs.
Whitman in her diary, years before, boasted, and had invaded the melon
patch and stolen melons, so that the Indians who ate them were
temporarily made sick. With their superstitious ideas they called it
"conjuring the melon," and the incident was used effectually to excite
hostilities.
There is no evidence that white men directly instigated the massacre
or took a part in its horrors. While there is evidence of a bitter
animosity existing among the Jesuit priests toward the Protestant
Missionaries, and their defense of the open charges made against them
is lame; yet the historical facts are not sufficient to lay the blame
upon them.
Nor is it necessary to hold the leading officials of the Hudson Bay
Company responsible for the crime as co-conspirators. There are always
hangers-on and irresponsible parties who stand ready to do the
villain's work.
The leader of the massacre was the half-breed, Joe Lewis, whose
greatest accomplishment was lying. He seems to have brought the
conspiracy up to the killing point by his falsehoods. He was a half
Canadian and came to Oregon in company with a band of priests, and
strangely enough, dropped down upon Dr. Whitman and by him was clothed
and fed for many months. The Doctor soon learned his real character
and how he was trying to breed distrust among the Indians. Dr. Whitman
got him the position of teamster in a wagon train for the Willamette,
and expressed a hope that he was clear of him. But Joe deserted his
post and returned to Waiilatpui, and as events showed, was guided by
some unseen power in the carrying out of the plans of the murderers.
To believe that he conceived it, or that the incentives to the
execution of the diabolism rested alone with the Indians, is to tax
even the credulous. They were simply the direct agents, and were,
doubtless, as has been said, wrought up to the crime through
superstitions in regard to Dr. Whitman's responsibility for the
prevailing sickness, which had caused many deaths among the Indians.
For all the years to come, the readers of history will weigh the facts
for themselves, and continue to place the responsibility upon this and
that cause; but, for a safe standing point, will always have to drop
back upon the fact that it was the "irrepressible conflict" between
civilization and savagery, between Christianity and heathenism,
backed up by national antagonisms, which had many times before
engendered bad spirit.
It has been the history of the first settlement of every State of the
Union, more or less, from the landing upon Plymouth Rock up to the
tragedy at Waiilatpui. Only it seems in the case of the massacre at
the Whitman Mission, to be more coldblooded and atrocious, in the fact
that those killed had spent the best years of their lives in the
service of the murderers.
Those who had received the largest favors and the most kindness from
the Doctor and his good wife, were active leaders in the great crime.
The Rev. H. H. Spalding, in a letter to the parents of Mrs. Whitman,
dated April 6, 1848, gives a clear, concise account of the great
tragedy.
He says: "They were inhumanly butchered by their own, up to the last
moment, beloved Indians, for whom their warm Christian hearts had
prayed for eleven years, and their unwearied hands had administered to
their every want in sickness and distress, and had bestowed unnumbered
blessings; who claimed to be, and were considered, in a high state of
civilization and Christianity. Some of them were members of our
Church; others, candidates for admission; some of them adherents of
the Catholic Church; all praying Indians.
"They were, doubtless, urged on to the dreadful deed by foreign
influences, which we have felt coming in upon us like a devastating
flood for the last three or four years; and we have begged the
authors, with tears in our eyes, to desist, not so much on account of
our own lives and property, but for the sake of those coming, and the
safety of those already in the country. But the authors thought none
would be injured but the hated Missionaries--the devoted heretics; and
the work of Hell was urged on, and has ended, not only in the death of
three Missionaries, the ruin of our Mission, but in a bloody war with
the settlements, which may end in the massacre of every adult.
"The massacre took place on the fatal 29th of November last,
commencing at half-past one. Fourteen persons were murdered first and
last; nine the first day. Five men escaped from the Station, three in
a most wonderful manner, one of whom was the trembling writer, with
whom, I know, you will unite in praising God for delivering even one.
"The names and places of the slain are as follows: The two precious
names already given--my hand refuses to write them again; Mr. Rogers,
young man, teacher of our Mission School in the Winter of '46, who
since then has been aiding us in our Mission work, and studying for
the ministry, with a view to be ordained and join our Mission; John
and Francis Sager, the two eldest of the orphan family, ages 17 and
15; Mr. Kimball, of Laporte, Indiana, killed the second day, left a
widow and five children; Mr. Saunders, of Oskaloosa, Iowa, left a
widow and five children; Mr. Hall, of Missouri, escaped to Fort Walla
Walla, was refused protection, put over the Columbia River, killed by
the Walla Wallas, left a widow and five children; Mr. Marsh, of
Missouri, left a son grown and young daughter; Mr. Hoffman, of Elmira,
New York; Mr. Gillan, of Oskaloosa, Iowa; Mr. Sails, of the latter
place; Mr. Bewley, of Missouri. The two last were dragged from their
sickbeds, eight days after the first massacre, and butchered; Mr.
Young, killed the second day. The last five were unmarried men.
"Forty women and children fell captives into the hands of the
murderers, among them my own beloved daughter, Eliza, ten years old.
Three of the captive children soon died, left without parental care,
two of them your dear Narcissa's adopted children. The young women
were dragged from the house by night, and beastly treated. Three of
them were forced to become wives of the murderers of their parents,
who often boasted of the deed, to taunt their victims."
[Illustration: WHITMAN'S GRAVE.]
Continuing the narrative Mr. Spalding says:
"Monday morning the Doctor assisted in burying an Indian; returned to
the house and was reading; several Indians, as usual, were in the
house; one sat down by him to attract his attention by asking for
medicine; another came behind him with a tomahawk concealed under his
blanket and with two blows in the back of the head, brought him to the
floor senseless, probably, but not lifeless; soon after Telaukaikt, a
candidate for admission in our Church, and who was receiving
unnumbered favors every day from Brother and Sister Whitman, came in
and took particular pains to cut and beat his face and cut his throat;
but he still lingered till near night.
"As soon as the firing commenced at the different places, Mrs. Hayes
ran in and assisted Sister Whitman in taking the Doctor from the
kitchen to the sitting-room and placed him upon the settee. This was
before his face was cut. His dear wife bent over him and mingled her
flowing tears with his precious blood. It was all she could do. They
were her last tears. To whatever she said, he would reply 'no' in a
whisper, probably not sensible.
"John Sager, who was sitting by the Doctor when he received the first
blow, drew his pistol, but his arm was seized, the room filling with
Indians, and his head was cut to pieces. He lingered till near night.
Mr. Rogers, attacked at the water, escaped with a broken arm and wound
in the head, and rushing into the house, shut the door. The Indians
seemed to have left the house now to assist in murdering others. Mr.
Kimball, with a broken arm, rushed in; both secreted themselves
upstairs.
"Sister Whitman in anguish, now bending over her dying husband and now
over the sick; now comforting the flying, screaming children, was
passing by the window, when she received the first shot in her right
breast, and fell to the floor. She immediately arose and kneeled by
the settee on which lay her bleeding husband, and in humble prayer
commended her soul to God, and prayed for her dear children who were
about to be made a second time orphans and to fall into the hands of
her direct murderers. I am certain she prayed for her murderers, too.
She now went into the chamber with Mrs. Hayes, Miss Bewley, Catharine,
and the sick children. They remained till near night.
"In the meantime the doors and windows were broken in and the Indians
entered and commenced plundering, but they feared to go into the
chamber. They called for Sister Whitman and Brother Rogers to come
down and promised they should not be hurt. This promise was often
repeated, and they came down. Mrs. Whitman, faint with the loss of
blood, was carried on a settee to the door by Brother Rogers and Miss
Bewley.
"Every corner of the room was crowded with Indians having their guns
ready to fire. The children had been brought down and huddled
together to be shot. Eliza was one. Here they had stood for a long
time surrounded by guns pointed at their breasts. She often heard the
cry, "Shall we shoot?" and her blood became cold, she says, and she
fell upon the floor. But now the order was given, "Do not shoot the
children," as the settee passed by the children, over the bleeding,
dying body of John.
"Fatal moment! The settee advanced about its length from the door,
when the guns were discharged from without and within, the powder
actually burning the faces of the children. Brother Rogers raised his
hand and cried, "My God," and fell upon his face, pierced with many
balls. But he fell not alone. An equal number of the deadly weapons
were leveled at the settee and the discharge had been deadly. She
groaned, and lingered for some time in great agony.
"Two of the humane Indians threw their blankets over the little
children huddled together in the corner of the room, and shut out the
sight as they beat their dying victims with whips, and cut their faces
with knives. It was Joe Lewis, the Canadian half-breed, that first
shot Mrs. Whitman, but it was Tamtsaky who took her scalp as a
trophy."
An old Oregon friend of the author, Samuel Campbell, now living in
Moscow, Idaho, spent the Winter of '46 and '47 at the Whitman Mission,
and never wearied in telling of the grandly Christian character of
Mrs. Whitman, of her kindness and patience to all, whites and Indians
alike. Every evening she delighted all with her singing. Her voice,
after all her hard life, had lost none of its sweetness, nor had her
environments in any sense soured her toward any of the little
pleasantries of every-day life.
Says Mr. Campbell, "You can imagine my horror in 1849, when at Grand
Ronde, old Tamtsaky acknowledged to me that he scalped Mrs. Whitman
and told of her long, beautiful, silky hair." Soon after the United
States Government, by order of General Lane, sent officers to arrest
the murderers. Old Tamtsaky was killed at the time of the arrest and
escaped the hangman's rope, which was given to five of the leaders,
after trial in Oregon City, May, 1850. The names of the murderers
hanged were Tilwkait, Tahamas, Quiahmarsum, Klvakamus and Siahsalucus.
The Rev. Cushing Eells says, "The day before the massacre, Istikus, a
firm friend of Dr. Whitman, told him of the threats against his life,
and advised him to 'go away until my people have better hearts.' He
reached home from the lodge of Istikus late in the night, but visited
his sick before retiring. Then he told Mrs. Whitman the words of
Istikus. Knowing how true a friend Istikus was, and his great courage,
the situation became more perilous in the estimation of both, than
ever before. Mrs. Whitman was so affected by it that she remained in
her room, and one of the children, who took her breakfast up to her
room, found her weeping. The Doctor went about his work as usual, but
told some of his associates that if it were possible to do so, he
would remove all the family to a place of safety. It is the first time
he ever seems to have been alarmed, or thought it possible that his
Indians would attempt such a crime."
Rev. Mr. Eells gives a detailed account of the massacre and its
horrors, but in this connection we only desire to give the reader a
clear view without dwelling upon its atrocities. "The tomahawk with
which Dr. Whitman was killed, was presented to the Cayuse Indians by
the Blackfeet upon some great occasion, and was preserved by the
Cayuse as a memorable relic long after the hanging of the Chiefs. In
the Yakima War it passed to another tribe, and the Chief who owned it
was killed; an Indian agent, Logan, got possession of it and presented
it to the Sanitary Society during the Civil War. A subscription of one
hundred dollars was raised and it was presented to the Legislature of
Oregon, and is preserved among the archives of the State."
This narrative would be incomplete without recording the prompt
action of the Hudson Bay Company officers in coming to the relief of
the captive women and children. As soon as Chief Factor Ogden heard of
it, he lost no time in repairing to the scene, reaching Walla Walla
December 12th. In about two weeks he succeeded in ransoming all the
captives for blankets, shirts, guns, ammunition and tobacco, and at an
expense of $500. No other man in the Territory, and no army that could
have been mustered could have done it.
The Americans in Oregon promptly mustered and attacked the Indians,
who retreated to the territory of a different tribe. But the murderers
and leaders among the Indians were not arrested until nearly two years
after the crime.
While some have charged that the officials of the Hudson Bay Company
could have averted the massacre, this is only an opinion. Their humane
and prompt act in releasing the captive women and children from worse
than death, was worthy of it, and has received the strongest words of
praise.
Thus was ended disastrously the work of the American Board which had
given such large promise for eleven years. While its greatest
achievement was not in saving savage souls, but in being largely
instrumental in peacefully saving three great States to the American
Union, yet there is good evidence, years after the massacre, that the
labors of the Missionaries had not been in vain. After the Treaty of
1855, seven years after the massacre, General Joel Palmer, who was one
of the Council, says, "Forty-five Cayuse and one thousand Nez Perces
have kept up regular family and public worship, singing from the Nez
Perces Hymn Book and reading the Gospel of Matthew, translated into
Nez Perces, the work of Dr. and Mrs. Spalding."
Says General Barloe, "Many of them showed surprising evidences of
piety, especially Timothy, who was their regular and faithful preacher
during all these years. Among the Cayuse, old Istikus, as long as he
lived, rang his bell every Sabbath and called his little band together
for worship."
Twelve years after leaving his Mission, Rev. Mr. Spalding returned to
his people and found the Tribe had kept up the form of worship all the
years since. Upon opening a school, it was at once crowded with
children, and even old men and women, with failing eyesight, insisted
upon being taught; and the interest did not flag until the failing
health of Mr. Spalding forced him to give up his work. The Rev. Dr.
Eells' experience was much the same; all going to prove that the early
work of the American Board was not fruitless in good, and emphasizing
the fact that good words and work are never wholly lost, and their
power only will be known when the final summing up is made.
There have been few great men that have not felt the stings of
criticism and misrepresentation. The wholly unselfish life of Dr.
Marcus Whitman, from his young manhood to the day of his death, it
would seem, ought to have shielded him from this class, but it did
not. In justice to his contemporaries, however, it is due to say,
every one of them, of all denominations except one, was his friend and
defender.
That one man was a French Jesuit priest, by the name of J. B. A.
Brouillett. He was Acting Bishop among the Indians, of a tribe near to
the Cayuse, where Dr. Whitman had labored for eleven years, and where
he perished in 1847. After the massacre, there were some grave charges
made against Brouillett, and in 1853 he wrote a pamphlet, entitled,
"Protestantism in Oregon," in which he made a vicious attack upon the
dead Whitman, and the living Dr. Spalding, and the other Protestant
Missionaries of the American Board.
It naturally called out some very pointed rejoinders, yet attracted
but little attention from the Christian world. Patriotic American
Catholics took but little stock in the clamor of the French priest,
and the matter was in a fair way to be forgotten, when interest was
suddenly renewed in the subject by the appearance of an executive
document, No. 38, 35th Congress, 1st Session, signed J. Ross Browne,
Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and dated at San Francisco, December
4, 1867, which contained a few sentences from J. Ross Browne and all
of the Brouillett pamphlet.
The idea of getting so slanderous a paper published as an official
public document by the United States Congress, was an unheard-of
challenge that called for a reply. And it came promptly and pointedly.
From all parts of the country, Members of Congress were flooded with
letters to find out how such a thing could be accomplished. None of
them seemed able to answer. But the mischief was done and many of them
expressed a willingness to help undo it.
The Old School and New School, and the United Presbyterians in their
Presbyteries, resented the outrage, both in the Far West and in the
East, and none more vigorously than did that of the Illinois
Presbytery at the meeting in Chicago in 1871. The Methodists and
Baptists and Congregational Conferences in Oregon and Washington,
cordially united in the work, and demanded that an address, defending
the Missionaries and the American Board, should be printed just as
conspicuously to the World as had been the falsehoods of Brouillett.
The Presbyterian General Assembly at Chicago, May 18, 1871, led by the
Rev. F. A. Noble, summed up the case under seven different counts of
falsehoods, and demanded that Congress should, in simple justice,
publish them in vindication of the Protestant Church. The Oregon
Presbytery was still more positive and aggressive and made their
specifications under twelve heads. The Congregationalists and the
Methodists in Oregon were equally pointed and positive. It resulted in
"A Committee on Protestantism in Oregon," drawing up a reply.
In this they say: "The object of Brouillett's pamphlet appears to be
to exculpate the real instigators of that terrible tragedy, the
massacre at Waiilatpui, and to cast the blame upon the Protestant
Missionaries who were the victims." They go on to declare that the
paper "Is full of glaring and infamous falsehoods," and give their
reasons concisely, and wholly exonerate Dr. Whitman from all blame.
They close their address thus: "With these facts before us, we would
unite with all lovers of truth and justice, in earnestly petitioning
Congress, as far as possible, to rectify the evils which have resulted
from the publication, as a Congressional Document, of the slanders of
J. Ross Browne, and thus lift the cloud of darkness that 'Hangs over
the memory of the righteous dead and extend equal justice to those who
survive.'" The Rev. Dr. Spalding prepared the matter and it was
introduced through Secretary Columbus Delano, and the Indian Agent, N.
B. Meacham, and passed Congress as "Ex-Document No. 37 of the 41st
Congress."
Forty thousand copies were ordered printed, the same as of
Brouillett's pamphlet. It is reported that less than fifty copies ever
reached the public. They mysteriously disappeared, and no one ever
learned and made public the manner in which it was done.
But the incident developed the fact, that the whole patriotic
Christian people unitedly defended Whitman from the charges made.