Women of the Frontier

by Brandon Marie Miller

  Narcissa Whitman

  Alone, in the Thick Darkness of Heathendom

  When new bride Narcissa Whitman began the grueling overland journey on an old Indian path that would soon be known as the Oregon Trail, she barely knew her husband, Marcus. She’d pushed the limits of old-maid-hood by not marrying until the ripe old age of 28. The two agreed to marriage without courtship or romance. Instead, a passion for missionary work forged the bond between Narcissa and Marcus.

  Although well-educated, with experience as a teacher and a leading participant in her upstate New York church, Narcissa faced difficulties gaining acceptance from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) without a “missionary husband.” Marcus, too, had been discouraged by the board; they’d encouraged him to wed a “missionary wife.” A wife could teach natives to read and write; and a missionary family served as a model for the natives. Missionary men needed helpmates, “well-educated and pious females who have formed all their habits and modes of thinking in a Christian country.” And of course, wives insured male missionaries remained happy and productive. The sight of a wife and children served as a symbol of peace, “well understood and appreciated by savages.”25

  The ABCFM decided Narcissa and Marcus should establish their mission among the American Indians of Oregon. Several Western tribes, including the Nez Percé, had expressed interest in learning about Christianity. Marcus had traveled west already, and he believed a woman could successfully make the long journey. He’d worked to recruit others to join him in his mission to the Northwest. Henry Spalding, whose marriage proposal Narcissa had once rejected, and his wife, Eliza, would travel with the Whitmans. The two women would be the first females to journey across the continent.

  At their wedding on February 18, 1836, the day before departing for Oregon, Narcissa sang a missionary hymn that left the guests sobbing into their handkerchiefs.

  In the deserts let me labor,

  On the mountains let me tell,

  How he died—the blessed Saviour—

  To redeem a world from hell!

  Let me hasten, let me hasten,

  Far in heathen lands to dwell.

  The journey from New York to Saint Louis seemed an idyllic honeymoon to Narcissa. But as the company left Saint Louis, she admitted a “peculiar” feeling pulling away from “the very border of civilization.”26 Where most women could vent their fears or displeasure with the journey west in letters, Narcissa felt bound by the restraints of her missionary role. She knew her letters would be shared among family, friends, and even published for strangers, so that “what I say to one I say to all.”27 They traveled by horseback, usually sleeping in the open, riding hard for nearly a month to catch up with the Oregon-bound American Fur Company caravan of trappers and traders. The large group, “a moving village,” Narcissa called it, of 70 men and hundreds of pack animals, offered safety. “Tell Mother,” she wrote her siblings, “I am a very good housekeeper in the prairie.”28

  In early July, the party reached South Pass in the Rocky Mountains, marking an approximate halfway point for the journey. A few days later, they reached a rendezvous of hundreds of Indians, traders, and trappers along the Green River in present-day Wyoming. Narcissa marveled at the exotic blend of people—Flathead, Nez Percé, Snake, and Bannock tribes alongside rough-hewn mountain men. Narcissa and Eliza Spalding offered the Indians they encountered their first glimpses of white women. Narcissa wrote to Marcus’s family, “I was met by a company of native women, one after the other, shaking hands and saluting me with a most hearty kiss. This was unexpected and affected me very much.”29

  But as they continued on toward Fort Hall on the Snake River (in present-day Idaho) with a group of traders and nearly 200 Indians, Narcissa formed new impressions of the native people. After watching the Native American women collecting wood, pitching shelters, cooking, and caring for the animals, she concluded the Indian women were “complete slaves of their husbands.”30 She was relieved when the Indians split off from the group.

  By now, Narcissa was pregnant, and she turned to faith to sustain her and define her new role. She saw “the sustaining hand of God” in every good sign—good grazing for the oxen or a gift of food. But tensions and short tempers between the Whitmans and the Spaldings simmered the entire trip, affecting the journey.

  They reached the Hudson’s Bay Company trading post, Fort Walla Walla, in early September and then traveled down the Columbia River to the major trading post at Fort Vancouver. Narcissa found the Indians she met less and less impressive. The staring and attention no longer pleased her. She believed the Flatheads had no feelings for their children. As the cultural divide widened between Narcissa and the native people she met, she found the Indians lacking. The Whitmans had come to Oregon not to understand but to save the heathen’s “perishing soul” from burning in hell.

  Fort Vancouver on the Pacific Ocean sat in splendor as Great Britain’s seat of power in Oregon. From here, tons of furs and trade goods from the North American West sailed for England. After 4,000 miles and six and a half months on the trail, Narcissa delighted in the sights, sounds, and especially, comforts of civilization. Narcissa and Eliza stayed here for several weeks while Marcus and Henry departed to look for suitable sites for their missions. Narcissa taught singing to the fort’s young people and gathered supplies for her new home: tinware pails and coffee pots, bleached linen for sheets, and blankets. She even saved fruit seeds to plant in the spring.

  The Spaldings would build their mission among the Nez Percé, and the Whitmans would settle among the Cayuse tribe at Waiilatpu, on a site about 25 miles east of Fort Walla Walla. Although Narcissa was encouraged to stay at Fort Vancouver through the winter, she insisted on setting out for her new home in November. She felt in high spirits—she was a missionary with a good husband and a baby on the way. “Our desire now is to be useful to these benighted Indians,” she wrote missionary Samuel Parker, “teaching them the way of salvation … and the beauties of a ‘well ordered life and godly conversation’; and to answer the expectations of those who sent us here. It is a great responsibility to be pioneers in so great a work. It is with cautious steps that we enter on it.”31

  The mission stood on the banks of the Walla Walla River with 300 acres for farming and building. A windowless small house, hastily constructed, had a heating stove in the living space, a large fireplace in the central kitchen, and two little bedrooms. With a few pieces of furniture, her items from Fort Vancouver, and even a dog and a cat, Narcissa felt satisfied with her new home. “These may appear small subjects to fill a letter with,” she wrote, “but my object is to show you that people can live here, & as comfortably too as in many places east of the mountains.”32

  Nearby lay the winter lodges of a band of Cayuse, a people who spoke Nez Percé, which Narcissa had not yet mastered. In early January, she visited the village and noted the Indians seemed pleased that she had come. Like many missionaries, she felt ill at ease “in heathen lands … widely separated from kindred souls, alone, in the thick darkness of heathenism.” This feeling challenged all missionaries in the field. The Missionary Herald had even warned that missionaries “must love the heathen in spite of their hatefulness.” Narcissa, like any well-bred white woman, wished the assistance of servants to help run her little household. She quickly discovered Cayuse women would not do her work for her, and she lamented that they “do not love to work well enough for us to place any dependence upon them.”33

  The Whitmans began a worship service even as they struggled to establish a home and the mission itself. Homesickness overwhelmed Narcissa—even more so when she gave birth to a daughter, Alice Clarissa, in March 1837. The baby, the first child born to American citizens in the Pacific Northwest, became the center of Narcissa’s life.

  Narcissa and Marcus gradually established a schedule of worship and teaching. Both were hampered by the language barrier. Marcus gave sermons, and Narcissa taught hymns in English and later in the
Nez Percé language. Narcissa started, and later abandoned due to ill health, a Bible class for women. The Whitmans often had a Sunday school, and Narcissa taught reading in her kitchen, though she struggled to communicate in the Cayuse tongue. Even a year later she admitted, “I cannot do much more than stammer yet in their language.”34

  Like other missionary wives, Narcissa didn’t know how to go about her missionary work, struggled with doubts, and hoped, in a vague way, to have some sort of “gentle influence” on the Cayuse. But the culture seemed beyond her understanding. “We have had school,” she wrote in 1838, “and my kitchen has been filled with children morn and eve, which has made my floor very dirty.”35 Narcissa, who had thrown her whole heart into the conversion of white sinners, using emotion and song and a deep desire to share the Word, found herself unable to reach out in the same way to the Cayuse.

  For the Cayuse, the world—the earth, the animals, the plants—represented a sacred and holy place. For the Whitmans, God alone stood sacred. The Cayuse showed every sign of wanting to learn about Christianity, and some already knew how to pray with a partial knowledge of the Bible, taught by Hudson’s Bay traders. They were willing to learn the secrets of white religion, just as they had benefitted from white trade goods and technology. Chants, songs, prayers, and rituals were already part of their spiritual life; adding elements of Christianity would not be difficult. They eagerly wanted to learn to read and write—a valuable tool and part of white people’s power.

  What the Cayuse came to realize was that missionaries like Narcissa and Marcus expected them to reject their own religious beliefs for the missionaries’ views of faith. And many tribal customs like dancing, gambling, and horse racing would have to be rejected as well. The Whitmans also hoped to change the Cayuse life of seasonal hunting, fishing, and gathering to one of farming, the way people lived in “civilized” countries. For some Cayuse, the Whitman’s constant harping on sin and evil seemed harsh. “Some feel almost to blame us for telling about eternal realities,”36 wrote Narcissa. One Cayuse informed her that life was better when he didn’t know that hunting, eating, drinking, and sleeping were bad.

  With Marcus often away, sometimes for weeks, on mission business or treating the sick, Narcissa found life revolving more and more around little Alice. At age two, Alice recited Bible verses and talked of Jesus. Narcissa pledged to train Alice “for His glory.” But Alice also imitated Cayuse ways and talked with the Indians. Like other missionary parents, this upset Narcissa. How was she to raise her daughter in a “heathen land, among savages?” Hawaiian missionaries warned Narcissa not to let Alice learn the native’s language, and Narcissa came to believe she must devote more time to her daughter and less to the Cayuse.

  The ABCFM decided to send several missionary families as reinforcements to Oregon to establish new missions. The families spent months with the Whitmans during the winter of 1838 and 1839. Tensions and sniping marked the relationships. No one was in charge; decisions about the missions were made and then reversed. Narcissa soon resented the extra people in her small home, especially when she felt the other wives did little to help her. She often retreated to her own room, seeming unfriendly and cold, where she struggled with these un-Christian impulses. Instead of forging a united front, the missionaries argued amongst themselves. They scattered to their separate missions and sent complaining reports back to the mission board. Eventually, in 1842 and 1843, Marcus traveled all the way to Boston to keep the ABCFM from shutting down some of the missions in Oregon. All this added strain to Narcissa’s life.

  In late June 1839, Narcissa’s world fell apart. As Marcus and Narcissa sat reading, Alice announced she wanted a drink. The child wandered down to the river, where she fell in and drowned. As Narcissa grieved, she wondered if God was punishing her for loving Alice too much, for loving her daughter above him. As the weeks wore on and she struggled to cope, Narcissa decided that instead of punishment, “Jesus’ love for her [Alice] was greater than mine.”37

  Narcissa continued to teach the Cayuse children, but she withdrew more from her missionary work. At the same time, Catholic missionaries competed for the Indians’ attention, although according to staunch Presbyterians like Narcissa and Marcus, the Catholics would burn in hell right alongside the Indians. Why had she and Marcus failed to convert any of the Cayuse? Narcissa questioned her own abilities. “To be a missionary in name and to do so little or nothing for the benefit of heathen souls, is heart-sickening,” she wrote a friend. “I sometimes almost wish to give my place to others who can do more for their good.”38 But then she blamed the Cayuse for ignoring their teachings, for being proud, vain, selfish, and ungrateful.

  Over the years, the mission complex added new buildings, a larger house, a blacksmith shop, a gristmill, and a sawmill. The fields yielded bushels of fruits and vegetables, and a herd of cattle grazed in the pastures. About 50 Cayuse were farming, too. Narcissa’s new home had a dining room and parlor and all manner of furniture. Pictures graced the walls, and the Whitmans dined on china. This was progress; this was civilization.

  But this show of comfort and wealth irked many Cayuse, especially younger members of the tribe. Some felt that, because the Whitmans used and controlled the land, they should pay for it or leave. The farm’s tilled fields gobbled up grazing land for Cayuse horses. To a culture that valued gifts as a show of friendship and hospitality, the Whitmans appeared stingy, offering goods only in exchange for work. But the Whitmans adamantly refused to pay for the land and turned a blind eye to Cayuse complaints, blaming a small faction of troublemakers.

  Narcissa added new responsibilities to her household that turned her focus further from mission work. She took in two little girls, the half-Indian children of famed mountain men Joe Meek and Jim Bridger, and another “half-breed” boy. If she couldn’t convert the Cayuse, she could at least shape and civilize these children. She kept the children away from the taint of the Cayuse, and she determined that they, unlike Alice, should speak nothing but English.

  As the 1840s dawned, the Whitmans and the Cayuse faced a new transformation. It began with a trickle of Americans arriving in Oregon. Narcissa commented on the immigration in her letters home and concluded: “What a few years will bring forth we know not.”39 Once started, the flood carried more emigrants each year into Oregon and right to the Waiilatpu mission, which became a resting spot for weary travelers. Narcissa and Marcus both felt enthusiasm for Oregon’s prospects.

  When Marcus left for a year long journey back to the states, Narcissa felt uneasy staying at Waiilatpu without him. One night, she was sure a Cayuse attempted to break down her bedroom door, intent on attacking her. She abandoned the mission after that and spent most of the next year socializing at Fort Walla Walla and Fort Vancouver and with a group of Methodist missionaries. To be in the company of “living and growing Christians is very refreshing to me, after having lived so much alone, immerged in care and toil,” she wrote.40 As soon as she departed the mission, the Cayuse burned down the gristmill. Narcissa saw no great meaning to the destruction and told herself that “the sensible part of the Cayuse feel the loss deeply.”41

  Marcus arrived back in the fall of 1843 with the largest group of emigrants yet, nearly 1,000 people. Narcissa reluctantly returned to Waiilatpu, plagued more often now by recurring health problems. But the following year, she took on another challenge: she agreed to raise the seven Sager children, orphaned by the death of both parents on the Oregon Trail. They ranged in age from 13 to five months old, five girls and two boys. One of the older girls noticed Narcissa’s special hunger to care for the baby. The Sagers’ arrival allowed Narcissa to completely withdraw from missionary work.

  She blossomed during these years at the mission, with renewed health and energy. She set up schedules for the Sager children and supervised chores, schooling, and religious lessons, also doling out punishments when needed. She made more efforts to examine her own heart and curb her irritations. She felt hope for the future. The Whitmans
even hired a schoolmaster each winter and invited other white children to come and learn.

  If they could not easily convert the Cayuse, they could help convert ragged emigrants and give Oregon a new population of hardworking and God-fearing citizens. This proved familiar work for Narcissa; it was the work of conversion she’d known back home, work made easier by shared language, culture, and basic values. One young man wrote of her “large, soft” eyes and noted, “She seemed endowed with a peculiar magnetism when you were in her presence, so that you could not help thinking yourself in the presence of a much higher than the ordinary run of humanity. I have heard her pray, and she could offer up the finest petition to the Throne of Grace of any person I have ever heard in my life.”42

  Narcissa remained hopeful that the Cayuse would see the light. She believed the Indians truly liked the mission family. Spats of violence did not undo their regular pattern of coexistence, but there were noticeable changes. “The poor Indians,” she wrote her mother, “are amazed at the overwhelming numbers of Americans coming into the country. They seem not to know what to make of it.”43

  Wrapped up in her adoptive and busy family, unwilling to admit failure with the mission, Narcissa again ignored warning signs all around her. When the United States and Great Britain agreed in 1846 to set a border granting a huge tract of land to the Americans, she believed the Cayuse would see how things were and settle down.

  While some Cayuse still attended church services, in eleven years the Whitmans had failed to convert a single Indian to Christianity. The other missions had not done much better. The old dispute with the Cayuse over payment for the mission land had remained a simmering issue, and the influx of huge numbers of white pioneers raised the temperature to boiling. The Cayuse recognized that they faced displacement by the newcomers. Brief skirmishes occurred between whites and Indians. Emigrants’ livestock ruined grazing lands and trampled the roots and camas bulbs the Cayuse depended on. The Whitmans gave charity to the white emigrants but charged the Cayuse for the use of the mill. White children went to school, while Indian children did not.