Missionaries in the Oregon Territory

Wheat Farm, Walla Walla, Washington, Russell Lee, photographer, July 1941.
FSA/OSI Color Photographs, 1938-1944

Congregationalist missionary Cushing Eells, founder of Whitman College, the oldest educational institution in Washington State, was born in Massachusetts on February 16, 1810. Eells established the college, located in Walla Walla, in 1859. He named the school in honor of fellow missionaries Marcus and Narcissa Whitman. Pioneers, the Whitmans helped open Oregon Territory to U.S. settlement.

In 1836, the Whitmans founded a mission among the Cayuse Indians at Waillatpu, six miles west of present-day Walla Walla. In addition to evangelizing, the missionaries established schools and grist mills and introduced crop irrigation. Still, their work advanced slowly jeopardizing funding. In 1842, Marcus Whitman journeyed East and convinced the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to continue support. Returning the following year, he joined approximately 1,000 settlers traveling to Oregon Territory. Without Whitman's aid the caravan might not have reached its goal.

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. Marcus and Narcissa Whitman and twelve other settlers were killed by Cayuse warriors on November 29, 1847. Known as the Whitman Massacre, this event precipitated the Cayuse War—a conflict that lasted until 1850.

Indian Women and Priest at Pala Mission, Pala, California, June 4, 1939.
California Gold: Folk Music from the Thirties

Between 1769 and 1823, Spanish Catholics established 21 missions among California Indians. Catholic missionaries competed for conversions among the Cayuse in the 1840s. Many Cayuse found Catholic ritual more appealing than the Protestant piety offered by the Congregationalists.

• Joseph Wilkinson Hines discusses early missions in present-day Oregon and Washington in Chapter VIII of his memoir, Touching Incidents in the Life and Labors of a Pioneer on the Pacific Coast Since 1853. A full text search in California as I Saw It: First Person Narratives, 1849-1900 on Walla Walla or Marcus Whitman will lead to more recollections of pioneer days in southeastern Washington.
• To learn about another northwestern tribe evangelized by Congregationalist missionaries see the Today in History feature on Chief Joseph and the Nez Percé camp.
• Search Panoramic Photographs, 1851-1991 and Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920 to see more images, urban and rural, of Washington State.
• Visit the Web site of Whitman Mission National Historic Site, maintained by the National Park Service, to learn more about the Whitmans.