In 1841, a stubborn 64 year old Methodist preacher named Joseph Williams left his home in Ripley County, Indiana to travel to the Oregon Territory. His family and neighbors all advised against it, pointing to dangers, hostile Indians and wild beasts.  “But my mind leads me strongly to go: I want to preach to the people there, and also to the Indians, as well as to see the county.”

Methodist Mission, Oregon, 1834

He travels to the Oregon and back in the next two years, sometimes alone, sometimes in company with French fur traders and their Indian wives, or other Americans making for California or the Willamette Valley. He is a tough old bird, surviving swollen rivers, fevers, a mishap with an ax that opens his shin, and the more than occasional snubs to his preaching from fellow travelers and some of the established missionaries.

To modern eyes he is an odd mixture of prejudice and openness. He notes many unbelievers who treat him kindly as well as those who make his life a misery with swearing and brutality.  He shows no special connection to the Indians he meets but deplores the fact that many of the established Oregon missions are doing so little to care for the Indians in their areas. He criticizes other missionaries for the coldness of their services and their emphasis on farming and caring for their own comfort and safety above that of the natives they went there to serve. (This may account for some of the snubs to his preaching mentioned above.)

Meet Joseph Williams and read his story in Narrative of a tour to Oregon, 1841-2 in Classics in Washington History.

Justice Edward Lander & Gov. Isaac Stevens

In May 1856, Gov. Isaac Stevens arrests the chief justice of the territorial Supreme Court, Edward Lander, and proclaims a state of martial law in Pierce, and then Thurston, counties.

Judge Lander was substituting at Steilacoom for another Justice, F. A. Chenoweth, who was ill. He was issuing writs of habeas corpus for five men accused of aiding the enemy during the Indian Wars, intending to move toward a civil trial. Gov. Stevens preferred that the accused men be tried by a military commission.

This confrontation sets off a civil rights crisis that involved the governor, the legal community, citizens, the militia, and the regular army. Political philosophies and personalities clashed.

The resources below explore the events from many different views.

Classics in Washington History

Message from the President… relating to the Proclamation of Martial Law in W.T.  Documents and correspondence collected by the federal government to examine the Martial Law controversy.

Message from the President… [on] Martial Law in the Territory of Washington.  Additional documents on the proclamation of Martial Law and its effects.

Proceedings of a Meeting of the Bar… on the Arrest of the Hon. Edward Lander.  Notes from a meeting of the Pierce County Bar and a separate meeting of concerned citizens.

F.A. Chenoweth Letter to Governor Fayette McMullin.  Judge Chenoweth explains his view of the controversy.

Newspaper articles

The Pioneer and Democrat in Olympia is very pro-Stevens:

“Representation: To the Honorables J. Patton Anderson and Joseph Lane, Delegates in Congress from the Territories of Oregon and Washington”
Pioneer and Democrat, 7/11/1856, Page 2, Column 5

“Representation: To the Honorables J. Patton Anderson and Joseph Lane, Delegates in Congress from the Territories of Oregon and Washington [continued]”
Pioneer and Democrat, 7/11/1856, Page 3, Column 1

“XXXIV Congress, First Session – Discussion in Senate, July 2d, ’56 on the Subject of Martial Law in Washington Territory”
Pioneer and Democrat, 8/29/1856, Page 1, Column 2

“Martial Law Again”
Pioneer and Democrat, 4/10/1857, Page 2, Column 1

“[Reprimand of Gov. Stevens by Secretary of State Marcy for Declaration of Martial Law]”
Pioneer and Democrat, 6/26/1857, Page 2, Column 5

The Puget Sound Courier in Steilacoom is fairly anti-Stevens:

“The Powers that Be”
Puget Sound Courier, 2/29/1856, Page 1, Column 1

“Martial Law – by a Citizen”
Puget Sound Courier, 4/25/1856, Page 3, Column 3

Eliza Spalding Warren

Perhaps the most poignant accounts of both life and death on those remote mission stations come from the women who were most intimately involved. In Memoirs of the West: the Spaldings,  Eliza Spalding, the daughter of Rev. Spalding, looks back at an idyllic childhood at Lapwai, the Spaldings mission. She helps her mother, travels with her father, and grows up among the Nez Perce Indians. She often stays at the Whitman mission for months at a time in order to attend school with other mission and immigrant children, and is there on Nov. 29, 1847. Her account is harrowing, as the 10-year-old child witnesses death and terror, and then serves as interpreter between the Indians and their captives. The book also includes excerpts from her mother’s diary and some of her father’s letters that speak of the unrelenting labor that he and his wife undertake.

Finally, three fascinating collections of letters by Narcissa Prentiss Whitman were gathered and published in the late nineteenth century by the Oregon Pioneer Association. The first covers their journey across the country to the Oregon Territory in 1836. The others include Narcissa’s letters to her family back east and correspondence with other missionaries in the West. They can be found in Classics in Washington History as Journey across the plains in 1836.

Sketch of Narcissa Whitman

The letters reveal a woman who is determined to live up to her religious ideals. She accepts the loss of home and her extended family. She accepts her husband’s frequent absences and the physical hardships of frontier living. Yet, she continually begs her family to write more often, and is without any letters from home for two years due to long distances. She is never quite at home with the Indians and has difficulty learning the language. There are hints in her narratives about the tensions among the missionaries and the discouragement when few others arrive to join the mission effort.

Narcissa bears a child at Waiilatpu, Alice Clarissa, that is the light of her life until she drowns at the age of “two years, three months, and nine days.” At the same time she takes on the care of children in need, having as many as eleven children in her home at once and writes, “I am sometimes about ready to sink under the weight of responsibility resting on me…” The letters, though relentlessly optimistic, create a portrait of an intensely social and conventional woman laboring in isolation and surrounded by a culture that remains foreign to her.

Rev. H. H. Spalding

For decades after the tragedy at the Whitman Mission, writers, preachers and others sought to place blame for the event itself and for the underlying causes. Resentments against the Hudson’s Bay Company and religious prejudices often colored narratives, and led to charges of cowardice or malice.

Fr. Brouillet

In response, Hudson’s Bay employee, William McBean, takes great exception to the accuracy of Spalding’s characterization of events in letters to the newspaper’s editor. See Moments in History.

Sketch of the mission

The Whitman Massacre of November 29, 1847 provides a painful window into a time of conflicting cultures, priorities and prejudices. Piecing together what happened from contemporary accounts can be both frustrating and fascinating. Were the Cayuse Indians misguided, evil, deceived, or somewhere in between all of those? Were the missionaries heroic martyrs or discouraged idealists? Did sectarian prejudice between Catholic and Protestant exacerbate a volatile situation?

You can explore a variety of theories, personalities and testimony surrounding this horrific event in the Library’s Digital Collections. There will be three posts on this subject to cover the variety of resources available on this event.

For an overview of the mission and its history, try Miles Cannon’s  Waiilatpu, its rise and fall, 1836-1847 . Cannon interviews many of the survivors and puts together a narrative of the whole of the Whitmans’ time in Oregon. The book is online in the Classics in Washington History under the heading of “Pioneer Life,” and is an excellent introduction to the principal individuals, organizations and series of events.

See also: The Whitman Tragedy – Part 2 | Part 3

In 1871 Frances Marie Antoinette Mack married Fayette Washington Roe.  Both had been raised in upstate New York, though Faye (as he was known) was born in Virginia.  The wedding occurred immediately after his graduation from West Point, and they quickly left to travel to his first army assignment in Fort Lyon, Colorado far from their quiet upstate homes. 

Kit Carson, Colorado Territory, October, 1871.

Tis late, so this can be only a note to tell you that we arrived here safely, and will take the stage for Fort Lyon to-morrow morning at six o’clock.  I am thankful enough that our stay is short at this terrible place, where one feels there is danger of being murdered any minute. Not one woman have I seen here, but there are men – any number of dreadful-looking men – each one armed with big pistols, and leather belts full of cartridges.

Here she begins a series of letters that will later be collected and published as Army Letters from an Officer’s Wife, 1871-1888. Frances followed her husband to posts throughout the West from busy, established garrisons to small redoubts with dirt floors, and provides a detailed description of life in the frontier army from a woman’s point of view.

She describes their first home at Ft. Lyon, her lessons in riding and shooting, and her confusion with military protocol and customs.  She enjoys the outdoor activities and the social life at the fort and throws herself into creating her first home.  It is a rude shock when her husband’s company is transferred for the first time and she learns that their destination is Camp Supply in what is now northern Oklahoma – more isolated, more primitive, and surrounded by hostile tribes.  As the wife of a junior officer she must leave behind many of her household goods, her furniture, her horse, and her new greyhound puppy.  She reacts as many very young wives might have, but soon finds her feet. 

I have cried and cried over all these things until I am simply hideous, but I have to go just the same, and I have made up my mind never again to make myself so wholly disagreeable about a move, no matter where we may have to go. I happened to recall yesterday what grandmother said to me when saying good-by: “It is a dreadful thing not to become a woman when one ceases to be a girl!” I am no longer a girl, I suppose, so I must try to be a woman, as there seems to be nothing in between.

(Also, when the company stops the first night and several soldiers are sent back for forgotten supplies, she manages to convince one of them to bring her puppy as well.  “Hal” grows and spends the rest of his adventurous life with Frances.)

Frances is a woman of her time, full of both courage and prejudice, who undertakes a strenuous and demanding life for the sake of her husband.  She endures sandstorms, Indian attacks, floods, killing cold and countless moves.  She also bakes fruitcakes, hunts buffalo and organizes cotillions.  It turns out that army life suits her very well.

Read her account online in the Classics in Washington History under “Women’s Stories.”

The son of a Hudson’s Bay factor and Raven, the daughter of Chief Comcomly of the Chinooks, Ranald MacDonald grew up on trading posts in the Northwest.  Fascinated by the idea of visiting Japan since his youth, he conceived the plan of shipping out on a whaling vessel and marooning himself on the Japanese shore.  Despite the fact that the government of Japan threatened death or imprisonment to foreigners trying to enter the kingdom, he did just that in 1848.

Ranald was taken captive and moved from one jurisdiction to another, but was well treated.  He was friendly and intensely curious about everything he saw and everyone he met.  The Japanese responded to his courtesy, and Ranald soon was teaching English to a significant group of Japanese officials.  His adventure ended when an American vessel, the Preble, arrived to retrieve a group of sailors that had been genuinely shipwrecked, and his captors allowed Ranald to accompany them back to America.

He continued his life as a sailor for some time, traveling widely.  When gold was discovered in the Fraser Valley in British Columbia, he worked there for several years.  He died in North Central Washington in 1894.

When Japan finally opened to the West, Ranald’s student, Einosuke Moriyama, served as one of the chief interpreters between Commodore Perry and the Tokogawa Shogunate.

 The State Library has two items in its online collection that tell Ranald’s story:

1.  Ranald’s deposition given to Captain Glynn of the Preble on the voyage back to America in 1849.

Deposition of Ranald McDonald regarding his imprisonment in Japan, made to Captain James Glynn, USS Preble] [Washington, D.C.: G.P.O., 1850]From: Senate Executive Document (United State. Congress. Senate); 31st Congress, 1st Session, vol. 10, no. 84, p. 24-28.

2.  Ranald’s own account written years after the fact and edited for the Eastern Washington Historical Society.

Ranald MacDonald : the narrative of his early life on the Columbia under the Hudson’s Bay Company’s regime, of his experiences in the Pacific whale fishery and of his great adventure to Japan : with a sketch of his later life on the western frontier, 1824-1894 by Ranald MacDonald.  Spokane, Wash. : Published for the Eastern Washington State Historical Society of the Inland-American Printing Co., 1923

“… and before us was a dark sea-wall of mountains…”

With those words, Caroline Leighton ended a journey from the civilized eastern states and began recording her responses to fifteen years on the Pacific coast.  Born and educated in New England, she worked in a school for former slaves in Washington DC during the Civil War.  There she met her future husband, Rufus Leighton.  After the war they married and sailed for the Pacific Northwest where Rufus had an appointment as a customs official.  They endured shipwreck, stormy seas, and travel by canoe during spring floods.

Caroline’s eye is both humorous and humane as she examines the West and all the people she meets there:  miners, farmers, Chinese workers, Native Americans, and immigrants from many countries.  She accompanied her husband as he traveled across the Territory, journeying by wagon to Walla Walla, taking steamers on the upper Columbia where the boat had to be winched up through canyons, and traveling by lumber ships between Washington and San Francisco.  On one such journey she writes:

“One day it was more than I could enjoy.  The wind roared so loud, and the sound of the waves was so heavy, that I retreated to my berth and lay down; but I could not keep my mind off the thought of how deep the water was under us.  After awhile I went on deck and sat there again, and the vessel began to plunge so that it seemed as if it were trying to stand upon one end.  I felt so frightened that I thought I would try to speak with the captain, and ask him if he ever knew a lumber vessel to tip over; and if I dared I would suggest that he should carry a little less sail…

but a little while after, he came to me and said, ‘Are you able to go to the forward part of the ship with me?  I should like to have you if you can.’   So he helped me along to the bow, where it seemed almost too frightful to go, and said, ‘Kneel down;’ and knelt down by me, and said, ‘Look under the ship.’  It was one of the most beautiful sights I ever saw, – such a height of foam, and rainbows over it.  …

Presently he said, ‘Men don’t often speak of these things to each other, but I feel the beauty of it.  Nights when the vessel is moving so fast, I come and watch here for hours and hours, and dream over it.’  When I thought about it afterward, I wondered how he could know that the way to answer my fear was to show me what was so beautiful.  I was not afraid anymore, whatever the vessel did.”

I recommend Caroline Leighton to your acquaintance.

The 1884 edition, Life at Puget Sound : with sketches of travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon, and California, 1865-1881 is available electronically in the State Library’s online digital collection, Classics in Washington History.

Caroline’s book was reprinted as West Coast Journeys with an introduction by David M. Buerge in 2002 by Sasquatch Books.