Маркус Уитман: Миссионер, Врач и Трагедия на Орегонском Пути

19th century American missionary
the New York school

Marcus Whitman (September 4, 1802 – November 29, 1847) was an American physician and missionary. He is most well known for leading settlers across the Oregon Trail, unsuccessfully attempting to Christianize the Cayuse Indians, and being killed by the Cayuse Indians in the Whitman massacre. In 1836, Marcus Whitman led an overland party by wagon to the West. He and his wife, Narcissa, along with Reverend Henry Spalding and his wife, Eliza, and William Gray, founded a mission near present day Walla Walla, Washington in an effort to convert local Indians to Christianity. In the winter of 1842, Whitman went back east, returning the following summer with the first large wagon train of settlers across the Oregon Trail. These new settlers encroached on the Cayuse Indians living near the Whitman Mission and were unsuccessful in their efforts to Christianize the tribe. Following the deaths of many nearby Cayuse from an outbreak of measles, some remaining Cayuse accused Whitman of murder, suggesting that he had administered poison and was a failed shaman. In retaliation, a group of Cayuse killed the Whitmans and eleven other settlers on November 29, 1847, an event that came to be known as the Whitman massacre. This led to continuing warfare between settlers and the Cayuse which reduced their numbers further.

On September 4, 1802, Whitman was born in Federal Hollow, New York to Beza and Alice Whitman. After Beza's death when Whitman was seven, he was sent to Massachusetts to live with his uncle. Whitman dreamed of becoming a minister but did not have the money for such schooling. He returned to New York as a young man. He studied medicine for two years with an experienced physician under the form of apprenticeship approved then, and received his degree from Fairfield Medical College in New York. He practiced medicine for a few years in Canada but was interested in going to the west.

In 1835, Whitman traveled with the missionary Samuel Parker to present day northwestern Montana and northern Idaho, to minister to bands of the Flathead and Nez Perce nations. During this journey, he treated several fur trappers during an outbreak of cholera. At the end of their stay, he promised the Nez Perce that he would return with other missionaries and teachers to live with them. Parker and Whitman were present for the 1835 Rocky Mountain Rendezvous.

In 1836, Whitman married Narcissa Prentiss, a teacher of physics and chemistry. She had also been eager to travel west as a missionary, but she had been unable to do so as a single woman. They had one daughter, Alice Clarissa, born On March 14, 1837, the first Anglo American child born in Oregon Country. She was named after her grandmothers. She drowned in the Walla Walla River at age two. As settlers came in increasing numbers, the Whitmans took in eleven orphaned children, including the adoption of the Sager orphans. They also established a kind of boarding school for settlers' children at their mission. The Cayuse tradition held medicine men personally responsible for the patient's recovery. Their despair at the deaths, especially of their children, led the Cayuse under Chief Tiloukaikt to kill the Whitmans in their home on November 29, 1847. Warriors destroyed most of the buildings at Waiilatpu and killed twelve other white settlers in the community, kidnapping many children and forcibly marrying them in certain cases. The events became known among white settlers as the Whitman massacre. The Cayuse held another 53 women and children captive for a month before releasing them through negotiations. These events, and continued white encroachment, triggered a continuing conflict between the settlers and the Cayuse that became known as the Cayuse War. Five Cayuse were hanged for murder. Historians have noted contemporary accounts of competition between the Protestant missionaries and Catholic priests, who had become established with Jesuit missions from Canada and St. Louis, Missouri, as contributing to the tensions. The Roman Catholic priest John Baptiste Brouillet aided the survivors and helped bury the victims. Two days later Brouillet encountered Rev. Henry H. Spalding on his way to the Whitmans', told him what had happened, and warned him that he might be in danger. Spalding later wrote a pamphlet stating forcefully that the Catholic priests, including Father Brouillet, had incited the Cayuse to massacre. Spalding's version of the disaster was printed and reprinted, sometimes at taxpayer expense, for the next half century.

Whitman is commemorated by Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, the Wallowa–Whitman National Forest, Mount Rainier's Whitman Glacier, and numerous schools, including Marcus Whitman Middle School in Port Orchard, Washington; Marcus Whitman Junior High School in Seattle, Washington; and Marcus Whitman Central School in Rushville, New York, his hometown. His mission is preserved as Whitman Mission National Historic Site. While the name is not used much now, the road from Penn Yan, New York to Rushville, New York was formerly called the Marcus Whitman Highway. Fort Whitman (active 1900–1947) located near LaConner Washington is named for him. The Washington State Legislature has declared the fourth day of September as Marcus Whitman Day. A bronze tablet in Wheeler, New York commemorates his 1828–1835 practice as a medical doctor in that town. In 1977, he was inducted into Steuben County, York's Hall of Fame. Walla Walla has a Marcus Whitman Hotel and Conference Center. In 1953, the state of Washington donated a statue of him by the sculptor Avard Fairbanks to the National Statuary Hall Collection in the United States Capitol, but on April 14, 2021, Governor Jay Inslee signed legislation to remove it replace it with a statue of Native American leader Billy Frank Jr. An identical one stands at the edge of the campus of Whitman College.

Marcus Whitman's alleged political influence over the United States' claim to the Oregon country, as well as his purported leadership role in the emigration, were greatly exaggerated in the decades following his death, leading to great controversy in popular and academic literature. After Whitman's death, Spalding energetically promoted the idea that Marcus Whitman had traveled east to Washington in order to "save" the Oregon Territory from British control by convincing the United States to send settlers to contest claims of British governance. In 1901, Yale University historian Edward Gaylord Bourne convincingly disproved this revision of history, using the historical record to demonstrate that Whitman's trip back east was motivated by his desire to maintain the mission to convert the Native American tribes of the Northwest to Christianity and that he returned with settlers who were Protestant in order to promote (Protestant) Christianity.