Murder at the Mission

February 15, 2021
Revisionist account of the once-well-known 1847 Whitman Massacre, an event that helped catalyze the American annexation of Oregon and Washington. Harden focuses on the mission founded by Marcus Whitman and his wife, Narcissa, a place that became a locus for intrigue and murder. The two Presbyterian missionaries had come with pious intentions but a tendency not to listen to anyone, and they settled not among the more receptive Nez Perce but instead among the Cayuse people. "For eleven years," writes the author, "albeit with mounting disappointment and bitterness, the Indians allowed the Whitmans to preach, teach, farm, and build on their land." But on Nov. 29, 1847, a party of Cayuse massacred the Whitmans and 11 other White male settlers. The targets were deliberately chosen; other Whites were left alone. Harden diligently reconstructs the events over the years leading up to the killing, showing how Whitman opened Cayuse territory to White settlers streaming overland across the Oregon Trail without asking the Cayuse for permission to do so. The events were immortalized by another missionary, Henry Spalding, whom church authorities privately suspected of being a psychopath. Whitman had ridden back all the way to Boston to defend himself from church inquiries and secure further support for his growing mission, stopping in Washington on the way. Spalding, whose career was faltering, inflated the importance of Whitman's trip, imagining that this sojourn in the nation's capital was the "tale of a pious patriot riding east to save Oregon from the perfidious British." Harden's vivid reconstruction illustrates the process of Western mythmaking, beloved of Americans when it paints them in a heroic light; and of cultural collision, with the Whitmans almost willfully ignoring the Cayuse worldview. There's a strong strand of anti-Catholicism, Know-Nothingism, and racism throughout, too, which lends Harden's welcome study an unfortunate timeliness. A boon for those who like their history unadorned by obfuscation and legend.

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Starred review from March 1, 2021

Journalist and author Harden (A River Lost) writes in the introduction to this book that history is often written by the victors; with that in mind he seeks to demystify one of the best-known stories of Western history: the deaths of Narcissa and Marcus Whitman in 1847. The Whitmans, Protestant missionaries, traveled to Oregon territory in 1836 along with Reverend Henry Spalding and his wife, settling in different locations. The author explains how the Whitmans and Spaldings had tense encounters with Cayuse people in the region, especially after a measles epidemic severely affected the tribe. Combining biography and history, the narrative continues to explain how the Cayuse community was impacted by settlers pouring into the rich valleys of present-day Oregon and Washington. Harden also offers a detailed recounting of interpersonal rivalries between missionaries and explains how religious and secular newspapers, engaging in propaganda, spread untruths about the Whitmans' deaths. A highlight of the book is Harden's inclusion of current information about tribes native to the Pacific Northwest and how they are still affected by the legacy of the Whitman massacre. VERDICT Harden succeeds in bringing often-forgotten history front and center. A well-written, fast-paced account that is highly recommended to all readers.--Patricia Ann Owens, formerly at Illinois Eastern Community College, Mt. Carmel

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2021
Marcus Whitman was killed in his kitchen by a tomahawk to his head and a shot to his neck on a foggy November day in 1847. His wife, Narcissa, was taken outside and shot, 11 others were killed, and 47 taken hostage at their Presbyterian mission in Oregon. Their deaths were only the beginning of the story, which would be twisted into a tale that cast the Whitmans as heroes and would lead to the near-extermination of the Cayuse tribe responsible, but the truth was far more complicated. The Whitmans had traveled west more than a decade before, Narcissa and another missionary wife the first white women to cross the Rockies. The years that followed were marred by infighting among the missionaries, selfishness, tragedy, and a measles epidemic that would seal their fate. Harden meticulously outlines how one bitter minister crafted an outlandish lie out of the Whitmans' deaths, promoting a narrow vision of heroic white Christians destined to conquer the land, a vision that persisted into the twentieth century, echoing far beyond the Pacific Northwest.

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