CORRESPONDENCE 75
and rising community than during the last winter. We greatly need the prayers of the churches that we may reap ere long a gracious harvest. Our communities are surrounded by heathen and 1 no one can tell the excessively immoral influence which the heathen exert on a civilized community. And then the number of professors are few, consequently but few re- straints are imposed on the impenitent. Added to this, the fact that we are at present involved in an unpleasant Indian war with the Cayuse tribe inhabiting the country along the foot of the Blue Mountains, south of the Columbia River, keeps the people in a state of excitement unfavorable to the cultivation of the Christian graces. The apparent cause of the difficulty seems to have originated in the fact of the last year's immigrants having brought the measles among the Cayuse Indians. Many sickened and died with them and the flux. The Indians, ever jealous and credulous, suspicioned Dr. Whit- man of poisoning them. It seems a treacherous half-breed who had been educated by the missionaries and resided in Dr. Whitman's family circulated the report that he had overheard the doctor and Mr. Spaulding discussing the subject of the best method of exterminating the Indians. Finally, about the 30th of November, one of the most inhuman tragedies which the history of savage cruelty has ever recorded was perpe- trated in open day. Dr. Whitman, his excellent wife, Mr. Rodgers, a young man of unblemished character and engaging manner, studying for the ministry, and ten other persons were brutally butchered by the very chiefs who had long manifested great confidence in the Dr., and for whom he has so long labored and sacrificed almost all the blessings of civilization to ameliorate their conditions and direct their whole tribe to the glories of Heaven through a crucified Saviour. About thirty men, women and 1 children were then taken captive and reduced to Indian slaves, and the females suffered the most revolting acts of savage violence in the presence of their own husbands and fathers and mothers, against which no entreaties or remonstrances were of any avail for more than a month, till Mr. Ogden, one of the chief factors of the Hudson Bay Co.,
