THE
Oregon Historical Quarterly
THE COMING OF THE WHITE WOMEN, 1836
By T. C. Elliott
The arrival of the first white American women to cross the plains and Rocky Mountains to the Columbia River is an event worthy of commemoration in the localities to which they came. The women were Narcissa Prentiss Whitman and Eliza Hart Spalding, wives of Doctor Marcus Whitman and the Reverend Henry H. Spalding, who came as Protestant missionaries to the Cayuse and Nez Perce Indian tribes in what was then the Oregon country. With their husbands they established the first homes of American families in the interior region now known as the inland empire; the Spaldings at Lapwai, near Lewiston, Idaho, and the Whitmans at Waiilatpu, near Walla Walla, Washington. They were courageous, conscientious and resourceful, wholly consecrated to the difficult and isolated tasks before them. Mrs. Whitman was murdered by the Indians eleven years after arrival and Mrs. Spalding died of exhaustion and ill health only three years later. They arrived at Fort Nez Perce (also called Walla Walla), a trading post of the Hudson's Bay Company on the Columbia, September first and third respectively, 1836. In this limited narrative it is proposed to relate the experiences and route of travel of this missionary party during the last eleven days of their journey, as told by Mrs. Whitman in a serial letter written to her family in New York while en route and which became a journal[1] of the journey, amplified and explained by editorial comment.
- ↑ The quotations from Mrs. Whitman's journal herein used were copied from her original manuscript, now in Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington. Photostat copy is in the Oregon Historical Society. The journal printed in the Oregon Pioneer Transactions, 1891, differs slightly from this manuscript.
