How the Whitman Murders Redefined the American West

Summary

Summary of "How the Whitman Murders Redefined the American West" – HISTORY This Week

Episode Release Date: May 26, 2025
Hosts: Sally Helm, Blaine Hardin
Guests: Bobby Connor (Director, Tomas Licht Cultural Institute), Blaine Hardin (Author of Murder at the Frontier)

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1. Introduction: The Treaty of 1855 and Its Significance

The episode opens on May 30, 1855, near present-day Walla Walla, Washington, where Isaac Stevens, the governor of the newly formed Washington Territory, addresses a gathering of approximately 5,000 Native Americans from five tribes: the Walla Walla, Yakima, Nez Perce, Umatilla, and Cayuse. Stevens outlines a treaty aimed at ending ongoing conflicts in the Columbia River Basin. However, his true intention extends beyond peace—he seeks to drastically alter the tribes’ way of life.

Isaac Stevens (00:32): "You’ll all become farmers and mechanics and doctors and lawyers, like white men."

Despite resistance, the tribes are coerced into ceding 60,000 square miles of land, laying the foundation for the states of Idaho, Oregon, and Washington, thereby completing the map of the contiguous United States from coast to coast.

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2. The Arrival of the Whitmans: Missionaries and Settlers

Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, white missionaries, become central figures in this transformative period. Invited by whispers of indigenous openness to Christianity, the Whitmans journey west despite personal and logistical challenges, including a tense travel with another missionary couple due to past romantic entanglements.

Upon their arrival in Fall 1836, they establish a mission near a Cayuse village. Initially, relations flourish, especially after the birth of their daughter, Alice Whitman, who is warmly welcomed and deemed a Cayuse girl by the tribe’s headman Tilikayt.

Bobby Connor (04:28): "We have been here a very long time."

The Whitmans’ efforts to integrate with the Cayuse—emphasizing farming, education, and Christianity—appear successful. However, underlying tensions simmer beneath the surface.

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3. Rising Tensions: Tragedy and Deteriorating Relations

The turning point arrives on June 23, 1839, when tragic circumstances lead to the drowning of Alice Whitman. Narcissa is devastated, retreating from missionary activities, while Marcus’s focus shifts more toward farming than his original missionary zeal.

As Marcus prospers agriculturally, demands for rent from the Cayuse escalate. The Whitmans’ refusal ignites anger within the tribe. Subtle disrespect and cultural misunderstandings deepen the rift:

Bobby Connor (15:20): "They wanted us to sit still year round, not travel our seasonal cycles on horseback to gather our foods. They weren't interested in our way of life. They were interested in teaching us theirs."

Attempts by Marcus to assert control lead to violent confrontations, including the use of poisoning tactics that further erode trust.

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4. The Whitman Massacre: A Catalyst for Change

By November 29, 1847, the strained relations culminate in a brutal attack. A small group of Cayuse, driven by despair and accusations that Marcus’s medical practices failed their people, murder the Whitmans and eleven white men, sparing only women and children.

Bobby Connor (22:16): "When he tried to doctor our Indian children and Indian adults, most of them died."

The massacre triggers immediate outrage and a desire for vengeance among white settlers, leading to the Cayuse War. Militiamen launch retaliatory attacks against Cayuse villages, resulting in significant loss of life and further destabilizing the region.

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5. Legal and Territorial Ramifications

In the wake of the massacre, five Cayuse men are captured and put on trial in Oregon City. Despite their defense highlighting the cultural context and grievances, including the acceptance of Whitman’s medical failures as legitimate reasons for their actions, the men are found guilty and publicly hanged.

Bobby Connor (26:15): "They have done it many times. Marcus Whitman was aware of this."

This judicial outcome disregards Cayuse sovereignty and traditional laws, reinforcing settler dominance and accelerating the push for American annexation of the Oregon Country.

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6. The Transformation of the Oregon Territory

News of the Whitman Massacre and subsequent violence agitates the federal government. A delegation from Oregon Territory persuades President James K. Polk to officially incorporate the region into the United States. Federal forces, including the U.S. Cavalry and territorial governors, are dispatched to enforce American laws and expand settlement.

Blaine Hardin emphasizes that without the Whitmans' deaths, the timeline for Oregon’s incorporation might have significantly differed, underscoring the massacre as a pivotal moment in American expansionism.

Blaine Hardin (31:02): "Without the Whitman's deaths, who knows when the US would have incorporated this region into the country."

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7. Legacy and Historical Narratives

The Whitman Massacre, propagated by figures like Henry Spaulding, became mythologized in American history as an event symbolizing Manifest Destiny. Spaulding’s embellished accounts cast the Whitmans as martyrs who sacrificed themselves to secure American dominance over the Pacific Northwest, overshadowing the complex realities of cultural conflict, disease, and forced assimilation faced by the Cayuse.

Henry Spaulding (32:22): "Whitman saves Oregon from being stolen by the Brits."

This narrative has been perpetuated through education and media, often glossing over the nuanced and tragic interactions between settlers and Native Americans.

Bobby Connor (34:55): "It's a widespread sense of injustice in our community. It's a widespread sense of tragedy."

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8. Conclusion: A Tragic but Defining Chapter in American History

The episode concludes by reflecting on the enduring impact of the Whitman Massacre on both American expansion and Native American communities. It highlights the importance of revisiting and reevaluating historical events to acknowledge the multifaceted human experiences involved.

Blaine Hardin (34:45): "A tragedy in which many people, not just the Whitmans, lost their lives."

The tragic killing of the Whitmans served as a critical catalyst for the westward expansion of the United States, reshaping the American West's historical landscape and leaving a legacy of cultural and territorial shifts that continue to resonate today.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Isaac Stevens (00:32): "You’ll all become farmers and mechanics and doctors and lawyers, like white men."
• Bobby Connor (04:28): "We have been here a very long time."
• Bobby Connor (15:20): "They wanted us to sit still year round, not travel our seasonal cycles on horseback to gather our foods. They weren't interested in our way of life. They were interested in teaching us theirs."
• Bobby Connor (22:16): "When he tried to doctor our Indian children and Indian adults, most of them died."
• Bobby Connor (26:15): "They have done it many times. Marcus Whitman was aware of this."
• Henry Spaulding (32:22): "Whitman saves Oregon from being stolen by the Brits."
• Bobby Connor (34:55): "It's a widespread sense of injustice in our community. It's a widespread sense of tragedy."
• Blaine Hardin (34:45): "A tragedy in which many people, not just the Whitmans, lost their lives."

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Conclusion

"How the Whitman Murders Redefined the American West" delves deeply into a pivotal yet often oversimplified event in American history. By examining the intricate relationships between missionaries, settlers, and Native American tribes, the episode paints a comprehensive picture of how a single tragedy can trigger widespread cultural and territorial transformations, ultimately reshaping the nation's destiny.

Transcript

[Sally Helm]

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[Blaine Hardin]

It's like you just get me. I feel like my true self with you. Does that sound crazy? And it doesn't hurt that you're gorgeous. Okay, that's it. I'm taking you home with me. I mean, you can't find shoes this good just anywhere. Find a shoe for every you from brands you love like Birkenstock, Nike, Adidas and more at your DSW store store or dsw.com the History Channel Original Podcast hey everyone, Sally here. This week's episode is a deep dive into a story featured on Kevin Costner's the West, a new History Channel TV series from executive producers Kevin Costner and Doris Kearns Goodwin. It takes a fresh look at the history of the American west by delving into the epic struggle for the land itself. Check out new episodes of Kevin Costner's the West on the History Channel, premiering on Memorial Day, or stream the next [e-mail] history this week May 30, 1855. I'm Sally Helm. A grassy plain near present day Walla Walla, Washington. About 5,000 native people have gathered from five different tribes the Walla Walla, Yakima, Nez, Perce, Umatilla and the Cayuse. They're here to negotiate a treaty, one that will change the shape of the United States. A man named Isaac Stevens steps out to address the crowd. He's the governor of the newly incorporated Washington Territory. He wants to end the bloodshed that has plagued the Columbia River Basin for the last eight years. But he wants more than that. He's pretty clear about it. He wants these people to abandon their way of life and adopt his. He says you'll all become farmers and mechanics and doctors and lawyers, like white men. Also, you'll go live on some tracts of land around here. Reservations. And we'll take the rest of the the tribal leaders have little choice but to accept. Stevens reportedly told one of them, the Yakima chief Kamiakin, if you do not accept the terms offered, you will walk in blood, knee deep when the Walla walla Council ends two weeks later. These tribes have ceded 60,000 square miles of land to the US government. This treaty, it's the origin story for the states of Idaho, Oregon and Washington. And with that addition, the map is complete. The lower 48 states you'd recognize sea to shining sea. This has long been the ambition, but the reason the annexation happens at this precise moment, that goes back to a really particular event, what some call a justified killing and others call a massacre. The Whitmans were white missionaries living near one of these tribes, the Cayuse. And after the Whitmans die, life for Native Americans in this region is never the same.

[Bobby Connor]

92% of our homeland. We are dispossessed of 92% of our homeland in the treaty making process. And by taking the lives of the Whitmans, we ushered that chapter in more quickly.

[Blaine Hardin]

Today, the Whitman killing or the Whitman massacre. After an initial period of relative peace, how did things go so wrong? And why did these particular deaths lead to a massive expansion of the United States?

[Bobby Connor]

Thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of years.

[Blaine Hardin]

That is how long the Cayuse have lived in the Pacific Northwest.

[Bobby Connor]

So we have been here a very long time.

[Blaine Hardin]

Bobbi Connor is director of the Tomas Licht Cultural Institute. She says the Cayuse settled right on the border of present day Washington and Oregon. This was somewhere between 16 and 20,000 years ago, before the glaciers retreated from what's now the United States.

[Bobby Connor]

We have oral histories about the people who escaped those massive glacial melt floods.

[Blaine Hardin]

There are other tribes in the area, but the Cayuse keep somewhat to themselves.

[Bobby Connor]

They were a mountain people and they were expected to be excellent in whatever they did. I think of that in the same way I think of samurai. In their insular, rigorous, demanding culture, the.

[Blaine Hardin]

Cayuse are probably most famous as skilled horsemen. Horses aren't native to the Americas, but once they arrive, the Cayuse master riding and breeding and soon own some of the fastest horses in the American West.

[Bobby Connor]

They were fierce on horseback, they were fierce on foot, and when they were hospitable, they had a fierce sense of hospitality. When they ask you to sit down and eat, sit down and eat because they wanted to be fully in command of taking care of you.

[Blaine Hardin]

At first. That hospitality extends to Christian missionaries who begin arriving in Cayuse lands in the mid-1830s. They're riding the winds of the Second Great Awakening, a religious revival that inspires thousands of Americans in the early 19th century.

[Sally Helm]

Around 1790, only about 1 in 10Americans went to church regularly.

[Blaine Hardin]

Blaine Hardin, author of the book Murder at the mission.

[Sally Helm]

After the Second Great Awakening. By 1835, about 8 in 10Americans went to church regularly. The American population had been swept by evangelical Protestantism.

[Blaine Hardin]

These missionaries aren't the first white people that the Cayuse have encountered. They trade regularly with the Hudson's Bay Company. Those horses they breed are quite valuable, and the Cayuse are happy to exchange them for Western tools that can make their tribe more powerful.

[Sally Helm]

The Cayuse never numbered more than 800 people, but they were particularly good at adopting Western technology. They had rifles, they had steel knives, so they punched well above their weight.

[Blaine Hardin]

So when the Cayuse hear about Christianity, they first associate it with these other aspects of white culture and life, things like steel or horses.

[Sally Helm]

When they heard that the Americans had a spiritual toolkit, a kind of Western religious technology that they equated with horses and knives and rifles, they thought, well, we want some of that because there are white people moving around and things are changing. We need to get the spiritual power.

[Blaine Hardin]

According to Hardin, the Cayuse and other tribes in the region, they express some openness towards Christianity as a supplement to their own religion. They have no intention of abandoning their own spiritual traditions. That distinction gets a little lost in translation. And when white missionaries hear stories about any openness to Christianity, they really run with it.

[Sally Helm]

They thought, well, you know, we want to convert people. And now it looks like these native people want to be converted themselves. They're hungry for Christ.

[Blaine Hardin]

One of these missionaries is Marcus Whitman. He was born in upstate New York in a place that became known as the Burned Over District because the religious fervor of the Second Great Awakening burned right through it. As a young person, he would have seen these traveling revivals where sermons and prayer circles and group singing could last all day and into the night. As a teenager, Whitman experienced a religious awakening. He wanted to become a minister, but his family convinced him that medicine was more practical. Fast forward. He's 32, a practicing doctor, when he attends a lecture by a minister who tells this story that has taken hold that there are tribes out west who want to be converted. And Marcus Whitman, he finds himself filled with missionary zeal. This lecturing minister says he needs help spreading the gospel, and Marcus wants to do it. There's just one problem with convincing the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to send him West. He's single.

[Sally Helm]

They wanted him to be married because she would help him and she would also keep him from fraternizing with Indian women, which was important in their view.

[Blaine Hardin]

Luckily, just a few days after Whitman raises his hand to go West. That minister delivers another lecture and who should hear it but Narcissa Prentice, an unmarried woman who is also inspired to go west. She just needs a husband and the match is made.

[Sally Helm]

He proposed, she accepted. They did their marital business in about a day. And the day after they were married, they left for the West.

[Blaine Hardin]

They're not alone. They're traveling with another married couple, Henry and Eliza Spaulding, which is a little awkward because seven years earlier, Henry Spaulding had proposed to Narciso Whitman. She rejected him. So this months long journey on what will become known as the Oregon Trail, it has its tense moments.

[Sally Helm]

Narcissa later wrote to her father, saying, we never should have traveled west with this guy. He harbors all these ill feelings and jealousies towards me and Marcus.

[Blaine Hardin]

The missionaries do finally make it to their destination in the fall of 1836. At that point, the two couples really had had enough of each other.

[Sally Helm]

Henry Spaulding was so annoying and precipitated so many arguments that they decided they had to live a long ways away from each other.

[Blaine Hardin]

The Spauldings settle next to the Nez Perce tribe and The Whitmans go 120 miles away near a small Cayuse village. This land belongs to the Cayuse. It is not part of the United States. It's not even a territory yet. When the Whitmans first arrive, the Cayuse are away on their annual fall hunt. And when the tribe returns, they embrace the newcomers with that legendary Cayuse hospitality. And Marcus Whitman, remember, is a doctor. He connects with the Cayuse early on by healing some of the tribe's members. But he is also warned by some nearby traders that this could be dangerous.

[Bobby Connor]

If you choose a mission among the Cayuse, you must know this. They will kill you if you are an unsuccessful medicine man.

[Blaine Hardin]

Bobby Conner says Whitman is considered a teewot, a supernatural healer. Narcissa Whitman wrote at the time, it has been and still is the case with them. When one dies in your care, they will hold you responsible for his life and you are in great danger of being killed.

[Bobby Connor]

It was a contract. When a patient dies, there can be a malpractice suit. Well, this is the cost of surgery gone wrong. It's a malpractice execution.

[Blaine Hardin]

Whitman knows this and knows it's a risk. But nevertheless, he treats a case of pneumonia in the tribe early on and luckily he's successful. So relations remain strong, especially after the birth of the Whitman's daughter, Alice.

[Sally Helm]

She was a precocious little girl who was much welcomed by the Cayuse.

[Blaine Hardin]

The tribe's headman Tilikayt visits the baby shortly after her birth and designates her a Cayuse Timai or Cayuse girl since she had been born on their land.

[Sally Helm]

There was a general feeling that the birth of this daughter, who was the first white baby born in the region, that this was a good omen.

[Blaine Hardin]

The Whitmans feel that their mission is going well.

[Sally Helm]

I thought, you know, this is going to be easy. These people are interested and they also have some knowledge of what we're trying to do. The Cayuse had had some introduction to Christian practices. They knew how to pray, they knew how to sing, and they were willing to sit and listen to a sermon.

[Blaine Hardin]

Til Lakaykt and the other tribe members also seem willing to learn farming. And that's important to Marcus mission. He wants them to abandon their nomadic hunter gatherer lifestyle so that they can stay in one place year round and go to church. More missionaries arrive and there are some squabbles, but relations are so far basically good. Alice, now 2 years old, is even picking up the local language. But then tragedy strikes. June 23, 1839. Marcus and Narcissa are busy reading and their daughter Alice goes down to the river to fill two cups of water. Somehow she falls in and drowns.

[Sally Helm]

Narcissa really never recovered from the heartbreak of that drowning. She basically turned away from her missionary vocation and really did not have a whole lot to do with the Cayuse.

[Blaine Hardin]

Relations with the Cayuse go downhill.

[Sally Helm]

Marcus was probably a better farmer than he was a doctor or missionary. And they watched as he prospered, as his crops grew. And so they said, why don't you start paying us some rent?

[Blaine Hardin]

The Whitmans refuse. The Cayuse are angry. At one point the headman Tilakite tugs on Marcus Whitman's ears, apparently to indicate that on this topic he should be a better listener. Wittmann doesn't relent, so Tillekayt throws Whitman's hat to the ground.

[Sally Helm]

The leaders of the Cayuse tribe told them to either pay rent or to leave and then ordered them to leave. But the Whitmans refused to leave.

[Blaine Hardin]

Underneath it all, the Whitmans and the other missionaries are pretty contemptuous of the Cayuse.

[Sally Helm]

They utterly looked down on the Cayuses religious practices and also on the way the Cayuse lived.

[Blaine Hardin]

The Cayuse may have been willing to sit in church or even recite some prayers, but the Whitmans basically don't convert any of them. The mission is failing and soon Marcus gets a letter from the missionary board. You've been fired. You're coming home. But Marcus, he's not taking this lying down. He travels six months back to headquarters.

[Sally Helm]

In Boston, and he did persuade the board to change its mind.

[Blaine Hardin]

Whitman has the mandate he needs now. He'll come back to the Cayuse with renewed purpose. And he's not alone.

[Sally Helm]

He returned on the largest wagon train up to that point over the Oregon Trail.

[Blaine Hardin]

Marcus Whitman returns to Cayuse lands along with a flood of other white settlers.

[Sally Helm]

There were hundreds of them, and then there were thousands of them.

[Blaine Hardin]

History this Week is now in its sixth season. Kind of crazy and we love bringing you these stories. All of our work is supported by the ads you hear on the show. But if you don't want to hear those ads, we're now introducing history this week plus available exclusively on Apple Podcasts for just $2.99 per month. You'll get all of our new episodes without any of the ads, and we'll be adding ad free versions of our older episodes too. So subscribe now and get your first week free History this Week plus exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Summer's here and Nordstrom has everything you need for your best dress season ever. From beach days and weddings to weekend getaways in your everyday wardrobe. Discover stylish options under $100 from tons of your favorite brands like Mango Skims, Princess Polly and Madewell. It's easy too, with free shipping and free returns in store order, pickup and more. Shop today in stores [e-mail] or download the Nordstrom app. Sometimes historic events suck, but what shouldn't suck is learning about history. I do that through storytelling. History that Doesn't Suck is a chart topping history telling podcast chronicling the epic story of America decade by decade. Right now I'm digging into the history of incredible infrastructure projects of the 1930s, including the Hoover Dam, the Empire State.

[Sally Helm]

Building, the Golden Gate Bridge and more.

[Blaine Hardin]

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[Sally Helm]

A shock, an absolute shock to the Cayuse.

[Blaine Hardin]

The first white people to head out to Cayuse lands were missionaries like the Whitmans, and there were just a handful of them. But these new settlers are coming in much greater numbers, and they're not missionaries. Many of them are fueled by the fervor of manifestation, destiny. They want to take the continent for America. Marcus Whitman, he started out with a different fervor, a fervor for spreading the Gospels. But over his seven years in the west, he has transformed. It's about manifest Destiny for him now, too.

[Bobby Connor]

Whitman wanted this to be American. He said, we need to bring these Americans, Protestants to the west so that this will be an extension of the United States.

[Blaine Hardin]

Whitman writes at the time, I have no doubt our greatest work is to be to aid the white settlement of this country.

[Sally Helm]

They're going to take this land over. And as important, the Cayuse began to perceive that he was more of a empresario of white settlement than he was a Christian minister to their needs.

[Blaine Hardin]

Whitman's tone towards the Cayuse becomes much more antagonizing.

[Sally Helm]

They wanted the Cayuse to renounce their nomadic ways, to dress like white people and to act like white people.

[Bobby Connor]

They wanted us to sit still year round, not travel our seasonal cycles on horseback to gather our foods. They weren't interested in our way of life. They were interested in teaching us theirs.

[Blaine Hardin]

At one point, Marcus Whitman is upset about some wolves who are ruining his crops and killing his livestock. He plants some meat laced with poison to kill them.

[Bobby Connor]

Was hanging up and Indian people ate it and got sick.

[Blaine Hardin]

Those who were poisoned nearly died, but, you know, it was an accident. In another incident, though, one of the missionaries decides to teach the Cayuse a lesson. The mission had as part of its crops a patch of melons.

[Bobby Connor]

They wanted to teach us about personal property and they put an emetic in the watermelons to teach us not to take them without permission. And people got sick.

[Sally Helm]

It just became clear to the Cayuse that this was a huge mistake, having these missionaries.

[Blaine Hardin]

1847 is the largest year of migration along the Oregon Trail yet, and those white settlers bring measles. The Cayuse and other tribes have no immunity. The disease rips through the population.

[Bobby Connor]

In one village, the story is that there's no one adult left to bury the Dead, we can't even have a burial ceremony because there's no one to conduct it.

[Sally Helm]

So this epidemic I and the enormously terrifying death toll sort of combined with the long standing resentment of the Whitmans on the part of the Cayuse to create really a lot of anger and rage. And then a conspiracy theory began to float around in Cayuse country that said that the Whitmans were planning to poison the Cayuse and take their land.

[Bobby Connor]

It was not hard to believe.

[Blaine Hardin]

After all, Whitman and the missionaries had used poison before, poison that had made the Cayuse sick. And now the Cayuse are dying in droves of this new disease. Now Marcus Wittmann, remember, is a doctor. And during the epidemic he does try to help, but the results do not look good.

[Bobby Connor]

When he, as a physician would minister aid to white people, most of them lived. When he tried to doctor our Indian children and Indian adults, most of them died.

[Sally Helm]

His technique for helping to mitigate the symptoms of the disease was to bleed people and sometimes roll them in the snow. This of course, did not help people recover from the measles. And so Whitman, by the measure of the Cayuse tradition, was a failed medicine man and he deserved to be killed.

[Blaine Hardin]

For the Cayuse, November 29, 1847 is a particularly dark moment of this measles epidemic.

[Bobby Connor]

They have buried nine people in about a 24 hour period. They buried three children. That morning.

[Blaine Hardin]

A small group of Cayuse approach the Whitman home asking for medicine. They enter the kitchen, one of them drives a hatchet into Whitman's head for good measure. They shoot him dead.

[Sally Helm]

And then they all went outside. And a general bloodletting in began. Eleven white men were killed. That's including Marcus Whitman. The Cayuse did not kill women or children. The only woman they killed was Narcissa. Eleven white men had Dr. Whitman and and Narcissa were all buried in a shallow mass grave.

[Blaine Hardin]

It's a brutal attack and in the immediate aftermath there's outrage on both sides. The Cayuse largely distanced themselves from the violence. The men responsible took 47 hostages who fall under the care of other tribal members. And a large group of Cayuse decide, okay, this kind of thing can't continue.

[Bobby Connor]

There are people who are engaged who write a letter to the Oregon Provisional Government to have a peace council set up so that we can prevent further bloodshed.

[Blaine Hardin]

The peace council negotiates the hostages release, but that doesn't sate the anger of the white settlers.

[Sally Helm]

They soon raise a militia to exact vengeance on the Cayuse and also to take their land.

[Bobby Connor]

It becomes known as the Cayuse War, but that would presume armed combatants against armed combatants. It was volunteer militia against villages. So it's not a war, it's an attack on our people.

[Blaine Hardin]

In one instance, Nez Perce tribe members try to stop some militiamen from seeing stealing their cattle. The militiamen simply kill them.

[Bobby Connor]

People just keep dying. Any chance to shoot an Indian, they do.

[Blaine Hardin]

There's now a provisional government in Oregon Territory, and they put pressure on the Cayuse leadership. They want someone to pay for the women's deaths. Soon, five Cayuse men go to the officials to explain what happened, how it.

[Bobby Connor]

Happened, why it started that the killing of Whitman is an accepted law in our culture because he was a medicine man and his medicine didn't work. It poisoned our people.

[Blaine Hardin]

The men are arrested. One of them is Tilakite, the Cayuse headman who was one of the first to embrace the Whitmans. But now this attack has set a chain of events in motion that will be devastating for the Cayuse as he's being transported to stand trial. Tilakaikt reportedly says, just as your Christ.

[Sally Helm]

Died for the sins of all people, so do we sacrifice ourselves for the other Cayuse people.

[Blaine Hardin]

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[Bobby Connor]

Tilakaikt, Itziaja, Salakis, Koyoma, Samkin, Tamahas and Locomis.

[Blaine Hardin]

Those men become known as the Cayuse 5. Their trial in Oregon City is a spectacle. There's little doubt that they'll be found guilty, though their lawyers do put up a solid defense.

[Sally Helm]

They said that the killing occurred on Cayuse land, which was not part of the United States. With no rule of law other than the traditional law of the Cayuse. And the traditional law of the Cayuse is justified. The killing of medicine men. They had done it many times. Marcus Whitman was aware of this. The judge considered that and just threw it out.

[Blaine Hardin]

This could have been for a number of reasons. For one thing, it wasn't just Marcus Whitman who was killed. It was also his wife and 10 other men. But perhaps even more importantly, the idea that the Cayuse control their land and determine its laws. These white settlers aren't having it. The Cayuse 5 are found guilty of murder and publicly hanged.

[Bobby Connor]

To choke them to death means that their spirit will be held in their body and it won't be allowed to pass to the other land, to the other side, across the veil, across the river, to where our ancestors are. So the worst way to kill them is how they kill them by hanging.

[Blaine Hardin]

Meanwhile, news of the massacre and the ensuing violence has gotten back to the federal government.

[Sally Helm]

The settlers in Oregon sent a delegation back to Washington. And this delegation persuaded President Polk to turn the Oregon country, which was sort of this amorphous mass, it had no particular status, into an official territory of the United States.

[Blaine Hardin]

Circumstances for the Native Americans and settlers in Oregon change quickly.

[Sally Helm]

Polk dispatched the U.S. calvary, federal judges and a territorial governor to begin the process of turning the Oregon country into the states of Oregon, Washington and Idaho.

[Blaine Hardin]

Without the Whitman's deaths, Blaine Hardin says, who knows when the US Would have incorporated this region into the country.

[Sally Helm]

What Whitman and his wife really did, more than anything else, the result of their missionary endeavors, is they got themselves killed. And their death was a trigger for motivating the President of the United States and the Congress to turn the Oregon country into a legal part of the United States. And it created a continental nation.

[Blaine Hardin]

The Oregon Territory is kind of the last puzzle piece. If you look at a map, this gives America control over the 48 contiguous states it retains today. Over the coming years, tens of thousands of settlers will cross the Oregon trail in search of land and wealth. And Marcus Whitman will reach the status of a martyr, largely due to the efforts of one Henry Spaulding, the annoying missionary who had once proposed to Narcissa Whitman. Spaulding's life at this point is in disarray. He's unemployed, bitter and desperate for relevance and power. And in the years after the Whitman killings, he spreads a story that is just a lie.

[Sally Helm]

Spalding spun the story that the missionaries were killed because they had thwarted this Indian Catholic British plot.

[Blaine Hardin]

Right. In Spaulding's story of Whitman's death, the British are involved, the Catholics. There's a lot of anti Catholic sentiment at the time in the United States. Spalding is essentially making up a conspiracy theory, one that has himself and his wife and the Whitmans as star heroic characters. In his version, Whitman saves Oregon from being stolen by the Brits. Then tragically, he's killed by the Cayuse.

[Sally Helm]

He did not explain about the measles epidemic or about the years of bad blood between the Whitmans and the Cayuse, or about the fear of these people, of thousands of white people taking their land. He turned it around and made it into a almost Christ like event where Whitman gave his blood so that Oregon, Washington and Idaho could become part of the United States.

[Blaine Hardin]

This story appears in newspapers across the country. It's a perfect anecdote to reinforce all, all of the ideas around. Manifest Destiny. Spalding goes to Washington and has Congress introduce his version of events into the record.

[Sally Helm]

It became the really the essence of every history book on the Pacific Northwest.

[Blaine Hardin]

Blane Hardin himself grew up in the Pacific Northwest, so he definitely heard of Marcus Whitman the martyr. In elementary school, his class performed the story in a play. Not the death part that was too grisly, but the story of Whitman, the hero who saved the Pacific Northwest from the British and as a missionary who helped the Cayuse learn to read and to grind wheat for bread. The real story, as you just heard, is a lot more complicated than that.

[Sally Helm]

I mean, this killing was a terrible thing. There's no way around it was brutal, unjustified, but it was also understandable.

[Blaine Hardin]

This time still echoes loudly in tribal memory.

[Bobby Connor]

It's a widespread sense of injustice in our community. It's a widespread sense of tragedy.

[Blaine Hardin]

A tragedy in which many people, not just the Whitmans, lost their lives. Thanks for listening to History this week, a Back Pocket Studios production in partnership with the History Channel. To stay updated on all things history this week, sign [e-mail] and if you have any thoughts or questions, send us an [e-mail] Special thanks to our guests Bobby Connor, director of the Tomaslicht Cultural Institute, and Blaine Hardin, former correspondent for the Washington Post and author of Murder at the A Frontier Killing, Its Legacy of Lies, and the Taking of the American West. We also consulted another great book, putting this episode together, Unsettled the Whitman Massacre and Its Shifting Legacy in the American west by Cassandra Tate. This episode was produced and sound designed by Ben Dickstein. It was also produced by me, Sally Helm for Back Pocket Studios. Our executive producer is Ben Dickstein from the History Channel. Our executive producers are Eli Lehrer and Liv Fiddler. Don't forget to follow rate and review History this week, wherever you get your podcasts, and we'll see you next week.