Marcus Whitman - Massacre

Massacre

The Cayuse resented the encroachment of European Americans. More significantly, the influx of white settlers in the territory brought new infectious diseases to the Indian tribes, including a severe epidemic of measles in 1847. The Native Americans lack of immunity to Eurasian diseases resulted in high death rates, with children dying in striking numbers. The Whitmans cared for both Cayuse and white settlers, but half of the Cayuse died and nearly all their children. Seeing that more whites survived, the Cayuse blamed the Whitmans for the devastating deaths among their people.

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. The events became known among European-American 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 European-American encroachment, triggered a continuing conflict between the occupying white settlers and the Cayuse that became known as the Cayuse War. They were so reduced in number that survivors joined the Nez Percé tribe.

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. But, the Rev. Henry H. 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. It was finally discredited in 1901 by Yale University historian Edward Gaylord Brown."