Journey West
Shortly after their wedding, Narcissa and Marcus, along with the also recently married Henry and Eliza Spalding, headed west for the Oregon Country in March 1836 to begin their missionary activities amongst the natives. The journey was by sleigh, canal barge, wagon, river sternwheeler, horseback, and foot. The founder of Ogden, Utah, Miles Goodyear, traveled with them until Fort Hall. On September 1, 1836, they arrived at Walla Walla Fort, a Hudson's Bay Company outpost near present day Walla Walla, Washington. They then traveled on to Fort Vancouver where they were hosted by Dr. John McLoughlin before returning to the Walla Walla area to build their mission. Narcissa was one of the first white women to cross the Rocky Mountains and live in the area. She was something of a novel addition to the community for the local Native Americans, the Cayuse.
Read more about this topic: Narcissa Whitman
Famous quotes containing the words journey and/or west:
“I have had the accomplishment of something like this at heart ever since I was a boy.... So I feel tonight like the man who is lodging happily in the inn which lies half way along the journey and that in time, with a fresh impulse, we shall go the rest of the journey and sleep at the journey’s end like men with a quiet conscience.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“The American West is just arriving at the threshold of its greatness and growth. Where the West of yesterday is glamorized in our fiction, the future of the American West now is both fabulous and factual.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)