Mike and Roxanne travel east

Whitman Mission Nov 6, 2007

Nov 6 53981 8:00

Got fuel again this morning. $3.64 a gallon and it was going up another 8 cents in just 20 minutes.

Since we hit Utah we have no more clear skies, it is constantly hazy. I miss the bright blue skies we have had the rest of the trip. The big cities had smog but as soon as you left them the air cleared. Not now, there is a layer over everything for as far as you can see.

We have left Idaho and are in eastern Oregon. The skies have finally cleared and we have blue skies again. Yeah!

1:00 We are at the Four Seasons RV Resort in Walla Walla, Washington. We have full hookups for $25.00. We get set up and then we are off to the Whitman Mission National Historic Site.

In 1833 a mostly fictional story in a New York Methodist publication stirred interest in eastern missionaries. The story told of the visit to St. Louis of western Indians seeking the white man's "Book of Heaven."

In 1835 the American Board of Foreign Missions, sent Dr. Marcus Whitman and Rev. Samuel Parker to the Oregon country to select mission sites. On the way they talked to fur traders and Indians and decided the prospects were good. Parker continued on to Oregon and Whitman returned to east to secure more workers.

Whitman headed west again in 1836 along with his new wife Narcissa and Eliza and William Gray. Narcissa and Eliza were the first white women to cross the country overland and the wagon, soon reduced to a two-wheeled cart was the first vehicle to travel as far west as fort Boise.

Whitman returned east once more to lead the Great Migration of 1843 as a guide.

Whitman's worked among the Cayuse Indians in Washington for 11 years serving as doctor, teacher, and minister. In 1847 an Indian uprising occurred at the mission on Nov. 29. The Indians had begun to mistrust Whitman as Indians began dying of smallpox and the white man's medicine only seemed to work on the white man not the Indians. The Cayuse believed they were being poisoned to make way for the new settlers.

On the day of the massacre Whitman, his wife and eleven others were killed and 50, mostly women and children were taken captive. They were ransomed a month later by Peter Skene Ogden of the Hudson's Bay Company.

In 1848 new of the tragedy and petitions from the settlers to Congress reached Washington and the Oregon Territory was created in August of that year.