(September 4, 1802–November 29, 1847), was an American pioneer, doctor and missionary to the Indians in the Pacific Northwest. Dr. Marcus Whitman had practiced medicine for eight years in Rushville, New York, and in Canada before being appointed, in 1836, as a missionary-physician to Oregon, with his wife Narcissa, by the American Board of Foreign Missions. They set up missions at Wailatpu near Walla Walla, Washington, and at Laowai.
In 1842–43, responding to a potential threat of closure, Dr. Marcus Whitman made a 4,000–mile trek east to persuade the Mission Board not to disband the mission. He also endeavored to interest the Government in settling the Oregon country and, in 1843, saw the first large wagon train head west on the Oregon Trail.
On July 3, 1923, just one month before his death, President Warren G. Harding delivered a speech in Meacham, Oregon, in remembrance of the Oregon Trail and the courageous missionaries to the Oregon and Washington territories. He unveiled a monument at Immigration Springs, and gave special recognition to the medical missionary Dr. Marcus Whitman, who, along with his wife, Narcissa, journeyed in 1836 to the Oregon territory. Dr. Marcus Whitman was also honored by the United States government with a statue in the U.S. Capital Hall of Statuary for his key role in populating Oregon, which was vital in winning the boundary dispute with Great Britain, thereby bringing the territory under United States jurisdiction. President Warren G. Harding stated:
Of the many rooms in the White Houses, which possess the peculiar charm of association with epochal happenings, the one most fascinating to me is that which formerly comprised the Cabinet Room and the President’s Study. Through its high windows one’s gaze is drawn irresistibly to the towering granite shaft whose very grandeur, exceeded by no other moment in the world, admirably symbolizes the matchless character of George Washington. The beautifully carved mahogany bedposts are those upon which fell the eyes of Andrew Jackson when opened from the troubled slumber which even to this day occasionally falls to lot of an over-weary President. Sunk into the marble mantel piece is a bronze tablet recording the circumstance that it was in this room that Abraham Lincoln signed the great emancipation proclamation, which struck the shackles of slavery from millions of human beings.
Yet another episode of hardly less importance in the building of our mighty nation took place within these walls. Before my mind’s eye as I stood in that heroic chamber a few days ago appeared the vivid picture. I beheld seated at his desk, immaculately attired, the embodiment of dignity and courtliness, John Tyler, tenth President of the United States. Facing him, from a chair constructed for a massive frame, his powerful spirit gleaming through his cavernous eyes, was the lion-visaged Daniel Webster, Secretary of State.
The door opened and there appeared before the amazed statesmen a strange and astonishing figure. It was that of a man of medium height and sturdy build, deep chested, broad shouldered, yet lithe in movement and soft in step. He was clad in a coarse fur coat, buckskin breeches, fur leggings, and boot moccasins, looking much worse for the wear. But it was the countenance of the visitor, as he stood for an instant in the doorway, that riveted the perception of the two Chiefs of State.
It was that of a religious enthusiast, tenaciously earnest yet revealing no suggestion of fanaticism, bronzed from exposure to pitiless elements and seamed with deep lines of physical suffering, a rare combination of determination and gentleness—obviously a man of God, but no less a man among men.
Such was Marcus Whitman, the missionary hero of the vast, unsettled, unexplored Oregon country, who had come out of the West to plead that the state should acquire for civilization the empire that the churches were gaining for Christianity.
Many of the exploits of America’s resolute sons are recounted in prose and verse. How often in our youth, and even in later years, have we been thrilled by the story of how “on through the night rode Paul Revere, through every Middlesex village and farm” to call the Minute Men to embattle at Lexington and fire “the shot heard ’round the world!” How many times we have shuddered at the impending fate of the Shenandoah Valley with “Sheridan twenty miles away!” I loved the martial notes of those stirring verses as a boy. I still love them.
But, when I stood in that historic room in the White House and my imagination depicted the simple scene, I could not but feel that the magnificence of Marcus Whitman’s glorious deed has yet to find adequate recognition in any form. Here was a man who, with a single companion, in the dead of winter [1842], struggled through pathless drifts and blinding storms, four thousand miles, with the sole aim to serve his country and his God. Eighty years and eight months ago he was pushing grimly and painfully through this very pass on his way from Walla Walla to Fort Hall, thence, abandoning the established northern route as impassable, off to the South through unknown, untrodden lands, past the Great Salt Lake, to Santa Fe, then hurriedly on to St. Louis and finally, after a few days, again on the home-stretch to his destination, taking as many months as it now takes days to go from Walla Walla to Washington.
It was more than a desperate and perilous trip that Marcus Whitman undertook. It was a race against time. Public opinion was rapidly crystallizing into a judgment that the Oregon country was not worth claiming, much less worth fighting for; that, even though it could be acquired against the insistence of Great Britain, it would prove to be a liability rather than an asset.
It is with sheer amazement that we now read the declarations of leading men of that period. So good an American, so sturdy a frontiersman, so willing a fighter, as General Jackson, shook his head ominously in fear lest the national domain should get too far outspread, and warned the country that its safety “lay in a compact government.” Senator McDuffie, of South Carolina, declared he “would not give a pinch of snuff for the whole territory,” and expressed the wish that the Rocky Mountains were “an impassable barrier.” Senator Dayton, of New Jersey, said that, with very limited exceptions, “the whole country was as irreclaimable and barren a waste as the Sahara desert,” and that malaria had carried away most of its native population. Even so far-seeing and staunch an advocate of western interests as Thomas Benton protested that the ridge of the Rockies should be made our western boundary, and avowed that “on the highest peak the statue of the fabled god, Terminus, should be erected, never to be thrown down.”
Webster, although not definitely antagonistic, was uninterested and lukewarm. Years before he had pronounced Oregon “a barren, worthless country, fit only for wild beasts and wild men,” and he was not one who changed opinions readily. But neither was Whitman one easily dismayed. Encouraged by the manifest friendliness of President Tyler, he portrayed with vivid eloquence the salubrity of the climate, the fertility of the soil, the magnitude of the forests, the evidences of ore in the mountains, and the splendor of the wide valleys drained by the great rivers. And he did not hesitate to speak plainly, as one who knew, even like the prophet Daniel.
“Mr. Secretary,” he declared, “you would better give all New England for the cod and mackerel fisheries of Newfoundland than to barter away Oregon.”
Then turning to the President, he added quietly but beseechingly:
“All I ask is that you will not barter away Oregon or allow English interference until I can lead a band of stalwart American settlers across the plains. For this I shall try to do!”
The manly appeal was irresistible. He sought only for the privilege of proving his faith. The just and considerate Tyler could not refuse.
“Doctor Whitman,” he rejoined sympathetically, “your long ride and frozen limbs testify to your courage and your patriotism. Your credentials establish your character. Your request is granted!”
Whitman’s strategy was true statesmanship. Substantial occupation would make good the claim of the United States, and that was what he had initiated during his few days in St. Louis. A few months later [1843] he had completed an organization of eager souls, and led the first movement by wagon train across plains and mountains along this unblazed trail.
What a sight that caravan must have appeared to the roaming savages! And what an experience for the intrepid pioneers!
More that two hundred wagons, bearing well-nigh a thousand emigrants, made up the party. They traveled by substantially the same route that Whitman had taken when he first went out to Oregon; from a rendezvous near what is now Kansas City they moved due northwest across northeast Kansas and southeast Nebraska to the Platte River; followed the Platte to the middle of what is now Wyoming, thence crossing the mountains by way of the Sweetwater Valley and the South Platte; and from Fort Hall, following the well-known route, roughly paralleling the Snake River, into Oregon. The difficulties of the trip, involving beside the two hundred wagons, the care of women and children, and of considerable herds of live stock, were such that its successful accomplishment seems almost miraculous.
But stern determination triumphed and the result was conclusive. Americans had settled the country. The country belonged to them because they had taken it; and in the end the boundary settlement was made on the line of the forty-ninth parallel, your great Northwest was saved, and a veritable Empire was merged in the young Republic.
Never in the history of the world has there been a finer example of civilization following Christianity. The missionaries led under the banner of the cross, and the settlers moved close behind under the star-spangled symbol of the nation.
Among all the records of the evangelizing efforts as the forerunner of human advancement, there is none so impressive as this of the early Oregon mission and its marvelous consequences.
To the men and women of that early day whose first thought was to carry the gospel to the Indians—to the Lees, the Spauldings, the Grays, the Walkers, the Leslies, to Fathers DeSmet and Blanchet and DeMars, and to all the others of that glorious company who found that in serving God they were also serving their country and their fellowmen—to them we pay today our tribute; to them we owe a debt of gratitude, which we can never pay, save partially through recognition such as you and I have accorded today. …
I thank you from my heart for permitting me to participate in doing homage to those brave souls. I rejoice particularly in the opportunity afforded me of voicing my appreciation both as President of the United States and as one who honestly tries to be a Christian soldier, of the signal service of the martyred Whitman.2184