Indian Missions

Sunday, October 12, we stopped at the Nez Perce Historical Park Headquarters in Spalding, Idaho.  It’s one of several stops on our way between Glacier NP and Redwood NP, none of which we would plan a trip around but are on the way.  The others are the Whitman Mission in Walla Walla, Washington, the John Day Fossil Beds in Oregon and Crater Lake in Oregon.  Tonight, Monday, we’re at a State Park at Mount Vernon, Oregon near the fossil beds.  We went to the Whitman Mission this morning.

I thought some of these stops wouldn’t be very interesting and wondered why we’re even bothering with them.  I’ve been wrong about two out of two of these stops so far.

The Nez Perce site is at the Lapwai Mission.  It was the Indians seasonal home and trading post.  I said seasonal because they traditionally moved with their food sources.  Henry Spalding set up his mission there to Christianize the Nez Perce.  He thought that this could not succeed unless they were able to stay in one place and not move with their hunting and gathering lifestyle so he tried to make them farmers with limited success.  This ultimately resulted in a division within the tribe with some becoming farmers and Christians and the majority rejecting both.  I asked and was told that this division within the tribe was the same division between those that signed the 1863 treaty and those that did not resulting in the battle at Big Hole between the non-treaty Nez Perce and the army.

A similar story exists at the Whitman Mission in Walla Walla.  Marcus Whitman and his wife Clarissa set up the mission there (around 1840 I think) to teach Christianity to the Cayuse Indians.  He also tried to make them farmers and built a gristmill, planted an orchard and set up a blacksmith shop.  This mission is important in American history because it also was an immigrant stopover on the Oregon Trail. Things appeared to go well to a point at the mission.

But the sheer number of immigrants coming and settling in the territory threatened the Cayuse hunting and gathering lifestyle and tensions began to increase.  In 1847 a measles epidemic brought in by immigrants killed many Cayuse, especially children, and the Indians thought they were being poisoned.  An uprising ensued and the Whitmans were killed in their home.

The Whitmans are buried there and there is a great monument to them.  The Visitor Center was closed due to Columbus Day so we couldn’t find out how the monument came to be built.  We happened to notice at Nez Perce cemetery that there is a large and elaborate headstone there for that missionary, Henry Spalding and the town is even named for him.

Covered Wagon on the Oregon Trail at Whitman Mission

Grounds at the Whitman Mission

Whitman Monument