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Narcissa Whitman and her husband, Marcus, went to Oregon as missionaries in 1836, accompanied by the Reverend Henry Spalding and his wife, Eliza. It was, as Narcissa wrote, “an unheard of journey for females.” Narcissa Whitman kept a diary during the long trip from New York and continued to write about her rigorous and amazing life at the Protestant mission near present-day Walla Walla, Washington. Her words convey her complex humanity and devotion to the Christian conversion and welfare of the Indians. Clifford Drury sketches in the circumstances that, for the Whitmans, resulted in tragedy. Eliza Spalding, equally devout and also artistic, relates her experiences in a pioneering venture. Drury also includes the diary of Mary Augusta Dix Gray and a biographical sketch of Sarah Gilbert White Smith, later arrivals at the Whitman mission.
Narcissa Whitman was a missionary in Oregon Country (present-day near Walla Walla, Washington), becoming one of the first white women west of the Rockies. However, she is best known for starting the Whitman Mission along the Oregon Trail, and for being massacred along with several others during the Whitman Massacre of 1847.
Focuses on events from youth of a missionary who was the first white woman to cross the Rocky Mountains.
Papers of the New York physician Marcus Whitman and his wife Narcissa (Prentiss) Whitman. Includes: card of admission for medical lectures, 1825; Marcus Whitman's fragmentary diary notes, May-July, 1835, on journey to Rocky Mountains with Samuel Parker; letters to his family on journey to Oregon, 1836 and 1843, and from Waiitlapu, 1844; Narcissa Whitman's letters to members of her own and her husband's family, 1836, and copy of her diary en route to the Columbia River; letter, Oct., 1846 (with addition, May 3, 1847) to Mrs. Gilbert, mother of Newton Gilbert.