Book Report--Unsettled Ground

 

Marcus and Narcissa Whitman were of unquestionably heroic stock. Both came to their deep piety by way of the Second Great Awakening, and both, hearty abolitionists, shared a spiritual commitment to social action. The Whitmans were married, quite literally, by their mutual call to do mission work among the nation's indigenous, moreso than love for each other. They barely knew each other, although what was there between them grew bountifully.

Narcissa Whitman would be a feminist icon if it weren’t for the tragic way her story ends. She was, boldly, the very first white woman to cross the Great Plains. Her inspiring journey opened the Oregon Trail to women, who up until her crossing in 1846 were simply assumed not to be strong enough for the rigors required. She and Marcus tagged along with a fur company all the way out to Washington. She did it. She made it, not by staying aboard a covered wagon either but by riding (side-saddle) and often enough going off to explore this new world all by herself.

The story goes—there is ample proof—that Narcissa soured on the Cayuse people she’d come to serve, and found it more agreeable instead to deal with white folks streaming through along the Oregon Trail. Her letters make clear her increasing intolerance. Some say she became disagreeable, that she came to the point of disliking the Native people she’d come to evangelize.

Marcus, her husband, like others, took on great authority among the Cayuse. He knew white-man’s medicine and practiced it well, but factors out of his control came to determine his fate. When wagon trains arrived at Waiilatpu, Whitmans’ mission station, they left the measles behind, a disease that burned through Native communities. To the Cayuse Dr. Whitman seemed far more successful at treating white kids—who carried immunities—than Native kids, who died in horrifying numbers.

Death came mercilessly to the Whitmans. The Cayuse grew furious and eventually murdered the Whitmans in a massacre that took several others at Waiilatpu as well.

For years, history held up the Whitmans as saintly martyrs. They were. But their having been martyred meant the Cayuse were bloodthirsty savages. “The Whitman Massacre” was quickly established as foundational in the progressive history of the Pacific Northwest. Children learned the story in elementary school.

No more.

Cassandra Tate’s Unsettled Ground: The Whitman Massacre and its Shifting Legacy in the American West is a thoughtful and thorough retelling of a very sad story that’s worth telling time and time again. Tate fleshes out detail that’s extraordinary in richness. That a Christianized culture in search of heroes would find Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, despite their weaknesses, to be verifiable Western heroes is completely understandable. But today, when colonialism is seen as horrifying, the Whitmans’ story is being revisited.

What Professor Tate attempts in Unsettled Ground is a reexamination of the Whitman Massacre in light of contemporary perceptions of relationships between the dominant culture and First Nations. She points out, for instance, that the actual bloody brutality of the massacre may well be exaggerated because, often enough, the ugly realities tend to grow in successive retellings. What she's suggesting is that the murders themselves may not have been as bloody awful as we’ve come to believe.

Neither of the Whitmans, of course, were saints. Tate claims Cayuse morality held that evil behavior resulted from evil spirits having taken up residence in the mind. Both Whitmans were slain by hatchet blows to the skull. Perhaps the violence was understandable.

It takes more rigor than Cassandra Tate can muster—or anyone else, for that matter--to sympathize a massacre, to believe those warriors guilty of no crime. But Professor Tate’s in-depth study of the Whitman story does what today’s moral positioning might well expect it to accomplish: it tries, thoughtfully and extensively, to heal deep racial wounds.

A year or so ago a life-sized painting of Narcissa Whitman was defaced with red paint at Whitman College, a place with a distinguished list of alumni and a fine academic reputation, a highly reputable institution of learning named after the Whitmans. These days, attempts at addressing issues of justice often leads to toppled monuments or defaced portraits that feature men and women once upon a time considered great but today morally questionable.

Extremes on both sides fail to examine the particulars and, by choice, avoid the discomfort of paradox. How do we view Thomas Jefferson, the third President of these United States? Is he the thoughtful scholar who created much of the Declaration of Independence, or is he a master who during his adult life owned as many as 600 slaves?

I grew up in an era when the most wonderful church day of the year was the annual Mission Fest, an all-day affair that included games and singing, hamburgers, brats, and cold pop from a stock tank, as well as a presentation by a furloughed missionary with slides and stories of God’s love for strange-looking people a world away. To those of us who grew up singing “every knee shall bow,” coming to know that bringing souls to Jesus doesn’t happen all that easily or swiftly. Coming to grips with that fact can disenthrall. But then, we need the truth--difficult questions require careful examination.

In Unsettled Ground: The Whitman Massacre and its Shifting Legacy in the American West, Professor Cassandra Tate attempts—successfully, I think—to help us discover a good deal more about the the Whitmans and the Cayuses, and a story that once held a sacred place at the heart of a much broader American story.