Although some pine timber had been handsawed in the Blue Mountains and dragged to the mission by horses, Whitman felt a dire need for a waterpowered sawmill. Among other things, he wanted to replace his leaky, earthen roofs with boards. He picked a spot on a stream in the foothills about 20 miles from the station and, by 1846, had the mill ready for operation. In 1847 a small cabin was built at the sawmill to house two emigrant families whom Whitman hired that autumn for a season of sawing. Physically, Waiilatpu was fast becoming the most substantial and comfortable of all the stations. From time to time, the other missionaries were just a shade envious of the Whitmans.
As the missionaries carried their work into the 1840’s, they continued their efforts among the Indians. Whitman had his greatest success in teaching them the rudiments of agriculture. In 1843 he wrote that about 50 Indians had started farms, each cultivating from a quarter of an acre to three or four. The Cayuse also became interested in acquiring cattle, and by 1845 nearly all possessed the beginnings of a herd.
Much slower progress was made in education and religious instruction. To the Whitmans’ disappointment, the Cayuse became less and less interested in learning the principles of Christianity. The demands made of them were too great for their simple and seminomadic way of life. Then, too, the Whitmans found they had less and less time to devote to Indian affairs. In addition to the multitude of details involved in the everyday job of acquiring food and shelter, the arrival of the annual emigrant trains from the United States demanded much time and energy from the Whitmans. Waiilatpu became not only an Indian mission but also an important station on the Oregon Trail.
At Lapwai, Spalding was having greater success among the Nez Percé and was able to convert several important Indian leaders. In 1839 he obtained a printing press from the American Board mission in Hawaii and printed parts of the Bible in the Nez Percé language. Both he and Asa Smith had difficulty in devising a workable alphabet. But on the second attempt, they contrived one that captured the sounds of the Nez Percé tongue. At Tshimakain and Kamiah the work of teaching and converting Indians proved a laborious and slow task. Although they recognized the difficulties facing them, the missionaries clung tenaciously to the idea of preparing the Indians for the day when white settlers would pour into the fertile lands of the Far West.
Meanwhile, the signs of white migration were becoming more plentiful at Waiilatpu, situated as it was on the main route of travel from the East. One of the ways in which this movement was making itself apparent was in the increasing number of white children who were to be seen at Whitman’s station.
The Mission Children
On her 29th birthday, March 14, 1837, Narcissa Whitman gave birth to her only child, a baby girl who was named Alice Clarissa after her two grandmothers. Alice was the first child born of United States citizens in the Pacific Northwest. Her arrival was a great joy not only to her parents but to the Cayuse as well. The Indians had been aware of the baby’s coming, and after her birth all the chiefs and elders of the tribe visited the house to see the temi or “Cayuse girl,” as they promptly named her because she was born on their lands.
That autumn the Whitmans took 8-month-old Alice Clarissa on a visit to the Spaldings at Lapwai. It was time for Eliza Spalding’s first confinement, and Dr. Whitman had come to officiate. On November 15, the baby arrived. The Spaldings named their daughter Eliza, after her mother. Back home again, little Alice Clarissa provided her parents with untold happiness. But that happiness was to be tragically short lived. On a fine Sunday afternoon, June 23, 1839, Alice Clarissa Whitman met death by drowning. Unattended for a few minutes, she had wandered down to the steep bank of the nearby Walla Walla River and had fallen in. Though her body was found but a short time later, all attempts to revive her failed. Her heartbroken parents tried to console themselves with the thought that her demise was the will of God. Yet their loneliness was immense. Before long, however, the Whitmans once again had children in their home to care for and to raise.
The first of these was Helen Mar, the half-breed daughter of the famous mountain man, Joe Meek. Helen Mar’s Nez Percé mother had deserted Meek, and when he journeyed to Waiilatpu in 1840, he persuaded Mrs. Whitman to accept the care of the child. The next year, another little part-Indian girl was added to the Whitman household when another famous mountain man, Jim Bridger, sent his 6-year-old Mary Ann to the Whitmans.
In 1842 two Indian women brought a “miserable-looking child, a boy between three and four years old,” to Narcissa and asked her to take him in. This boy was also half-Indian; his Spanish father had once been an employee of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Narcissa tried to decline the responsibility, but her pity was too great. Taking the child, she named him after an old friend back home, David Malin. Then, when Marcus returned to Oregon in 1843 from his trip East, he brought with him his 13-year-old nephew, Perrin Whitman. Thus the Whitmans acquired their fourth youngster.