On October 3 Whitman set out on his remarkable ride across the continent in the height of winter. Accompanied by a newly arrived emigrant, Asa Lovejoy, and an Indian guide, Whitman reached Fort Hall on the upper Snake River after 15 days of travel. Persuaded to detour to the south because of rumors of Indian wars east of the Rockies, the tiny party crossed the Uintah Mountains to Fort Uintah, in Utah. The hazardous trip was made through deep snow and in bitter cold.
WHITMAN’S RIDE AND THE OREGON TRAIL
Whitman’s Ride, 1842 Oregon Trail, 1843 Later cut-offs, Oregon Trail International Boundaries St. Louis Liberty Independence {Whitman} Bent’s Fort Taos Santa Fe Fort Uncompahgre Fort Uintah {Oregon Trail} Fort Laramie South Pass Fort Bridger {Oregon Trail Cutoff} Fort Bridger Fort Hall Fort Boisie Waiilatpu Fort Walla Walla Fort Vancouver
Following the Uintah, Colorado, and Gunnison Rivers, Whitman reached Fort Uncompahgre, Colo. From there, he set out for Taos in northern New Mexico, but had to return when his guide became lost. Severe winter storms continued to harass Whitman and Lovejoy, but by mid-December they reached Taos. On the trail to Bent’s Old Fort on the Arkansas River, they learned that a group of mountain men were leaving the fort for St. Louis. Whitman pushed on ahead to catch this party before it left.
Later when Lovejoy reached the fort, he discovered that Whitman had not yet arrived. Sending word to the mountain men to wait, Lovejoy turned back and found Whitman, who in his haste had become lost. Exhausted, Lovejoy stayed at Bent’s Old Fort until summer, when he joined Whitman at Fort Laramie for the return trip to Oregon. On February 15 Whitman reached Westport, Mo. By March 9 he was in St. Louis, and about March 23 he arrived in Washington, D.C.
Even after he reached Boston, Whitman left no written record of his overland journey. Although Lovejoy did write about it in later years, his account includes only the western part of the trip. For the last half of the journey, we must rely on the accounts of those who saw Whitman as he traveled toward the American Board headquarters at Boston. On reaching civilization at St. Louis, it is probable that he gave up the saddle gladly and traveled to Washington by steamer and stagecoach.
In Washington, Whitman visited Secretary of the Treasury J. C. Spencer, an old friend. It is possible, too, that he was introduced to President John Tyler. This stopover in Washington caused many people years later to claim that Dr. Whitman had ridden East to persuade the government to save Oregon from the British, an argument not widely accepted today. Most historians agree that Whitman’s ride was to save the missions and that the trip through Washington was secondary.
The great weakness in the “save Oregon” theory was that it failed to distinguish between the reasons for the trip and the results that came of it. This theory also tended to link the causes of the journey with the results of all Whitman’s later efforts in Oregon, including assistance to the American emigrants and the development of Waiilatpu as an important way station on the Oregon Trail.
When Marcus Whitman arrived at New York City about March 25, he was interviewed by Horace Greeley, the famed editor of the Tribune. At New York the doctor boarded the Narragansett and sailed to Boston, where he arrived March 30. Despite the rough seas of the Atlantic coast, this part of the extraordinary trip must have seemed calm to Whitman after the hundreds of miles on horseback through the winter snows of the Rocky Mountains and the western prairie—a journey of hardships rarely paralleled in American history.