The Cayuse received their presents and seemed to think their work was over. In this they were mistaken. The hardy old pioneers of Oregon, who loved and honored Dr. and Mrs. Whitman, arose as one man, and in winter, without tents or proper equipments, moved down upon the Cayuse country. I do not intend to burthen my readers with the story of a long, desolating Indian war. It was a bloody and savage contest, where General Phil H. Sheridan was initiated into active military life and won his first honors.
The leaders in the massacre, Tilcokait, Tahamas, Ouichmarsum, Klvakamus, and Sichsalucus were arrested and hung at Oregon City, just before the author reached there. In 1850 one of the most miserable of the villains, Tarntsaky, was killed while being arrested. My room-mate in Oregon in 1850, the late Samuel Campbell of Idaho, spent the winter and spring of 1847 at the Whitman Mission, and never tired in telling of the lovely Christian character of Mrs. Whitman, of her kindness and patience to whites and Indians alike. She had retained the same glorious musical voice, and life wherever she went was filled with what Matthew Arnold would call "sweetness and light." Mr. Campbell said while he was a prisoner at Grand Ronde, old Tarntsaky one day boasted in his presence that he took the scalp from Mrs. Whitman's head, and told him of the long, golden, silky hair. He said, "Prisoner as I was, it was all I could do to keep my fingers from his throat." The many tribes around sided with the Cayuse, except the Nez Perces, and the whole land was closed to white settlers for over ten years, as the state government deemed it impossible to protect the scattered settlements.
The Result
The final result was that the tribes engaging in the war were all removed to distant reservations, and forty thousand square miles of rich territory were opened to settlement. Thus the great sacrifice resulted for the good of the people. The work of the American Board in sending missionaries to Oregon has sometimes been called "a disaster" and "failure." Was it? What could have been grander work for any Christian man than Whitman's brave part in saving the whole great territory to the Union? Patriotism is a part of Christianity, and an important part. That man is a feeble Christian who does not love his home and fatherland.
The American Board never claimed, or received, a moiety of the reward deserved, because of its poor estimate of the great work done at that time by its servants. Well did Dr. Frank Gunsaulus say:
"Marcus Whitman was more to the ulterior Northwest than John Harvard has ever been to the Northeast of our common country."
Two names which shine brightest upon the pages of English history are Dr. Robert Livingstone and Dr. John McKenzie, both missionaries, and both poor men. Their eminent services were along much the same lines as those of Dr. Whitman—services to the whole people and the nation. Dr. McKenzie made three trips to London before he could persuade the English authorities to plant their flag over Bechuanaland, the flower and wealth of all South Africa. But how England and English people have ever since loved to do honor to both these noble men! Dr. Whitman, by his eminent and heroic service, laid the American people under as great a debt of gratitude, and I simply point to facts already narrated to sustain that position. Have the people of the United States done their simple duty to its noble martyrs?
The Benefits to the Indians
As to the benefits from the missionaries to the Indians themselves eternity alone will reveal how little or how much good was conferred. The