WHITMAN, MARCUS: Congregational missionary and pioneer; b. at Rushville, N. Y., Sept. 4, 1802; d. at Waiilatpu, Ore., Nov. 29,.1847. He was educated privately and then studied medicine at Pittsfield, Mass., after which he practised as a physician in Canada for four years, removing in 1828 to Wheeler, N. Y. In 1835 he went, with a missionary named Samuel Parker, to study Ameriican Indian conditions west of the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, with a view to introducing Christianity among them; and so favorable were the prospects among Flathead and Nez Perces tribes in what is now Wyoming that Whitman returned to New York to organize a mission, while Parker continued his way in search of sites for missionary stations. Early in 1836 Whitman and his companions set out, reaching Walla Walla in September, and making his first center at Waiilatpu, near that post. In 1842 he was transferred by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to a missionary station near Fort Colville, but he almost immediately started on a return journey to the east, wishing to obtain helpers in view of the rapid immigration into Oregon and of the Roman Catholic

missionary activity among the Indians. He gained the retention of the posts at Waiilatpu and Clearwater, but had not enough time to secure the assistants he desired. During his return journey he acted as guide and physician to a large emigrant caravan, and on reaching Waiilatpu he resumed his missionary labors. In 1847, however, an epidemic of measles among the Cayuae caused so large a number of fatalities that Whitman and the other missionaries were believed to be using black magic against them; and the Indians accordingly attacked the mission and killed him and fifteen others.

Apart from his importance as a missionary, Whitman was the man who, above all others, roused popular interest in Oregon and thus largely promoted its settlement. On the other hand, there appears to be little evidence for the common belief that he discovered a plot of the Hudson Bay Company to obtain Oregon for England by colonizing it from Canada, and that his trip of 1842 was to secure American immigrants to forestall such action. Equally fictitious is the story that, when reaching Washington to expose this plot, he found the United States about to exchange Oregon for the fisheries of Newfoundland, and that his representations prevented this exchange and thus secured the retention of the territory.

Bibliography: W. Barrows, Oregon; the Struggle for Posseaaion, Boston, 1884; J. G. Craighead, The Story of Marcus Whitman, Philadelphia, 1896; 0. W. Nixon, How Marcus Whitman saved Oregon, Chicago, 1896; idem, Whitman's Ride through Savage Lands, ib. 1906; W. A. Mowry, Marcus Whitman and the Early Dais of Oregon, New York, 1901; W. I. Marshall, History vs. the "Whitman sawed Oregon" Story, privately printed, Chicago, 1904; C. W. Smith, A Contribution toward a Bibliography of Marcus Whitman, Seattle, 1908; M. Eells, Marcus Whitman; Pathfinder and Patriot, ib. 1909.