[MUSIC PLAYING] The Columbia Plateau stretches wide from the Cascade Mountains in the West to the Bitterroot Mountains in the East. The vast area bisected by the Columbia River and its many tributaries was a vibrant crossroads for trade, not just for the many Indian tribes who lived here, but for Indians from regions beyond the plateaus natural boundaries.

A wide variety of goods changed hands. Dried fish from the local rivers, bison robes from the Great Plains, whale oil from the West Coast. At the dawn of the 19th century, American and European trappers and traders made their way into the Columbia River Basin and launched a new era of commerce.

The trappers and traders relationship with our people was economic. We understood economy. We understood trading.

The North West Company, the Pacific Fur Company, and the Hudson's Bay Company were the first foreigners to establish posts in the early 1800s.

To the Cayuse, the fur traders were an opportunity. They were an opportunity for white goods. They were also a window into white society. The Cayuse were well aware from their connections with other Indians along trade networks, from their own travel of American civilization out on their periphery, and that American civilization was advancing westward. The fur trading posts gave the Cayuse the opportunity to examine white civilization up close and white spiritual beliefs.

The relationship between the Indians and these outsiders is mutually beneficial.

They brought new things in-- thimbles and thread and scissors, the brass bells. They brought in candles, brought in weapons, brought in blankets.

It's hard to understand the value of some of these trade goods. A copper kettle was the microwave oven of its day. Steel tools for killing an animal or for processing a hide are enormous time savers. The Cayuse Indians, other Plateau Indians were delighted to have fur traders and to be able to get those goods from them.

In return, the plateau Indians provide fur pelts. They also offer another valuable commodity.

The traders need horses, and the Cayuse have swarms of horses. They're In the best horse country along the Columbia River.

The horses were our economy back then. That was what the Cayuse people were noted for, was out horse herds. You were considered poor if you had less than 100 head of horses. And there's documentation where we had people that owned thousands, 2000 head of horses.

The traders used the horses not only for travel and transportation but for food. Horse flesh is a frequent item on the menu at the Hudson's Bay Company posts on the Columbia Plateau.

The trappers and traders integrate more easily into Indian society.

The trappers and traders didn't need us to turn into somebody else to do business with them. They married our people. Many of them lived according to our customs.

The fur traders understood Indians better than almost any other white people of the time. The fur traders were not without their prejudices, as well.

The opening of the Oregon Trail would break the trade monopoly of the Hudson's Bay Company on the Columbia Plateau.

The number of Americans increases and increases. And at the same time this is happening, at the same time, there's this American tide of immigration, the price of beaver fur is collapsing, and the whole fur trade is becoming much less valuable than it was.

The US gained full control of the region in the Oregon Treaty of 1848. As the Hudson's Bay Company withdrew, agriculture and settlement replaced trapping and trading as the primary economy of the Northwest.

[Music playing] At the beginning of the 19th century, a spiritual movement sweeps across the United States, known as the Second Great Awakening. The period is marked by itinerant preachers, revival meetings, and conversion experiences. With evangelical enthusiasm, believers are eager to spread the word of God. A big part of the Second Great Awakening is once you're saved, you're not done. You are responsible for saving others. Your salvation depends on continued effort to save others. This desire to awaken others to Christianity gives birth to the modern missionary movement. They had this vision that it was really possible to Christianize the entire world. The American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions, or ABCFM, is formed in the early 1800s with the explicit purpose of spreading the gospel to foreign shores. The American Board had, as its motto, , the saying, "The evangelization of the entire world in the present generation." And for that purpose, they sent missionaries over a good swath of the world. They had missions in India. They had missions in China. They had missions in Africa. They had missions in Thailand, and they had missions among the American Indians. Following the 1831 journey by four Plateau Indians to St. Louis, reportedly looking for the "white man's Book of Heaven," the ABCFM sets its sights on the conversion of Indians in the Pacific Northwest. They wanted to inform us as to how we might be bettered, and that was through Christianity, civilization, through white man's education. In 1836, Marcus Whitman is appointed by the American Board to establish a mission among the plateau Indians in the Oregon Territory. Though no treaties had been negotiated with the native peoples of the region, both the US and Great Britain asserted rights of discovery in the Oregon Country. Oregon Territory was considered a foreign territory. And that's why, in the 1830s, Marcus and Narcissa went out under the Foreign Mission Board. Whitman's mission is not the only one in the region. By 1839, there are four American Board missions in Oregon. Methodists and Catholics are also there, competing for the same souls. The Protestants are, more or less, on the same team. But, of course, there are these Catholic missionaries. And this was horrifying to Whitman and to the other Protestant missionaries. This is the great era of anti-Catholic prejudice in the United States. The Whitman's were very hostile to the Catholic efforts. Basically, the Whitman's thought that those people who were baptized by the Catholics were still heading for hell. Now, what the Whitman's experience is pretty much what the other missionaries experience, even the Catholic missionaries. An initial flurry of interest of two to three years and then a real falling off and, eventually, even hostility. In each case, the Indians found Christianity somewhat wanting. The missionaries proved disappointed. And none of them succeeded in converting large numbers of Indians. Following the deaths of Marcus and Narcissa Whitman in 1847, the American Board closes all of their missions in the Oregon Territory. Although the missions in the Pacific Northwest are a failure, the American Board is successful with missions as far afield as India, Africa, China, and Hawaii. Though the Northwest missions closed, other Christianizing efforts continued in the region. Today, many Cayuse descendants consider themselves to be Christians. It's important to recognize that, in our culture, we still have very many devout Christians. We have many people who are equally devoted to our native practices, spirituality. If you took a survey, we'd have probably a 140% religion because many people are Presbyterian and also understand and follow Waashat practices.

When Marcus and Narcissa Whitman crossed the Rocky Mountains and descend into the sweeping expanse of land, known as the Oregon Country, they accomplish something that many have thought was impossible. Regular folk-- both men and women-- had traveled overland to reach the continent's Western edge. Though no treaties were signed with the native peoples of the region, just five years later, in 1841, Eastern Americans are ready and eager to follow in the Whitman's footsteps. Much of the Oregon Territory is under the joint occupancy agreement with Britain. And the idea was that citizens of either nation could go there and settle there. What the British discover is that occupancy is 90% of the law. Over the next few years, thousands will pack their worldly possessions and follow the Oregon Trail on a 2,000-mile overland journey. When the first wagon trains make it to the Northwest, it's a revelation to a lot of Americans back East. There's increasing land pressure back East. The population is exploding. The Oregon Country was part of the national consciousness but was considered too far away, too unapproachable-- a place for mountain men, not a place for families, not a place for settlers. What these first wagon train show is that it's possible. And the rush is on. It's almost like a gold rush, but for land. From the American point of view, the West is ripe for the picking. The idea of Manifest Destiny showed the boundaries of the United States is actually reaching to the Pacific. The entire continent would be an American continent. And that the United States was especially blessed by God and that going West would fulfill a certain kind of noble destiny that God had for Americans. And that they would bring progress and civilization along with them. And that that was superior to anything that already existed. When the settlers came across the Oregon Trail, with this idea of civilization spreading across the land and everything else was savaged on the edges, and that's the way the native people were regarded. No one understood about how we regarded the land. We had laws. We were sovereign. The pressure to claim Indian land grows even more intense after the death of the Whitmans in 1847. The killing of the Whitmans is a bright red line between two eras in the history of the Pacific Northwest. Before the killing of the Whitmans, you have the era of the fur trade and the missions. It's not an equitable era in all ways, but it's an era where Indians and whites, at least, try to work together. After the killing of the missionaries, we move into an era of raw conquest. The word massacre was one that was exploited in the eastern press. And the point is that by describing the killings as a massacre, that justified a certain kind of response that was very useful. Something had to be done quickly about Oregon Territory, and it had to be claimed definitively for the United States. They became a useful symbol to justify expansion, to justify the rightness of expansion, to overlook any injustices to Native people. It was a very well thought out process by the United States on how to gain control of the resource. The goal of the United States government was to take the land, to help extinguish our rights as a people and allow more people from the other side to come into the country. The westward flow of Americans is unstoppable. The Oregon Trail is just one of several used by immigrants to reach not just Oregon, but destinations throughout the West. The Indians would have been dispossessed of their land if the killing of the Whitman's had never happened. There is this flood of white immigration coming into the area. Indians were bound to resist. Oregon becomes an official US territory in 1848. Within a decade, most Indians will be forced to move on to reservations, making way for the tide of pioneers, prospectors, and speculators to rush in and claimed the land for an expanding America.

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The story of Marcus and Narcissa Whitman. Their intentions, their work among the Cayuse Indians, their deaths, and their lasting impact has been questioned by every generation. At the time that they are killed, they are looked upon pretty much as people who sacrificed themselves for a good cause, trying to uplift the Indians, yet the Indians killed them. And so there was great animosity towards the Indians. That's one of the first reactions. The killing of the Whitman's comes as a pinnacle act and an act that was not in violation of law according to our customs in our country. And they were in our country, but did not want to live according to our customs. I think the fact that there was a spectacular ending to their story made it very easy to cast them into this role as heroic Christian martyrs. I think that happens frequently with people who reach a tragic end. Much as is made of them, and their flaws are forgotten. It made heroines and heroes of people who had had a destructive impact on Native life. Within a generation, though, of the death of the Whitman's, they're looking for another larger reason. One of the stories that got told about the Whitman is that Marcus Whitman saved Oregon. The story is based on a trip Whitman made back East in 1842 to meet with the American Board of Commissioners of foreign missions. Conflicts between the Oregon missionaries had prompted the board to threaten to close two of their mission sites. When he really went back East was primarily to save the mission. In the 1890s, the journey East is reimagined by a Chicago writer named Oliver Nixon. He wrote a book about how Marcus Whitman met with the President and the Secretary of State during this visit. And convinced them not to give the Oregon Country to Britain. The story was really invented from whole cloth. And that goes on for years, whether he did or did not save Oregon. Afterwards, they came up with another meaning for the death of the Whitman's. And it centered around the Whitman's as agents of empire. The idea is that the Whitman's helped the Oregon Trail along. The Whitman's helped with the settlement of the West. And that's their true significance. Whitman Mission was established at a time when this was the dominant belief, that the Whitman's were important as agents of empire. That's why the park is put together the way it is, with the wagon, with the mill pond, with those other elements of settlement and civilization being the things that they created, rather than an Indian village, which would have been there as well. Over the years, the Whitman's legacy would tarnish. Subsequent generations reject them outright. Some even saying they had it coming. And so I think there's some things left out. No one wrote the history for us is kind of what I'm saying. There has to be some truth to both sides. And it's been reported in history books always by the non-Native sides. Today, the story is often viewed as a clash of cultures. But even that may be too simplistic or too one-sided. I don't believe it's a culture clash. I believe that the creator gave us this land and that someone arrived later to tell us that God had told them what to do with not only the land, but with us is the root of the conflict. And it has to do with land and God, as most wars do. Visitors to the mission often struggle with conflicted feelings about the Whitman's. How do we reconcile their tragic deaths with what many view now as the wrongness of their intentions? I think I understand the sincerity of both Marcus and Narcissa desire to transform the future of these people, but to be sympathetic to people who were really interested in destroying Native culture, and replacing Native culture with American culture, and who were contemptuous of Native people. On the other hand, you have to ask yourself, would I have done any better had I been living at the time? We're all prisoners of our own value system. It's very hard to step outside that system. I don't think we can demonize the Whitman's for being human, for their individual character or nature. Historians argue among themselves about how you judge the past. Do we judge the Whitman's by their own standards? They have their flaws, but they're certainly trying to do the right thing. Do we judge them by 20th century standards, and condemn them for their cultural insensitivity, and so on? I think we have to dip into each of these wells and look at them from each of these ways. But in the end, it's not for us to judge the Whitman's. They're gone. It's for us to explain them and try to understand what happened. [MUSIC PLAYING]