This week my husband and I traveled to one of our favorite wine regions for a very different kind of experience than we have had on previous wine jaunts. Even before we drove into the town of Walla Walla in Washington state’s far southeastern corner, we decided to begin this visit with a new stop. For years we’ve entered and left town passing by the signs identifying the Whitman Mission National Historic Site, and I’ve always had a hankering to check it out. We finally had the time to do so, and it promised to be a good option for this era of social distancing and outdoor activities.

I’d first learned about Marcus and Narcissa Whitman in fifth grade, when Oregon students learn the history of the state and the preceding Oregon Territory (encompassing most of the present-day Pacific Northwest region) in social studies classes. The Presbyterian missionaries (Whitman was also trained as a doctor) arrived from the East in 1836 and set up a mission on the banks of the Walla Walla River with the intent to convert the local Native Americans, the Cayuse. Whitman returned east and then led the first large wagon train on the Oregon Trail out west in 1843. In addition to trying to Christianize the local people, Whitman sought to teach them farming techniques, building a small network of irrigation canals, planting an apple orchard and farming about 40 acres of various crops while his wife taught the children. Unfortunately, the influx of white settlers ballooned from just 15 in 1840 to more than 4,500 in 1847. They brought with them diseases such as cholera, smallpox and measles, and it was an outbreak of the latter in 1847 that killed more than half of the Cayuse, including most of their children. On Nov. 30, 1847, the Cayuse attacked the mission, killing the Whitmans and 12 other settlers and destroying most of the mission’s buildings.

We arrived on a warm but gray November afternoon, with most of the fields harvested and brown and leaves on the trees dull and dry. It made for a rather somber visit to a rather quiet and melancholy site. The visitors’ building was closed, open at this time of year (or because of COVID) only on the weekends. The pathways surrounding it have signage to explain each area, though, so we were able to explore on our own just fine. There seemed to be only one other party visiting while we were there, so we nearly had the whole place to ourselves. With only a strong breeze rattling the leaves and dry grasses in an otherwise quiet landscape, it added to the lonely mood of the place.

We first visited the Great Grave marking the burial place of the Whitmans and the other settlers who died on that November day, and then we climbed a small hill to a memorial marker and fine views of the valley and the mission site.   

Coming down from the hill, we followed another path to circle the mission site. The outlines of the foundations  of several of the original buildings ringed an area not much bigger than a football field. These included a blacksmith shop; the Whitman’s first small home; and a much larger building which housed a schoolroom, storehouse, sickroom, parlor, office and kitchen. On one side was an apple orchard on the site of the original one planted by Whitman , and at the east end was a mill pond which provided the water to power a small grist mill.

As we circled back to the parking lot, we walked along a portion of a spur of the original Oregon Trail  and inspected a recreation of a covered wagon.   It reinforced what incredible journeys the pioneers took with so little between them and peril and death.

I was glad to have had the chance to visit this place which had featured so largely in my schoolgirl imagination. I found it to be a somber, quiet and rather sad place where two cultures profoundly impacted each other and the future of this area.

— Patty Vanikiotis, associate editor/copy editor