Sometimes, an entire story unfolds over the course of a walk. It helps, of course, to have 57 miles and two days to allow that runway to unfold in full.
The road signs leaving La Grande are aggressive. Not only do they alert drivers to the 17% grade looming ahead on the dirt track, but they remind them in a series of subsequent warnings, with a level of intensity paralleled by dour-faced figures on street corners announcing that the end is nigh. As it turns out, though, the first travelers through this area were rattled by the ascent. Narcissa Whitman, passing through in late August 1836, had already endured quite a bit on her journey, but she comes across in her journal as genuinely knackered by the experience: “Before noon we began to ascend one of the most terrible mountains for steepness and length I have yet seen. It was like winding stairs in its descent and in some places almost perpendicular.” Another pioneer, Edward Evans Parrish, writing in 1844, called it “the worst road yet.”
I, of course, didn’t have a cart or a life’s worth of possessions to shuttle through the Blue Mountains, and if I’ve cursed the weight of my pack at times, I was grateful for my lighter load as I settled into a glorious day in the high pines. Hunting season just started, so I had considerably more company than the Whitmans, with regular trucks rolling by when I followed the main gravel tracks. The first man to pause at my side offered no formal greeting, instead cutting right to the chase: “Where’s your gun?” The second was more conversational, noting that he wasn’t even trying to line up a shot today. “I’m retired. If I take a buck today, that’s it. I’m done for the season.” Instead, this was an excuse to get out of the house and up in the hills, scouting around and getting a feel for the current state of affairs. I suspect he wasn’t alone in his approach–over the course of the whole day, I never heard a single gunshot.
The Whitmans are well remembered in these largely unsettled hills, including a large memorial in a grassy field, adjacent to an old log cabin. Other signs alert travelers to the fact that they’re following the “Whitman Route.” They weren’t the only ones who struggled through here, though. Cecilia Adams and Parthenia Blank, passing through the area in 1852, bemoaned the difficult terrain, writing that, “many cattle are failing and all are very poor and a good many get lost among the thick timber. A good many wagons are left, some broken and some good and sound because the cattle are not able to take them along.” A year later, Amelia Stewart Knight just wanted the whole experience to end, lamenting that she “would never get to the foot of the mountain.” By contrast, I just wanted it to continue. After so many days of pavement and cars, the trails through thick woods were a delight, even if some of those paths didn’t correspond with my gps at all. I certainly didn’t end up with the most efficient approach through the hills, but for one day at least, I was pleased to wander.
In time, I was delivered into the day’s lone town, Meacham, which today is little more than a railroad, a café, and a cluster of mobile homes. Originally known as Lee’s Camp because of the establishment of a military encampment in 1844, this developed into a bustling railroad stop, complete with a tavern and brothel. It even earned some national attention for a restaurant known as “The Log House,” run by Grandma Munra, that proved to be very popular with rail workers. It’s claim to fame, though, dates to 1923, when President Warren Harding paused here to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the covered wagon crossing of the valley, during which Meacham “became the American capitol for a day.” While the Blue Mountain Lodge is long closed, the Oregon Trail Café survives, and operates with an abundance of good cheer.
With a full stomach and a spare Snickers bar–courtesy of the café–I pushed on a few miles to Emigrant Springs State Park, where I crashed for the night. The Astor party was the first European crew to pass through here, making their way eastward in January 1812. The timing was abysmal, with bitterly cold weather and snow in places that passed their midsections. My timing was more consistent with the pioneers who followed, with most moving through the area in the first half of October. Even still, I narrowly avoided a miserable experience. The night before I stayed, temperatures plummeted to a low of 22. Instead, I enjoyed a relatively-toasty 35.
The upside of a chilly night is added motivation to get moving early, and I popped out of my bivy at 5am, emerging into an explosion of stars overhead. After quickly striking camp in the dark, I hit the road, pounding out a quick six miles en route to Deadman Pass. A wagon driver was found dead here in 1864. Today it’s a rest area. It’s good to know that the folks at the Department of Transportation have a sense of humor.
Somewhere in this area, I parted ways with the Whitmans, who traveled northward from this point, heading towards present-day Walla Walla. Other early pioneers followed in their footsteps. Only after the Whitman Massacre in 1847 was the Oregon Trail re-routed more directly towards Pendleton.
The Whitmans, and Narcissa in particular, are generally portrayed as sympathetic figures. Rinker Buck holds up Narcissa as a heroine of sorts, circling back to her story at multiple points, though he does arrive at some misgivings towards the end. It’s hard not to be impressed by this strong, stereotype-defying figure, braving the varied challenges of the frontier. The National Park Service published the quintessential account of the Whitman Mission in 1964, authored by Erwin N. Thompson. The build-up to the massacre positions the Whitmans as passive victims, subjected to a storm that slowly took shape around them, despite their best efforts. As other pioneers moved into the region, the narrative explains, indigenous resentment surged. Conditions became tense. Tom Hill, a Delaware Indian who relocated to the area, is positioned as the agitator-in-chief, stirring up fears among the Cayuse that they would lose their lands in short order–and that the Whitmans were in on it. The primary blame placed on Marcus Whitman was that he was growing pessimistic about the future of indigenous folks in the region, as “the results of more than 10 years labor among the Cayuse offered little encouragement, and he feared that the future would be little better.” The Cayuse took note of his growing detachment.
The immediate trigger for the massacre, according to Thompson, was a measles outbreak in 1847, brought about by that year’s wagon train. Lacking any sort of natural resistance, this ran roughshod through the Cayuse, killing half their population within two months, despite the fact that–as Thompson put it–“the Whitmans tried desperately to relieve the suffering.”
Another new arrival, a “half-breed” named Joe Lewis, became the next intrusive agitator, blamed by Thompson for spreading rumors among the Cayuse that Marcus Whitman was directly responsible for the measles epidemic. The goal, he claimed, was that “when all the
Indians were dead, Whitman was going to take their lands for himself.” Thompson then notes that another “half-breed,” Nicholas Finley, provided a “headquarters for the malcontents” like Lewis.
Thompson then sets up the massacre as a quintessentially traditional action for the Cayuse. “One of the practices of the tribe for generations was that if a patient of a medicine man, or tewat, should die, the sick person’s relative could seek revenge by killing the tewat. Since measles was a white man’s disease and since Whitman, a white doctor, surely knew the cure, they believed that he was deliberately withholding that cure from them. Their people were dying, and revenge should be extracted from tewat Whitman.” The Whitmans, he notes, were well aware of the threats they were facing, but their “high sense of obligation and responsibility” sustained their brave presence. “Courageously,” Thompson writes, they were committed to sticking around and tending to the ill.
The storm hit on Monday, November 29, 1847. Marcus Whitman was the first to die, struck by a tomahawk in the back, as Thompson tells it. Narcissa was shot by Joe Lewis, but survived the initial wound, and proceeded to rally the survivors for a bit, before eventually falling to a second wave of gunfire. Ultimately, 13 of the 74 missionaries were killed.
So one version of a story ends there. The Whitmans, brave and self-sacrificing missionaries, who played a key role in opening up the West to future travelers, died at the hands of uppity Indians who were lashing out against civilization in all its varied forms. To the extent that the Whitmans harbor any blame, it is largely due to larger forces beyond their control–a future that had little room for indigenous peoples and their traditions.
But again, all of that unfolded somewhere north of my location. I had a different road ahead–a long and winding one, descending gradually into the Umatilla river valley, which shined on this morning like a rippling, golden sea. In the distance, I could see my destination for the day, Pendleton, and I84, winding like a serpent through the fields.
In between, I engaged in a small-scale act of international travel, passing through the Umatilla Indian Reservation. The first sign of my border crossing didn’t mention the reservation, but rather Saint Andrew’s Mission, founded in 1897. And in a way, this is where my path and that of the Whitmans surprisingly reunited. The Whitmans, of course, were dead by then, and I was far from being born, but the missionaries who survived them had to pick up the pieces. St. Ann’s Mission, established on the Umatilla River in 1847, south of Walla Walla, was abandoned soon after the massacre. Not until the 1860s would the missionaries reorganize, and only gradually was the mission relocated to its current location near Pendleton and renamed as Saint Andrew’s. On this Sunday morning, the road to the mission was busy with folks heading over to celebrate mass.
The valley has changed profoundly since the first European visitors arrived. Cecilia Adams and Parthenia Blank, having survived the Blue Mountains, recalled that the valley was “literally dotted with Indian ponies.” This reveals two things. First, that people have long abused the word “literally.” And second, that this area was once chockablock with horses.
While three tribes share the reservation today–the Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla, known collectively as the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR)–the Cayuse were most deeply associated with this particular area in the 19th century. In its outstanding historical overview of the region and its people, the CTUIR notes that elders describe their being “thousands and thousands” of horses, including Cayuse, Appaloosa, Pintos, Paints, and Mustangs. Those horses spread widely throughout the foothills, requiring extensive amounts of grazing land. Their proliferation had a significant effect on Cayuse life, expanding their range of contact into Montana, Wyoming, Canada, California, and Nevada, and allowing for much wider spread of ideas and goods. The horse became one of the defining qualities of the tribe and a key status symbol.
The CTUIR’s historical account also offers its own distinct take on the Whitman Massacre. Instead of the Whitmans-as-heroic-victim narrative offered by Thompson, they shoulder much more blame in this discussion. The surging numbers of European immigrants and the profound damage done by the measles outbreak certainly comes up, but it is paired with a series of other missteps and misdeeds perpetrated by the Whitmans, including the failure to pay for land taken by the mission, their intrusion on indigenous trade, and growing fear and mistrust of Marcus–which was reflected in his extensive failure to convert Indians, which was supposed to be his defining purpose as a missionary. In this story, a different vision of Marcus Whitman emerges–one of a man whose focus was drifting away from saving souls and towards turning profits, with little regard for the indigenous population that was hosting him.
Emigrant Road became Mission Road, and not too long after passing the mission I entered the town of Mission. Around me, I saw small houses, a park, a school, and a Bureau of Indian Affairs office building. I stopped by the market for a burrito and a drink. Less than a decade after the massacre, Marcus’s bleak predictions for the Cayuse, Umatilla, and Walla Walla peoples were already coming into reality. The Treaty of June 9, 1855 saw them ceding 6.4 million acres to the US, in exchange for 510,000 acres on which they would live. When that land was finally surveyed, it turned out that–whoops!–it was actually only 245,000 acres. A bookkeeping glitch! As more and more westerners moved into the area, though, and they discovered that the land could be great for cultivating wheat, they became increasingly resentful of the many horses munching away at that breezy gold. Congress was more than willing to play ball, enacting legislation that further chipped away at the reservation, allotting small parcels to individual tribe members, designating the rest as “surplus,” and then opened it back up for settlement. In the end, this reduced the reservation to 172,882 acres, of which only 52% is actually owned by Indians.
If the heroic missionary narrative is faulty, it’s important to note that the indigenous victim narrative is also dicey. It’s not due to a lack of accuracy; this is an important part of our history to recognize and acknowledge. Rather, it’s linked to the limiting nature of this narrative, transforming indigenous populations into passive, powerless figures. For that reason, it’s easy to understand why the CTUIR narrative ends in a forward-looking manner. The 1980s and 1990s, they optimistically note, “can be characterized as the visible beginnings and presence of self-determination efforts on the Umatilla Reservation.” Housing has increased considerably. Tribal employment has followed suit. Due to some successful economic development projects–including, not surprisingly, a casino–the operating budget for the reservation has also grown. Along with the other development initiatives, this has supported land acquisition and restoration projects, including more than 10,000 acres.
Only a handful of miles stood between Mission and Pendleton, first continuing along Mission Road and then transitioning onto the highway for the final approach. I was a few weeks late for the town’s claim to fame, the Pendleton Round-Up, which takes place every September.
The Round-Up was established as an annual event following a 4th of July celebration in 1909, with a vision of creating “a frontier exhibition of picturesque pastimes, Indian and military spectacles, cowboy racing and bronco busting for the championship of the Northwest.” 7000 people turned out for the first event, and over the years that has climbed to 50,000, drawing attendees from around the world.
What stood out to me the most, especially given my route into town, was the key role played by the CTUIR and other indigenous peoples in the event. Given the central significance of horses in Cayuse culture, it makes sense that there could be links to a rodeo. But the connection goes far deeper. From the very first Round-Up, the organizers invited the CTUIR to take a central part in the event, before they even knew what this might entail. But then, something magnificent unfolded quite organically. As tribal members arrived, they established camp, and that transformed into what has become known as Indian Village, a defining feature of every subsequent Round-Up. Harper Jones, the Round-Up director of Indian relations, noted that, “If you look at our event, we have 300 tepees out there and family generations who have basically been camped in the same spot going back generations.” That was affirmed by 65-year-old Odie Minthorn, a member of the Cayuse and Umatilla tribes, who fondly reflected that, “My grandmother was here in 1910. I’ve been doing this forever.”
When the first Europeans started trickling into the Umatilla valley, the CTUIR history notes, “For the most part, both races viewed each other as inferior people.” As the years have passed, we’ve constructed different stories of those first decades of contact, stories that I walked through over the course of these two days. The heroic missionaries and the vicious savages. The triumphant settlers and the indigenous victims. In recent years, efforts have been made to craft a more accurate and inclusive accounting. As one small example, the National Parks Service made a change in nomenclature, renaming the Whitman Massacre as the “Tragedy at Waiilatpu.”
It’s important to get the history right. It’s even more important, though, to get the present right. And maybe the Pendleton Round-Up offers one example of that often fraught and futile goal, bringing together all branches of the local community in a shared tradition that honors the different cultures who call this home.
The big news in this year’s Pendleton Round-Up was the triumph of Kayla Fossek, this year’s Queen of the Round-Up. And not just any queen. Fossek is the first Native American to win the title since 1953. While Fossek grew up immersed in tribal culture, it wasn’t until she started pursuing the competitions related to the Round-Up that she learned a great deal more about her family’s long relationship with horses and the land. “There’s so much history that I truly just did not know. Being involved in Happy Canyon has taught me more of my Native American culture than anything.” It’s an encouraging ending to a complicated, 200-year history.
