Traits of American Indian Life and Character by Peter Skeene Ogden

Traits of American Indian Life and Character by Peter Skeene Ogden

Author:Peter Skeene Ogden [Ogden, Peter Skeene]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Native American
ISBN: 9780486148489
Google: 0He7uCvsmzsC
Publisher: Courier Corporation
Published: 2012-08-07T22:23:06+00:00


PLATE V.

An Indian Hunting Party

CHAPTER VI.

The Bloody Tragedy

ON the evening of the 6th of December we were seated around our cheerful fireside, “holding sweet converse” on the different topics of news we had lately received from Canada and England by our overland express, when a loud knocking at the door attracted the attention of all present, and a Mr. H——, from the Dalles mission, made his appearance, accompanied by a servant of the Company from Walla Walla, one of our trading posts on the upper part of the Columbia. They announced to us the melancholy tidings of the murder of Dr. and Mrs. Whitman and twelve Americans, with the entire destruction of Wai-let-pu mission. The following particulars of this bloody tragedy may be relied on.

For some time previous to the massacre, a number of the Cayoux Indians who resided in the vicinity of the mission, had died of the measles and dysentery, which prevailed in every part of the country. The worthy doctor had been most constant in his attendance on the sufferers, administering not only medicines, but such other comforts as, indeed, he could ill afford from his slender stock. Unhappily, his efforts for their relief were vain; the mortality increased, rather than diminished; and the horrid idea became impressed on the superstitious minds of the Indians, that Dr. Whitman and others had conspired to exterminate them by means of poison! This idea, however it may have originated, received corroboration, as has since been ascertained, from the instigations of one Joseph Louis, a Spanish Creole, who for upwards of a year had been employed about the mission in the service of the kind master whom he now sought to destroy. The number of deaths continuing to increase daily, confirmed the diabolical suspicion once entertained, and soon these wretched men resolved on revenging their supposed wrongs, and securing their future safety by murdering all the inmates of the mission.

As the base Creole had urged them to this fatal determination and promised his assistance in the bloody deed, so he was almost the first to commence the tragedy, by murdering two brothers of tender years, the eldest not more than sixteen; a most cruel and cowardly act, for at the time, both lay prostrate on a bed of sickness. The hour of ten in the morning was selected for the butchery, and before many minutes had elapsed, no less than twelve victims had been sacrificed to their wild and revengeful superstition. The first was a tailor, killed on the bench where he was seated at his daily labour; a poor inoffensive being, little suspecting, and perhaps still less prepared, for so awful a change. The next was the worthy doctor himself, who had entirely devoted the last ten years of his life to the instruction of those very savages who were now about to reward him so cruelly. This instruction, I ought to remark, had consisted not only in the principles of Christianity, but in the tillage of the soil, the value of which had long been proved by their abundant harvest.



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