A History of Oregon, 1792-1849

They had scarcely gained this temporary retreat, when the crash of windows and doors, and the deafening war-whoop, tore the last hope from their fainting hearts. The rooms below were plundered of their property, – the furniture dashed to pieces and cast out. Joe Lewis was seen to be among the foremost to dash in the windows and bring out the goods. Here a deed was perpetrated similar to that of the refined and Christian Catholic people of Burgos, in Spain, when they murdered and cut up their governor for attempting to obey the law and take an invoice of church property.

The Cayuse Indian Tilokaikt went into the room where the Doctor lay yet breathing, and with his hatchet deliberately chopped his face terribly to pieces, but left him still alive. Some Indian, also, cut the face of John Sager while he was yet alive.

About this time, Joe Lewis went into the schoolroom and sought out the children, who were hid in the upper loft, and brought them into the kitchen to be shot. As Francis passed by his mangled, gasping brother, he stooped and took the woolen tippet from the gash in his throat, when John attempted to speak, but immediately expired. Upon this, Francis turned to his sister and said, “I shall soon follow my brother.” The children were kept in this painful position for some time. Eliza Spalding was among them, and understood every word spoken by the Indians, who, having finished their terrible slaughter without, were filling the room and the doorways, with their guns pointed at the heads and hearts of the children, constantly yelling, “Shall we shoot?” Eliza says her blood became cold, and she could not stand, but leaned over upon the sink, covering her face with her apron, that she might not see them shoot her. From this place they were removed out of the door by the side of the Indian room, just before Mrs. Whitman was brought out to be shot.

Immediately after breaking into the house, the Indians called to Mrs. Whitman and Mr. Rogers to come down, and on receiving no answer, Tamsaky (the Indian who was the most anxious to have the bishop and his priests take the Doctor’s place), started to go up-stairs, but discovering the end of an old gun (placed there by Miss Bewley), he desisted, and entered into conversation with those above. He urged them to come down, assuring them that no one should hurt them. Mrs. Whitman told him she was shot, and had not strength to come down, besides she feared they would kill her. Tamsaky expressed much sorrow on learning that Mrs. Whitman was wounded, and promised that no one should be hurt if they would come down. Mrs. Whitman replied, “If you are my friend, come up and see me.” He objected, and said there were Americans hid in the chamber with arms to kill him. Mr. Rogers, standing at the head of the stairs, assured him there were none, and very soon he went up and remained some time, apparently sympathizing with the sufferers, assuring them that he was sorry for what had taken place, and urged Mrs. Whitman to come down and be taken over to the other house where the families were, intimating that the young men might destroy the house in the night. About this time the cry was heard from Joe Lewis, “We will now burn.”

Mrs. Whitman was assisted down by Mr. Rogers and Mrs. Hays; on reaching the lower room, becoming faint, she was laid upon a settee, and taken through the kitchen over the dead body of young Sager, and through a crowd of Indians. As the settee passed out of the door, the word was given by the chief not to shoot the children. At this moment Mr. Rogers discovered their treachery, and had only time to drop the settee, raise his hands and exclaim, “O my God!” when a volley of guns was fired from within and without the house, part at Mrs. Whitman and part at himself. He fell upon his face, pierced with many balls.

An Indian seized Francis Sager from among the children, and Joe Lewis drew his pistol, and with the expression, “You bad boy,” shot him. All manner of Indian brutality and insult were offered to the mangled bodies while they lay groaning and dying, till night closed upon the scene, and the Indians retired to Finlay’s and Tilokaikt’s lodges to consult as to further outrage upon the still living and helpless victims.

The Canadian-Indian, Joe Lewis, was as active in abusing the helpless girls as he had been in selecting the children of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s servants to be protected and sent away from such as were to be abused and slaughtered.

Mr. Kimball, the three sick children, and Catharine Sager remained in the chamber all night. Mr. Osborn lay under the floor of the Indian room till the Indians retired. He then made his escape to the fort at Wallawalla, with his family. The three men at the beef found themselves surrounded, and in the midst of a volley of balls from pistols and guns pointed at them. All three were wounded, but neither fell. They fled as best they could: Mr. Kimball to the house; Mr. Canfield to the blacksmith shop, and thence to the mansion, where he hid himself, and remained till night; then fled and reached Lapwai before Mr. Spalding did. Mr. Hall wrenched a gun, which had missed fire, from an Indian’s hand, and ran for the bushes; reached the fort next morning; was put across the Columbia River by Mr. McBean’s order; and was lost, – starved to death, or murdered by the Indians, we know not which. Mr. Gillan was shot upon his bench. Mr. Marsh was shot at the mill; ran a short distance toward the Doctor’s house and fell. Mr. Saunders, hearing the guns, rushed to the door of the schoolroom, where he was seized by several Indians, who threw him upon the ground amid a shower of balls and tomahawks. Being a strong and active man, he rose, though wounded, and ran some rods, but was overtaken, surrounded, and cut down. Mr. Hoffman was cut down, after fighting desperately with a knife, his body cut open, and his heart and liver torn out.

In the midst of all this fury and savage shedding of blood, no children or servants of the Hudson’s Bay Company, or Roman Catholics, or such as professed friendship for that faith, were harmed in the least. Finlay, a half-breed of the company’s, who had formerly kept its horses, was stopping close to the station, assisting and counseling with the Indians; Joe Lewis selected the two Manson boys and a half-breed Spanish boy the Doctor had raised, and arranged to send them to the fort. Whoever this Indian was, or wherever he was from, he seems to have understood and acted fully and faithfully his part in the “great overturn” that he said, while at Boise, was to take place at that station and in the lower country. How he came to know there was to be any change or overturn is yet a secret only to be guessed at. Mr. McBean says he returned to Boise and Fort Hall; and Mr. McDonald, that he killed the guide to a company of United States troops in the mountains, and was himself shot.

CHAPTER LVI

Comments on Vicar-General Brouillet’s arguments against the Whitman massacre being the act of Catholics. – Joe Stanfield: Brouillet’s story in his favor. – Murders on the second day. – Deposition of Daniel Young. – More murders.

Vicar-General Brouillet, in his narrative of “Protestantism in Oregon,” says: “I could admit that Joseph Lewis, Joseph Stanfield, and Nicholas Finlay, who may have been seen plundering” (as proved on the trial of Stanfield), “were Catholics, without injuring in the least the cause of Catholicism; because, as in good reasoning” (Roman Catholic, of course), “it is never allowed to conclude from one particularity to another particularity, nor to a generality; in like manner, from the guilt of three Catholics it can not be reasonably concluded that other Catholics are guilty, nor, a fortiori, that all Catholics are guilty and Catholicism favorable to the guilt.”

No man, set of men, or sect, not interested in the result of a measure or a crime, will ever use an argument like the one we have quoted from this priest. Dr. Whitman and those about his station had been slaughtered in the most brutal and cowardly manner, by a band of Indians that this priest, his bishop, and associates, backed by the consent and influence of the Hudson’s Bay Company, had brought about through the direct influence of these three men: all of whom knew, and consulted with the Indians as to the commission of the crime. And we have the strongest reason to believe that this priest and his party were, by their conversation, instructions, and direct teachings, adding their influence and approval to that horrid transaction. Besides, when the crime is committed, we find this same band of fur traders and priests protecting, shielding, advising and assisting the murderers to the utmost of their power and influence, both in the country and in their foreign correspondence. If such facts do not implicate a party, we ask what will? The very book from which we are quoting, containing 108 pages, has not a single sentence condemning the course or crime of these men, but every page contains some statement condemning Spalding, Whitman, or some American supposed to belong to, or in favor of, the American settlements or missions.

But let us return to further particulars of this Whitman massacre. We have gathered up the statements and facts on both sides of this question, and with our own knowledge, previous to and since its occurrence, we write with assurance, if not with the best judgment in selecting the facts and evidence to place the truth before the public.

We were in the midst of describing that horrible scene of savage blood and carnage, when we stopped for a moment to inquire after the character of three of the prominent actors, in fact, the leaders in the tragedy.

Brouillet tells us (on page 89 of his narrative, page 56 of Ross Browne) in extenuation of the guilt of Stanfield, that “the following circumstance, if true, speaks very highly in his favor, and shows that if he has at any time forgotten the good principles he had received in his infancy, once, at least, those principles prompted him to an heroic action. It was on the morning of the day that followed the massacre. There were several Indians scattered in the neighborhood of the mission buildings, but especially a crowd of Indian women was standing near the door of the house in which all the white women and children were living. Stanfield, being then at a short distance from the house, Tilokaikt, the chief of the place, came up and asked him if he had something in the house. ‘Yes,’ said Stanfield, ‘I have all my things there.’ ‘Take them away,’ said the Indian to him. ‘Why should I take them away? they are well there.’ ‘Take them off,’ he insisted, a second time. ‘But I have not only my things there; I have also my wife and children.’ ‘Yes,’ replied Tilokaikt, who appeared a little surprised, ‘you have a wife and children in the house! Will you take them off?’ ‘No,’ replied Stanfield, ‘I will not take them away, and I will go and stay myself in the house. I see that you have bad designs; you intend to kill the women and children; well, you will kill me with them. Are you not ashamed? Are you not satisfied with what you have done? Do you want still to kill poor innocent creatures that have never done you any harm?’ ‘I am ashamed,’ replied Tilokaikt, after a moment’s hesitation. ‘It is true, those women and children do not deserve death; they did not harm us; they shall not die.’ And, turning to the Indian women who were standing near the door of the house waiting with a visible impatience for the order to enter and slaughter the people inside, he ordered them to go off. The Indian women then became enraged, and, showing them the knives that they took from beneath their blankets, they insulted him in many different ways, calling him a coward, a woman who would consent to be governed by a Frenchman; and they retired, apparently in great anger for not having been allowed to imbrue their hands in the blood of new victims. The above circumstance was related at Fort Wallawalla to Mr. Ogden, by Stanfield himself, under great emotion, and in presence of the widows, none of whom contradicted him. An action of that nature, if it took place, would be, of itself, sufficient to redeem a great many faults.”

We do not wish to question any good act this Frenchman may have done; but the guilt of knowing that crime was to be committed, and that the Americans were to be killed around him like the ox he had brought to the slaughter, which he knew was to be the signal for its commencement; and the manner he and his two associates conducted themselves on the ground; the influence he had to stop the massacre at any time, and his robbing the widows and orphans in the midst of the slaughter; – these make up a complication of crime that none but the vilest will attempt to excuse.

On the 30th of November, Mr. Kimball and Mr. Young, a young man from the saw-mill, were killed. Mr. Kimball, in attempting to go from his concealment in the chamber for water for himself and the sick children, was shot by a young Indian, who claimed his eldest daughter for a wife as his lawful pay for killing her father.

We will now give an original deposition which explains the killing of Mr. Young, and also of two other young men, who escaped the first and second, and became victims of the third more brutal slaughter.

Deposition of Mr. Daniel Young relative to the Wailatpu Massacre

Question. – When, and in what manner, did you learn of the massacre?

Answer. – I was residing with my father’s family at Dr. Whitman’s saw-mill, about twenty miles from Wailatpu, where we had gone for the winter. My brother, a young man about twenty-four years of age, and about two years older than myself, had gone down to the station, the Tuesday before, with a load of lumber, and for provisions, and was expecting to return about the last of the week. Joseph Smith and family were also living at the saw-mill, except his oldest daughter, who was at the station. His family was out of flour and meat, and ours was now out of meat. On Saturday evening, he proposed to me to go down the next day for provisions. I did not wish to go down; told him if he wanted provisions he could go. He said if he had a horse he would go. We offered him a horse. He still urged me to go, as there was no one, he said, to stay with his family. I went down on horseback on the Sabbath, being the next Sabbath after the massacre. I did not go to the place till about an hour after dark, and learned nothing of the massacre till after I had got into the house. In the room where I expected to find my brother, I found them eating supper, with several Indians in the room. At the table was Mrs. Hays, and Joseph Stanfield, and Mrs. Hall, with the remnant of her family. About a couple of minutes after I went in, Joseph Stanfield left the table and went out of the house (this was some time previous to the rest leaving the table), and was gone for about three hours, I knew not where; but after he returned, he said he had started to go to Nicholas Finlay’s, a half-breed’s lodge, but had got lost. Nicholas had come in about half an hour before Stanfield returned. In the mean time I had learned from the Indian Beardy, through Eliza Spalding (his interpreter), of the massacre. This was in short sentences and much confused. Beardy said, however, that the Doctor was his friend, and he did not know of it until a good many had been killed, and he was sorry for what had taken place; he said the Indians said the Doctor was poisoning them, and that was the reason they did it, but he (Beardy) did not believe it. That he was there to protect the women and children, and no more should be killed. During the evening I also learned of the number that had been killed, and of those who had escaped from the place; but it was not known what had become of them.

I was informed by Stanfield that my brother had met an Indian who had told him to go back and stay for a week, but another Indian told him he could safely go on for provisions, and that he would go with him. He went on to within half a mile of the mission. The Indians were said to have gone thus far with him. Stanfield said he there found him dead, shot through the head near one eye, and there he buried him. Stanfield said also that evening that the Doctor was poisoning the Indians, which had caused the massacre; that Joe Lewis had heard from an adjoining room one night the Doctor and Mrs. Whitman talking of poisoning them, and that the Doctor had said it was best to destroy them by degrees, but that Mrs. Whitman said it was best to do it at once, and they would be rid of them, and have all their land and horses as their own; and that he (Joe Lewis) had told the Indians this before the massacre.

Stanfield also asked me if I had heard of his being married. I told him I had heard from my brother that he was going to take Mrs. Hays for a wife. He said: “We are married, but have not yet slept together.” I said: “Yes, I understand, you pretend to be married.” He said: “We are married; that is enough.” I thought it strange why he was saved unless he was a Catholic, and during the evening took an occasion, when I thought he would not suspect my object, to ask Stanfield whether he was a Catholic? He said, “I pass for one.”

I slept with Stanfield that night; did not retire till late. Next morning, Crockett Bewley, a young man about twenty-one or twenty-two, I should think, who was sick at the time of the first massacre, and whose clothes had been stolen (by Stanfield), came into the room wrapped in a blanket or a quilt. Bewley seemed to speak of the Doctor’s poisoning the Indians as something commonly reported among them as the cause of the massacre, but said he did not believe any thing of it, but he believed Joe Lewis was one of the leaders, and the Catholic priests were the cause of it. Stanfield replied, “You need not believe any such thing, and you had better not let the Indians hear you say that,” and spoke in a voice as though he was somewhat angry. Soon after this, Bewley left the room; Stanfield turned to me and said: “He had better be careful how he talks; if the Indians get hold of it the Catholics may hear of it.” As soon as I could do it without being suspected, I sought an opportunity to caution Bewley about the danger I thought he was running in speaking thus in the presence of Stanfield, and asked him if he did not know of Stanfield being a Catholic? He said he did not. I told him he might have known it from the fact of most French being Catholics. He replied he did not know of the French being Catholics more than any other people. I told him to be cautious hereafter how he spoke, and he said he would.

Soon after the conversation with Bewley, I told Stanfield I must return home; he said I must not, the Indian chiefs would be there after a while and would tell me what I must do; said he did not think I could get off till the next day.

We now commenced making a coffin for one of the Sager children that had died the night before. Soon after, the chief Tilokaikt came. He told me I could not go back till the next day, that he would then send two Indians back with me. I told Stanfield, in the chief’s presence, that I had told my folks I should be back on Monday if I came at all. Stanfield told me in reply, that the chief says, “Then you may go;” Stanfield also said, “The chief says tell them all to come down and bring every thing down that is up there; we want them to come down and take care of the families and tend the mill. Tell them, ‘Don’t undertake to run away; if you do, you will be sure to be killed;’ not be afraid, for they shall not be hurt.”

The chief had now done talking. Stanfield now told me to caution them, our people, at the saw-mill, as to what they should say; if they said any thing on the subject, “say that the Doctor was a bad man, and was poisoning the Indians.” He had also before that told me the same. I got a piece of meat and asked for some salt; but he said there was none about the house; afterward I found this was not the case. I then returned home, and informed our people as to what had taken place, and my father’s first reply was, “The Catholics are at the bottom of it.” Mr. Smith admitted it, but said, immediately, we must all become Catholics for our safety, and before we left the saw-mill, and afterward, he said he believed the Doctor was poisoning, and believed it from what Joe Stanfield had told him before about the Doctor’s misusing the half-breeds and children at his mission. The next day, Tuesday, we went down to the mission, and arrived after dark; found the young men, Bewley and Amos Sales, who were sick at the time of the first massacre, were both killed, and their bodies were lying outside of the door near the house where they lay during the night, and Stanfield said he could not bury them until he got the permission of the Indians. The next day we helped to bury them.

Here I would say that the two Indians the chief wished to send with me, as he said, to see us safe down, as Stanfield interpreted to me at the time, were the chief’s sons, and he wished me to wait because Edward, Tilokaikt’s son, had gone to the Umatilla to the great chief, to see what to do with the two young men who were sick. This, Stanfield told me, was the business which Edward Tilokaikt had gone for, and he would not get back so as to go with me that day. Three Indians, however, arrived within an hour after I got to the saw-mill, viz., Clark Tilokaikt, Stikas and one whose name I never knew, and came down a part of the way with us next day. I learned from Mrs. Canfield and her daughter, that this same Edward Tilokaikt, after he returned from the Umatilla, gave the first blow with his whip, and broke and run out of doors, when other Indians finished the slaughter of the sick men. While at the station, Joseph Smith threatened me with the Indians if I did not obey him. I felt our condition as bad and very dangerous from the Indians, and feared that Smith would join them. He sometimes talked of going on to the Umatilla to live with them. His daughter was taken by the chief’s sons (first Clark, and in the second place, Edward) for a wife. I told Mr. Smith, were I a father, I would never suffer that, so long as I had power to use an arm; his reply was, “You don’t know what you would do; I would not dare to say a word if they should take my own wife.” I continued to regard our situation as exceedingly dangerous till we got out of the country.

After we had arrived at Wallawalla, I said, in the presence of Mr. McBean, that I supposed there were present some of the Indians who had killed my brother, and if I knew them I would kill them yet. Mr. McBean said, “Take care what you say, the very walls have ears.” He was very anxious to get us safe to the Wallamet.

Q. – Would you suppose one who was acquainted at that place liable to get lost in going that evening to Finlay’s lodge?

A. – I would not. It was in sight and a plain path to it, and was not more than twenty-five yards off.

Q. – When did you learn from your brother that Stanfield was going to take Mrs. Hays as a wife?

A. – Some two or more weeks before the massacre, something was said as to Mr. Hoffman taking Mrs. Hays. My brother says, “No, I heard Joe Stanfield say that he was going to take her as a wife.”

Q. – Did your brother appear to believe that this was about to take place?

A. – He did, and my brother talked about it, – made us believe it was going to take place.

Q. – What opportunity had your brother to know about this, more than yourself?

A. – He boarded at the station, and was some of the time teaming from the saw-mill, and Mrs. Hays cooked for him and several others of the Doctor’s hands, among whom was Stanfield.

Q. – Why did you think Stanfield was a Catholic, as a reason for his being saved?

A. – Because I heard Dr. Whitman say at the mill, that the Catholics were evidently trying to set the Indians upon him, but he thought he could keep it down for another year, when he would be safe. I supposed he expected safety from the government being extended over the country.

Q. – How did Stanfield seem to know that the chief would be there after a while, and would tell you what you might do as to going back to the saw-mill?

A. – I did not know.

Q. – Why did you tell your people that you would be back on Monday, if at all?

A. – Because we were in an Indian country, and I remembered what I had heard the Doctor say at the Umatilla, and my brother had not returned as expected.