| Summary: | Eliza Spalding Warren, the daughter of missionaries Henry Harmon and Eliza Hart Spalding, was ten years old and had just arrived at Waillatpu for schooling when the Whitman Massacre occured on Nov. 29, 1847. In this account written for Clarence Leroy Andrews, Eliza Spalding Warren describes the events of that day, including the deaths of Marcus Whitman, John Sager, Narcissa Whitman, Andrew Rogers, Frank Sager, and Nathan Kimball. Warren comments on the Whitmans' relationship with the Cayuse Indians before the attack, and concludes the account with a description of her father's dangerous journey from the nearby Umatilla Indians back home to the protection of the friendly Nez Perce. The Whitman Massacre took place on Nov. 29, 1847, at Waiilatpu, a Christian mission on the Walla Walla River, when missionary Marcus Whitman, his wife Narcissa, and twelve male residents of the mission were murdered by a small band of Cayuse. The Cayuse blamed Whitman for a measles epidemic that had killed many members of the tribe, and also feared that he was bringing in too many white settlers. More than forty women and children, including Eliza Spalding, Lorinda Bewley, and the surviving Sager orphans Catherine, Elizabeth, Matilda and Henrietta, were subsequently taken captive by the Cayuse but were later ransomed by Peter Skene Ogden of the Hudson Bay Company. Although only ten years old at the time of the massacre, Eliza played a vital role in that she was the only survivor who knew enough of the Cayuse language to be able to understand their captors. Her father, Henry Harmon Spalding, another white missionary stationed 120 miles away at Lapwai, had just left Eliza at the mission for schooling and was himself nearly killed as he tried to return to Lapwai.
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