From honeymoon to massacre': memory and remembrance of Marcus Whitman, 1847-1962

April Mae Grube

In November of 1847 a small band of Cayuse Native Americans attacked the Whitman mission at Waiilatpu near Fort Walla Walla in the Oregon Territory and killed Dr. Marcus Whitman, his wife, Narcissa, and twelve others. Over the next several years the Whitman massacre came to play a central role in Americans' understanding of and identity with the frontier experience. At the hands of late nineteenth-century romantics, Marcus and Narcissa bore the burden of martyred sainthood while early twentieth-century novelists depicted them as the quintessential pioneer family, as trailblazers with patriotic and nationalistic intentions, and as civilizers of the wild Pacific Northwest. While Narcissa has been the subject of some gender analysis, no comparable studies exist which seriously investigate the role of masculinity in the creation, perpetuation, and diffusion of the Whitman memory. Thus, this project addresses how an emphasis on Marcus Whitman's masculinity played a central role in the popularity and persistence of the Whitman memory in fostering an American manhood. The Whitman massacre legacy retains its importance in the twenty-first century because for more than one hundred fifty years it has been used to justify and reaffirm white Americans' entitlement to the U.S. West. In turning a critical eye towards the ways in which American vii storytellers have memorialized Marcus in rigidly gendered terms, not only is the interdependence of masculinity and civility in American culture brought into focus, but it also brings a forgotten dimension back to an account that has been flattened over time. By questioning how Marcus Whitman was depicted as a civilized Victorian gentleman who personified true religion, patriotism, married life, and frontier capability, the important way that the Whitman narrative has been manipulated through language and imagery is exposed. This study of manipulation reveals that it is through gendered romanticism that the local and regional memory of Whitman became part of an American national memory bound in the transformative power of the frontier experience.

From honeymoon to massacre': memory and remembrance of Marcus Whitman, 1847-1962

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