User:Ensignmorituri

I am a programmer and musician from Los Angeles, California, USA. Currently working on my bachelor’s degree at Whitman College.

Whitman College was established in the mid-1800s by the survivors of a missionary from the east coast, Marcus Whitman. He and his family travelled to what is now the southeastern corner of Washington state. Besides French fur traders who came from the north, his party were the only non-native inhabitants of the Pacific Northwest. His relations with the native people of the Cayuse, Umatilla, and Nez Perce tribes were mostly friendly.

The French having interacted closely with these natives meant they were already familiar with smallpox. Outbreaks of European disease wracked the tribes for about a generation before Whitman arrived; contrary to what 21st century students at his namesake school have asserted, there is no evidence that his party deliberately furnished the natives with any objects bearing disease. They and the local tribes reached a mutually beneficial agreement. Whitman and his colleagues would help eminent tribespeople study the culture of Europe, including Christianity and language skills, so that they could make better dealings in commerce. In exchange, Whitman, his family, and his small parish were given a parcel of land and a promise of peace.

But Whitman was a colonist. Contrary to the terms of his contract with the tribes, he and his companions perpetually invited easterners to live with them. The settlement began to grow, to the natives’ alarm. They informed him that he was in violation of his contract, and that they would enforce the customary restitution if he did not himself. At the same time, an epidemic swept through the region. Whitman, a doctor, was hired by locals to cure the afflicted; in Tamanwit, the practice of law particular to the Umatilla, Walla Walla, and Cayuse, the penalty for failing to cure a sick patient when one purported to be able to cure them (i.e. malpractice) was to be paid in livestock.