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The Whitman massacre (also known as the Walla Walla massacre) was the murder in the Oregon Country on November 29, 1847 of U.S. missionaries Dr. Marcus Whitman and his wife Narcissa, along with 15 others, by Cayuse and Umatilla Indians.
The killings are usually ascribed in part to a clash of cultures and in part to the inability of Dr. Whitman, a physician, to halt the spread of measles among the Native Americans, who held Whitman responsible for subsequent deaths.
Other factors that may have contributed to the massacre were outbreaks of cholera, conflict between the Protestant missionaries and local Catholic priests, the contempt shown by Narcissa Whitman toward the Indians and their way of life, resentment over missionaries' attempts to transform the Indians' lifestyle and the killing of a Walla Walla chief's son.
Marcus Whitman was born in 1802 at Rushville, New York.
The Whitmans reached the Walla Walla river on September 1, 1836, and decided to found a mission to the Cayuse Indians at Waiilatpu in the Walla Walla Valley.
The Whitman's two-year-old daughter drowned in 1839, Narcissa's eyesight gradually failed almost to the point of blindness, and their isolation dragged on year after year.
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