Marcus and Narcissa Whitman and the Opening of Old Oregon Volume 1

On a cold and foggy Monday in 1847, at the Waiilatpu Mission, Dr. Marcus Whitman and eleven others were killed by a band of Cayuse exacting retaliation for threats both real and perceived. In the wake of that massacre, life would change for all inhabitants of the Columbia Plateau, and Oregon Country would quickly become a territory of the United States. Author and historian Clifford M. Drury was born on an Iowa farm in 1897. From the 1930s until the time of his death in 1984, he exhaustively researched and studied the lives and effects of the Old Oregon missionaries. His energy and enthusiasm for understanding missionary history and American Western expansion has left an extensive and extraordinary written legacy. In this two-volume set, Drury thoroughly revisits the story of Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, the impact during their eleven years at Waiillatpu, and their significant roles in the great migration into the Pacific Northwest that would follow.