My irreligious liberal arts college in the Pacific Northwest was named after a missionary. We found that very funny. The Whitmans seemed hapless. They set up a mission, got few converts, infected the Indians with measles, and got themselves killed. That’s it. That’s all they did, and they got a college out of it. Marcus’ famous quote is, “My plans require time and distance”, and I remember thinking, “How could that possibly not be true for anyone?” There was a plaque on campus for his wife Narcissa that honored her being one of the first two white women to cross the Rockies, which is a funny formulation (first two white women), and her name is funny. It was a popular frisbee golf target. The sports teams are called the Fighting Missionaries. The most popular chant at games was, “Missionaries Missionaries We’re On Top!” And so on.

I spotted this book at a very good bookstore in Fargo this fall, and I just finished it. Another reminder of how easy it is for 20-year-olds to be colossal shitheads. I forgive us for being colossal shitheads on this particular point, but it’s striking. It’s pretty clear that a bunch of liberal students uncomfortable with Imperialism, Colonialism, etc. aren’t going to be comfortable with being identified with missionaries. Too keen on establishing our own identities to empathize with that kind of a figure. 

I’m much more prone to being affected by stories now. Marcus was my age when he applied for missionary service. He believed it was God’s work, and she was inspired to join him in it at a time when the consensus was that women couldn’t physically handle the trip out west. They were the experiment to see if families could settle the West. They were prim and proper and pious, and their only company for most of the trip is wild men - fur traders and crazy mountain coots.  They fall in love on the way, and conceive a child somewhere in the Rockies. They can’t stand the other couple that’s sent with them, so much so that they establish two missions 100 miles apart to avoid each other. Their daughter drowns at the age of two. Mail takes months, so they receive a package of dresses for their daughter from Narcissa’s family months after she dies. How can that not just break your heart? Their homestead becomes a station on the Oregon Trail. The Cayuse Indians aren’t very interested in Christianity, so Marcus focuses on teaching them agriculture. They don’t really care about that either. The church orders them to consolidate, and Marcus rides over the Rockies in winter, all the way to Boston - by way of New Mexico - to change their minds. He almost starves crossing the mountains and has to eat his daughter’s dog. She adopts orphans who are abandoned in the area. He acts as the physician for the entire region, including caring for the Indians during the measles outbreak that takes half the tribe.

He sees the endgame. The trickle of settlers becomes a flood, and the idea of converting people in a foreign land becomes outdated when the US claims the territory. Marcus starts talking about leaving - starting their own homestead where they can have some privacy and peace. His medicine works for the white patients and not the Cayuse, and no one knows about antibodies, so the Indians accuse him of poisoning them. He comes home the last night, knowing that they are about to be slaughtered, but he doesn’t try to escape. He’s in charge of 70 people - most of them children, many of them on bedrest - and the nearest settlement is over 20 miles away. He figures that the best way for most of them to survive is to stay put, though it meant jeopardizing his family. And he was right. 53 women and children survived. 

Ten years after attending Whitman College, that all strikes me as a very human story. I actually feel inspired.