whitman mission and losing a daughter and alice clarissa and plans for life

The final historical item I never learned about the Whitman Mission from earlier reading was that they lost their little daughter to a drowning accident in 1839. Here are a few details.

Marcus and Narcissa were married in February 1836, just a few weeks before they set out for Oregon. By June Narcissa was pregnant, and she made the trip across the bumpy Plains during the early months of pregnancy. Their first mission house was built by December within a few feet of the channel of the Walla Wall River, and it flooded on occasion in 1837/1838. On March 23, 1837 Alice Clarissa was born. Because of the flooding of the house, a new and larger mission house was built several feet from the river, and the family moved into it (complete with church/school as well as family living quarters) in 1838. Ah, safe at last. But, to no avail, at least as regards Alice Clarissa. On June 23, 1839, she fell into a shallow tongue of the channel, drowning before her mother could find her. Her memorial gravestone is directly under the shooting obelisk at the top of the hill facing the compound.

Meditation on the Loss of a Child

So occurred the worst fears of any parent. I thought of little Alice Clarissa's brief life while baking in the 103 heat atop the hill at Waiilatpu on July 25. I found myself growing oblivous to the heat as I entered into my own fears and tears, imagining how a couple can continue a mission in an inhospitable clime when conflict within and terrors of nature now have sapped not just your energy but your seed. Indeed, the Whitman's would never have another child, even though a nephew, Perrin Whitman, would join the Waiilatpu mission in 1843 and actually be away from the mission (the American Board had just bought the Methodist Mission in the Dalles in September for $721.13 and Perrin had gone to live there with others) when the massacre occurred on November 29, 1847.

The Whitman's so much wanted to do what they perceived to be the right, but they seemed stymied at every turn. First it was an unexpected flood, but no matter--move the house a little further from the river. Then it was the incessant conflict with Henry Spalding, William Gray and others. How could you be a "light to the world," which they thought themselves to be, when you were constantly bickering among yourselves? Then there was the Cayuse stubbornness, standoffishness and reluctance to embrace the Gospel. No doubt Whitman had thought that the Four Natives' coming to St. Louis to inquire of the "book" in 1831 was symbolic of a spiritual thirst for the Gospel which all natives had, but no one had taken the time to inform the Cayuse that they were supposed to be docile heathen waiting patiently for the missionaries to deliver them from error's chains. Then the Cayuse and others didn't want to learn the White Man's settled ways of agriculture. Oh, the Mission made the desert bloom, to be sure. But, from the perspective of the Cayuse, why go through all that extra work in a settled existence when you can eke out your existence on an annual basis by traditional hunting, fishing and berry-picking? Any teenager could understand the logic of their argument.

Then, the Whitans lost their beloved little daughter in 1839. Maybe the attitude towards loss of children was a bit more philosophical in those days, since many children didn't make it much past infancy in any case, but I still think that parents must have faced numbing grief and doubts about their decisions in the wake of such a drowning tragedy. Narcissa suffered a nervous breakdown in the wake of her death, and some think that she never really emerged from depression thereafter. And then, to top it off, the word had gotten back to the American Board headquarters in Boston of the discord at the mission stations, and they decided, in 1842, to "pull the plug" on Waiilatpu. If anyone had thought that there was heroism in any of this, they would have been in a minority, to be sure.

So, standing high above the mission complex on that hot day, and then finding Alice Clarissa's memorial stone below, I cried. I wept not only for the loss that the Whitman's faced, though my tears were about 157 years too late, but for all the mistakes, troubles, disapointments, losses and death that comes upon us poor humans as we try to make our plans to conquer the wildernesses of our lives. Someone will no doubt say that had there been better planning, had they really scoped out their territory the way they should, had they realized ahead of time that the Indians wouldn't have been responsive to the Gospel, had they been a bit more conscientious in child-care issues, had they worked out the unresolved psychological issues of the Henry Spalding/Narcissa Prentiss/Marcus Whitman triangle, then they would have avoided a whole heap of trouble for themselves. Indeed, an argument could be made that another Western trip, the Lewis & Clark expedition, was successful precisely because of its clear mission, limited duration, and physically fit members.

But somehow this historical "Monday morning quarterbacking" leaves me a bit cold. People do things because of love, because they are wed to big ideas, because their hearts lead them to act before their minds can take in all the issues. Indeed, if we had to wait for the analytical processes to work through all the possible permutations of danger and failure before acting, we would be as immobilized as a block of marble. But we people act from the heart; we are driven by the ideologies we hear preached all around us; we form bonds that are fragile yet tensile, enduring yet threatened at all times. And so it shall be to the end of the world. The Whitman Mission was a perfect example of the loss and disappointment attending seemingly pure motivations of very talented people. Maybe that, ultimately, is the reason I wept.

Conclusion

So, what do you do when it all crashes around you? Of course, you go to Washington to ask Congress for help. That, friends, is precisely what Marcus Whitman did. And, that is what the next essay discusses.

1999