Marcus and narcissa whitman death

19th-century American missionary

For the New York school, see Marcus Whitman Middle/High School.

Marcus Whitman (September 4, 1802 – November 29, 1847) was an American physician and missionary.

He is most well-known for leading American settlers across the Oregon Trail, unsuccessfully attempting to Christianize the Cayuse Indians, and was subsequently killed by the Cayuse Indians in a event known as the 1847 Whitman massacre, over a misunderstanding, resulting in the beginning of the Cayuse war (1847-1855).

In 1836, Marcus Whitman led an overland party by wagon to the West. He and his wife, Narcissa, along with Reverend Henry Spalding and his wife, Eliza, and William Gray, founded a mission near present-day Walla Walla, Washington in an effort to convert local Indians to Christianity.

In the winter of 1842, Whitman went back east, returning the following summer with the first large wagon train of settlers across the Oregon Trail. These new settlers encroached