page_title: Marcus Whitman
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Marcus Whitman / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: statue of Marcus Whitman at NSHC
context_page_description: Marcus Whitman was an American physician and missionary.
  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 at present day Walla Walla, Washington in an effort to convert local Indians to Christianity. In the winter of 1842 Whitman returned east, returning the following summer with the first large wagon train across the Oregon Trail. The new settlers encroached on the Cayuse Indians living near the Whitman Mission and were unsuccessful in their efforts to Christianize the Tribe. Following the deaths of many nearby Cayuse from an outbreak of measles, some remaining Cayuse accused Whitman of murder, suggesting that he had administered poison and was a failed shaman. In retaliation, a group of Cayuse killed the Whitmans and twelve other settlers on November 30, 1847, an event that came to be known as the Whitman Massacre. Continuing warfare between settlers and Indians reduced the Cayuse numbers further.
context_section_description: Whitman is commemorated by Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington,  the Wallowa–Whitman National Forest, Mount Rainier's Whitman Glacier, and numerous schools, including Marcus Whitman Middle School in Port Orchard, Washington; Marcus Whitman Junior High School in Seattle, Washington; and Marcus Whitman Central School in Rushville, New York, his hometown. In 1953, the state of Washington donated a statue of him by the sculptor Avard Fairbanks to the National Statuary Hall Collection in the United States Capitol. An identical one stands at the edge of the campus of Whitman College. The Washington State Legislature has declared the fourth day of September as Marcus Whitman Day. A bronze tablet in Wheeler, New York commemorates his 1828-1835 practice as a medical doctor in that town.  In 1977, he was inducted into the Steuben County (NY) Hall of Fame.
  Walla Walla has a Marcus Whitman Hotel and Conference Center.  While the name is not used much now, the road from Penn Yan, New York to Rushville, New York was formerly called the Marcus Whitman Highway.
caption: Marcus Whitman, National Statuary Hall Collection, US Capitol
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