Looking West

1. Looking West

2. Missionaries • Methodist - Jason & Daniel Lee - Oregon • Catholic - primarily with Flatheads and Coeur D’Alenes • Presbyterian - Whitmans & Spaldings • Whitmans - Cayuse • Spaldings - Nez perce

3. Missionaries • Lee recalled because he worked more to help white settlers than natives • Indians who converted to Christianity by Catholics mixed Christianity with their own religious customs • Whitmans and Spaldings set up two different missions because they didn’t get along with each other. Whitmans eventually killed by Cayuse.

4. Missionaries • White settlers followed missionaries out to the Oregon Territory • Missionaries helped settlers once they arrived

5. The Trip • Danger Accidents Weather Native Americans at first were helpful. After realizing that many people were coming and those people expected to take land and resources, began making travel more difficult.

6. Difficulty • Daily tasks to care for a family and livestock were very difficult • Food • Exhaustion • Terrain

7. Disease • Cholera • Transmitted through lack of sanitation - usually in drinking water • Caused by a bacteria • Vomiting, diarrhea, dehydration, death • Came to US from India in early 1800’s. • Outbreaks still occur. Zimbabwe having trouble right now due to sanitation worker strike.

8. Death • About one out of ten who started out on the trail died. • Most died from Cholera or Accidents • Cholera crept silently, caused by unsanitary conditions: people camped amid garbage left by previous parties, picked up the disease, and then went about spreading it, themselves. People in good spirits in the morning could be in agony by noon and dead by evening. • http://www.endoftheoregontrail.org/road2oregon/sa18death.html

9. Death • Accidents were caused by negligence, exhaustion, guns, animals, and the weather. Shootings were common, but murders were rare -- one usually shot oneself, a friend, or perhaps one of the draft animals when a gun discharged accidentally. Shootings, drownings, being crushed by wagon wheels, and injuries from handling domestic animals were the biggest accidental killers on the Trail…Deaths along the trail, especially among young children and mothers in childbirth, were the most heart-rending of hardships: • "Mr. Harvey's young little boy Richard 8 years old went to git in the waggon and fel from the tung. The wheals run over him and mashed his head and Kil him Ston dead he never moved."- Absolom Harden,1847 • http://www.endoftheoregontrail.org/road2oregon/sa18death.html

10. Impact on Native Americans • Europeans brought disease. • Spanish had brought small pox in 1700’s - killing about 30% of Native population on the coast • Settlers brought in cholera, smallpox, influenza, measles, and malaria bringing the western Washington Native population from 28,000 to 9,000 by 1850.

11. Impact on Native Americans • Approximately 90% of the Northwest Native population was destroyed by disease. “…Samuel Hancock wrote that ‘It was truly shocking to witness the ravages of the disease here at Neah Bay…The beach, for a distance of eight miles, was literally strewn with the dead bodies of these people.” - Timothy Egan, The Good Rain

13. Write a response to this question: What impact did the development of Washington State have on different cultural groups?

14. Sources • http://www.who.int/topics/ • http://www.endoftheoregontrail.org/road2oregon/sa18death.html • Egan, Timothy, 1990. The Good Rain. New York: Vintage Books. • http://washingtonlink.org/essays/output.cfm?file_id=5100