2019 Book #2: ‘Narcissa Whitman on the Oregon Trail’ by Lawrence Dodd. This monograph of Narcissa’s life focuses on her Oregon Trail trip of 1836, commenced the day after her wedding. While well suited to make the trip, riding mostly horseback the latter half of the trip (unheard of for women of the time) while pregnant (unprecedented and heroic), Narcissa and Marcus Whitman chose to mission to a tribe, the Cayuse, that was less than welcoming (compared to the Nez Perce), and the influx of settlers after their successful trek helped lead to the flood into Oregon, caused them to care more for the white emigres arriving every fall than the native Cayuse, leading ultimately to Whitman mission’s ultimate demise at Cayuse hands at the time of a severe, deadly smallpox outbreak.
rwb historically speaking 