Have you visited Walla Walla (not sure why it needs to be more than one Walla), but then there’s others (wasn’t there an old poem about these double names where the maiden’s heart goes Hamma Hamma)? There’s more there than the wine near Walla Walla. The well respected Whitman College is there, formerly called the Missionaries – this was dropped in 2016.
Crosscut in a recent article discusses the controversy surrounding Whitman in current political thinking: “Marcus Whitman was a missionary who might have faded into historical obscurity had not he, his wife Narcissa, and 11 others been killed by Cayuse Indians at his mission at Waiilatpu, near present-day Walla Walla, on Nov. 29, 1847 —170 years ago. Instead, he became one of the most memorialized figures in Washington state history.”
Whitman, as I recall, set up his mission along the Oregon Trail and was both physician and minister to both the natives and settlers. Things went OK until diseases were imported that began to kill off the Cayuse adding to their resentment into the intrusion into their lands. Make sure you visit the Mission if ever in the area.
The article goes on to discuss the “Whitman Massacre” and the rather previously whitewashed historical view of Whitman. For an interesting bit of local history click here. Will another statue bite the dust?