THE WHITMAN MASSACRE or THE MURDER OF DR. WHITMAN

(Oregon Country--Whitman Murders) Brouillet, Jean-Baptiste A.. AUTHENTIC ACCOUNT OF THE MURDER OF DR. WHITMAN AND OTHER MISSIONARIES, BY THE CAYUSE INDIANS OF OREGON, IN 1847, AND THE CAUSES WHICH LED TO THE HORRIBLE CATASTROPHE. S. J. McCormick, Portland, Oregon 1869. 108 pp. Small 8vo (19 cm). Printed wraps, edges wear, old ink spot, front wrap separating, back wrap chipped. Very good.

Brouillet, Rev. J. B. A, “would become perhaps the most vocal advocate for Catholic missions in the United States. Born in 1813 in the village of St. Jean-Baptiste de Rouville, Quebec, he had entered the seminary at the age of 13. By the time he was 20, he was serving as professor of both grammar and literature while training for the priesthood. After his ordination at the Cathedral of Montreal in 1837, he taught school and pastored in Quebec until coming to the attention of Bishop François Norbert Blanchet in 1846. Blanchet recruited the younger priest to accompany him in establishing a mission at Walla Walla. Brouillet enthusiastically agreed, and the two men set off from Montreal with two volunteers on March 23, 1847. Arriving at Fort Walla Walla more than six months later, they were met by the Cayuse chief, Tauitau, who explained that his people were dissatisfied with the Whitmans and desired the Catholics to start a mission among them. Blanchet complied, assigning Brouillet to establish St. Anne’s at Tauitau’s village. In the aftermath of the Waiilatpu tragedy, Blanchet sent Brouillet to California to raise funds for the mission effort, and there in 1849 he built the first Catholic place of worship in San Francisco. In 1850 he followed Blanchet to Vancouver as vicar-general of the newly created Diocese of Nesqually. In 1862 he traveled to Washington, D. C., to advocate for the western missions, then returned ten years later to establish the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions, for which he obtained Papal blessing in Rome in 1879. He would continue to lead BCIM activities, as well as minister to his diocese, until his death in 1884, due to the effects of having been caught in a blizzard two years earlier.” (Primary Sources)

This is Brouillet’s own copy of the 1869 edition, signed at the top of the Introduction. It is the only known signed example of this essential work. It is also signed on the front cover by French-Canadian historian Edmund Mallet and contains several of Mallet’s marginal notes within. A distinguished copy of a key Oregon imprint.