Whitmans Notable, Less Than Admirable Keep History Real It’s Not For Creating A Cast Of Handy Heroes.

Should Whitman College dethrone the pioneers for whom it’s named or do they still deserve respect?

Weep no tears for the loss of Walla Walla’s historic pageant called “Wagons West.”

On the 100th anniversary of the arrival of Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, Viola Forrest portrayed Narcissa in the town play. It was 1936 and nostalgia for these heroes of the Northwest flooded tear ducts. Memories of the Cayuse Indians, whose lives were forever changed by their encounter with the Whitmans, were considered irrelevant.

It’s now 1997, the 150th anniversary of the attack on Whitman mission. No one is donning a Narcissa Whitman costume. This is progress.

These small-town pageants, like scenes from the movie “Waiting for Guffman,” are usually made up of equal parts sentimentality, denial and bad acting. In some parts, they continue to this day. Southerners march townspeople dressed as Robert E. Lee through their streets. In Custer, S.D., an actor dons a flowing, blond wig as George Armstrong Custer, one of the most dubious heroes the Old West ever produced, for the town’s Gold Discovery Days.d

People of Walla Walla have wisely turned their backs on such drivel. Instead, at a recent two-day symposium, they examined the historical perspectives of both whites and Indians.

It’s now clear that Narcissa and Marcus Whitman ventured into Cayuse Indian lands with a vision both courageous and arrogant. In her letters, Narcissa made no secret of her disdain for Indians. She pledged herself to the task of saving the “heathen” souls of the Cayuse and described them as “filthy” and flea-ridden.

A Cayuse faction murdered them and 11 others at the Whitman Mission on Nov. 29, 1847. It was a tragic day in Northwest history - a classic cultural clash of the type that has been going on since the beginning of time and that continues today throughout the world.

Only by studying the roots of such conflict - from all perspectives - can humans ever hope to prevent such tragedies in the future. After all, history examines the past in order to apply its lessons to the present. Its purpose was never the creation of heroes for white pedestals. When we turn the people of the past into marble figures, we often deprive them of their humanity and ourselves of the crucial lessons their lives can teach.

, DataTimes MEMO: See opposing view under the headline: Heroes they were and should remain

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