Upon Whitman’s return to his mission, his main goal shifted from converting American Indians to assisting white settlers. It effectively opened the floodgates of pioneer migration along the Oregon Trail and became known as the Great Emigration of 1843. Their trek began on May 22 and lasted five months. The group included 120 wagons, about 1,000 people and thousands of livestock. When Whitman headed west yet again, he met up with a huge wagon train destined for Oregon. In the meantime, missionary Elijah White led over 100 pioneers across the Oregon Trail. In 1842, the Whitman mission was closed by the American Missionary Board, and Whitman went back to the East on horseback where he lobbied for continued funding of his mission work. Narcissa’s accounts of the journey were published in the East and slowly more missionaries and settlers followed their path which became known as the Whitman Mission Route. Whitman’s small party had proved both men and women could travel west, although not easily. They finally reached Fort Vancouver, Washington, and built missionary posts nearby-Whitman’s post was at Waiilatpu amid the Cayuse Indians. The party made it to the Green River Rendezvous, then faced a grueling journey along Native American trails across the Rockies using Hudson Bay Company trappers as guides. Upon returning home, Whitman married and set out again, this time with his young wife Narcissa and another Protestant missionary couple. Whitman’s first attempt took him as far the Green River Rendezvous, a meeting place for fur trappers and traders in the Rocky Mountains near present-day Daniel, Wyoming. Determined to spread Christianity to American Indians on the frontier, doctor and Protestant missionary Marcus Whitman set out on horseback from the Northeast in 1835 to prove that the westward trail to Oregon could be traversed safely and further than ever before.
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