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Dalles would not send supplies to those on a wagon train who’d taken a wrong route in 1845. Did that demonstrate mercy? They claimed the people had made a mistake and must live with the consequences, but the Samaritan didn’t ask the injured man why he’d taken a route known to be peopled by thieves. He simply helped him. My husband and I saw it as our mission to bring such mercy. To bring Jesus to their souls and prepare them for the changes that would come. Changes we brought about by our making it over the mountains with my father’s little wagon. If two white women could survive the trip, then before long there would be many others, not just missionaries caring for their souls, but those who would want their land: this hot, majestic, verdant, tree-barren hill country cut by sparkling streams. Were we wrong?
    I sometimes feel guilty for my part in bringing about such change.
    Mr. S and I had worked on the language together. I count it one of the most joyous experiences we shared, this effort to translate important biblical stories and songs into Sahaptin, their language. That I have that memory of the two of us pursuing a purpose together gives me peace on difficult days when we no longer have a mission. Dr. Whitman insisted the Cayuse learn English, and I equate that demand to some of the unrest we heard of among the missionaries themselves, the Whitmans and Eells, even those early years. I had been concerned when it was decided that we would not all remain together as one mission. But later, I was grateful my husband had decided—along with Dr. Whitman—that we would do more good to go where we’d been invited by the Nez Perce than try to convince another tribe that they wanted us.
    But I digress from telling of a day of such joy when the press arrived. It confounds me how difficult it is to hold happy memories, how much easier to remember trouble. Perhaps the painful memories are ways to try to restore the time before the tragedy, and yet suffering arrives when one longs for what is not and can never be again. We did celebrate that evening, and for several days the Indians staged dancing and horse races, their skinny-tailed dogs sniffing and panting in and out of the tipis. The People baked salmon on sticks angled close to the fires, roasting the fillets as long as Mr. S’s arm, so that we could chew on the savory flesh in the morning, even when the fish had cooled. The dried slabs of fillet would keep for months. Eliza thrived on the meat, and we all had fishy breaths despite the liberal use of tooth powder.
    During the afternoon respites when the Indians slept in the heat, we missionaries bent over the typeface and the press. Mr. S and Joseph had built a small building to house it, with windows to bring in good light, and there the men worked to put the parts together. Mr. Hall, tall and willowy, had an ease about him, and he was gentle with his wife as few men I’ve ever seen be. He joked, too, and I found it a delight to laugh. Mr. S is a serious soul, purposeful. He told me laughter takes up space better spent in work. Once, in seminary, he wrote a treatise on how to win six hundred million souls worldwide to Christ in twenty-one years. He had much to accomplish and I took it as no small gift that he had chosen me—no, God chose me for him—to do such work. Of course that was before I knew that Henry had asked someone else first to share his life with him and she had declined. Imagine my surprise to meet that very woman one day and share a seven-month journey across the continent with her and her husband. Later my child would be taught by her in far-off Waiilatpu. It was good I had the focus of the language to put into typeface and to print, keeping my own sinful, envious thoughts at bay.
    Once the Sahaptin primer was complete, we intended to translate the book of Matthew into their language. They would be the first books printed west of the Rocky Mountains—a language primer and the gospel. They