Converting the West: A Biography of Narcissa Whitman by Julie Roy Jeffrey (review)

Reviews 247 Converting the West: A Biography of Narcissa Whitman. By Julie Roy Jeffrey. (Norman, Oklahoma: The University of Oklahoma Press, 1991. 256 pages, $24.95.) Converting the West narrates the life of Narcissa Prentiss Whitman (18081847 ). In mid-March, 1836, Narcissa and her husband Marcus left Pittsburgh with a mission party, led by Marcus, headed to the Oregon Territory. After a decade’s Presbyterian missionary work with the Cayuse Indian tribe in the pacific Northwest, Marcus and Narcissa were murdered in the Indian massacre at their station, at Waiilatpu. Narcissa proved the only woman in the community slain during this massacre. Her life “back East” is adequately sketched by Professor Jeffrey, but the biography really becomes interesting once the party crosses the mid-continent. As a female missionary, asJeffreyjustly observes, Narcissa understood “she had become a public figure of sorts and that her correspondence would not be private.”In analyzing these letters,Julie Royjeffrey has done admirable work in plumbing the seeming meanings of the omissions, as well as the inclusions. In this vein, the author provides keen insights into the relationship be­ tween Narcissa and Marcus. Analogously, the hardships and illnesses alluded to and the hesitations and doubts hinted at in Narcissa’s letters ProfessorJeffrey “fleshes out” sensibly and convincingly. In conveying a sense of the western adventure portion of Narcissa’stoo-brief existence, the author presents another admirably strong and sensitive American woman of the kind hitherto pre­ sented, in epistolary format, by Lydia S. Lane in I Married a Soldier [(1893). University of New Mexico Press, 1987] and by Elinore Pruitt Stewart in Letters of a Woman Homesteader [(1914). Houghton Mifflin, 1982]. When Narcissa’s only child dies, she “takes in” and helps raise the orphan children of the Sager family, one of many good deeds performed by the Whitmans for the commu­ nity—“whites” and Indians alike—for which they evidently received, at best, scant gratitude. The build-up to and the aftermath of the massacre Jeffrey presents with especial skill— multum in parvo. Concerning these incidents, she makes efficient use of the understandably meager sources to present the drama in aptly muted tones. The selection of maps and photographs adds tang and interest to this quietly moving biographical narrative. JAMES KIRSCHKE Villanova University ...