Tiloukaikt
Encyclopedia
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
leader of the Cayuse
Cayuse
The Cayuse are a Native American tribe in the state of Oregon in the United States. The Cayuse tribe shares a reservation in northeastern Oregon with the Umatilla and the Walla Walla tribes as part of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation...
tribe in the northwestern United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. He was involved in the Whitman Massacre
Whitman massacre
The Whitman massacre was the murder in the Oregon Country on November 29, 1847 of U.S. missionaries Dr. Marcus Whitman and his wife Narcissa Whitman, along with eleven others. They were killed by Cayuse and Umatilla Indians. The incident began the Cayuse War...
and was a primary leader during the subsequent Cayuse War
Cayuse War
The Cayuse War was an armed conflict that took place in the Northwestern United States from 1847 to 1855 between the Cayuse people of the region and the United States Government and local Euro-American settlers...
.
The Cayuse, and their neighbors the Nez Percé, identified the Walla Walla Valley of the Oregon
Oregon
Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...
territory as their primary homeland. When approached by Presbyterian missionary
Missionary
A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...
Marcus Whitman
Marcus Whitman
Marcus Whitman was an American physician and Oregon missionary in the Oregon Country. Along with his wife Narcissa Whitman he started a mission in what is now southeastern Washington state in 1836, which would later become a stop along the Oregon Trail...
in 1835, Tiloukaikt and other Cayuse leaders consented to the establishment of a mission in the valley. Sometime later, Whitman and his wife Narcissa created the mission and school at Waiilatpu, in the Walla Walla Valley. A number of Cayuse children attended the school and were taught by Narcissa Whitman. The mission served as a way station for travelers along the Oregon Trail
Oregon Trail
The Oregon Trail is a historic east-west wagon route that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon and locations in between.After 1840 steam-powered riverboats and steamboats traversing up and down the Ohio, Mississippi and Missouri rivers sped settlement and development in the flat...
.
Early relations between the Cayuse and Nez Perce and the missionaries throughout the region were generally peaceful. However, tensions between Roman Catholic and Protestant missionaries and the increasing number of white adventurers and settlers in the territory led to misunderstandings and disagreements.
The growing white population also brought disease to the Pacific northwest and its native peoples. Measles
Measles
Measles, also known as rubeola or morbilli, is an infection of the respiratory system caused by a virus, specifically a paramyxovirus of the genus Morbillivirus. Morbilliviruses, like other paramyxoviruses, are enveloped, single-stranded, negative-sense RNA viruses...
and scarlet fever
Scarlet fever
Scarlet fever is a disease caused by exotoxin released by Streptococcus pyogenes. Once a major cause of death, it is now effectively treated with antibiotics...
broke out among both white and native populations. Whitman, a trained physician, treated both Indians and whites. However, due to the lack of immunity in the native population, more Indians than whites died. When the number of dead Cayuse children began to rise, some Cayuse became suspicious that Whitman was poisoning his patients rather than treating them. Contemporary accounts suggest that some white settlers encouraged the Cayuse in this belief.
During a measles epidemic in 1847, suspicion and ill feeling came to a head. During a November 29 visit to the mission for medicine, Tiloukaikt had words with Whitman. While they were talking, a warrior named Tomahas struck Whitman from behind, inflicting several wounds with a tomahawk
Tomahawk (axe)
A tomahawk is a type of axe native to North America, traditionally resembling a hatchet with a straight shaft. The name came into the English language in the 17th century as a transliteration of the Powhatan word.Tomahawks were general purpose tools used by Native Americans and European Colonials...
. Other Cayuse fell on the mission occupants, killing Narcissa Whitman and twelve others. Another fifty three men, women and children were captured and held as hostage
Hostage
A hostage is a person or entity which is held by a captor. The original definition meant that this was handed over by one of two belligerent parties to the other or seized as security for the carrying out of an agreement, or as a preventive measure against certain acts of war...
s.
Settlers in the nearby Willamette Valley
Willamette Valley
The Willamette Valley is the most populated region in the state of Oregon of the United States. Located in the state's northwest, the region is surrounded by tall mountain ranges to the east, west and south and the valley's floor is broad, flat and fertile because of Ice Age conditions...
, led by fundamentalist clergyman Cornelius Gilliam
Cornelius Gilliam
Cornelius Gilliam was a pioneer of the U.S. state of Oregon who was best known as the commander of the volunteer forces against the Cayuse in the Cayuse War. A native of North Carolina, he served in the Black Hawk War and Seminole Wars before settling in Missouri...
, raised a volunteer militia
Militia
The term militia is commonly used today to refer to a military force composed of ordinary citizens to provide defense, emergency law enforcement, or paramilitary service, in times of emergency without being paid a regular salary or committed to a fixed term of service. It is a polyseme with...
for a rescue attempt. A peace commission, headed by Joel Palmer
Joel Palmer
General Joel Palmer was an American pioneer of the Oregon Territory in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. He was born in Canada, and spent his early years in New York and Pennsylvania before serving as a member of the Indiana House of Representatives.Palmer traveled to the Oregon...
, was established to meet with neighboring tribes in hopes of avoiding an escalation of violence. However, the hostages were actually saved through the actions of Peter Skene Ogden
Peter Skene Ogden
Peter Skene Ogden , was a fur trader and a Canadian explorer of what is now British Columbia and the American West...
of the Hudson's Bay Company
Hudson's Bay Company
The Hudson's Bay Company , abbreviated HBC, or "The Bay" is the oldest commercial corporation in North America and one of the oldest in the world. A fur trading business for much of its existence, today Hudson's Bay Company owns and operates retail stores throughout Canada...
, who negotiated and paid for their release.
However, Gilliam and his militia attacked an encampment of uninvolved Cayuse, which led to a period of violence between Cayuse and Palouse people and the settlers and militia. This became known as the Cayuse War. Eventually, the white militia withdrew and the area settled into an uneasy peace. However, if a real peace was to be established, white settlers demanded that those who had killed Whitman and the other mission residents should be punished. Two years later, five Cayuse, including Tiloukaikt, surrendered. They were taken to Oregon City, tried and sentenced to hang. Before his execution on June 3, 1850, Tiloukaikt accepted Catholic last rites while refusing to deal with the Presbyterian missionaries. Defiant and angry, Tiloukaikt spoke on the gallows, "Did not your missionaries teach us that Christ died to save his people? So we die to save our people."
The death of the five Cayuse did not significantly reduce tensions in the area. Raids, initiated by both whites and natives, continued. Eventually, most surviving Cayuse left the Walla Walla area and joined neighboring tribes including the Nez Perce, Umatilla
Umatilla (tribe)
The Umatilla are a Sahaptin-speaking Native American group living on the Umatilla Indian Reservation, who traditionally inhabited the Columbia Plateau region of the northwestern United States....
and Yakama
Yakama
The Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, or simply Yakama Nation , is a Native American group with nearly 10,000 enrolled members, living in Washington. Their reservation, along the Yakima River, covers an area of approximately 1.2 million acres...
.