Empire of Innocence

To increase the burden on her time and labor, she bore one child of her own, and adopted many more homeless and hungry orphans. Trying to care for all these children and take care of the wayward pioneers taxed her to the point where she set up what might have been called the first women's support group, in which the members took time out of their day to pray for each other.
             The fact that Whitman had no idea of what she was about to put herself through gives us valuable insight as to the mindset of many of the settlers and pioneers of the time. Many had erroneous preconceived notions of a tax-free land of liberty, with rolling fields and snow-capped mountains in the distance. The fact is they were only blinding themselves to the truth, and thus leaving themselves even more vulnerable when tragedy did hit them. This led to a feeling of resentment toward nature and the indigenous population of the American West. Most pioneers viewed the Indians as bloodthirsty savages intent on killing them, their wives, and their children. On the other hand, the Indians viewed the white man as a strange foreign group, slowly invading and taking over the land that the Native Americans had held for many generations. These two rather serious misunderstandings created a dangerous situation for both the settlers and the Indians.
             In the midst of all her good intentions lay several factors that Whitman did not anticipate. First of all, it would have been wise to consider whether or not the Indians wanted to be "enlightened" at all. To them, this introduction of a new way of life was not always beneficial. It destroyed the society they had known for so long, and threw them into uncertainty. Second, she should have expected the somewhat careless attitude toward the Indians by other missionaries. In fact, her husband, Marcus Whitman, said, "It does not concern me so much what is to become of any particular set of Indians" (505).