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In 1847, Protestant missionary Marcus Whitman was killed after a disastrous eleven-year effort to evangelize the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest. By 1897, Whitman was a national hero, celebrated in textbooks, monuments, and historical scholarship as the “Savior of Oregon.” But his fame was based on a tall tale — one that was about to be exposed. This book traces the rise and fall of Marcus Whitman's legend, revealing two patterns in the development of American history. On the one hand is providential history, marked by the conviction that God is an active agent in human history and that historical work can reveal patterns of divine will. On the other hand is objective history, which arose from the efforts of Catholics and other racial and religious outsiders to resist providentialists' pejorative descriptions of non-Protestants and nonwhites. The book examines how these competing visions continue to shape understandings of the American past and the nature of historical truth.

This essay reviews several of the main ways in which scholars of religion have depicted relationships between religion and market economies in the United States. It traces sociological, historical, and ethnographic approaches to the study of religion and market economies, examining how scholars have navigated the tensions between religious declension, on the one hand, and celebration of free market ideals, on the other. It then suggests some directions for further study, including better integration of the studies of material goods, labor, and capitalism with studies of religion and market economies; new studies of religion and finance; greater attention to non‐capitalist systems in U.S. history; and studies that recognize the permeable and co‐constructed nature of religion and market economies.

This chapter details how the Whitman story evolved out of the history of the establishment and subsequent collapse of Marcus Whitman's mission among the Cayuse people. It situates the Whitman Mission within antebellum Protestant understandings of missionary labor as ordained by God and destined for success. It also illustrates the providential framework, wherein the failure of a mission to win converts or implement any material change in the lives of missionized peoples would be viewed as incompatible with the divine destiny of mission work. The chapter recounts how Whitman came to the conclusion that the Cayuse people were providentially doomed to extinction and that his true purpose was to facilitate the Christianization of Oregon Territory. It discusses Whitman's renarration of his own missionary purpose so that it could be seen as a success.

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