{"id":304,"date":"2021-04-23T19:13:20","date_gmt":"2021-04-24T02:13:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/history.wsu.edu\/past-as-prologue\/?page_id=304"},"modified":"2026-06-22T11:12:46","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T18:12:46","slug":"thigpen-marriage-missionaries-and-race-in-the-american-west","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/history.wsu.edu\/past-as-prologue\/episodes\/thigpen-marriage-missionaries-and-race-in-the-american-west\/","title":{"rendered":"Thigpen Marriage, Missionaries, and Race in the American West"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wsu-decorator  wsu-overflow--hidden wsu-decorator--style-lines-gray\" style=\"top:0;right:0;height:100%;width:20%\"><\/div>\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Marriage, Missionaries, and Race in the American West<\/h1>\n\n\n<div class=\"wsu-row wsu-row--sidebar-right\" >\r\n    \n<div class=\"wsu-column\"  style=\"\">\r\n\t\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignleft size-large is-resized\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/wpcdn.web.wsu.edu\/wp-cas\/uploads\/sites\/2629\/2021\/04\/Portrait-of-arcissa-Prentiss-Whitman-792x1186.png\" alt=\"Portrait of Narcissa Prentiss Whitman\" class=\"wp-image-313\" width=\"198\" height=\"297\" srcset=\"https:\/\/wpcdn.web.wsu.edu\/wp-cas\/uploads\/sites\/2629\/2021\/04\/Portrait-of-arcissa-Prentiss-Whitman-792x1186.png 792w, https:\/\/wpcdn.web.wsu.edu\/wp-cas\/uploads\/sites\/2629\/2021\/04\/Portrait-of-arcissa-Prentiss-Whitman-396x593.png 396w, https:\/\/wpcdn.web.wsu.edu\/wp-cas\/uploads\/sites\/2629\/2021\/04\/Portrait-of-arcissa-Prentiss-Whitman-768x1150.png 768w, https:\/\/wpcdn.web.wsu.edu\/wp-cas\/uploads\/sites\/2629\/2021\/04\/Portrait-of-arcissa-Prentiss-Whitman.png 800w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 198px) 100vw, 198px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><em>Portrait of Narcissa Prentiss Whitman, from O. W. Nixon&#8217;s How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon. Wikipedia<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n<p>When you think of marriage in the American West, you may have thoughts of Missionaries and pioneers starting families while clearing the land. But as WSU associated Professor of History, Jenny Thigpen says, there\u2019s a racial element not to be ignored. Although today we tend to think about marriage as a relationship built around love, studying past unions shows love was not the priority, and that combatting intermarriage and building the region in a particular way, one that ensured racial exclusivity of some, was paramount.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Audio Recording:<\/h2>\n\n\n<!--[if lt IE 9]><script>document.createElement('audio');<\/script><![endif]-->\n<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-304-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"https:\/\/wpcdn.web.wsu.edu\/wp-cas\/uploads\/sites\/2629\/2021\/04\/Thigpen-Marriage-Missionaries-Whitmans.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/wpcdn.web.wsu.edu\/wp-cas\/uploads\/sites\/2629\/2021\/04\/Thigpen-Marriage-Missionaries-Whitmans.mp3\">https:\/\/wpcdn.web.wsu.edu\/wp-cas\/uploads\/sites\/2629\/2021\/04\/Thigpen-Marriage-Missionaries-Whitmans.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading wsu-spacing-after--default wsu-spacing-before--large\">Transcription of Audio:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Sueann Ramella:<\/strong>&nbsp;When you think of marriage in the American West, you may have thoughts of Missionaries and pioneers starting families while clearing the land. But as WSU associated Professor of History, Jenny Thigpen says, there\u2019s a racial element not to be ignored in today\u2019s <em>Past as Prologue<\/em>.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jenny Thigpen<\/strong><strong>:&nbsp;<\/strong>Americans in the 19th century were already convinced of the importance of the family unit to the health of the nation. In fact, they viewed it as the building block of society. But this took on new&nbsp;meanings as they pushed into the west.&nbsp;Euro-American men often made matches with Indigenous women while&nbsp;colonizing&nbsp;the region. But those marriages&nbsp;became&nbsp;a&nbsp;cause of&nbsp;concern by the mid-century,&nbsp;and marriage became increasingly regulated around race. White men were encouraged to find &#8220;suitable&#8221; racial matches. Entire newspapers&#8211;like the Matrimonial Times&#8211;sprang up to facilitate a trade in &#8220;mail order brides.&#8221; Most historians argue&nbsp;that&nbsp;those matches corrected a gender imbalance in the region, but it&#8217;s also undeniable that they addressed a perceived racial problem.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By the middle of the century, many states had come to view inter-racial marriage as &#8220;unnatural&#8221; and&nbsp;created anti-miscegenation laws barring such unions. By the end of the century, most western states&nbsp;had&nbsp;passed these laws, highlighting&nbsp;a&nbsp;growing racial anxiety.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>People who grew up in Washington and Idaho are usually familiar with the story of the&nbsp;Whitmans, who came to the region as missionaries in the 1830s. But few know the circumstances of their partnership. Both Marcus Whitman and Narcissa Prentiss&nbsp;had&nbsp;aspired to be missionaries&nbsp;long&nbsp;before knowing each other. They both applied to do this work through the American Board of&nbsp;Commissioners for&nbsp;Foreign Missions, which had firm policy prohibiting unmarried men and women from engaging in this work. The goal, in part, was to send missionaries who could act as &#8220;exemplars&#8221; of Christian masculinity and femininity for the people they hoped to convert&#8211;in this case, the&nbsp;Cauyse&nbsp;and the Nez Perce.&nbsp;It&nbsp;became fairly common for young men and women to marry based on these&nbsp;shared ambitions. Marcus Whitman and Narcissa Prentiss were married just before their departure for the Oregon territory. The same was true of Elkanah Walker and Mary Richardson, who literally spent their honeymoon on the overland trail.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When they arrived, they encountered other kinds of partnerships\u2014different from their own\u2014and this&nbsp;gave them cause for concern. John McLaughlin of the Hudson&#8217;s Bay Company, for example, was married to a Metis woman, Marguerite. Catherine Pambrun, similarly, was descended from two generations of white men who had made marriages with Indian women. For the missionary\u2019s taste, Catherine Pambrun&#8217;s habits lacked sophistication. In both cases, the missionaries sought to reform the behavior and manners of the Indigenous wives&nbsp;to more closely match their own. One historian wrote that the missionaries saw cultural transfer&nbsp;in the region&nbsp;as a one-way process.&nbsp;Missionaries really sought to transform the kinds of&nbsp;partnerships&nbsp;they found in the west to look more like their own. And it wasn\u2019t just about religion or culture, but increasingly about race. In modern times, we tend to think about marriage as a relationship built around love. Yet,&nbsp;studying past unions shows love was not the priority, and&nbsp;in fact in the nineteenth century,&nbsp;combatting intermarriage and building the region in a particular way, one that ensured racial exclusivity of some, was paramount.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Sueann Ramella:<\/strong>&nbsp;That\u2019s WSU associated Professor of History, Jenny Thigpen, who is working on a new book called <em>Marriage and the Making of the American West<\/em>. To hear this and other <em>Past as Prologue<\/em> essays go to NWPB.org.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wsu-container  wsu-position--relative\" >\r\n    \n<div class=\"wsu-decorator wsu-zindex--level-2 wsu-spacing-before--xmedium wsu-spacing-after--large wsu-position--relative wsu-decorator--style-block-gray\" style=\"top:40px;left:-100px;height:3px;width:260px\"><\/div>\n\n<div class=\"wsu-decorator  wsu-decorator--style-lines-crimson wsu-zindex--level-3 wsu-position--relative\" style=\"top:-40px;left:-40px;height:25px;width:63%\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">About the Author:<\/h2>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignleft size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"114\" height=\"132\" src=\"https:\/\/wpcdn.web.wsu.edu\/wp-cas\/uploads\/sites\/2629\/2021\/03\/Thigpen-Jennifer-headshot.jpg\" alt=\"Jennifer Thigpen\" class=\"wp-image-119\"\/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n<p>Jennifer Thigpen&nbsp;is Associate Professor of History at WSU. She focuses on 19th Century U.S. history, particularly women and gender, the U.S. West, and colonialism. She has been awarded the Western History Association\u2019s Jensen-Miller Award for best article in the field of women and gender in the North American West in 2011. She was a Lerner-Scott Dissertation Prize Finalist (2008), and was awarded the UC Irvine Chancellor\u2019s Club Dissertation Fellowship in 2006, and the Mayers Fellowship, at the Huntington Library in 2005. Her publications include <em>Island Queens and Mission Wives: How Gender and Empire Remade Hawai\u2018i\u2019s Pacific World,&nbsp;<\/em>\u201cDesperately Seeking Mary: Materializing Mary Richardson Walker, Missionary,\u201d <em>The Public Historian<\/em> Vol. 34, No. 3 (Fall 2012): 68-81;&nbsp;\u201c\u2018You Have Been Very Thoughtful Today\u2019: The Significance of Gratitude and Reciprocity in Missionary-Hawaiian Gift Exchange\u201d <em>Pacific Historical Review<\/em> (2010), &#8220;\u2018Something Wonderful is About to Happen\u2019: Americans and the Open Frontier\u201d ABC-CLIO\u2019s Analyze Project (August 2008); and &#8220;Looking \u2018West\u2019\u2013Perspectives on a Changing Nation, HOT Themes in American History Humanities Out There, UCI California History-Social Science Project and the Santa Ana Partnership (2007).<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\r\n\n\n<div class=\"wsu-column  wsu-color-background--gray-0\"  style=\"\">\r\n\t\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading  wsu-font-size--large\">Book by Jennifer Thigpen: <\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><em>Island Queens and Mission\u00a0Wives<\/em>. <\/h3>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"300\" height=\"491\" src=\"https:\/\/wpcdn.web.wsu.edu\/wp-cas\/uploads\/sites\/2629\/2021\/04\/Thigpen-Missions.jpg\" alt=\"Book cover for Island Queens and Mission Wives by Jennifer Thigpen\" class=\"wp-image-311\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>(Publisher: University of North Carolina Press)<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\r\n\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Marriage, Missionaries, and Race in the American West<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3554,"featured_media":0,"parent":40,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_wsuwp_accessibility_report":null},"categories":[],"tags":[],"wsuwp_university_location":[],"wsuwp_university_org":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/history.wsu.edu\/past-as-prologue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/304"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/history.wsu.edu\/past-as-prologue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/history.wsu.edu\/past-as-prologue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/history.wsu.edu\/past-as-prologue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3554"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/history.wsu.edu\/past-as-prologue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/history.wsu.edu\/past-as-prologue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":653,"href":"https:\/\/history.wsu.edu\/past-as-prologue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/304\/revisions\/653"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/history.wsu.edu\/past-as-prologue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/40"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/history.wsu.edu\/past-as-prologue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/history.wsu.edu\/past-as-prologue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/history.wsu.edu\/past-as-prologue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304"},{"taxonomy":"wsuwp_university_location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/history.wsu.edu\/past-as-prologue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wsuwp_university_location?post=304"},{"taxonomy":"wsuwp_university_org","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/history.wsu.edu\/past-as-prologue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wsuwp_university_org?post=304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}