The 2023 Oliver Lecture will feature Blaine Harden, author of Murder at the Mission: A Frontier Killing, Its Legacy of Lies, and the Taking of the American West. The lecture will take place Saturday, October 21 at 7pm at First Congregational Church in Portland. Roberta Conner will introduce Blaine Harden.
Harden’s book examines the 1847 killing of Protestant missionaries Marcus and Narcissa Whitman and 11 others, all white, at a mission station near Walla Walla by a small number of Cayuse Indians. This incident became infamously known as the Whitman Massacre.
Murder at the Mission reveals the true history of the incident and its aftermath.
First Congregational UCC invited Harden to present this story as a step towards reckoning with the role of Congregationalists in the taking of the Northwest from indigenous tribal people.
Proceeds from the lecture will benefit the
Tamástslikt Cultural Institute located in Pendleton, Oregon.
Murder at the Mission
is available for stand-alone purchase through
BROADWAY BOOKS
before the Lecture or onsite October 21.