After Providence

Abstract

This chapter describes the tale of Marcus Whitman's ride as a legend with real consequences as it played a central role in constructions of regional and religious identities. It reviews how the Whitman story helped Anglo-Americans narrate their way into lands that they had conquered and allowed Pacific Northwest Protestants to envision the West as a Christian region. It also talks about how the story powered historical organizations, fundraising efforts, and public displays of the unity of Protestant and state power. The chapter looks at the changing iterations of the Whitman story that reflected and shaped academic and popular history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It emphasizes how providential history and the Whitman story continued to haunt the halls of the academy, the pages of popular history, and spaces of public remembrance in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.