Before the Big Lie of 2021, there was the Big Lie of 1847. Missionary Marcus Whitman and 11 others were killed by members of the Cayuse tribe, which led Congress to make Oregon a U.S territory and justified countless crimes against Native Americans for decades to come. But as guest Blaine Harden explains in his stirring new book Murder at the Mission, the "heroic" story of Marcus Whitman's life and death is a fable invented by other missionaries, opportunists, and expansionists. This is what really happened.
