Newlyweds Marcus and Narcisa Prentiss Whitman, together…

Newlyweds Marcus and Narcisa Prentiss Whitman, together with a group of other missionaries including Henry and Eliza Spalding, had joined a caravan of fur traders led by mountain men Milton Sublette and Thomas Fitzpatrick.

In addition to the fur traders’ seven wagons, each pulled by six mules, a cart drawn by two mules carries Sublette, who had lost a leg a year earlier and walks on a "cork" leg made by a friend.

The combined group arrives at the fur-trader's rendezvous on July 6.

Whitman, a medical doctor, had in 1834 applied to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions; unsuccessfully, as the organization accepts only married couples.

The following year, he had traveled with missionary Samuel Parker to present-day northwestern Montana and northern Idaho, to minister to the Native American bands of the Salish and Nez Percé people.

Encountering an outbreak of cholera along the way, Whitman had treated several fur trappers.

At the end of their stay, he promised the Nez Percé that he would return with other missionaries and teachers to live with them.

After his return, Whitman had attended a speech by Parker, now representing the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, which called for missionaries.

On February 18, 1836 in Angelica, New York, Whitman had married Narcissa, a teacher of physics and chemistry.

Narcissa, who was as eager as Marcus to travel west as a missionary, had been unable to do so as a single woman.