The Last Mission of the Pioneer Mother
A reflection on the life of Myra Eells, one of the first white women to cross the Rocky Mountains to bring the Gospel to the Pacific Northwest.
Mrs. Myra Eells, wife of Rev. Cushing Eells, died at Skokomish on Aug. 9th and was buried at Seattle on Aug. 13th. Born Myra Fairbanks in Holden, Mass., in 1805, she committed herself to missionary work in her youth. In 1838, the day after her marriage, she and her husband departed on an overland trip of 3,500 miles—2,000 of it on horseback—alongside Rev. E. Walker and wife, W. H. Gray and wife, and Dr. Whitman and Rev. H. H. Spalding. These women were the first white women to cross the Rocky Mountains, proving the possibility of the journey to the pioneers who would follow. For forty years, she labored among the untutored Indians, facing solitude, sickness, and the discomforts of the frontier to establish the foundations of colonial life in what would become Washington, Idaho, and Montana. Though she never returned to her native village, she lived to see the land transform from rude Indian huts to schools, churches, and settled communities.
“The Christian heroism of a frail woman like Mrs. Eells in quietly and patiently repeating the lessons of her early life by precept and example to untutored Indians... reveals the force of love to Christ in the soul.”
Myra Eells' life highlights the intense migration of the 1830s that fundamentally altered the geography of the Pacific Northwest. Today, her legacy—and the displacement of Indigenous peoples that accompanied the missionary movement—remains a core, if complicated, part of Washington’s foundational history.
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