If you don't pay much attention to the history, you might associate Marcus and Narcissa Whitman with the Oregon Trail. In fact, the missionaries made their trip west several years before the big stampede.
And Blaine Harden, journalist and author, argues that the myth-making about the Whitmans and their deaths at the hands of Native Americans may have contributed to the stampede on the Oregon Trail.
Harden's latest book is Murder at the Mission: A Frontier Killing, Its Legacy of Lies, and the Taking of the American West. The book examines the true actions, and the narratives that followed.