Marcus Whitman was an American physician and missionary. He is most well-known for leading settlers across the Oregon Trail, unsuccessfully attempting to Christianize the Cayuse Indians, and being killed by the Cayuse Indians in the Whitman massacre.

The Cayuse are a Native American tribe in what is now the state of Oregon in the United States. The Cayuse tribe shares a reservation and government in northeastern Oregon with the Umatilla and the Walla Walla tribes as part of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. The reservation is located near Pendleton, Oregon, at the base of the Blue Mountains.