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The Diary of Eliza Spalding

1850

I write of a time after Millie was born, Martha still just a baby and I was without my husband. S decided to take Eliza and Henry Hart across the Cascades to the Pacific Ocean. How I would have loved to have seen those waters! They were gone for several weeks while Matilda looked after us. S had once left an old Indian in charge to run the grist mill. He’d done it before, but the older man had also been pushed aside by a group of rowdy, younger Nimíipuu one day. They pushed the old man down. S ran out to stop the ruckus and one young Indian struck S, crushed him on the hard ground, choked him. I ran screaming from the house, pounding on the back of S’s attacker. It was the first time I ever lost my composure, and my blows were of little effect. Several other Indians who had brought their grain to be ground saw the trouble and pulled S’s attacker off.

“Do you not know that we would never let anything happen to our Spalding,” the Nimíipuu told me later while S rubbed his throat. Their words were reassuring, but what if they had not been there at that providential time? Henry might have died. And I, left alone with the children. What would I do? The answer to that question was never more far away nor as real as at that moment when he was almost choked to death. I told S he’d been foolish to intervene but he admonished me with words of our Lord, that what is a greater love than to lay down one’s life for a friend. The old Indian had befriended us and he had given his life in service to the Lord. S knew he had to do whatever he must to defend him. His words shamed me and I never again complained about his impulsive actions. With enough thought I could see that all he did was in service.

It took me a time to see how that long trip to the ocean was in service, though. S told me they’d gotten lost in the mountains, rescued by an Indian. Eliza came back ill with the flux, and though eight years old and riding her own horse, she had made the return trek, S said, sitting in front of him on his horse as she was too ill to ride her beloved Tashe alone. They’d stayed extra days at The Dalles mission because of her frailty, conversing with the missionaries there, I suppose. Perhaps that was the Lord’s design, as S and those ministers shared the strains of their work as well as their joys. I had Matilda to share my days with, but a man does need to have other men to acknowledge his efforts, can learn from a time away from the strains of family demands. A wife’s words are often not enough to bolster.

21
Leavings

Men needed times away from the responsibility of family, I supposed. I imagined Mr. Warren and his drovers enjoying their nights beneath the moon, telling stories of the day. But so did mothers need such respite, if only for a few moments. My sisters had given me that and I hadn’t really acknowledged how important they had been.

Walking the streets of The Dalles, I admonished myself to be patient. But by the second day, I couldn’t find patience in me if it had been a cow mooing in the corral. Hannah and Charles determined they needed to get back and no cajoling would change their minds, though grateful I was for what they’d done. We loaded all the household goods we could into my wagon and I asked that they take what was not as essential as I’d once thought when I had room to take it. They would return it to my father’s house—or mine—in Brownsville, without a fee as they had stopped before we arrived near Touchet. “Tell my
father that we’re fine. Please don’t tell him that you did not see the cattle yet. I don’t want him to worry.”

I watched them roll their wagon on board the steamship and head west. Hannah waved and America Jane sniffed. “Just like the aunties,” she said. “Always good-bye.”

Little Shoot stood beside me.

“Do you need to return to your family?”

“I am here.”

“Yes, I know, but tell me now if you can’t wait.” It occurred to me that I should set a time to wait for myself. Did I go forward with Little Shoot and hope I’d find my husband who didn’t have the decency to send word for me if he’d already gone through? Or should I send Little Shoot south to see if they were still on their way? I must have said some of those thoughts out loud.

“I could do that, ride south. There is reservation there, Warm Springs, and Wasco people are placed there. These Celilo Indians are relatives.” He nodded toward the round-faced Indians standing on scaffoldings with ropes around their bellies while they speared the big salmon jumping upriver above the roaring falls. The June sun glistened against his damp body. “One might ride with me who knows the route.”

“You’ve asked?”

“Watching sheep does not take much time. They are like big dogs.”

“I suppose I have spoiled them. They like biscuits too much to wander far. So yes, please. See if you can get word about my husband.”

We stayed at the wagon, alone. I washed out Lizzie’s napkins; took care of my own intimate apparel, hemmed America Jane’s dress, then spot-washed it, looking at my sun-browned hands, gloves being impractical except leather ones to handle
oxen yokes and harness. We looked like vagabonds more than a “cared for” family. But money grew scarcer and my two nights of luxury on a bed served to annoy that I couldn’t really afford to stay there again. What would I do if we failed to make our rendezvous?

Had my mother ever allowed herself to get into this position? She couldn’t get immediate help from the other missionaries, but as her husband was employed by the Mission Board, without him in service, she’d be asked to leave Lapwai and find another life. With four children. Maybe my uncle Horace would have assisted. He would have helped me, too, if he hadn’t moved away after her death. My mother had her faith to sustain her so she wasn’t really alone. Maybe I wasn’t either. It did no good to imagine the worst. Better to sing songs to my children, gaze at the stars.

I bedded the girls down under the tent and pulled my bedroll up to my chin. Little Shoot had told me of the woman he’d worked for, a colored woman. “She is left alone with two children,” he told me. “When her husband dies, they come, take all things from her, candlesticks and dishes. Sell them.”

“How could they?”

He had shrugged his shoulders. “She is the color of charred wood. White faces do what they want.” He’d gone on to say she delivered babies, raised her children, worked land. That woman, Letitia Carson he called her, had a skill. Perhaps I’d discover my own skill if Mr. Warren had indeed gone on without me, by his choice—or not.

Stars twinkled in the wide sky unbroken by tall timber or small oaks. It was a Lapwai sky, wide open from round hill to round hill, a river rushing in the background. The sky was a blanket of blackness dotted with silver brads. I felt so small, so powerless. Yet I felt less alone than I had in years.

I drove the ox team into the town the next morning as I could figure no other way to manage the two girls and still go into the Umatilla House to see if Mr. Warren had sent word. I took it as no small accomplishment that I lifted the heavy oxen yokes and managed the harness while America Jane looked after Lizzie on a quilt. “Grateful I was,” as Charles would say, that my youngest couldn’t yet walk.

And grateful I was when Little Shoot caught up with me as I lifted Lizzie from the wagon bed in front of the hotel. The sheep bleated at the sight of him. “He comes!” Little Shoot shouted as he dismounted Maka, breathless, dust brushing his fine face. “A day behind. You are to resupply flour, salt, sugar. He comes for you. Drives the herd east.”

“Papo’s coming!” I swung my daughter in a dance. America Jane grabbed my skirts, grinning as she hugged.

I spoke a prayer of gratitude. I could be flexible. I could adapt. “Both skills,” I told the girls, whose blue eyes sparkled, reflecting my joy. More adjustments would be called for, but for this moment, I felt the anticipation of the unknown instead of its dread.

“There you are!” Mr. Warren leapt from his horse and danced me around. “You’re a sight for trail-dusted eyes.”

“Mr. Warren, Andrew, welcome.”

He kissed me then, that thrill of flutter like the first time. My face felt hot when he released me. We were back at the site where we’d had the wagons, Little Shoot advising my husband where he could find us. I’d washed the girls’ dresses—with Little Shoot’s help—and put a clean one on myself. My hair was
less a tangled mess than usual, pushed up into a thick netted twist at the top of my head, an ivory stick Rachel had given me pushed through it.

“You bet I’m welcomed. What a beautiful sight after six weeks with those drovers and the back end of cows. It’s a doable pass. It is.”

“Grateful I am that you find us more attractive than that.” I curtsied.

He laughed with me, kissed me soundly again, then looked me in the eye, causing yet another thrill from toes to head. “I have missed you.”

“You didn’t wonder if I’d come or not?”

“I prayed you would. That you’d get everything organized to be here together.”

“I’m rather pleased with myself that I managed. I discovered having an important task needing to be accomplished and bringing all the resources to bear to make it happen is quite—”

He lifted his eyebrows.

“Powerful.”

“A fine word.” He swung Lizzie from the blanket where she’d been lying on her tummy, pressed his hand on America Jane’s head as she waited patiently beside him. “It’s so good to have you all here.”

“Where are your cows?”

“They’ll be along in a day or so.” He looked around. “Where are your sisters?”

“Father wouldn’t let them come.”

“Didn’t want them in Indian country, I’ll wager.”

“I guess that was it.” I didn’t want to tell him what my father had said about him and his lack of common sense. Sometimes doing what others think is insanity is actually impetus toward significance.
Go and
learn what this means
. In truth, taking a
risk had led to meaning for Father and his work; my mother too. And now, perhaps for me. “Little Shoot’s been a good escort. You knew he came from me when you saw him riding Maka.” I didn’t see the young man now, decided he was on the other side of the wagon giving us our privacy.

“Little Shoot. That Indian? He served you well?”

“He did. And he found you.”

“We’ve really no need of him anymore.”

I hadn’t thought that far ahead. “I . . . I guess you’re right, though he’s been good with the children. And the sheep.”

“You and I will trade off driving the oxen.”

“I have the children—”

“I’ll send a drover when I’m on horseback.”

“Yes, of course. Well, he has a wife waiting for a baby, so I imagine he’ll be happy to return. I’ll just express my thanks and pay him.”

“I already did. He’s gone.”

“No! I didn’t get to thank him. I thought he’d stay on until we got to Touchet.” A niggle of fear wormed its way into my throat. Going back to Cayuse country, I had counted on Little Shoot acting as intercessor if we needed.

“He said he was happy to serve you.”

“Papo! Papo!”

America Jane hopped up and down, and Mr. Warren handed me Lizzie as he lifted his oldest daughter and rubbed his whiskered face against hers. America Jane giggled as she tugged on his beard.

“He did well with the children. They’ll miss him.” I sighed. “I keep having to explain where people go.”

“Good practice. Living is all about the different ways we say good-bye.”

“I can’t believe he left without saying anything to me.”

“He didn’t abandon you, ’Liza. People leave because they’ve finished their business. It isn’t about your business.”

“Well, I prefer hellos.”

“Me too. Hello, Mrs. Warren. Are you free for supper tonight?”

Oh, how I was!