Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez Perce (52 page)

The initial years of white contact are discussed from the European point of view in the following sources:
Journals of Lewis and Clark,
edited by Reuben Gold Thwaites,
Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition,
8 vols. (New York: 1904–05; reprinted, New York: 1959).
“Faithful to Their Tribe & Friends”: Samuel Black's 1829 Fort Nez Perce Report,
edited by Dennis W. Baird (Moscow: University of Idaho Library, 2000); Washington Irving's
The Adventures of Captain Bonneville, U.S.A., in the Rocky Mountains and the Far West
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961); Peter Skene Ogden's
Snake Country Journals
(London: Hudson's Bay Record Society, 1950); and Alexander Ross's
Adventures of the First Settlers on the Oregon or Columbia River,
edited by Reuben Thwaites (1849; reprint, Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark, 1904). Hiram Chittenden's two volumes of
American Fur Trade in the Northwest
(Stanford, CA: Academic Reprints, 1954) provide broad background into the fur-trading era.
Adventures of Zenas Leonard, Fur Trader,
edited by John Ewers (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1959), offers a closer glimpse. Zoa Swayne, in
Do Them No Harm
(Orofino, ID: Legacy House, 1990), provides a fanciful reconstruction of the immediate postcontact period using Nez Perce oral accounts and the journals from the Corps of Discovery. Of the non-native historians, Francis Haines in
The Nez Percés: Tribesmen of the Columbia Plateau
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1955) is especially strong in this period.

Nez Perce historian Allen Slickpoo's
Noon-Nee-Me-Poo: Culture and History of the Nez Perces
(Lapwai, ID: Nez Perce Tribe, 1973) is fundamental to understanding the Nez Perce culture and history from within. The culture as it has been carried forward is well discussed in Horace Axtell's
A Little Bit of Wisdom: Conversations with a Nez Perce Elder
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000). Lucullus McWhorter's
Hear Me, My Chiefs! Nez Perce History and Legend
(Caldwell, ID: Caxton Printers, 1983), drawn from his copious correspondence with native people, is as essential a groundwork as Josephy's.

The McWhorter papers in Washington State University, Pullman, Washington, provide incomparable insight into Nez Perce affairs. Internet users will find an invaluable resource at the National Park National Historic Trail Foundation Web site, http://www.fs.fed.us/npnht (accessed May 2005), where everything from a virtual tour of the trail to an annotated bibliography to a series of quotes from participants in the Nez Perce war can be accessed. I also relied heavily on personal interviews and conversations with individual Nez Perce, who shared their knowledge of their culture and history with me. For personal reasons, most have requested anonymity.

2. A Harvest for the Lord

Again, Josephy's
Nez Perce Indians
and McWhorter's
Hear Me, My Chiefs!
provide the historical skeleton, and Haines,
The Nez Percés,
gives a sound historical footing. The journals of Henry Spalding are covered in E. M. Drury's
Henry Harmon Spalding
(Caldwell, ID: Caxton Printers, 1936).
Where Wagons Could Go,
edited by Clifford Merrill Drury (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), presents the missionary point of view from the diaries of Narcissa Whitman and Eliza Spalding and offers insight into the spiritual mind-set of missionaries as well as into the feelings and experiences of two early frontier women. Drury also edited
Marcus and Narcissa Whitman and the Opening of Old Oregon
(Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark, 1973) and
The Diaries and Letters of Henry H. Spalding
(Glendale, CA: Arthur H. Clark, 1958). Rowena Alcorn's
Timothy: A Nez Perce Chief, 1800–1891
(Fairfield, WA: Ye Galleon Press, 1996) provides a sympathetic look at a Nez Perce who decided that there was goodness and wisdom in the white missionary ways. Kate McBeth's
The Nez Perce Since Lewis and Clark
(Moscow: University of Idaho Press, 1993), is a look at the Christian Nez Perce experience through the eyes of a missionary who worked among them. McWhorter's
Hear Me, My Chiefs!
has an appendix devoted to Tuekakas, Joseph's father.

Axtell's
A Little Bit of Wisdom
allows one to view through a prism the effects of Christianity on a traditional Nez Perce spirituality. James's
Nez Perce Women in Transition
provides insight into the role of women in all aspects of traditional culture. Gulick's chapters on the missionaries and the Book of Heaven in
Chief Joseph Country
are readable, informative, and well illustrated.

3. A Child of Two Worlds

Little is documented about Joseph's childhood. Chester Anders Fee's
Chief Joseph: Biography of a Great Indian
creates a plausible, if unverifiable, version. For the most part, it is necessary to construct a cultural context of Nez Perce childhood and fit Joseph into it. Eliza Spalding's references in
Where Wagons Could Go
, edited by Clifford Drury, provide some glimpses into the possible Christian influence on his childhood, an influence that some of Joseph's descendants have mentioned to me in conversations. Construction of Nez Perce culture is best done with the aid of James's
Nez Perce Women in Transition;
Spinden's
The Nez Percé Indians;
McWhorter's
Hear Me, My Chiefs!
(especially the appendixes); Ackerman's
A Necessary Balance;
and Landeen and Pinkham's
Salmon and His People.

Naturally, all such reconstructions are clumsy and wooden, since they try to provide an analysis of something incandescent. The non-native person who made the best imaginative leap and succeeds most fully in animating the experience of Nez Perce belief is Curtis in
The North American Indian
(vol. 8, Norwood, MA: Plimpton, 1911); Ken Thomasma's
Soun Tetoken: Nez Perce Boy
( Jackson, WY: Grandview Publishing, 1990) is a children's book based on conversations with descendants of Joseph and has a ring of truth to it. The best emotional access to Nez Perce belief and traditional life perhaps is obtained by listening to
Nez Perce Words and Stories,
a recording published by Wild Sanctuary music, in which Elizabeth Wilson, a ninety-one-year-old Nez Perce elder, tells stories and sings songs from her tradition. This recording, made in 1972, offers the voice and memories of one who was raised in the old ways and whose life brushed against that of Joseph and the others involved in the flight and exile. Slickpoo's
Noon-Nee-Me-Poo
also offers a view of traditional life and childhood.

The Dreamer religion is addressed by Click Relander in his account of the Palouse Dreamers,
Drummers and Dreamers
(Seattle: Northwest Interpretive Association, 1986). Robert Ruby and John Brown present a more scholarly assessment of Dreamer religion in
Dreamer-Prophets of the Columbia Plateau: Smohalla and Skolaskin
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986). Yellow Wolf explains his understanding of the
wayakin
quest in McWhorter's
Yellow Wolf: His Own Story
. Haines gives a cogent analytical explanation in
The Nez Percés.

My best materials with regard to Nez Perce belief and child rearing came from conversations and interviews with Nez Perce themselves and from the extensive correspondence involving Wottolen in the McWhorter Collection of archival materials at Washington State University, in Pullman, Washington.

Matilda Sager Delaney gives a firsthand account of the Whitman killings in
The Whitman Massacre of 1847
(Spokane, WA: Ye Galleon Press, 1997). Josephy covers the aftermath thoroughly in
The Nez Perce Indians;
Haines's
The Nez Percés
is the most comprehensive and instructive in explaining the actual events and the reasons behind them.

4. A Tide of Laws and Men

Francis Paul Prucha's
The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984) is the starting point and essential source document for understanding treaty relationships and realities. Josephy's
The Nez Perce Indians
includes extensive background materials on early governmental relationships between the Nez Perce and the United States as well as on all the mining and treaty periods.

The proceedings of the Treaty of 1855 are wonderfully documented in the first-person account of Lawrence Kip, “The Indian Council at Walla Walla,” in
Sources of the History of Oregon,
vol. 1, part 1 (Eugene: University of Oregon, 1897). Gulick's
Chief Joseph Country
tells the story with narrative flair and historical accuracy, while Haines's
The Nez Percés
sets the proceedings in their broader political context. Landeen and Pinkham's
Salmon and His People
contains the entire treaty as signed, and Starr Maxwell's remarkable documenting of testimony of Nez Perce in 1911 in
Memorial of the Nez Perce Indians Residing in the State of Idaho
(Moscow: University of Idaho Library, 2000) reveals in the Nez Perce's own words what they thought they were agreeing to. This testimony also shines a bright light on the Indians' understanding of the subsequent Treaty of 1863.

Hazard Stevens's two volumes of
Life of Isaac Ingalls Stevens
(Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1900) gives us the government position on events of the time. McWhorter's
Hear Me, My Chiefs!
raises some interesting questions about Indian negotiating strategies and explains the Indian thinking on the treaties and the period surrounding them.

The world of the settlers and miners is revealed in
Conversations with Pioneer Men: The Lockley Files
(Eugene, OR: One Horse Press, 1996) and
Reminiscences: Incidents in the Life of a Pioneer in Oregon and Idaho,
by William Goulder (1909; reprint, Moscow: University of Idaho Press, 1989). Starting during the Gold Rush years of the early 1860s, newspaper accounts from the
Lewiston Teller
provide a daily picture of life in the area as well as a glimpse into the attitudes of the newcomers to the Nez Perce.

Further negotiations between the government and the Nez Perce are documented in direct testimony in a University of Idaho Library publication,
“The Treaty of 1855 Has Not Been Lived Up to and We Have No Faith That This Will Be Lived Up To”: The 1867 Nez Perce Treaty Council,
edited by Donna Smith (Moscow: University of Idaho Library, 2001). Here the Indians speak to the governmental officials in their own voices.

5. “We Will Not Give Up the Land”

Again, Prucha's
The Great Father
and Josephy's
The Nez Perce Indians
provide the historical groundwork for an understanding of this complex period. Gulick unpacks this period nicely in
Chief Joseph Country.
As always, Haines in
The Nez Percés
is strong at providing comprehensive historical information in a digestible manner.

At this point official correspondence begins to dominate historical accounts, which often include the reports of the various Indian agents such as John Monteith and letters between participants such as Howard and Monteith. General Howard, in
Nez Percé Joseph
and in
Chief Joseph: His Pursuit and Capture
(Boston: Lea and Shephard, 1881), provides first-person accounts of events, albeit from a military standpoint, while McWhorter, in
Hear Me, My Chiefs!
covers this period with thoroughness and clarity.

A small pamphlet,
The Death of Wind Blowing,
by Mark Highberger (Wallowa, OR: Bear Creek Press, 2000), gives an interesting account from local sources on the killing of Joseph's friend. Gulick, in
Chief Joseph Country,
gives a picture of the period drawn heavily from a local participant in the events.

6. “I Am a Man; You Will Not Tell Me What to Do”

General Howard in
Nez Percé Joseph
recounts the pivotal Lapwai meeting from his military perspective. McWhorter also covers it thoroughly from the Indian point of view in
Hear Me, My Chiefs!
Joseph's account in
Chief Joseph's Own Story
makes it clear that the Indians thought Howard was unreasonable and blundering in his negotiations. Hampton's account in
Children of Grace
offers a good narrative recounting of the treaty proceedings.

Emily FitzGerald's
An Army Doctor's Wife on the Frontier: Letters from Alaska and the Far West, 1874–1878
(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1962) allows us to watch the entire proceedings through the eyes of a woman living at the Lapwai post. Yellow Wolf, in McWhorter's
Yellow Wolf: His Own Story,
tells of the meeting from his point of view as a participant.

Part 2: A Time of War
7. “There Have Been Killings”

The secondary source that best recreates the outbreak is Hampton's
Children of Grace,
but the historical testimony of settlers is the most riveting. Much of my material came from interviews with descendants of the white settlers and family documents as yet uncataloged at the Grangeville, Idaho, museum. Among those that have been published, Norman Adkinson's
Nez Perce Indian War and Original Stories
(Grangeville: Idaho County Free Press, 1967) and Charlotte Kirkwood's
The Nez Perce Indian War Under War Chiefs Joseph and White Bird
(Grangeville: Idaho County Free Press) provide the most immediate glimpse into the minds of the locals at the time of the outbreak. McWhorter's
Hear Me, My Chiefs!
covers the outbreak with an even hand.