Category: Nex Perce history

The long Nez Perce road to Nespelem

Last weekend four of us from Wallowa County made the long highway drive to Nespelem, Washington for the annual Nez Perce root feast. After a service of drumming, singing and testimony, we sat for a huge feast of “first foods.” Wild foods from water and salmon through roots and plants to serviceberries and huckleberries was prepared by the women of the walwa ma, or Joseph Band of the Nez Perce Indians, and laid on tables until there was little room for our plates. Then we tasted each in turn, as they appeared in time and importance in indigenous lives for millennia.

But, first we had to get from the Wallowa Valley in Oregon—now beginning to green up with spring, but still showing heavy snow on the mountains and shedding yellow needles on the western larch that all here call “tamarack,” to Nespelem. It is about a six-hour drive on modern roads with a good car. Pavement all the way, over Tollgate and skirting Walla Walla, meeting the Columbia briefly at Wallula, north through Moses Lake country, meeting and following the Columbia again all the way to the Grand Coulee Dam.

Spring is not greening everywhere, and there is a lot of sagebrush between here and there. I kept thinking about Chief Joseph and his people, who had lived in the Wallowa Country for thousands of years, drank and gathered fish from her many streams, ate her roots and huckleberries, watched her larch trees green up in spring and turn brilliant yellow in fall.

Yes, there is sagebrush in the Wallowa, even cactus along the lower Imnaha and Snake rivers. In fact, because the elevation goes from under 2000 feet to over 9000, the Wallowa encompasses many climates and earth systems. I know now that Indians were here as Wallowa Lake’s glacier was finishing its work, that “seasonal rounds” of gathering the foods we ate in Nespelem and that I have eaten at the longhouse in Wallowa would have been made long before the horse, made within a few miles of wide fishing spots along the Minam River.

The walwa ma found familiar foods on the Colville Reservation—one of the arguments for sending them there after the Nez Perce War and the exile in Oklahoma Indian Territory was that there would be pine forests, familiar foods on the land, and salmon in the rivers—but my guess is that they had to travel further than they ever did at home to complete a seasonal round of gathering foods.

And on the Colville Reservation they had to and have to still share the land with eleven other tribes and bands. “The Colville Confederated Tribes are comprised of 12 bands which include, the Moses-Columbia, San poil, Nespelem, Methow, Entiat, Colville, Lakes, Wenatchee (Wenatchi), Chief Joseph’s Band of Nez Perce, Palus, Southern Okanogan, and Chelan.”

The path out of the Wallowa was long and torturous. Many know the entire Nez Perce nation by its war and what is now The Nez Perce Trail. There are maps and books that follow that trail from the Wallowa Valley, across the Snake River crossing and recrossing the Salmon River, on through Yellowstone—and ending forty miles short of the Canadian border at the Bear’s Paw Mountains in Montana

That was only the first five months and 1200-1400 miles of the trail that the non-treaty Nez Perce of Joseph’s and other “non-treaty” bands traveled. It went from Montana to North Dakota by horse and boat as captives of the US Army, then by train to Ft Leavenworth in Kansas. There were eight years in exile in Kansas and in Oklahoma Indian Territory, before the remaining war survivors were allowed to come West again. But not to Oregon. On the train again, near where Wallula Junction in Washington now is, the survivors were separated. Some went to the Nez Perce Reservation in Idaho, but Joseph and his close followers were not welcome in Oregon or Idaho, and went first to Spokane, and finally to Nespelem, a small place on the large Colville Reservation.

Volumes have been written about the first 1200 miles of that journey, and a few books deal with the years of exile, always mentioning Joseph’s trips to Washington D. C. to plead for a return that had been promised the Indians at Bear’s Paw. At least one recent book centers on the few who escaped to Canada from Montana.

Now, having just made the trip from the Wallowa Valley to Nespelem, I want to know more about that last leg of the 1885 journey of Joseph and his people, from Wallula to Nespelem. How they traveled over harsh land from Wallula to Spokane. The negotiations with the tribes already at Colville, and the final journey there.

We know that a house was built for Joseph, but he lived in a tipi nearby. We know that he came to the Wallowa twice to plead for a small piece of land, but was rebuffed, and we know that he is buried in a humble Nespelem cemetery, that his people told the people of the Wallowa Valley who have wanted him back over the years that they hadn’t wanted him alive.

More and more Nez Perce people and non-Indians from the Wallowa Valley are making that long trek now, and Indians are coming the other way to celebrate at Tamkaliks, to dig roots, and to worship in the Wallowa Longhouse. But it seems to me important that we go there as well, go to see the people in the place of their 148-year exile—as elder Soy Redthunder says, the trip is as many miles one way as it is the other—and imagine the last difficult legs of that long ago journey away from the Homeland.

# # #

Antikoni

That is the name of the play by Beth Piatote now playing in Los Angeles! This, from “People’s World”:

“LOS ANGELES — Theatergoers are in for a very special occasion—a revelation, it’s not too excessive to say—if they will expand their horizons a bit and embrace a Native American perspective on view now.

“Currently celebrating its 30th anniversary season, Native Voices presents the world premiere of Beth Piatote’s Antíkoni at the historic Southwest Campus of the Autry Museum of the American West, formerly known as the Southwest Museum of the American Indian, deemed the oldest museum in Los Angeles. According to DeLanna Studi, Native Voices Artistic Director, the work ‘developed during our 2020 Festival of New Plays,’ and it ‘perfectly embodies our spirit and mission.’Read Rich’s Post →

The Equestrian Revolution

I’ve written before about Ned Blackhawk’s outstanding book, The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History. Here’s more.

The title itself is revolutionary—“rediscovering” echoing and countering the decades of homage to Columbus for “discovering” America. And “unmaking history” indicating that we have that part wrong too. That the history we—our government offices, popular presses, and academic and popular historians—have made, is wrong.Read Rich’s Post →

Measles

The recent upsurge in measles cases in Florida and the US in general has doctors and public health officials scratching heads. Apparently, there is a big difference in infection rates when the percentage of children who receive the MMR—Measles, Mumps, Rubella—vaccinations drops from 95 % to 91%; transmission among the unvaccinated spreads more rapidly, and a few—stats say 3 %–of the vaccinated still get a mild case of the disease. That, in my understanding is in a nutshell what is happening in Florida and threatening elsewhere as measles cases in 2024 rise.Read Rich’s Post →

The Last Indian War—Horses and Technology

Elliot West’s “The Last Indian War” was published in 2009, so it has been around. I’d not read it, but it was handy and I needed to check a date or name, so picked it up. And read a page or two. And decided I should read it. Read it because what West does is put the Nez Perce War in context of the Westward movement and US history.

We know that the War parties—Nez Perce and pursuing armies—moved through Yellowstone National Park. Some writers even tell us that it—Yellowstone—was a first, and that tourists were encountered and captured. But West tells us that yes, Yellowstone was the first National Park, and that it “reflected three powerful forces creating and defining the West.”Read Rich’s Post →

A Brief List of Books on Nez Perce History and Culture

I’ve put together lists of books on the Nez Perce several times over the years, but new books keep coming out, sometimes new books with “old” information not covered in previous books. Two wonderful examples in the current list are those edited by Dennis Baird, Diane Mallickan, and W.R. Swagerty, Encounters with the People, and the Nez Perce Nation Divided. Both deal with original written and oral accounts of the people in crucial years leading up to the 1863 “Liar’s Treaty.”

I won’t pretend to be exhaustive, to do a serious and complete bibliography of books on the Nez Perce. We have a dozen more on our library shelves and/or in the sales shop downstairs! Maybe someday.Read Rich’s Post →

Ken Burns is Jefferson’s Historian

I watched all 8 hours of Ken Burns’ recently released “Muhammad Ali”; good, but maybe a bit too long. And it reminded me that I had also watched “Jackie Robinson” and “Jack Johnson,” and all 18 innings of “Baseball.” Baseball was glorious and my favorite; it told the story of racial segregation and integration in America through sports.

After watching Ali, I turned back to an earlier Ken Burns, the four hours he gave to “Lewis and Clark” several years ago. I didn’t count the minutes, but maybe 20 of the 240 dealt with the original inhabitants of the country—Indians Natives, Indigenous people—that the Corps of Discovery met on their journey.Read Rich’s Post →

“Side Channel”at Nez Perce Homeland

On Saturday, Indian elders helped dedicate the “side channel project” on the Nez Perce Homeland grounds in Wallowa. The Wallowa River, Nez Perce Fisheries workers told us, had been shoved to a side, channelized decades ago, probably in the 1940s and 50s, so that more land would be free for pasture and crops. This narrowed, straight flowing river has scoured the river bottom and eaten the banks, and in so doing destroyed places for fish to rest while migrating, and places for them to spawn. The side channel does not change the course of the main stem, but allows water to drift to and through some of the river’s old territory. In spring runoff, water will spill over the side channels and recreate marshlands, where tule and other native plants can grow. There have already been fish and lamprey in the side channel waters.Read Rich’s Post →

October 5; On this day…

October 5, 1877 is the day on which the wal’wá·ma band of the Nez Perce and members of other non-treaty bands lost their freedom. They’d intended to go quietly from the Wallowa to the reduced Idaho reservation, leaving and losing their homeland but continuing to live in nearby country among relatives from other bands. They crossed the Snake River into Idaho in spring runoff, and there the grief-stricken actions of some young Nez Perce in killing Idaho settlers—settlers known for their mistreatment of Indians—set off a fighting retreat of more than 1200 miles. It ended on this day 144 yeasr ago at the Bears Paw mountains in Montana, just 40 miles short of safety in Canada.Read Rich’s Post →

Learning to be a librarian

Learning to be a librarian

When Alvin Josephy started talking about leaving his books to Fishtrap all those years ago, I nodded and envisioned a nice addition to the Fishtrap house with shelves of books, a file cabinet or two, study carrels, and a stream of poets and historians pulling books off the shelves and making new poems and stories with their help. Over time, in conversations with Fishtrap friends and with a small grant from the Lamb Foundation, the vision gained an artist’s rendering (see top of the blog page) and an architect’s plans.

And then the real world and a recession hit, money from foundations that had seemed “ready” became impossible, and, eventually, I settled in to try to make sense of Library holdings, mission, and possibilities. I started learning to be a librarian, and envisioning the eventual physical home receded into some far off mist.

So now I wrestle with whether we finish cataloging books—or concentrate on papers and ephemera. And how do we make the information we have available? How important is a complete bibliography of Alvin’s work? And, most importantly, never mind the books—what do I do with Alvin Josephy’s legacy as historian and activist on behalf of American Indians? “Alvin, I thought you were leaving me a bunch of books, but all this?” I say to myself as he watches over my shoulder.

I talk about these things with writers, historians and library friends all the time. And just last week, had a nice meeting at Lewis and Clark College with Special Collections librarian Doug Erickson and friend Kim Stafford.

Doug’s office desk sits in a corner of the room that houses the William Stafford Collection. In the opposite corner there is an odd-shaped Plexiglas enclosure with a seat in it and wires running out of it to a stool-full of electronic gear. It was some kind of medical deal that Doug picked up on EBay for $150 and turned into a mini recording studio. Among other things, he records poets for his “Oregon Poetic Voices” project. I know a bit about that, because Fishtrap was an original partner, and you can go right to that site and hear Ursula LeGuin read poetry in 1990 at Summer Fishtrap. Try it: http://oregonpoeticvoices.org/

But the big aha moment for me in the talk with Doug and Kim is that libraries and archives are not just collections of old dusty stuff. They are things you work with now. And Doug says that Mitt Romney was right—rich folks get their words and ideas recorded all the time. Doug wants the poems your grandma wrote—or the ones you write.

Which takes me back to Alvin looking over my shoulder. He determined to write the Nez Perce book AFTER he found the Indian voices collected by an oddball Washington rancher named Lucullus McWhorter and published by another oddball, an old fashioned freedom of the press publisher from England who found his way to, of all places, Caldwell, Idaho, and founded Caxton Press. And published Yellow Wolf and Hear Me My Chiefs. http://www.caxtonpress.com/

In the twelve years it took to research and write The Nez Perce and the Opening of the Northwest, Alvin also found three remaining veterans of the Nez Perce War he could talk to, the Sohon drawings from the 1855 Walla Walla treaties, which were hidden away at the Washington State Historical Society, and other obscure stuff—revealed in the footnotes of the book (their omission the reason he always hated the abridged version of same)

So my next library project is to bring a real live archivist to town to train me and other volunteers in the ways of preserving these other voices against the time the next Alvin comes along.