Category: Nez Perce

Nez Perce Fourth of July

Years ago, Albert Red Star Andrews of the Joseph Band of Nez Perce on the Colville Reseravtion in north central Washington, told me about a unique Fourth of July event on his reservation. It was called Pasapalloynin, meaning “to make them rejoice, to make them happy!”

It happened about 1903, shortly after Chief Joseph made his last trip to the Wallowa to plead for land here. The Indians were feared when he and survivors of the Nez Perce War of 1877 returned to the Northwest in 1885; Joseph specifically could not be in Idaho or Oregon; he and his close followers ended up on the Colville Reservation. By 1900 and that final pleading, the fifteen-year interval had replaced fear with mockery. The locals, said the local newspaper, “made sport of the old chief.”

In 1883, Congress had promulgated a “Code of Indian Offenses,” which encouraged Indian agents to strip tribal people of their cultures. Potlachces, the practices of medicine men, polygamy, scalp dances, sun dances, and any “warrior” dances were specifically banned. Wise Indians hid their drums and regalia, and some elders continued to practice language and religion.

And then, following war and unsatisfactory return, being rebuffed in returning to his ancient homeland, this Pasapalloynin. In Albert Andrews words, this circle of riders inside the ring of tipis:

“Amidst the group of riders, towards the front, are speakers calling out the why of this gathering and calling out some of the many names of those now gone or deceased, never to be seen or visited with again. The cantering pace allows the speakers’ voices to carry well and the camper’s responses can be heard as the keening begins while the procession passes by them. Grieving has begun.

“In ‘normal times’ this procession could occur anytime. But large gatherings of Native peoples still trigger suspicion and fear by white people and ‘peaceful Indians’ of another uprising, during this time. Chief Joseph had brought his headmen together to take care of themselves, to help the people of the Band come to terms with what they had just experienced. With the Nation’s celebration of its birth coming, it would be a time to carry this out. In this way, it would lessen the chance that the military would be called in bearing the arms and weaponry of war. The Soyapos may think the Band is joining in on this ‘birthday’ celebration.

“Chief Joseph made it clear that this was a time for a collective mourning. They needed to grieve their losses of friends, of relatives, of family…of all lost since 1877. They must carry out this mourning service to grieve and ‘let go’ of all those now gone from their midst. They must let go and move on together, having survived the conflict inflicted under Manifest Destiny.

“The mourning begun, the second round proceeded at a faster pace. As the third round began, the horses were prompted into a faster-paced gallop. On this round, rejoicing began. Pasapalloynin!!! to make them rejoice, to make them happy! ‘Look around you!’ they shouted. ‘See and remember all whom you see here today and rejoice that we are all together, and that we are here! Today, we live to carry on, for all that are here with us, for all our children! Today we rejoice! Today!’”

There was also a powwow on the Fourth, and in a photo we can see the Nez Perce drumming and dancing fiercely, many of the men in the traditional “stovepipe” headdresses, the feathers all pointing directly upward like a halo rather than trailing as in the Plains custom which became a norm for the Nez Perce and other Northwest tribes. I’m haunted by the face of a drummer, who has entered another space, eyes closed but all the muscles in his face alive and announcing joy at what he is doing.

And there are still tribal powwows across the country on the Fourth of July, an annual show of resistance to an overwhelming system that has attempted to make Indians white—asssimilate them—or make them disappear.

Albert’s story, and my learning about the Christianizing of Indians, the attempts at assimilating through boarding schools, allotment acts, and Codes of Indian Offences, led me to see music as both a tool of assimilation—hymns and Bible books published in Lapwai, and a means of resistance, as in the Joseph story above.

But there was more: boarding school bands, and the Indian jazz and dance bands of the teens and twenties and into the seventies that the Indians created with their marching band instruments; “Julia Keefe’s All-Indigenous Big Band” of today; and the vigorous powwow dancing and drumming circuit that Tamkaliks, the annual powwow at the Nez Perce Wallowa Homeland in Wallowa is part of.

We made an exhibit of it a few years ago, and I am proud to say that the exhibit is now up in the McCall, Idaho City Library, and will be until fall. You can also read the text and see the photos mentioned above in a virtual version of this exhibit on our webpage at https://library.josephy.org/nez-perce-music/

I will be thinking about all of this on my Fourth of July. Enjoy yours—with some humility and appreciation for first peoples.

 

Photo: Nespelem circa 1903, by Latham

Native Resiliency

In an age of rapid and vast migrations, political polarization, and uncertain and severe weather events, American Indians seem to be a calm in the middle of many storms. Maybe indigenous peoples in other countries sit at their own centers, with the same continental and global turmoil surrounding them. Or maybe they are all conditioned to turmoil around them, resilient and ready for the impacts on them and the lands.

It’s an interesting place to be—at the vortex. Interesting because, in the Americas at least, it follows five hundred years of relentless assault on homes and homelands by occupying intruders. Now those one-time intruders and colonizers consider the lands theirs, and argue with each other and work to bar the door to those that came later, and those still trying to get into the United States of America.

These new peoples—new over the last 500 years, include religious refugees from greater Britain; Norwegians forced from farms diluted over generations; Germans fleeing conscription in Kaiser’s armies; Jews fleeing pogroms in Eastern Europe and annihilation in Western Europe; Arabs fleeing harsh regimes in the Middle East and endless war in Palestine; Indians, Chinese, and others from around the world seeking economic and intellectual opportunity. This large and diverse population of North America has long dominated Tribal remnants. Who have, remarkably, survived it all.

Now, watching from the Center, watching and listening to one group trying to push other groups back to supposed homelands—or just away from a country their faction claims to have orchestrated or done the backbreaking labor of building—it must be dizzying. But it must also be troubling, as some of the “new” people have claimed friendship with and a kind of natural succession from Native peoples, while others have always been hostile to originals, to the indigenous.

There was a recent call to deny Native Americans birthright citizenship. Because, some in our White House argued, Native Americans were not recognized “generally” as citizens, because they were citizens of their tribes, “semi-sovereign” nations in their own rights. In a great tie-in between the colonists’ emphasis on land ownership, the Dawes Allotment Act, which offered individual Indians private pieces of their government recognized homelands, those who took up allotments could be citizens, AND pay taxes! At any rate, in 1923 all American Indians became US citizens. Today, those who wanted to deny Native Americans birthright citizenship have quieted.

There was a streak of good things for Tribes and Tribal peoples during the Biden-Haaland years, with exposure of the boarding school tragedies, land-back and salmon back efforts, co-management of natural resources programs, etc. etc., etc.

And now, direct and indirect assaults on those gains, and on Tribes in general. Cuts to the BIA, although not as deep or onerous as to some other agencies—AID disappears completely! but cuts also to the Bonneville Power Administration, which has been entwined with Native fisheries programs in saving salmon, steelhead, and lamprey, and in improving upstream habitat in ways that do that while providing an abundance of more general improvements to the environment. Ironically, the BPA was a net money-maker for the government. I do not know the current status.

And then this, as reported in the “Oregon Capital Chronicle” by Alex Baumhardt:

An “historic” deal made two years ago between the U.S. government, four tribes, Northwest states and environmentalists to put legal battles aside and invest in restoring endangered Columbia River fish runs is now off. President Donald Trump on Thursday signed a presidential memorandum withdrawing the federal government from a December 2023 agreement to help restore salmon, steelhead and other native fish being decimated by federal hydroelectric dams in the Columbia River Basin. Trump’s memorandum refers to the commitments as “onerous,” “misguided” and placing “concerns about climate change above the nation’s interests in reliable energy resources.”

Shannon Wheeler, chairperson of the Nez Perce Tribe, said in a statement that Trump’s decision is a denial of the truth. “This action tries to hide from the truth. The Nez Perce Tribe holds a duty to speak the truth for the salmon, and the truth is that extinction of salmon populations is happening now,” he said. “People across the Northwest know this, and people across the nation have supported us in a vision for preventing salmon extinction that would at the same time create a stronger and better future for the Northwest. This remains the shared vision of the states of Washington and Oregon and the Yakama, Umatilla, Warm Springs and Nez Perce tribes, as set out in our Columbia Basin Restoration Initiative.”

Once again, there is federal takeaway from Tribes, but this time the takeaway is aimed at state governments in Washington and Oregon as well. And once again, the logic is strained. The long-term benefits to the lands, waters, and peoples of the Northwest

At the same time we have news of the Yuroks in California gaining 70 square miles of land, redirecting land management towards wildlife, education, and traditional foods, and embarking on the revegetation project on the Klamath River. Their homeland includes the river mouth.

Four dams on the Klamath River were removed, two of them after more than 100 years, and salmon are finding their way to ancient spawning grounds. We in the Pacific Northwest, Tribal people and the rest of us, will be keeping our eyes on the Klamath as we mark time, diminishing fish runs, and the impacts of executive orders on the lower Snake River’s four dams. Counting on resilience.

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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.Read Rich’s Post →

We Will Always Have Been Against This

When tourists look at our wall display at the Josephy Center that tells a very brief story of the walwa ma, or Joseph, Band of the Nez. Perce Indians, they often shake their heads and say something like “It’s terrible what we did to Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce.” Those who say this are mostly in their forties and older, and mostly white, and have read something of the Nez Perce War. Many go on to say that the boarding schools were terrible. Some continue, decrying the attitudes and actions of our government against Native Americans in detail. They’ve read about the killings of the Osage women, the stories of Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Quanah Parker, Geronimo, and Captain Jack and the Modoc War. Read Rich’s Post →

A few words to my blog friends

Writing this blog is one of my favorite parts of working at the Josephy Center. Who gets to shout out about new things learned, old injustices exposed; about the resilience of the Native American people!

And do you know that a 2021 blog post called “How much is a beaver pelt worth” has had over 2600 hits! The next most seen post is “Nez Perce Music” with 1650, and then “Nez Perce Treaties” with 1350.

In America today there is a great curiosity about the Nez Perce, and about Indians in general, and I have the privilege of reading, writing, and living some of this curiosity. This year Kolle (my library colleagure) and I went on Snake River with Nez Perce elders, visited a tool-making site with elders and an archeologist, and I look forward to hosting an exhibit of Nez Perce artists in spring.

Right now our exhibit, “Nez Perce in Oregon: Removal and Return,” is up at the university in La Grande, will go to the community college in Pendleton after the first, and eventually make its way to the State Capitol.

Old blog posts, past exhibits, talks about sockeye and Alvin Josephy’s broadcast from the WW II Marine Corps landing at Guam are all on our webpage: https://library.josephy.org/. Go explore. And to help Kolle and me continue our work with more exhibits, host more elder visits, and send out my blog posts, click on https://josephy.org/donate/general-fund-donation/ and make your donation.

Thanks for reading. Thanks for friendship and support. And have a great holiday.

What’s next in Indian Country #2

I thought I should follow up the last blog post, a musing—and hope—that there will be Natives sprinkled across government no matter the new regime. And I should have added that the sprinkling will be in local and state as well as the national government, and that the watering of Native knowledge and values will continue to go beyond government.

Why?

The fine work of the Biden appointees in high positions will leave a mark. Many Natives they brought into government and programs they started and fostered will still be here. Read Rich’s Post →

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 →

Good news in Indian Country

I hope everyone saw President Biden’s passionate apology to Native people for the awful, almost 100-year, practice of boarding schools. They were another misguided attempt to deal with what became known as “the Indian problem.” Which might be translated as removing the original peoples from their lands. It couldn’t be solved with diseases, displacement, treaties and wars, so legislation and forced assimilation became the answer. And breaking the generational chain of passing language and culture from grandparents to parents to children to grandchildren was the boarding schools’ weapon.Read Rich’s Post →

Hawaii

Several years ago, I talked with a group of “Road Scholars” visiting the Wallowas. Road Scholar was the heir to “Elderhostlel,” and remains a program that targets retirees who want to travel and learn. At that time, I did my brief presentation on Nez Perce removal and tried to be encouraging about Native peoples’ return here and in many places across the country.

One of the visitors was from Hawaii, and he and I have been exchanging emails over the affairs of Native Americans on the Mainland and in Hawaii ever since. His name is Noel Kent…

Read Rich’s Post →

Grace Bartlett, the Nez Perce, and the Wallowa Country

This summer we have been doing Friday conversations on local and Nez Perce history. This Friday was the last session for 2024. We focused on Grace Bartlett and her book, The Wallowa Country, 1866-76. I hadn’t read the book in years, remembering always that it was a day-by-day account of the first ten years of white tenure in the Wallowas—and the last ten years of Native, Nez Perce tenure. I’ve always thought the book a unique contribution to local and Nez Perce history, but had not remembered details and some of the book’s signature elements. I skimmed it on Thursday night, and was even more appreciative of Grace’s work.

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 →

Native Gains: Deb Haaland, Joe Biden, and Harry Slickpoo

It’s hard to get a handle on it. So much has happened in and for Indian Country since Biden took office and appointed Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo) Secretary of the Interior. Haaland had held tribal offices, headed the New Mexico State Democratic party, and had served in the US House of Representatives before she became the first Native American to be a US Cabinet secretary. She knew the ropes, and she hit the ground running.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 →

The Three Sisters: Buffalo, Beaver, Salmon

The new Ken Burns documentary, the American Buffalo, follows the Euro-Americans across the continent as they kill buffalo, kill them mostly for profit—meat for the railroad workers; tongues which fetched high prices as culinary delicacies in the East; buffalo robes and hides that became important strong leather for the Industrial Revolution; and, finally, the remnant hooves that were gathered for glue and bones that were ground up for fertilizer. They also killed buffalo for sport and to impoverish Native tribes that depended on them.Read Rich’s Post →

The Nez Perce and Condors–and Alvin

On Friday night, Angela Sodenaa, Precious Lands Coordinator for the Nez Perce Tribe, gave a stirring talk at Wallowology in Joseph, “The Nimiipuu and the qúˀnes: Condor Recovery in Hells Canyon.” She recapped condor demise and recovery across the West, and the Tribe’s work in establishing the feasibility of condor return to the Snake River and tributaries, and advocacy work on behalf of that return.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 →

Anne Richardson and General Howard

My friend Anne Richardson passed away a few years ago. Her husband, Dennis Nyback, brought a box of her books and notebooks to the Josephy Library about a year ago, and then he passed away.

I didn’t write a eulogy for Anne at the time of her passing, although I have told bits of her fascinating life story to a few people—the little bits that I know. Now I feel remiss at not having written something sooner, maybe written something before her passing, because of all the people I know, Anne Richardson knew more about General O.O. Howard than anyone else. Hers might have been a valuable voice to anyone trying to untangle the story of Howard and his role in the Nez Perce War.Read Rich’s Post →

Indigenous Continent: The Big Picture and small mistakes

I just finished reading Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America, by Pekka Hämäläinen. I’d previously read Lakota America, and have his book on the Comanche Empire on my shelf. In Lakota America, he argues that in 1776 there were two emerging nations in North America: The Lakota were moving out of the Great Lakes region and advancing towards the Plains, where they would become dominant. The new American nation was scrambling to secure the eastern seaboard, fight off British, French, Spanish, and Native contenders, and move at its own pace across the continent.Read Rich’s Post →

1871 in Northeast Oregon

That’s the year of the first white settlers—and the year that tiwi ‘ teqis (Chief Old Joseph) passed away. A few years before that, tiwi’teqis had seen the surveyors’ monuments on the Oregon-Washington line, and had put up his own monuments to show white settlers a demarcation line. “Joseph’s Deadline,” it was called. His son, Young Joseph, had warned A.C. Smith not to build his toll bridge across the Minam River—a bridge that would allow settlers an easier approach to the Wallowa Country as it crossed his father’s deadline.

Read Rich’s Post →