CHAPTER XXVIII
INDIANS OF THE UPPER COLUMBIA
The Indians of the upper Columbia, with whom Governor Stevens was next to treat, presented a far more pressing and difficult problem than the reduced tribes of the Sound. They numbered fourteen thousand souls, comprised in ten powerful tribes, viz., Nez Perces, Cuyuses, Umatillas, Walla Wallas, Yakimas, Spokanes, Cœur d’Alenes, Flatheads, Pend Oreilles, and Kootenais.[2] They were a manly, athletic race, still uncontaminated by the vices and diseases which so often result from contact with the whites, and far superior in courage and enterprise, as well as in form and feature, to the canoe Indians of the Sound and coast. Each tribe possessed its own country, clearly defined by well-known natural boundaries, within whose limits their wanderings were restrained, save when they “went to buffalo,” or attended some grand council or horse-race with a neighboring tribe. The chase, the salmon fishery, the root ground, the numerous bands of horses and cattle, furnished easy and ample sustenance. It was estimated that the Nez Perces owned twenty thousand head of these animals, and the Cuyuses, Umatillas, and Walla Wallas not less than fifteen thousand. The Yakimas and Spokanes also possessed great numbers.
THE INTERIOR FROM CASCADE MOUNTAINS TO FORT BENTON
Of all these tribes, the Nez Perces or Sahaptin were the most numerous and progressive. They numbered 3300, and occupied the country along the western base of the Bitter Root Mountains for over two hundred miles, and a hundred miles in width, including both banks of the Snake and its tributaries, the Kooskooskia or Clearwater, Salmon, Grande Ronde, Tucañon, etc. Yearly, in the spring or fall, their war chief would lead a strong party across the Rocky Mountains to hunt the buffalo on the plains of the Missouri, and many were the bloody encounters they had with the dreaded Blackfeet, the Arabs of the plains. They owned great numbers of horses, and the advent of the horse among them, about the middle of the eighteenth century, obtained from the Spaniards of New Mexico or California, of which they preserved the tradition, was the chief cause of their prosperous condition. From the days of Lewis and Clark, the first of the white race to meet their astonished gaze, they were famed as the firm friends of the white man. During all the fur-hunting and trading epoch the “mountain men,” as the trappers and voyageurs delighted to call themselves, were welcome in the lodges of the Nez Perces. Together they wintered in safety on the banks of the Kooskooskia, and together they hunted the buffalo on the plains of the Missouri, and made common cause against the Blackfeet. Among the most noted of the numerous encounters in which they were allied against their common foe was the stubborn fight of Pierre’s Hole in 1832, so graphically described by Washington Irving in his “Bonneville Adventures.” It was in this fight that Lawyer, then a promising young brave, and afterwards for many years the powerful head chief of the Sahaptin, received a severe wound in the hip, which never entirely healed, and doubtless hastened his death.
In 1836 Rev. H.H. Spalding with his wife was sent out by the Presbyterians, and settled as a missionary on the Lapwai, a branch on the southern side of the Kooskooskia, twelve miles above its confluence with the Snake. Here he was preceded by William Craig, a Virginian, one of the best type of mountain men, who had married a Nez Perce maiden and made his home among her people. Aided by Craig’s knowledge of the Nez Perce tongue and character, and of the Indians themselves, Mr. Spalding taught the whole tribe a simple Christian faith, made a dictionary of their language, and translated and had printed in the native tongue a hymn-book, catechism, and New Testament, taught a number of the young men to read and write their own language, built a saw and grist mill, and labored to induce them, not without success, to till the soil. Yet, after all this achievement, he was in the end led to abandon his mission. In an unhappy hour he opened a store and went to trading with the Indians. In their experience a trader was the personification of greed and falsehood. To them the union of the trader, all selfishness and fraud, and the preacher of morality and truth was monstrous, nay, impossible. Mr. Spalding, too, was hard and exacting in his dealings, and offended in that way. With all his zeal and energy, he evidently lacked knowledge of Indian nature, perhaps of human nature. What wonder that some of the Nez Perces, seeing that the trading-post was a fact, concluded that his preaching was a fraud, and warned him out of their country! The massacre of the devoted missionary, Dr. Marcus Whitman, and his family, by the Cuyuses, in 1847, had just occurred, and Mr. Spalding, fearing a like fate if he remained after the warning, abandoned the mission where he had done so much. The majority of the Nez Perces, however, desired him to remain; and when he decided upon going, they formed a strong party of warriors, and escorted him with his family and effects unharmed through the hostile Indians to the frontier settlement. They magnanimously refused the large reward offered them, saying, “We will not sell Mr. Spalding; he left our country of his own free will, and we escorted him as his friends.” In the war which ensued they remained the firm friends of the whites, and the officers of the Oregon volunteers engaged in it presented them with a fine, large American flag, in which they took great pride. It was their boast that “We are the friends of the white man. The white man is our brother. His blood has never stained our hands.” Craig remained among them in perfect safety, and was treated with undiminished kindness. Although abandoned by Mr. Spalding, they by no means discarded the good he had taught them. They maintained, unaided, their simple religious worship, and held services regularly every Sabbath, with preaching, singing of hymns, and reading of the Bible, all in their own language, with the books translated and printed for them by the devoted missionary. They prided themselves upon their superior intelligence, upon having young men who could read and write, and upon their ancient and fast friendship with the whites. This friendship indeed was not merely a matter of sentiment. They were shrewd enough to turn it to good account. Large emigrations crossed the plains to Oregon during the period from 1843 to 1855; and the Nez Perces used to go down to the emigrant road on the Grande Ronde or Umatilla, with bands of fat, sleek, handsome ponies, and exchange them with the emigrants for their worn-out horses, oxen, and sometimes a cow, clothing, groceries, ammunition, etc. The Pikes, as the Missourians who comprised the majority of the emigrants were called, “allowed that the Nez Perces could beat a Yankee on a trade.” By these means they were beginning to obtain cattle as well as horses, were learning to wear blankets and shirts instead of skins, and individuals were even beginning to set out fruit trees, and plant corn and potatoes, and in a word the Nez Perces were making rapid strides toward civilization. There is no more interesting and instructive example of the amelioration of a savage tribe by the introduction of domestic animals, and its steady growth from abject barbarism, than that afforded by the Nez Perces. But little more than a century ago they were a tribe of naked savages, engaged in a perpetual struggle against starvation. Their country afforded but little game, and they subsisted almost exclusively on salmon, berries, and roots. The introduction of the horse enabled them to make long journeys to the buffalo plains east of the Rocky Mountains, where they could lay in great abundance of meat and furs; furnished them with a valuable animal for trading with other less favored tribes; soon raised them to comparative affluence, and developed in their hunting and trading expeditions a manly, enterprising, shrewd, and intelligent character. They had improved and profited still more from their intercourse with the whites, until there seemed every prospect that, with the introduction of cattle, they might lay aside their nomadic habits, and become a pastoral and then an agricultural people.
The Cuyuses were the most disaffected and intractable of all the tribes. But little is known of their early history. They are said to have come from the east many years ago. No tribe could resist their prowess, and when they settled on the Umatilla and Walla Walla rivers, having driven out the original inhabitants, none dared molest them; since which, wars and pestilence had reduced their numbers to but five hundred, and continual intermarriages with the neighboring tribes had caused their own language to fall into disuse. But they still maintained their separate independence, and were as haughty and arrogant as ever. The Jesuits established a mission on the Umatilla and made some progress in their conversion, and then Dr. Whitman came among them, establishing his mission in the Walla Walla valley, and for several years possessed their confidence and accomplished much good. The rivalry between Jesuit and Protestant missionary was carried to a high pitch. Pictorial cards were issued by each party, representing its opponents descending into the fiery depths of the infernal regions, where Satan and his imps, with red-hot pitchforks, were impatiently waiting to receive their prey, while the converts to the true faith were ascending to heaven up a broad flight of stairs with winged angels on either side. This hostile and bigoted attitude of the missionaries towards each other must have weakened the respect and confidence of the Indians, and contributed not a little to the troubles that followed.
Dr. Whitman was accustomed to attend the Indians when sick, and these labors, undertaken in the purest benevolence, were ultimately the cause of his death; for, the measles having broken out among them, and great numbers, especially of the children, dying, their suspicions were directed towards this devoted and able missionary.