By the year 1859, peace had been declared, the Indians having been conquered, and the country east of the Cascade Mountains was opened up to settlement. The next year Mr. Spalding moved his family into the Walla Walla country, and attempted to renew his work among his former Indians. The Indian Service at that time was very corrupt, and he encountered such strong opposition on the part of the agent and employes that he had to desist and await further developments. The influences about these Indians during the next ten or twelve years was very bad. The White Salmon River and the Oro Fino mines had been discovered, and thousands of miners, many of whom were of the worst class, passed through their country.
In 1871, however, the Indian Service had been reconstructed, and what was commonly known as the peace policy was adopted by the government. In accordance with its principles, all religious work among the Indians of the United States was to be encouraged. The way was now open for Mr. Spalding to return to his former field of labor. Twenty-three years had passed since he was driven away, during which time no work had been done by white men to encourage the best, while much had been done to encourage the worst, in them. The Indians received him with open arms. They thronged about him, and a more joyous welcome could not have been given him. The old church organization was resuscitated and during the next three years, while he still lived, he baptized nearly seven hundred of this tribe, and more than two hundred and fifty among the Spokanes, a smaller tribe, where Messrs. Walker and Eells had been stationed. During his last days, not being able to travel about as he had done, he established a boys' school in Kamiah, in which he taught and trained young Indian men to be preachers. But he had not much longer to live. He was worn out. In August, 1874, he was brought down to Lapwai, where he laid down to die, at the ripe age of seventy-one. He was buried near the same spot where, thirty-eight years before, he had commenced his labors which had accomplished so much for the tribe and the country.
Another chapter in the good work done for the Nez Perces was the advent of the McBeth sisters. Nearly a year before Mr. Spalding's death, Miss Susan L. McBeth arrived at Lapwai under appointment as a teacher in the Indian school. As subsequent events will show, hers was a remarkable Christian character, in every way worthy to be the successor of Mrs. Spalding. The following year she went to Kamiah, and took up the work begun by Mr. Spalding, the training and education of young men to do missionary work among their own people. In addition to her work as a teacher, she was also a missionary, and held services among the Indians there. Although afflicted with partial paralysis, she performed her duties with a heroism and success that was remarkable. For three years she was there alone. When the breaking out of the Chief Joseph Indian war made it unsafe for her or any of the whites to remain there, she, in company with two other white families, fled hastily to Lapwai under guard of forty of the Christian Indians. The war closed in the fall of that year, 1877, but there were still stragglers about, and the agent felt it would be unsafe for her to remain there alone, and under his direction she remained in Lapwai for two years. Some of her students followed her down to Lapwai to receive the benefit of her instruction at that place.
She had now been on that reservation for six years, when in the fall of 1877 her sister, Miss Kate C. McBeth, arrived, and joined her in her work. Together they went back alone to Kamiah, where Miss S. L. McBeth resumed her work teaching the young Indian men, and her sister, Miss K. C. McBeth, opened a school especially for young women. It had been found that however well the young men were instructed and trained, when they wished to marry, they could not find young women fitted to be help-meets for them; and they deteriorated so much as greatly to impair their usefulness. This new school soon became popular, and was very useful and important. Those were happy days for the two sisters. The church work, the Sunday school services, the Women's Missionary Society, the hearty cooperation, and I had almost said the adoration of the Indians, was very enjoyable. For six years they continued there, supported by the Presbyterian Missionary Society. A part of the time a government school was kept near them, and the intercourse between the teachers of the different schools was mutually enjoyable. About this time the health of Miss S. L. McBeth gradually failed, and there were changes in the management of affairs on the reservation which did not help the McBeth sisters in their work. At first, during the hot weather, and later permanently, Miss S. L. McBeth removed to Mt. Idaho, fifteen miles distant and across the reservation line. She went there first in 1885. She bought a little home there, and lived in it until her death. Many of her pupils followed her and built little houses in which to live while attending her school. In addition to her other duties, during all these years, she prepared a dictionary of the Nez Perce Indian language, containing upwards of fifteen thousand words, which she left as her legacy. It was a most valuable one. For nearly twenty years she had lived among and for the benefit of the Nez Perces Indians, when her end came. In May, 1893, at the age of sixty years, she passed away. Born on the banks of the Doon, in Scotland, hers was a strong character, and a long and useful life. Loving hands bore her fifteen miles to the little church at Kamiah, near which, on the banks of the Clearwater, she was buried. Her influence, even after her death, was most potent. The young men she had taught and trained lived and labored for others for many years thereafter. Some of them went to preach to the Spokane Indians, some to the Umatillas, some to the Shoshones, and some even followed the prisoners taken in the Joseph Indian war to the Indian Territory, where so many of them died. They were of great comfort to the suffering ones, and finally returned with some of the prisoners to the home land. The high moral tone of the Nez Perces Indians, as well as those living in that vicinity, is largely due to her influence.
As has been said, six years after Miss S. L. McBeth came to the Nez Perces Indians, Miss Kate McBeth, her sister, followed her, and also took up a similar work, especially among the young Indian women. Upon her shoulders has fallen the mantle of her elder sister and now for a third of a century she has been among them. "Miss Kate," as she is familiarly called, is to them the little mother to whom they come for advice and counsel. She has written a book, covering the principal events of their history during the past century, which is valuable, and intensely interesting to any one who cares for information regarding the Indian tribes of the Northwest. From this book I learn that there are now six churches among the Nez Perces, two among the Spokanes, a smaller tribe, and where Messrs. Walker and Eells were for nearly ten years, one among the Umatillas, where was the remnant of the Cayuse tribe who remained friendly during the Cayuse war. Old Istychus, who had led the first wagons across the Blue Mountains, in 1843, when Dr. Whitman was called away to visit the Spauldings, when so many were sick there, who with his band of forty-five Christian Cayuses always remained true to the faith taught them by Dr. and Mrs. Whitman. There were two other real mission churches, one among the Shoshones, and one among the Shivwits in Utah, eleven in all. These are the results of the work of the early missionaries, among whom the Spaldings and the McBeths were the most fruitful. All of these churches are self supporting, and conduct their own affairs with so much wisdom that at present they do not need a superintendent to care for them. In the Christian Endeavor Convention, held in the Presbyterian church of Tacoma, in 1912, half a dozen well dressed Indian men were there as delegates sent by those churches.
The Nez Perce tribes originally numbered about three thousand, approximately. Their country is especially well adapted for their needs. Consequently they were always well supplied with the necessities of life, and were, compared with the other tribes, well off. They were an unusually high-minded, noble and intelligent tribe. About two-thirds are what are called the Treaty Indians. About half of these are nominally Christian Indians, and all are and always have been friendly to the whites. About one-third are called non-treaty or wild Indians. It was from these that Chief Joseph collected his band, and made war on the whites in 1877; and whom General Howard followed across the Rocky Mountains to near the British line, where they were surrounded, and taken prisoners. They were then taken to the Indian Territory and given land. Many of them died there. Most of the children could not endure the climate of the hot land, as they called it, and wilted away. After eight years of captivity, they were permitted to return. Those who were willing to come on the reservation were given lands and homes. The others were sent to the Colville Reservation. Among these was Chief Joseph, who steadily refused to return to his own tribe. He felt that those Indians had sold his country without his consent, and he could never forgive them. Perhaps two hundred stuck by him as long as he lived, and since then they have been gradually drifting back. Something like half of the non-treaty Indians joined Chief Joseph in the war. They have now dwindled, so that scarcely one hundred are left who have not come on the reservation. Joseph, himself, died in 1904.
And now let us come back to our Eliza, the first American white child born in the Northwest who grew to years of maturity. We left her married, and living in the Willamette Valley. About the year 1861, she was living with her young family on the Touchet in what was then Walk Walla county. There we met her, being neighbors, although living twenty miles apart, but I saw more of her younger sister, then unmarried, living a mile or so from her home, than I did of her. She soon after returned to the Willamette Valley and our paths diverged, so that we did not meet each other for a long time. Three years ago we again met at her beautiful home on Lake Chelan. Fifty years had elapsed since we last met. She was then a widow, but well preserved for one of her age. She had been active in religious work, having been superintendent of one or more Sunday schools; and "Grandma Warren," as she is familiarly called, is universally respected and esteemed. She has since sold her attractive home, and is at present living with one of her sons at Dudley, Idaho. She intends soon to return to Spokane and purchase a small home. She is an honor to her family, and to our state, where she has lived for many years, and where she expects to end her days.
Edwin Eells.