Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez Perce (6 page)

But Tuekakas remained strong in his acceptance of these new teachings. He even received the Christian spirit bath that washed a man clean of his old ways. He accepted the gift of a Christian name, Joseph, and remarried his wife in the Christian fashion. She too was given a new name, Asenoth. As their children were born, they too were given Christian names and given the spirit bath that would let their spirits live forever with Jesus.

Among these children was a boy born in a cave a day's journey from the Reverend Spalding's mission. Like his father, he was given the Christian name of Joseph.

Y
OUNG JOSEPH
was born in the year 1840, four years after the Reverend Spalding had arrived and just when the missionary was at the height of his power and influence. Because of his father's friendship with the Reverend, Joseph was accorded a privileged status at the mission.

While his father sat at Spalding's side learning the ways of the Book of Heaven, young Joseph was given the freedom to play with the white children, often being pulled around the mission grounds in the same wagon with the Spaldings' son.

With a free and innocent curiosity, he was able to drink in the strange, almost magical reality of this Soyapo settlement with its heavy wooden buildings and great, groaning grinding stones and fire-breathing bags that melted metal. Though he was too young to understand what he was seeing, he knew from the first that there was a world different from the Wallowa and that the people in this other world, with their strange ways and different skin, had magical powers and treated him with kindness

Then, each spring, when the mountain snows began to melt, he would travel back with his family up the long trails to the Wallowa, where he was trained in the old ways, learning the medicine power of the plants, the names and powers of all the animals, and the language of the birds.

It was an idyllic life for a child. But for the Nez Perce people themselves, who were also living these separate lives, it spoke of a tension in their spirit that was becoming increasingly difficult to resolve. They had willingly embraced the presence of the Reverend Spalding when he had first arrived because he had brought new knowledge that they could use to help their people, just as they had used the knowledge of the horse and the ways of the buffalo people and the weapons and tools of Soyapo strangers who had come before. But they had not expected to be told to give up their old ways in order to gain this knowledge. Now they were being told they had to choose, and they were unsure what to do.

Some of the bands, especially those whose home villages were nearest the places of the missionaries, gave themselves over completely to these new ways, as the Reverend demanded. They cut their hair, adopted Soyapo clothes, raised Soyapo sheep and pigs and cattle, and dug into the earth with metal blades. They marked off squares on the earth and taught different plants to grow in straight lines. They lived in heavy wooden houses, attended church, and sold the food they did not need instead of giving it away to others.

They said that this new way was better for the people—that it allowed them to take better care of the elders and the children, that it meant less time of empty bellies. Soyapo livestock freed them from the need to cross the mountains to hunt buffalo. Planting gardens in the Soyapo manner meant they no longer had to make seasonal pilgrimages to the camas and kouse grounds. They had apple trees for fruit, corn and potatoes for grain, and solid houses for protection against the weather. By learning the Soyapo tongue they could now read the Book of Heaven and could understand the ways of Jesus. They were on the good path, and their people were prospering. They did not want to burn forever in a place of endless fire.

But other bands were not so sure. Much of what the Reverend Spalding taught went against the teachings of the ancestors. It was not good to dig into your mother's flesh or cut her hair. It was not good to forget the old practices of offering the spirits the firstfruits of the harvest. And they could not believe that the Creator wanted them to abandon the teachings he had placed in the earth in favor of a strange book about a man who lived far away in a desert.

By the time Joseph was five, the heart of the Nez Perce had begun to split. Two years before, in 1843, another Soyapo had come among them, a Dr. White, and he had given them new, harsh rules that he said were from the same white fathers who had sent Lewis and Clark. But these laws were more about what people could not do than about what they should do. The Reverend Spalding supported Dr. White, even placing a metal ring in a tree at a height higher than a man's head so people's hands could be tied to it while they were lashed for acts that went against these new Soyapo laws.

Old men were being lashed for going into another's lodge for food when they were hungry; children were being lashed for taking ears of corn from the garden of another. If you rode a horse that belonged to another or touched another man's goods, you were lashed. If you burned another man's building, you were hanged. There was even a law that told who could own dogs and who could not.

Most troubling of all, these new laws did not seem to apply to the white people. When the son of a Walla Walla chief was killed by Soyapo who had falsely accused him of stealing, the white leaders would not kill the murderers, even though the first law on the list Dr. White had given them was, “Whoever willfully takes the life of another shall be hung.” If the laws were not followed by the Soyapo, why should they be followed by the Nez Perce and the other tribes?

But what most turned the hearts of many Nez Perce against the Soyapo was the decision by the white law officials to make one man, Ellis, the head chief over all the Nez Perce bands. It went against the Nez Perce way to place one chief over all the others. Decisions of importance were to be made in council, and Ellis, though wealthy, had never won great distinction in hunting or warfare and was favored by the Soyapo only because he had been sent to study among the whites and could speak their language. To call him the head chief over all the people showed that the Soyapo had no respect for Nez Perce ways.

Eventually trappers who had taken Nez Perce wives also began speaking against the missionaries. They pointed out how the Reverend Spalding made the Nez Perce pay for seeds and plows but did not pay them for their land and air and water. The hunters returning from the buffalo country also brought disturbing news. While on the buffalo plains they had met many men with Soyapo fathers and Indian mothers. These half brothers had told them that Soyapo with the Book of Heaven spoke with split tongues.

It would happen like this, they said. First the missionaries would come, talking spirit law. But soon others would follow who would use that law to take what belonged to the Indian. These men would hold the Book of Heaven in one hand while stealing Indian land with the other. They would divide everything into “mine” and “yours.” They would make the Nez Perce pay for goods while taking what they wanted for their own. Soon they would own everything and the Nez Perce would be left with nothing.

This was too close to what the Nez Perce were seeing with their own eyes. The angriest among them began to harass Mr. Spalding and his people. They stopped going to hear him teach spirit law and threw rocks at the school building and spit through the doors and windows at his wife. They broke down the fences and smashed the mill and cut off the ears and tails of his cattle.

Those in the tribe who now lived by the Soyapo ways spoke out against this, saying that Nez Perce who were afraid of the new law were like boys who were afraid to become men. They reminded them of the many gifts they had received from other strangers, like the horse, the ways of the buffalo, and the guns and tools and cooking pots. The new ways of the Spaldings were no different. And by doing violence to the Reverend and his family, they were betraying the promise of friendship their ancestors had made to Lewis and Clark.

But the angry ones refused to listen. These men are not like Lewis and Clark, they responded. Lewis and Clark brought gifts, not laws. Lewis and Clark did not make the Nez Perce wear different clothes. Lewis and Clark did not make them cut their mother's flesh to place seeds in the earth so lazy men could get food without going on the hunt. Lewis and Clark did not ask them to become a nation of old women who sat watching plants grow and slow cows walk while Soyapo told them where to live and how to dress and what to eat and how to worship the Creator.

In exchange for a life of ease, they said, the Soyapo had given them a life of fear. Already, many among them were more concerned about not going to the land of fire than they were about honoring the ancestors and serving the good of their people.

Why too, they asked, did the Soyapo fight among themselves about the path of heaven? The Reverend Spalding was constantly speaking angrily against the Black Robes who had come among the Cayuse and taught a different spirit law from his. And he was always arguing with other Soyapo at the mission about the Book of Heaven. Their grandfathers had taught them that people should not fight about religion because all people were free to find their own path to the Creator.

Gradually, the Nez Perce were becoming a people divided.

All these questions were reduced to nothing during the winter of 1846, when the Creator finally spoke. And he did it in the old way, through the voice of the earth.

That year the snows came early and deep, and went down low into the valleys and canyons, covering the ground where the horses and cattle grazed. The winds blew so cold that a strong man could not remain outside without cover. The rivers and the streams froze. No one alive could remember such a winter.

Unable to find food, the horses and cattle began to die, and the plants that the Reverend Spalding had taught the Nez Perce to harvest froze and became worthless. A great hunger came upon the land and the people.

The medicine men, who had long spoken against the ways of the Soyapo, said that this was the Creator's punishment for the Nez Perce's having abandoned the ways of their grandfathers. This was no longer the voice of some Soyapo spirit teacher speaking to them, they said. It was the voice of the Creator himself. The disagreements among the people were only a reflection of the confusion of their spirit. There was only one way to set things right. The ways of the Soyapo must be abandoned and the teachings of the old ways restored.

Tuekakas listened closely to the counsel of the medicine men. They had the wisdom of the ancestors, and their words were not to be discounted. But neither could he discount the words of his friend, the Reverend Spalding, and the truth that was contained in the Book of Heaven.

Night after night he read the words in his copy of the book that the Reverend had given him as a gift, hoping to find answers to what was happening to his people. It was in his hands to lead, and if the way was clouded, it was up to him to find a clear path.

He conferred too with his brothers among the Cayuse, who lived a few days' journey to the west in the country where Dr. Whitman had settled and built his mission. What he learned from them was unsettling.

Dr. Whitman had once been a caring father, they said, but lately he had seemed more concerned with bringing Soyapo to the land than in teaching spirit law to the people. Several summers before, he had gone back to the East and returned with over a thousand Soyapo. The travelers had stayed only a few days, then gone on toward the great water, but while they were at the mission they had been allowed to camp in Dr. Whitman's yard and come into his house, while the Cayuse were kept at a distance. Such an insult, they believed, spoke of the doctor's true heart.

Now, each year, great numbers of Soyapo were coming in large wagons with billowing cloth tops, carrying not just men, but families. And they were not just passing through. They were building fences and marking off lands. They were turning the mission into a Soyapo village, and the doctor was favoring them in all things, from trading to the time he spent teaching them spirit law.

Perhaps most troubling of all was what the Cayuse had been learning from the Black Robes. The Black Robes were men who taught a different spirit law than the Reverend Spalding and Dr. Whitman. They wore long black robes and hung crosses around their necks. They gave the people medals and coins like those that had been given by the great men, Lewis and Clark. They had beads to help the people pray and crosses to keep away the evil. They rang bells and lit candles and had strong ceremonies that brought curses if they were not followed. They were strong like warriors and did not need women. These Black Robes had said that the Reverend Spalding and Dr. Whitman were teaching the Book of Heaven falsely. By following that false path, they said, the people would be led to the place of endless fire.

To save them from that place, these Black Robes gave the people the gift of the new life from pure water as soon as they came among them. They were not stingy with spirit gifts like Dr. Whitman, who would let people burn forever rather than give them the gift of the saving water if he did not think they were worthy. Because of the big hearts of the Black Robes, many of the Cayuse people had begun to listen to their words and to ignore the words of Dr. Whitman.

What Tuekakas learned from the Cayuse supported what he was learning with his own eyes and ears. He had seen that the Reverend Spalding was spending more time speaking against the Black Robes than he was teaching the way of the good path. And he was, indeed, stingy with the gift of saving water, giving it to very few rather than to anyone who needed it. The Black Robes, his Cayuse brothers had told him, came to the bedside of any Indian who was close to death and gave them the gift of the water if they asked for it, so they could go to the good place with Jesus. But the Reverend Spalding would not do this. And he was charging the Nez Perce for the tools and cattle, yet he still would not pay the Nez Perce for the land on which he had placed his own house and garden. His way was indeed less generous than the way of the Black Robes, if what the Cayuse said was true.

With such confusion surrounding him, Tuekakas decided it was time to withdraw his people from the influence of the Soyapo ways.

Tuekakas had actually begun his withdrawal from the Soyapo world several years earlier. He had not taken kindly to the decision to appoint Ellis head chief, and he had not looked favorably upon the intrusive, punitive Soyapo laws and the unseemly glee with which some of the other Nez Perce had embraced the whip as a way of enforcing them. He still valued his friendship with the Reverend Spalding and counted his Book of Heaven as among his most prized possessions. But when the Soyapo leaders had begun speaking more of laws than things of the spirit and had begun to demand that the people give up their old ways in order to accept the new, he had lost faith in their goodness.