CHAPTER TWO:
ADMINISTRATIVE DEVELOPMENT

The Superintendency of Robert L. Morris, 1975-1981

Robert L. Morris had worked at several units in the Southwest, beginning with a ranger job at Canyon de Chelly National Monument in 1948 and ending with a tour as Superintendent of El Morro National Monument in the 1970s. [104] It was no secret in Park Service circles that the new superintendent of Nez Perce would be walking into a difficult situation, and Morris accepted the job with an important guarantee: Regional Director Russell E. Dickenson promised to put all his influence behind getting a new visitor center built at Spalding as soon as Congress raised the budget ceiling for park development. [105]

This promise strengthened Morris' position as he met with various interested parties upon his arrival. Not only were tribal leaders anxious for the NPS to initiate park development, but a number of other park supporters voiced similar sentiments immediately. These included Ted Little, Marcus Ware, faculty members of the University of Idaho, and Idaho Senators Church and McClure as well as Warren G. Magnuson and Henry M. Jackson of Washington. [106] To the local groups Morris tried to convey one important message: do not argue with each other about where the visitor center will be or whose history it will present until after Congress has approved the funding increase. These issues could be finalized after funding had been approved. [107] In October 1976, exactly one year into Morris' superintendency, Congress amended the Nez Perce National Historical Park Act by raising the development ceiling from $1,337,000 to $4,100,000. [108] Regional Director Russell E. Dickenson's pledge of support for the visitor center, Morris' efforts at consensus-building, and the 1976 act of Congress all seemed to place the park on a new and more advantageous footing.

During 1976, park staff worked closely with Nez Perce tribal representatives in planning new interpretive exhibits for East Kamiah and White Bird Battlefield. The East Kamiah interpretive shelter was built in August 1977, and interpretive exhibits were installed the following spring. The development also included a new 3,000-foot pole fence along the highway frontage, replacing some 2,000 feet of barbed wire fence that the Nez Perce Tribe had built under contract two years earlier. Other planned improvements, including additional interpretive displays and public restrooms with flush toilets, remained to be done. The White Bird Battlefield interpretive shelter was completed in July 1977. [109]

Meanwhile the NPS proceeded to develop plans for the much-anticipated visitor center at Spalding. Park planners suggested a bold exterior design that would emphasize the park's Nez Perce theme. At first they proposed a tall, conical building resembling a tepee. Then they agreed upon a simple triangle motif, a design element common in Nez Perce beadwork. Worked into the exterior design of the visitor center in the form of a gently pitching triangular slab roof, the triangle looked vaguely like an arrowhead. [110] The building would stand on the bluff above the river with the raised point of the roof directing the visitor's gaze up the Clearwater Canyon. The sloping triangular roof design was repeated at the East Kamiah and White Bird Battlefield interpretive shelters. A second motif, also repeated at these two sites, consisted of three slanting poles placed in the ground beside each highway entrance. The latter symbolized the traditional Nez Perce eagle staff. [111] The effect of the two motifs together was striking. These visual design features marked a significant step in bringing the park's wide interpretive orbit closer and closer to the central story of the Nez Perce Tribe. [112]

The decision to locate the visitor center on the bluff was also important. The two previous administrative headquarters and visitor centers — the Watson's Store and the former Blue Lantern Motel — were both situated below the bluff, inside the historic area. Park planners decided that the new, larger visitor center would intrude on the historic setting and negatively impact the historic resources if it were built in that area. Moreover, U.S. 12 had been rerouted along the top of the bluff shortly after the park was authorized in 1965, and park planners wanted the visitor center to be clearly visible to passing motorists. Locating the visitor center on the bluff had one rather ironic consequence, however. Most park visitors, after spending twenty to thirty minutes in the visitor center, would get back on the highway without going down to the historic area. [113]

The location of the visitor center had one very bitter consequence. On September 11, 1979, while putting in the access road for this development site, a construction crew inadvertently bulldozed through a tribal cemetery. Remains of a number of individuals were disturbed. The incident brought about a nadir in NPS-Nez Perce relations. Even after the remains were sorted out, identified, and reinterred a little more than three years later, the incident still cast a pall over Nez Perce feelings about the park and Park Service representatives. The decision to build the road dated from 1976, when planners saw a need to construct a direct road between the visitor center parking area and the historic area below. The road would traverse down the side of the bluff. Sam Watters, a tribal member, objected that the proposed road cut would intersect a tribal cemetery. Morris requested a consultation, and on March 18, 1976, Dr. Roderick Sprague, chairman of the Department of Sociology/Anthropology at the University of Idaho, inspected the site and the development plans with NPS officials and members of the Nez Perce Tribe. Even though there was a known Nez Perce cemetery at the top of the bluff, Sprague advised that the proposed road cut would not disturb any graves because graves would not extend down the slope. Nevertheless, he suggested that a trained archeologist should be present to monitor the initial phase of construction in case human remains were discovered. [114] With that assessment, and some archeological testing accomplished during the summer and fall of 1978, plans to locate the visitor center on the top of the bluff proceeded with the tribe's approval.

It was in the fall of 1978 that the NPS broke ground for the visitor center. Contrary to Sprague's advice, no archeologist was assigned to monitor the construction work. [115] The work on the road had barely begun when it was discovered that the bulldozer crew had unearthed a number of graves. According to Superintendent Morris, the burial remains were encountered about twenty-five feet outside the known cemetery. [116] Archeologist David Chance maintains that the actual road cut went outside the area shown on project plans. [117] The disturbance of the graves happened because the cemetery and the earthworks extended over a wider area than the park officials and archaeologists had anticipated. It caught both the archaeologists and park officials by surprise.

Morris contacted NPTEC the next day and sought to involve tribal representatives in the damage assessment. Despite this gesture, members of the tribe formed an impression that park officials underestimated the gravity of the situation. When NPTEC Secretary Silas Whitman arrived at park headquarters on September 13, he thought that the tone of the staff suggested that "seemingly the project was not of a significant problem other than a few graves being disrupted." He and Richard Halfmoon discussed whether there was a need for NPTEC to request an injunction in order to halt construction "until some positive action could be taken." [118]

Later that morning Halfmoon and Sam Watters, who had warned against the road in the first place, inspected the site with the superintendent, Park Curator Stephen Shawley, Cathy Spude from the Denver Service Center, Dr. Sprague, and some graduate assistants from the University of Idaho. Watters reported to NPTEC:

I observed three distinct piles of skulls and bones, some of which were in crushed condition, one with most of the larger bones intact. Cedar remnants and beads, with some remains of pottery and the remains of a headpiece were also in evidence. Mr. Shawley and myself then toured the area and observed other assumed grave sites which were either dug out by the machinery and crushed or covered by a considerable amount of dirt. There seemed to be another six or so probable grave sites that could be readily identified so. [119]

The following morning, Watters revisited the site with NPTEC Chairman Wilfred Scott, and found that the skeletal remains observed the day before had already been put in paper sacks and taken to the University of Idaho for study. Archaeologists were in the process of marking out additional sites for excavation. After briefing an afternoon session of the Reservation Development Subcommittee on the status of the graves, Watters, Scott, and three other tribal members returned to the site again "to obtain a firsthand look at the direction the Park Service and archaeologists were taking." They were dismayed to find that the archaeologists had disinterred three additional cedar coffins on the assumption that they must be moved. "The shock of seeing the ancestors in their last resting place and the prospect of seeing them destroyed to move them in the name of progress became too much for tribal people in attendance," Watters wrote. There was a meeting late that afternoon between tribal representatives, park officials, archaeologists, and Spude, followed by a conference call to the regional office. [120] After a further meeting on Saturday morning, it was decided to suspend all construction and post a security guard at the site until all the remains were reinterred in their original locations. The road alignment would be altered to avoid the cemetery, and the NPS would conduct archeological testing on the level ground to the west of the cemetery where the visitor center was to be located. Karl Gurcke of the University of Idaho assembled an all-Nez Perce archeological crew of thirteen and supervised the reinternment of the burial remains and the testing of the visitor center site during the next two weeks. [121]

In the weeks and months following this incident, NPTEC received letters from tribal members demanding the abolishment of Nez Perce National Historical Park. The disturbance and subsequent mistreatment of the graves seemed to confirm tribal members' suspicions that the park was a "white man's" idea. It acquired symbolic significance, unleashing other ill-feelings about the park. Tribal leader Jesse Greene, for example, objected strongly to the Park Service's display of a portrait of Henry Harmon Spalding in the temporary visitor center. For Greene and many other Nez Perces, Spalding was the man who had suppressed Nez Perce customs and whipped Nez Perce children. The Park Service removed the offending portrait, but Greene's displeasure ran so deep he wanted the Park Service removed from the area as well. [122]

The superintendent and staff continued to occupy offices in the former Blue Lantern Motel while the new visitor center was under construction. Superintendent Morris brought three Nez Perces onto the park staff. Former NPTEC Chairman Angus Wilson was appointed park technician in October 1976 and retired in April 1977. Albert Barros, a student at Lewis and Clark College, took a position as a general student trainee under a Cooperative Education Agreement. Maynard Holt joined the maintenance staff. Other additions to the permanent park staff included Stephen Shawley as park curator and Harold White as maintenance worker. Shawley, a University of Idaho anthropology student and specialist in Nez Perce artifacts, first began cataloguing the park's collections under contract in 1976. He was appointed park curator in October 1977. White had worked at Spalding State Park for the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation before 1965, and had worked for the NPS as a seasonal maintenance worker since that date. In June 1978, Chief of Interpretation and Resource Management (I&RM) Douglas J. Riley transferred out and the new chief, I&RM, Kenneth L. Adkisson transferred in from Sitka National Historical Park. [123]

Staff members spent most of their time at the Spalding unit, making infrequent trips to the other three NPS-owned sites and the numerous cooperatively managed sites. There was a growing concern with vandalism as interpretive signs were defaced at East Kamiah, White Bird Battlefield, and Weis Rockshelter in the mid to late 1970s, but the small staff primarily concerned itself with interpretation and visitor protection at the Spalding unit. Morris continued in his post until the visitor center was brought nearly to completion. In February 1981, shortly before Morris retired, park staff moved into the new building. [124]