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Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings
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NEZ PERCE NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK
Idaho
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Location: Clearwater, Idaho, Lewis, and Nez Perce
Counties; headquarters at the Spalding park unit, in Nez Perce County,
about 10 miles east of Lewiston; address: Nez Perce National Historical
Park, 39063 U.S. Highway 95, Spalding, ID 83540-9715.
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Situated in the ruggedly beautiful Nez Perce country,
which encompasses 12,000 square miles of northern Idaho, this new and
unique park allows today's traveler to see the land almost as Lewis and
Clark described it well over a century and a half ago. Scene of many
colorful and significant events in the history of the Rocky Mountain
frontier, the park interprets the prehistory, history, and culture of
the Nez Perce Indians, including their religion; missionary efforts
among them; the Lewis and Clark Expedition; the invasion of fur traders,
miners, and settlers; and the Nez Perce War (1877).
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, on their westward
journey in 1805, were the first white men to contact the hospitable Nez
Perces. In 1811 they also aided a small group of Astorians, a section of
the overland party, who passed through the area on their way to found a
fur post near the mouth of the Columbia River. The next year, personnel
from Fort Astoria established trade relations with the Nez Perces, and
other American and British traders soon visited them.
In 1836 the Reverend and Mrs. Henry H. (Eliza)
Spalding, the first U.S. missionaries to the Nez Perces, arrived. On
Lapwai Creek they founded a sister mission to the Whitman (Waiilatpu)
Mission. The latter had been established the same year among the Cayuse
Indians, about 110 miles farther west, in present Washington, by their
fellow American Board missionaries Marcus and Narcissa Whitman. Two
years later the Spaldings moved their mission about 2 miles down the
creek to its juncture with the Clearwater River.
The Spaldings made only limited progress in
converting their charges to Christianity and persuading them to abandon
nomadic hunting in favor of sedentary farming. Jeopardizing their
efforts was Spaldings defensively critical attitude toward the other
missionaries, especially the Whitmans. The personalities of the two men
clashed, and Spalding's philosophy of missionary work resulted in
arguments with his fellow workers.
Spalding nevertheless built the first white home,
church, school, flour mill, sawmill, blacksmith shop, and loom in Idaho.
In 1839 the mission received the first printing press in the Pacific
Northwest, donated by American Board missionaries in Honolulu. This
press, today in the museum of the Oregon Historical Society, printed the
first books in the Nez Perce language, as well as one in the Spokan
tongue. For this purpose, the missionaries devised phonetic renderings
of the languages.
At the time of the massacre at the Whitman Mission,
in November 1847, Spalding closed his mission and he and his wife moved
to the Willamette Valley. In later years they returned to the Nez Perce
country, where he taught school and preached until he died in 1874.
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Barracks at Fort Lapwai, Idaho.
Date unknown. (National Archives) |
Despite the Cayuse animosity, relations between the
Americans and the Nez Perces remained good until the 1860's, when miners
and settlers poured into their ancestral homeland of north-central
Idaho, northeastern Oregon, and southeastern Washington. In 1863 most of
them reluctantly agreed to a major reduction in their reservation, to
north-central Idaho. But for years several bands, known as the nontreaty
Nez Perces, lived outside the reservation and resisted Army and Indian
Bureau attempts to confine them with their acquiescent brethren. In 1876
a committee appointed by the Secretary of the Interior met with
representatives of the two factions at the Lapwai Agency, Idaho, and
later recommended to the Government the use of force if necessary to
move the recalcitrants onto the reservation. Finally, under duress, in
1877 they began to migrate there. En route in June a few revengeful
warriors murdered some settlers along the Salmon River south of the
reservation. Brig. Gen. Oliver O. Howard, in charge of the relocation,
sent two companies of cavalry under Capt. David Perry, from Fort Lapwai,
Idaho, to restore order.
The warriors who had committed the murders belonged
to a group camped on Camas Prairie, who subsequently moved to White Bird
Canyon. As the troops rode down the canyon on June 17 toward the camp,
about 60 or 70 of the Indians took cover at a point between the camp and
the approaching soldiers, and the Battle of White Bird Canyon broke out.
Assaulted vigorously on the flanks, Perry's men retreated in disorder up
the canyon. Thirty-four of them died, but not a single one of their
opponents. The victory here proved to be the Indians' undoing, for it
emboldened them to follow a course of defiance that eventually resulted
in the destruction of their power. A series of skirmishes ensued between
troopers and various Nez Perce bands that culminated in the Battle of
the Clearwater, on July 11-12.
That battle was indecisive, but it marked the
beginning of an epic fighting retreat by the Indians in an effort to
find a haven in Montana or, as they knew Sitting Bull had done, in
Canada. The episode is one of the more dramatic in the long struggle of
the U.S. Government to force the Indians off lands coveted by white
settlers and confine them to ever-diminishing reservations.
The leaders of the march were Chief Joseph, later the
statesman-diplomat of his people; Frog (Ollokot), his brother; Chief
White Bird; Chief Looking Glass; Chief Sound (Toohoolhoolzote); and
Chief Rainbow. They guided 700 people with their possessions,
transported by thousands of horses, across the Bitterroot Mountains over
the Lolo Trail, the route of their past annual treks to the buffalo
range in Montana. In 2-1/2 months they were to travel 1,700 miles,
trying to avoid conflict whenever possible, either dodging or fending
off the 2,000 troops trying to catch them. Although impeded by many
women and children, they evaded General Howard's pursuing party of
cavalry and hopelessly outdistanced his slow-moving infantry and
artillery. Once across the trail, the Indians headed southward and then
slightly eastward. Losing men and resources at the Battle of the Big
Hole, Mont., they passed through Yellowstone National Park and turned
northward but met disaster at the Battle of Bear Paw Mountains, Mont.,
in the fall of 1877.
During the campaign about 120 Indians had died and 88
had been wounded. They killed about 180 whites and wounded 150. Confined
at Fort Leavenworth, Kans., between November 1877 and July 1878 and
enduring much suffering because of the abysmal conditions, the Nez
Perces were then exiled to a reservation in Indian Territory and not
allowed to return to the Pacific Northwest until 1885.
Nez Perce National Historical Park, authorized by
Congress in 1965 and in the initial phase of development when this
volume went to press, represents a new concept in a national park. It is
a joint venture of the National Park Service, other governmental
agencies, the State of Idaho, the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee,
private organizations, and individuals. Of the 24 sites involved, 20
will remain in the hands of their present owners or under a protective
scenic easement. Folders available to visitors at National Park Service
units give exact locations of all sites and routing information.
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Part of White Bird Canyon
Battlefield, Idaho. View from Volunteers Knoll toward the mouth of White
Bird Creek. (National Park Service) |
The National Park Service administers four major
sites: Spalding, East Kamiah, White Bird Battlefield, and Canoe Camp. At
Spalding are a Nez Perce campsite of archeological significance; the
remains of the Spalding (Lapwai) Mission (1838-47), consisting of traces
of the millrace and ruins of two chimneys; site of the original Lapwai
Indian Agency (1855-84) for the Nez Perces; a Nez Perce cemetery, where
a large tombstone marks the graves of Henry and Eliza Spalding; and
Watson's Store, a typical general store of the 1910-15 period that
served the Nez Perces until only a few years ago. Extensive
archeological excavation is planned at Spalding.
In 1992 an additional 14 sites were added in the
adjoining states of Oregon, Washington, and Montana. The 38 sites of Nez
Perce National Historical Park have been designated to commemorate the
stories and history of the Nimiipuu (Nez Perce) and their interaction
with explorers, fur traders, missionaries, soldiers, settlers, gold
miners, and farmers who moved through or into the area.
A prominent feature at East Kamiah is the "Heart of
the Monster," a rocky hump protruding from the level valley to a height
of 50 to 60 feet that figures strongly in Nez Perce mythology. Also
situated at East Kamiah is the McBeth House, a small framehouse that was
the residence of missionaries Susan and Kate McBeth in the 1870's. White
Bird Battlefield was the site of the first battle of the Nez Perce War,
on June 17, 1877. Canoe Camp, a 3-acre roadside park along the bank of
the Clearwater River, was the location of a Lewis and Clark campsite in
1805.
Many of the 20 sites (expanded to 38 sites in 1992)
among the non-Park Service group are related to the phases of history
treated in this volume. Fort Lapwai, the Army's major post in Nez Perce
country, was founded by Volunteers in 1862 about 3 miles south of the
Clearwater River in the Lapwai Valley. The post prevented clashes
between Indians and whites on the Nez Perce Reservation, and played a
prominent role in the Nez Perce War. Made a subpost of Fort Walla Walla.
Wash., in 1884, Fort Lapwai was abandoned the following year and became
the headquarters of the Nez Perce Indian Agency. In recent years this
agency was replaced by the Northern Idaho Indian Agency, which serves
all the northern Idaho tribes. The parade ground may still be seen, as
well as a frame officers' quarters on its southwestern corner, now used
by the Indian agency staff, and the stables.
Two natural formations east of Lewiston, Coyote's
Fishnet and Ant and Yellow Jacket, are associated with Nez Perce legend
and mythology. Weippe Prairie, a National Historic Landmark because of
its relationship with the Lewis and Clark Expedition, was a favorite
place for the Nez Perces to gather camas roots, an important part of
their food supply. At this place Lewis and Clark, descending the
Bitterroots in 1805, first encountered the tribe.
At the site of the city of Pierce, a prospecting
party headed by E. D. Pierce made the first significant gold discovery
in Idaho in 1860. The ensuing gold rush brought thousands of miners and
settlers onto Nez Perce lands and within 3 years resulted in the
creation of Idaho Territory. Two engagements of the Nez Perce War are
commemorated at other cooperative park units; the site of the Cottonwood
Skirmishes and Clearwater Battlefield. On the steep bluffs overlooking
the Clearwater River are remains of stone breastworks used by Indians
and soldiers during the Battle of the Clearwater. Also associated with
the Nez Perce War and Nez Perce culture is Camas Prairie, a
plateau-valley in the heart of the Nez Perce country, indicated by a
highway marker. Once a sea of blue-flowered camas and grass, it was the
place where the warriors who murdered the settlers on the Salmon River
were camped with their group before it moved to White Bird Canyon.
The Lolo Trail, Idaho-Montana, a National Historic
Landmark described separately in this volume, was the traditional route
of the Nez Perces across the Bitterroot Mountains to their buffalo
hunting grounds in Montana and the avenue of the non-treaty faction of
the tribe in 1877. It was also the westward and eastward route of Lewis
and Clark in 1805 and 1806. Some other sites in the park area, much of
which is located within the boundaries of the historic Nez Perce Indian
Reservation, are associated with missionary activities among the
tribe.
http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/soldier-brave/sitea12.htm
Last Updated: 19-Aug-2005
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