Last updated: November 28, 2023
Place
Weippe-Watkuweis
NPS
Quick Facts
Significance:
Nez Perce people welcomed members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition into their homes and fed them on their westward and eastward journeys.
Designation:
Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail, National Historic Landmark, Nez Perce National Historical Park
Amenities
2 listed
Historical/Interpretive Information/Exhibits, Parking - Auto
In September 1805, and then again in June 1806, Nez Perce people hosted Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, York, Sacagawea, and the rest of their party at Weippe Prairie. Many Nez Perce people were staying here at the time—Clark called it “a butifull Countrey” with “maney Indian lodges.”
Nez Perce people saw these starving and bad-smelling Soyapo (White people) who had just crossed Lolo Trail during the wrong time of year. They gave them dried salmon, camas bulbs, camas bread, and berries.
They chose to help these newcomers in part because a Nez Perce woman, Watkuweis, told her friends and family that they should be kind to them. Watkuweis had been captured many years before during a raid by Blackfeet or Atsina warriors. She then lived with White people for several years before finding her way home. Watkuweis convinced her Nez Perce family to be kind to these White visitors, since the White people she had met before had been kind to her.
No one in the visiting party spoke Nez Perce, but two French-speaking men—George Drouillard and Pierre Cruzatte—knew the sign language that was common among Indigenous communities and non-Native traders across North America.
The visitors wanted to travel by boat, but they had left theirs on the other side of the Rocky Mountains. Two Nez Perce men, Walamottinin (Twisted Hair) and Tetoharsky, led the visitors to the Clearwater River. They helped these visitors find and cut down trees that were big enough to make canoes and taught them how to use fire to hollow out the center.
Walamottinin and Tetoharsky then guided the visitors down the rivers they knew well—from the Clearwater, to the Snake River, and then onto the Columbia River. They guided their new friends all the way to the great falls of the Columbia.
About this article: This article is part of a series called “Pivotal Places: Stories from the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail.”
Lewis and Clark NHT Visitor Centers and Museums
Visitor Centers (shown in orange), High Potential Historic Sites (shown in black), and Pivotal Places (shown in green) along the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail