Blog Description

Weekly Posts Concerning my Sabbatical Research and Writing Project


Monday, October 29, 2012

Moseying Across the Nez Perce Rez

It may have been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, but for Pink and I it has been a hectic week on the Bird Farm.  We moved to another house, as the one we were in is rented as of the first.  The new house is nice but also a Hobbit Hole.  Under the hill and walled with thick concrete, the internet signal doesn't reach into the house.  Now I work in the Farm's barn-like office.  My seemingly endless attempts to coax the signal downhill and through impenetrable structures created high levels of frustration for me.  We drove seventy miles to Lewiston to purchase a more powerful router and a Wi-Fi extender, but after many tries arranging the transmitters, no luck and no signal.  I  decided to be content with working in the muddled, little-office barn.

On a brighter note, as we traversed the reservation to Lewiston, we visited the Nez Perce National Historic Park and stopped at every Historic Marker along U.S. Highway 95.  The highway crosses Lawyer Canyon near the Canyon's head.  Here the canyon is only about 300 feet deep.  The creek is the border between Idaho and Lewis Counties.  

Idaho County is one of the largest counties, in size or area, of any county in the United States.  It is also one of the least populated counties.  Survivalists claim it is the safest place to be when Armageddon arrives.  The region is too far from populated areas like cities to get here on one tank of gas.  So if the infrastructure of the nation breaks down, people will have a difficult time getting here.  The area is rich in natural food resources, and every local is armed.  There are many more guns here than people.  I read this in some magazine article a while back.  I don't remember where though, probably some doctor's office or possibly a survivalist's office.  These survivalist speculations hold some water though; this area was protected the longest in the Eighteen-hundreds from White peoples' diseases and intrusions.  It was just too remote and hard to get to; something Lewis and Clark experienced after crossing Lolo Pass into the dark Bitterroots.

But both sides of Lawyer's Canyon are in the Nez Perce Indian Reservation.  Lawyer's Canyon bisects the southern half of the Reservation.  
Lawyer Creek below U.S. Highway  95 Bridge
The Camas Prairie wheat farmers chose this part of the upper canyon to cross with their trains full of grain.  
Lawyer's Canyon Camas Prairie Railroad Trestle
Subject-verb agreement?
The reservation is only a fraction of the size first agreed upon in treaty negotiations.  The 1855 Treaty set the boundaries from the Bitterroots across into Washington and Oregon.  It was Chief Lawyer who led the negotiations in 1863 which reduced the size of the reservation to today's boundaries. 
Negotiated Nez Perce Reservation Boundaries
(Map from Ansestry.com, http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~idreserv/npmap.html)

Nez Perce Translation of the Gospel of Matthew
The southwest region in Oregon that Lawyer had no authority to negotiate away, is the land where the Joseph bands of the Nez Perce lived.  Old Joseph was the first Nez Perce to be baptized a Christian.  When he found Lawyer had signed away his homeland in the 1863 Treaty, he tore his translated Gospel of Matthew up, threw it to the ground, and said he would have nothing more to do with the White-man or his God.  He instructed his son, the famous Chief Joseph of the 1877 Nez Perce War, never to sell or give up their land.  


Henry Harmon Spaulding came to Nez Perce country because four Indians sent by Lawyer to St. Louis, asked William Clark, then Governor of the outpost, to send missionaries and Bibles.  Spaulding and Marcus Whitman responded to what a newspaper called, "The Macedonian Call."  Both men brought their wives with them, the first women to cross the Rocky Mountains.  Whitman's mission to the Cayuse became a way station of the Oregon Trail, which evolved when it was known women had crossed the Rockies safely.  The Cayuse later killed the Whitmans believing they brought measles to the tribe.  Spaulding and his wife Elisa, Presbyterians, were the first Whites, to settle in what is now Idaho in 1836.  They developed a written script for the Nez Perce language,  translated and printed the Gospel of Matthew, and baptized the first Nez Perce Christians, Old Joseph and Timothy in 1839.  The Nez Perce National Historic Park Headquarters and Visitors Center is located near the mission in Spaulding, Idaho.
The museum is rich in artifacts, most of them collected over the years by Mylie Lawyer, the great-great granddaughter of Hallalhotshot (Chief Lawyer).  The National Park Service has an excellent article about her entitled, "Mylie Lawyer And Her Collection."  The Museum displays are stunning and worth the visit.

Tribute to Mylie Lawyer in the museum.
The Historic Sites across the Rez are rich and numerous.  The Nez Perce National Historic Park consists of 38 sites across north-central Washington, northeast Oregon, north-central Idaho and western Montana.  I took pictures of the exhibits in the museum, but as I exited the front door, Pink pointed out the sign that said no photographs allowed.  I won't post the photos I inadvertently captured.  You will just have to visit the museum when you drive through Idaho and see for yourself the rich exhibits.  

The slideshow below consists of the Historic road signs Pink and I found on our short road trip across the Reservation.  Chief Lawyer's legacy and influence is far-reaching here in the Pacific Northwest.
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Saturday, October 20, 2012

Cold & Windy on the Camas Prairie

The sky has finally filled with rain instead of smoke up here on the prairie.  The Camas Prairie is bounded by deep river canyons and dense mountain forests.  The average elevation of the rolling fields of wheat, grass, and canola is 3500 feet.  The river valleys cut deep and are plus-and-minus 1200 feet on the waters.  The drop from the Prairie to the rivers is abrupt and precipitous.  The west edge of the Bitterroot Mountains encompass the east side of the high prairie, dark and vertical.
Camas Prairie Idaho
 Three counties share the Prairie: Nez Perce to the west, Lewis the center and Idaho County the southeast.  Lawyer Creek cuts the Prairie through the middle and is the boundary between Lewis and Idaho Counties.

The Heart of the Monster, which I spoke of in an earlier blog, the most sacred place of the Nez Perce Indians, is just south of the mouth of Lawyer Creek.  Pink and I are currently staying at the Flying B Farm, the southern yellow pin.  I am soon to finish collecting data from the two Prairie county seats and will then move down to the Canyon on the Ranch, the portion of the canyon directly to our north, the southern dip of the creek, and following the creek to the east and entrance to the canyon.  The Flying B owns most of the eastern canyon.


Portrait of “Chief Lawyer” or Hallalhotsoot, portrayed as the Nez Perce 
leader of the Walla Walla Council by artist Gustav Sohon.
I have had a few locals tell me the Canyon is named after "Crooked Lawyers", because the canyon is so crooked and so are Lawyers -- not true (Well at least about the name origin).  Cartographers can't make up their mind if the Creek is named: Lawyer, Lawyers or Lawyer's.  Every version is used, but the correct "Lawyer's" is the most seldom used.  The creek and the canyon it has gouged is named for Chief Lawyer or "Hallalhotsoot" of the Nez Perce.  Fur trappers named him Lawyer because of his eloquence and ability to argue.  With a hat like that, who could argue?

Hallalhotsoot was about nine years old, and one of three Nez Perce boys who first met William Clark in 1805, when the advance party of the Corps of Discovery Expedition stumbled out of the dense Bitterroot Mountains, starving and reduced to eating dogs. 

The next few days may have been the most dangerous days of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.  The Nez Perce gave the men of the expedition a couple horses to eat and fed them Camas root.  The root of the Camas flower, the flower the Prairie is named for, makes a rich, starchy paste.  The root was a staple crop of the bands of the Colombian Plateau.  The expedition, having eaten nothing but meat for months, all became sick with nausea, and lay recovering from ingesting such a rich sweet food.  While sick and in their beds, the Nez Perce held council to decide what they should do with these new men.  Years before, a prophecy had come to the Plateau people:
Soon there will come from the rising sun,
a different kind of man from any you have yet seen,
who will bring with them a book (leaves) and will teach you everything,
and after that the world will fall to pieces.
(Silimxnotylmilakobok, theSpokan Prophet, c. 1790)
[Miller, Christopher, Prophetic Worlds: Indians and Whites on the Columbia Plateau, Rutgers University Press, 1985, p45.]
The elders argued.  Should we kill these men now?  Obviously they are the men of the prophecy; their heads are upside down, and they have eyes like fish (bald with beards and blue eyes).  Because of them the world will fall.  Should we learn from them?  Lewis had the book he wrote in, on the journal's  leaves.  A woman spoke up.  She encouraged them to be good to the men.  They were like the man who had once helped her.  After being captured by the Shoshone, she had been sold to a French fur trapper, who brought her to the Red River post and then helped her to return to her own people.  The elders agreed; they would help these new men.
(Story told by Allen Pinkham, Nez Perce story keeper.)


The Nez Perce could have just as easily killed the entire Expedition while sick from the Camas. Again, a woman saved the Expedition.  The Shoshone woman, Sacajawea, saved them on the other side of the Bitterroots, when she secured horses for the expedition from her people.

 Hallalhotsoot's father, Twisted Hair, befriended the expedition, took care of their horses over the winter, and he guided them down the Clearwater and Snake Rivers to the Columbia.  Twisted Hair and Broken Arm wintered the expedition's horses in Lawyer's Canyon, which of course did not bear Little Lawyer's name at the time.  Meriwether Lewis called Lawyer's Creek "Commearp Creek"
[Lewis, Meriwether; Clark, William (2005-07-01). The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 (Kindle Location 19110). Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.]

The Cold and Windy Camas Prairie, looking north toward Lawyer's Canyon fro the Flying B Farm


Well, as I write, the sun is begining to peek out.  Maybe I'll go deer hunting.  The standard greeting in the stores and restaurants of North Central Idaho these days is "Got your Elk yet?" or the equivalent, "Got your deer yet?"  Pinky likes to sleep with this guy looking down at her.  

I have always been of the opinion that it is better to be acquainted with who you eat, rather than hire a contract killer to wrap your meat up in sanitary plastic for you.  People who eat meat and dislike hunters take a hypocritical posture; isn't it double-minded?  Oh well, maybe I'll just go shoot a bird or catch a fish.  I've always respected the morals of the vegetarian, but I don't have any Camas to eat.  I think today is a good day to eat some meat.  Even though we are on the rich Camas Prairie, few Camas flowers remain after all.  Wheat, Canola oil and grass seed for golf courses have replaced the Camas flower.  The scene Lewis described in the spring of 1806 is gone from this high prairie:

Camas Flower

"The quawmash (Camas) is now in blume and from the colour of its bloom at a short distance it resembles lakes of fine clear water, so complete in this deseption that on first sight I could have sworn it was water." [Lewis, Meriwether; The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804-1806 (Kindle Location 20756). Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.] 
The spring scene on the high Camas Prairie is today Canola yellow and green wheat.  Now that the sun is appearing, the pastel tans of harvested wheat and the black burns of the fields of grass seed are brightening into golden hills, and the deep black burns show signs of spouts of green grass.  Yeah, today is a good day to hunt birds.  Here comes the sun.  I'll stay on the Prairie today, not the dark Bitterrot forest.

Spring Canola on a stormy Camas Prairie day.


Sunday, October 14, 2012

Pink and I have been somewhat distracted this week.  Pinky had a kidney infection and had to go to the hospital for antibiotics.  She eventually got sent to Lewiston for a couple days but is home now.  My left eye has been acting up, and I have to go to Spokane on Monday, tomorrow to see an eye specialist.   Spokane is about four hours away.
On a more postitive note, there has been a little bit of precipitation which has cleared some of the smoke out of the air.

I think fire season should be over now.  I can't see the mountains clearly from here on the Camas Prairie, but I expect them to start to appear more clearly this week.  At least scenes like this pic should be past now.

Pink and I did get up into the forest for a day.  The smoke still dominated the landscape then, but we did watch a fawn trying to convice its mother that nursing should still be an option.

I am still buried in Idaho County property and court records.  The back rooms of the Courthouse is not the place to take off some weight, obviously.
















The work is going well, even though it is a little tedious.  I'm reminded of my days as a bricklayer, one brick after another all day long.  Research is a similar chore.  Pick up a piece of data, put it in its proper place (organize it), pick up another . . .  I hope to be moving to the Nez Perce County Courthouse by the end of the week, depending on how long it will take for my eye in Spokane.  On the other hand, Moscow is not that far from Spokane, and I hope to go through the artifacts from the 1999 Kittle Rockshelter dig conducted in Lawyer Canyon.  I will be choosing pieces to be displayed in the Flying B Ranch Lodge.  The University of Idaho stores nine cubic feet of artifacts from the excavation.

The rock shelter contained a ten-thousand year record of use and even evidence of habitation before the Masama eruption that created Crater Lake filled the shelter with four to five feet of ash that washed into the cave.  A summary of the dig can be found in: "A Brief History of the Flying B Ranch".

City of Grangeville, ID Visitor Center's Mammoth Display

The Camas Prairie which embraces the arms of Lawyer Canyon is rich in Archeology.  This replica of one of the Mammoth skeletons uncovered at Tolo Lake, just a few miles from the house we are currently staying in, is displayed at the visitor's center in Grangeville, ID. 

No one is entirely sure how long these "Columbian" Mammoths lived here on the Prairie.  Mammoths appeared on the North American continent around one and a half million years ago.  They disappeared around the same time most scholars point to humans arriving to this continent, +/- 12,000 years ago.  Thomas Jefferson wanted Meriwether Lewis to be on the lookout for a live Mammoth on the Corps of Discovery Expedition.  Lewis of course didn't find any, but here at Tolo Lake, for unknown reasons, hundreds of the animals died here.

Well that's about it for this week's update.  The air is clearing up, the leaves are colored and blowing in the wind, and I am beginning to miss having students.  As a closing bit, I have always enjoyed the following video describing one of the reasons why the Lewis and Clark Expedition got along so well with Native Americans:



Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Fire in the Lawyer Canyon

This past week there was a 600+ acre fire on the Flying B Ranch, the North side of the canyon from Suzie Creek east. Redneck Joe took a jump off the top of the cliffs to give us an aerial view of the burned area.  This is Joe's description:
"I took a flight to show where a recent fire burned. You can also see where water drops and retardant drops took place. The fire started near the sporting clays course and went east until it met up with the burned area from another fire started along the highway about a month ago."


One of the noxious weeds that plagues the Camas Prairie is Star Thistle.  I will be addressing the effects of and war against this weed in the book I am writing on the Canyon.  Concerning this fire and the weed, Joe says,
"The only benefit fire can have with star thistle is if you take advantage of the ground being bear to spray herbicide and or plant cover. We are going to be doing some seeding via fixed wing aircraft soon!"
This past week I have been trying to make sense of property data I scanned at the Idaho County Courthouse.  To collect the data I used my Galaxy2 phone which has an 8 megapixel camera.  I downloaded an app. called "Camscanner".  I was very impressed!  The documents I captured were clearer and easier to read on my PDF scans than the sheets of the actual book which are faded with age.  Technology is making this kind of research much easier. 


These records are not only central to mapping historic ownership, they also give me names to look up in court records and other archives.  I am currently entering the pertainate data from these property documents into my GIS database, so I can project and analyze the history of ownership in and adjacent to the Canyon. 
As I add dates and owners to the database, I will be able to project property ownership by decade from 1912 to the present.  This will give me a visual perspective of the people and ownership involved in the story of the Canyon as I write.

I have also been successful in "geo-referencing Google images into the map (attaching geographic coordinates to the captured images).  I can look closely now at features of the canyon.  Each close-up pic from Google has to be added to the map and correctly positioned with the added coordinates.  Each picture can then be turned on or off to make accurate layers for the map of vegetation type, trails, and so on.

Using the pictures, I mapped the forested areas this week.  I will use old Soil and Water Conservation Department and Idaho Lands Department photos which go back to the 1930s to look at how the surface has changed over the decades.

To the right is the current forested area of the Canyon and her arms.  Forested areas are a rather new addition to the landscape.  Historic pictures from the Kamiah Historical Society show very few trees.

So, the past few days have been tedious to say the least, sitting in front of multiple computer screens analyzing documents and doing what GIS cartographers call "digitizing features". 

The weather out side is gorgeous.  The leaves are turning; last week's smoke is disappearing, and being a computer geek is crazy.  I'm going to take a break this week and go up into the forest Ruffed Grouse hunting.  Maybe if Redneck Joe comes down from the sky, I can convince him to go along.  I do have one of his dogs staying with me, Cali.  I have no idea if that is the correct spelling of her name.  She has her picture in an earlier blog entry.

If you haven't already, make sure you go flying with Joe in the video above.  He gets to regularly have this unique view of the Canyon, as he sails over it most every week..  It is a close as I will probably ever get to jumping off a 1500 foot cliff.