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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