We passed through Oregon City quickly. I didn’t need to go anywhere near the scaffoldings, though surely they’d been torn down. People had lost their taste for hangings and a jail had been built after the trial. But I could still see the faces of the men: Tiloukaikt. Tomahas. Kiamasumpkin. Isiaachsheluckas. Clokomas. The Cayuse (and the Umatilla people too) had claimed at the trial that their actions were required as revenge on medicine men who gave poor medicine. Dr. Whitman had not cured their measles and many had died. His medicine was no good and justice meant he must die too. But the jury disagreed. More than Dr. Whitman died, they said. Some women and children too. And all were not killed in the heat of that one horrible day. Several were slaughtered over a week later. I’d forgotten that until I heard it at the trial. Perhaps to keep us hostages meek and frightened and willing to do whatever they said. I remember watching little Mary Marsh knit a long stocking for one of the Cayuse who grabbed her chicken-leg arm, pinched it into pain, and told her to “Knit” or he would kill her. I had to translate but his ferocious face told her as much. He boxed her ears when she failed to knit fast enough for her captor. They kept water scarce as a baby’s whiskers. They decided when we would drink. One Sager boy died trying to get us water. They shot him with the canteen in his hands, two days after the initial assault.
“Mrs. Warren. You are ill?” Little Shoot spoke to me, his hand shaking the guiding stick keeping the oxen on their path. I walked beside him. “You do not answer me.”
“What? No, I’m fine.” My heartbeat slowed. This day, I heard the thundering falls as falls and not the hooves of horses from my past. I stayed with my children, here.
We camped the next day outside Portland, and I took Charles with me to the Oregon Steam Navigation company to secure passage on the middle river to The Dalles. Gold discovered in the Washington Territory the previous year spurred new craft-building, so I hoped we’d find a ship. Lizzie rode with me, her not being able to be far from her food source, and I didn’t know how long our negotiations would take. America Jane was content with Hannah and didn’t pout when I left her—a good sign, I thought. I had no fear of leaving her behind.
We had little trouble finding a vessel but were told we’d have to wait a day, miners paying to go first. There were stories of Paiute raids on miners who ignored their rights to the land, searching for gold in some “blue bucket” mine an immigrant claimed to have left behind. Danger lurked there on my husband’s journey.
How long Mr. Warren’s crossing would take was an unknown. But I felt a pressure to be on that steamship, as I’d taken so long to decide. We hurried back to bring the others and camped near the Company to load first thing in the morning.
The sway of the craft on the water reminded me that I did not like boat travel. America Jane stood beside Little Shoot, smiling while I lost my breakfast despite my panting like a dog and found myself shaking as Hannah took Lizzie from my arms. “I watch her, ja.” Lizzie didn’t protest and I was grateful, as my stomach did. Even when the water was smooth, the chug of the engines, the smell of the wood that fired them, the sounds of water pouring over the wheels, all worked to keep me off balance even when I focused on the timbered horizon.
The constant wind in my face tired my eyes, irritated the girls. We reached a rapids and a falls and had to portage east around it and board another boat. I welcomed the walking respite. When we reached The Dalles, we disembarked again and this time we took the wagons on our own.
I remembered this little town from when I’d been so ill after Father, Henry Hart, and I traveled to the ocean. I’d gotten sick on a boat then too. But here I’d had some other ailment that didn’t want to let me go. I remember feeling weak and frail, barely hearing conversations between my father and Mr. Walker and Mr. Brewer, both missionaries to the round-faced Indians who fished there. The falls thundered like the Willamette’s and perhaps the noise kept me from hearing as well.
“I have been to this place,” Little Shoot said. “My kasa takes me long years ago.”
“Those men look different, Mama,” America Jane said. I shushed her, though she was right. The Indians who fished here were rounder and not just on their faces. I didn’t see many horses tearing at grass either. The town smelled of fish and bustled with river traffic and a mercantile and even a hotel with the name Umatilla House across the front. Every business stood ready to sell goods to the trains of wagons arriving from the east later in the year and to miners heading east. Dragoons in uniform stood in small clusters away from their fort for the day, reminding us that we were only a year beyond the latest Indian Wars.
Arriving toward evening as we did, I took a room at the Umatilla House, leaving my wagon with Little Shoot, who would not have been given a room even if I’d rented it for him. He said he’d tend the two sheep too. The Ruckers stayed with the wagons as well, though I offered them a place. “We take cost of rooms as add-on to contract, ja. We stay with goods.”
In the morning I sought to find out whether my husband had arrived. Surely someone appearing from the south with three hundred head would be remembered. If not, then I could assume he had yet to appear.
“Nothing like that’s been this way.” This answer from the hotel manager named Graves when I questioned him. “Sure we’d hear about it, though he wouldn’t come into town I wouldn’t guess. Where’s he headed with them? I might buy one or two from him.”
“Touchet River, in Walla Walla country.”
“What’s there? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“Grass and missing fences. And a drier climate than in Brownsville.”
“It’s that, all right. Well, if I hear anything I’ll send word.”
The old worries began. Might Mr. Warren simply bypass this landing and cross upriver and I never know? Would he believe that I had come and send word? Maybe he’d think me contrary and decide I’d remained behind. What if something had happened and he wasn’t even alive? Had I lived weeks as a widow and didn’t even know?
“Mama, when’s Papo coming?”
“I don’t know, America. We just have to be patient.”
“What’s a patient?”
“Not what is a patient, but we have to be patient, to keep our thoughts calm, find things to occupy ourselves until we receive what we’re waiting for.”
“Are you a patient?”
“Am I patient? I’m trying to be. I miss your papo too. Let’s walk out to the wagons and see how Hannah and Mr. Rucker and Little Shoot fare.”
“I’m a good patient,” she chirped.
I didn’t correct her word usage a second time and for a moment did wonder if all my imaginings of the worst did make me a kind of “patient,” ill in my thinking while my body was sound. I shook myself and sent up a prayer for advice about how to proceed, something I ought to do more of. It’s what my mother would have done.
Back at the hotel Mr. Graves said, “I’ve been thinking about you heading east. Going the wrong way with those wagons. Everyone else is heading west.”
“We’ve been there,” I said. “Been east, too, but going back that way.”
“How far? Virginia? New York?”
I shook my head. “Back to the beginning.” He puzzled at that and I let him. I walked near the water, waiting. I was without my husband and who knew for how long?
The Diary of Eliza Spalding
1850
I write of a time after Millie was born, Martha still just a baby and I was without my husband. S decided to take Eliza and Henry Hart across the Cascades to the Pacific Ocean. How I would have loved to have seen those waters! They were gone for several weeks while Matilda looked after us. S had once left an old Indian in charge to run the grist mill. He’d done it before, but the older man had also been pushed aside by a group of rowdy, younger Nimíipuu one day. They pushed the old man down. S ran out to stop the ruckus and one young Indian struck S, crushed him on the hard ground, choked him. I ran screaming from the house, pounding on the back of S’s attacker. It was the
first time I ever lost my composure, and my blows were of little effect. Several other Indians who had brought their grain to be ground saw the trouble and pulled S’s attacker off.
“Do you not know that we would never let anything happen to our Spalding,” the Nimíipuu told me later while S rubbed his throat. Their words were reassuring, but what if they had not been there at that providential time? Henry might have died. And I, left alone with the children. What would I do? The answer to that question was never more far away nor as real as at that moment when he was almost choked to death. I told S he’d been foolish to intervene but he admonished me with words of our Lord, that what is a greater love than to lay down one’s life for a friend. The old Indian had befriended us and he had given his life in service to the Lord. S knew he had to do whatever he must to defend him. His words shamed me and I never again complained about his impulsive actions. With enough thought I could see that all he did was in service.
It took me a time to see how that long trip to the ocean was in service, though. S told me they’d gotten lost in the mountains, rescued by an Indian. Eliza came back ill with the flux, and though eight years old and riding her own horse, she had made the return trek, S said, sitting in front of him on his horse as she was too ill to ride her beloved Tashe alone. They’d stayed extra days at The Dalles mission because of her frailty, conversing with the missionaries there, I suppose. Perhaps that was the Lord’s design, as S and those ministers shared the strains of their work as well as their joys. I had Matilda to share my days with, but a man does need to have other men to acknowledge his efforts, can learn from a time away from the strains of family demands. A wife’s words are often not enough to bolster.
21
Leavings
Men needed times away from the responsibility of family, I supposed. I imagined Mr. Warren and his drovers enjoying their nights beneath the moon, telling stories of the day. But so did mothers need such respite, if only for a few moments. My sisters had given me that and I hadn’t really acknowledged how important they had been.
Walking the streets of The Dalles, I admonished myself to be patient. But by the second day, I couldn’t find patience in me if it had been a cow mooing in the corral. Hannah and Charles determined they needed to get back and no cajoling would change their minds, though grateful I was for what they’d done. We loaded all the household goods we could into my wagon and I asked that they take what was not as essential as I’d once thought when I had room to take it. They would return it to my father’s house—or mine—in Brownsville, without a fee as they had stopped before we arrived near Touchet. “Tell my father that we’re fine. Please don’t tell him that you did not see the cattle yet. I don’t want him to worry.”
I watched them roll their wagon on board the steamship and head west. Hannah waved and America Jane sniffed. “Just like the aunties,” she said. “Always good-bye.”
Little Shoot stood beside me.
“Do you need to return to your family?”
“I am here.”
“Yes, I know, but tell me now if you can’t wait.” It occurred to me that I should set a time to wait for myself. Did I go forward with Little Shoot and hope I’d find my husband who didn’t have the decency to send word for me if he’d already gone through? Or should I send Little Shoot south to see if they were still on their way? I must have said some of those thoughts out loud.
“I could do that, ride south. There is reservation there, Warm Springs, and Wasco people are placed there. These Celilo Indians are relatives.” He nodded toward the round-faced Indians standing on scaffoldings with ropes around their bellies while they speared the big salmon jumping upriver above the roaring falls. The June sun glistened against his damp body. “One might ride with me who knows the route.”
“You’ve asked?”
“Watching sheep does not take much time. They are like big dogs.”
“I suppose I have spoiled them. They like biscuits too much to wander far. So yes, please. See if you can get word about my husband.”
We stayed at the wagon, alone. I washed out Lizzie’s napkins; took care of my own intimate apparel, hemmed America Jane’s dress, then spot-washed it, looking at my sun-browned hands, gloves being impractical except leather ones to handle oxen yokes and harness. We looked like vagabonds more than a “cared for” family. But money grew scarcer and my two nights of luxury on a bed served to annoy that I couldn’t really afford to stay there again. What would I do if we failed to make our rendezvous?
Had my mother ever allowed herself to get into this position? She couldn’t get immediate help from the other missionaries, but as her husband was employed by the Mission Board, without him in service, she’d be asked to leave Lapwai and find another life. With four children. Maybe my uncle Horace would have assisted. He would have helped me, too, if he hadn’t moved away after her death. My mother had her faith to sustain her so she wasn’t really alone. Maybe I wasn’t either. It did no good to imagine the worst. Better to sing songs to my children, gaze at the stars.
I bedded the girls down under the tent and pulled my bedroll up to my chin. Little Shoot had told me of the woman he’d worked for, a colored woman. “She is left alone with two children,” he told me. “When her husband dies, they come, take all things from her, candlesticks and dishes. Sell them.”
“How could they?”
He had shrugged his shoulders. “She is the color of charred wood. White faces do what they want.” He’d gone on to say she delivered babies, raised her children, worked land. That woman, Letitia Carson he called her, had a skill. Perhaps I’d discover my own skill if Mr. Warren had indeed gone on without me, by his choice—or not.
Stars twinkled in the wide sky unbroken by tall timber or small oaks. It was a Lapwai sky, wide open from round hill to round hill, a river rushing in the background. The sky was a blanket of blackness dotted with silver brads. I felt so small, so powerless. Yet I felt less alone than I had in years.
I drove the ox team into the town the next morning as I could figure no other way to manage the two girls and still go into the Umatilla House to see if Mr. Warren had sent word. I took it as no small accomplishment that I lifted the heavy oxen yokes and managed the harness while America Jane looked after Lizzie on a quilt. “Grateful I was,” as Charles would say, that my youngest couldn’t yet walk.
And grateful I was when Little Shoot caught up with me as I lifted Lizzie from the wagon bed in front of the hotel. The sheep bleated at the sight of him. “He comes!” Little Shoot shouted as he dismounted Maka, breathless, dust brushing his fine face. “A day behind. You are to resupply flour, salt, sugar. He comes for you. Drives the herd east.”
“Papo’s coming!” I swung my daughter in a dance. America Jane grabbed my skirts, grinning as she hugged.
I spoke a prayer of gratitude. I could be flexible. I could adapt. “Both skills,” I told the girls, whose blue eyes sparkled, reflecting my joy. More adjustments would be called for, but for this moment, I felt the anticipation of the unknown instead of its dread.
“There you are!” Mr. Warren leapt from his horse and danced me around. “You’re a sight for trail-dusted eyes.”
“Mr. Warren, Andrew, welcome.”
He kissed me then, that thrill of flutter like the first time. My face felt hot when he released me. We were back at the site where we’d had the wagons, Little Shoot advising my husband where he could find us. I’d washed the girls’ dresses—with Little Shoot’s help—and put a clean one on myself. My hair was less a tangled mess than usual, pushed up into a thick netted twist at the top of my head, an ivory stick Rachel had given me pushed through it.
“You bet I’m welcomed. What a beautiful sight after six weeks with those drovers and the back end of cows. It’s a doable pass. It is.”
“Grateful I am that you find us more attractive than that.” I curtsied.
He laughed with me, kissed me soundly again, then looked me in the eye, causing yet another thrill from toes to h
ead. “I have missed you.”
“You didn’t wonder if I’d come or not?”
“I prayed you would. That you’d get everything organized to be here together.”
“I’m rather pleased with myself that I managed. I discovered having an important task needing to be accomplished and bringing all the resources to bear to make it happen is quite—”
He lifted his eyebrows.
“Powerful.”
“A fine word.” He swung Lizzie from the blanket where she’d been lying on her tummy, pressed his hand on America Jane’s head as she waited patiently beside him. “It’s so good to have you all here.”
“Where are your cows?”
“They’ll be along in a day or so.” He looked around. “Where are your sisters?”
“Father wouldn’t let them come.”
“Didn’t want them in Indian country, I’ll wager.”
“I guess that was it.” I didn’t want to tell him what my father had said about him and his lack of common sense. Sometimes doing what others think is insanity is actually impetus toward significance. Go and learn what this means. In truth, taking a risk had led to meaning for Father and his work; my mother too. And now, perhaps for me. “Little Shoot’s been a good escort. You knew he came from me when you saw him riding Maka.” I didn’t see the young man now, decided he was on the other side of the wagon giving us our privacy.
“Little Shoot. That Indian? He served you well?”
The Memory Weaver Page 19