Smoke nodded bitterly.
“To settle a gambling debt, he sold Soyappos some of our land. People are angry with him. They call him Worthless now.”
“One man cannot sell our land!” Calf Shirt said.
“Yet Lawyer has done it, and John has done it.”
“They must be stopped!” Smoke said. “This is our land! There is a treaty! Soyappos promised to keep white men off our lands!”
The old chief just gazed at him.
“Surely Flint Necklace would not allow this!”
“He is old and suffering from illness. He will not be with us for long.”
“And Eagle from Light?”
“He threatened to make war, but backed down when gold diggers prepared for battle. There were too many.”
Smoke stared at him in disbelief. Half Hair looked away, into the fire, as if he too could not believe it.
FORTY-SEVEN
December 1862
Lawyer limped along the muddy lane, leaning on his hickory cane. A fine rain dripped off his white top hat. It was midafternoon, but thick clouds pressed so close overhead they obscured the tops of the hills and darkened the day.
The new agent at the Place of Butterflies had finally paid him the salary he had been promised seven long snows before, and he had ridden with William Craig into the Soyappo settlement of Lewiston, to spend some of it. He had given permission only for a wharf and one building, to store trade goods. But the whites had ignored him, begun building as if the land were their own. His people were upset, though they had been amused when the river rose last spring—as it always did—and covered half the buildings.
General Wright had threatened to declare martial law to keep Soyappos off Nimíipuu land, and in response the government had at last begun to deliver on its promises. They had begun building Lawyer a home, started work on a sawmill and gristmill, and begun to plow and fence his land. He was becoming a wealthy man, as befitted a head chief. They had just come from the tailor’s shop, where he had ordered a new black suit and tie and a white shirt. Now he would have his hair cut to collar length, in Soyappo fashion. In his new clothes and his white top hat, he would be treated with respect by the whites. They would understand that he was as educated and intelligent as any of them.
Craig led him up onto a wooden walkway, which ran along in front of a dry goods store, a gambling establishment, a doctor’s office, a boot maker, a saloon, and a barber shop. When they entered, hair of all colors lay on the bare wooden floor, around two chairs that faced a great reflecting glass. A series of smaller chairs lined the opposite wall. Craig introduced him to a fat Soyappo with no hair on his head. “Head chief, you don’t say,” the fat man said, shaking Lawyer’s hand. “Well, I reckon I should be honored.”
He beckoned Lawyer into one of the chairs facing the glass and tied a white cloth around his neck, covering his calico shirt. The chief told the man what he wanted. He could not remember a time when his black hair did not lie on his shoulders, and he watched with trepidation as the scissors clipped through his locks and hair piled up on the floor around him.
“I understand there’s a treaty council coming,” the fat man said, after a few minutes of silence.
“Next spring,” Craig replied. “God willin’.”
“That Senator Nesmith must be a piece o’ work, convincing the United States Senate to move the Nez Perce off their land.”
Lawyer turned to stare at him, and the man stopped cutting: “Careful about those sudden movements, Chief.”
“Please, may I ask, repeat what you said?”
“Well, let’s see. I suppose I was expressing my wonder that Senator Nesmith could convince the Senate to move you folks off your land.”
“Who told you this?”
“Read it in the newspaper.” He turned to Craig: “You hear we got our own paper now, right here in Lewiston?”
“You sure you read that right?” Craig asked.
“Got it right here.” The man stepped over to a small table and picked up some papers, handed them to Craig.
“What does it say?” Lawyer demanded.
Craig was silent, reading. Finally he looked up: “Says the Senate voted money for a treaty, wants to either move you folks to other land or shrink your reservation, so you won’t have white men on the reservation. Other than me and the agent, of course.”
Lawyer knew the Soyappos wanted more country around the gold mines. He had seen that coming. But moving his people elsewhere? “Who did this?”
“The U.S. Senate,” the fat man said. He gestured toward the papers: “Says it was a close vote.”
“Close?”
“Quite a few were opposed.” The man brushed the hair off the white cloth, untied it, and swept it off Lawyer’s neck, snapped it away from him, so any remaining hair fell onto the floor. “How’s it look?”
Lawyer stared at the image in the glass, his mind reeling. He looked strange: his hair stopped just past his ears. “Government is divided?” he asked. He had heard many times that the Great Father’s government had split in two and was at war.
“You could say that. And one hand’s in the other’s pocket half the time.” The fat man chuckled, then held out his palm: “That’ll be one dollar.”
Lawyer handed him a silver coin and stood up, turned to Craig. “What does it mean?”
“It means this Senator Nesmith don’t know much about your people.”
“Government is not sure what it wants?”
Craig shrugged. “Wouldn’t be the first time. I hear Old Abe switches generals every six months.”
“They cannot ask my people to move.”
Craig gazed at him. “Not if they have an ounce of sense.”
A shrill whistle sounded from the river, and Lawyer started. He picked up his top hat and cane and followed Craig outside, where a light rain still fell. Out on the river floated a steamboat, the Colonel Wright. It was white, as long as a Nimíipuu longhouse and as tall as a small tree, with smoke belching from huge black pipes that thrust up from the middle and two huge wheels churning the water at the back. It looked like a huge, white Soyappo lodge swimming on the river.
Craig pulled on his hat and gestured toward the boat. “Let’s see what they’ve got today.” A huge wharf had been built to reach out into the river, at the end of the muddy lane, and the steamboat was turning toward it.
When it grew close to the platform its wheels stopped turning and Soyappos on board threw ropes to those on the platform, who looped them around wooden posts. The boat nestled against the posts, and the men pulled the ropes tight and tied them. Then they slid a long plank of white wood out until it reached the platform. People began to emerge and walk across the plank. The first were women, in long coats and headdresses of all sizes and shapes. But they were followed by a stream of soldiers in dark blue. Lawyer watched as man after man reached the platform, a rifle secure in his right arm, and turned left, in perfect order, toward the town. He stood for a long time, counting. More than 200 passed. His face set in a worried frown: things were in motion he did not understand.
“They’re bound for the new fort, at Lapwai,” Craig said. “They’ll winter over this year, I hear.”
“Why so many?”
Craig shrugged. “Show of strength for the treaty council, I reckon.”
May, 1863
Lawyer put the Soyappos off as long as he could, demanding a promise that they give up on the idea of moving his people off their land. After several moons, they agreed. The treaty council would only be about buying more Nimíipuu lands, to avoid conflict between whites and Indians.
A late spring delayed planting, and Lawyer was not able to call the bands in until the Time of Melting Snow in the Mountains. They would meet, he decided, where Reverend Spalding had once held his outdoor services, near his old house. The locust trees Spalding had planted long ago waved gently in the breeze, in full flower. The millraces were once again full of water, and one could smell the scent of fresh p
ine from the new sawmill. Even Reverend Spalding was back, to teach in the new school the Soyappos promised to build.
East of the meeting ground, between the old mission and the new fort, soldiers set up a camp for the Nimíipuu, white canvas tents in neat rows. As the bands arrived, most set up their own tipis, which they preferred to the smaller soldier tents. But there was no sign of Shooting Arrow, Eagle from Light, White Bird, Red Owl, or Sound of Striking Timber. Lawyer was irritated; it had been a dozen suns since he had sent word to them.
Mr. Hale, superintendent for Indian affairs in Washington Territory, had recommended Reverend Spalding and Robert Newell as translators, but Lawyer had asked that he send for Dr. Whitman’s nephew, who spoke Nimíipuutímt better than the other two. Too many of the headmen distrusted Spalding. The old teacher hated Thunder Eyes, Eagle from Light—even Shooting Arrow, his former student. He railed against them constantly, called them savages. They would never accept him as a neutral interpreter, and Lawyer could not argue with them. Spalding insisted on seeing what he wanted rather than what was in front of him. Since he had returned this spring, he was worse than ever. This council was too delicate, too dangerous, to allow any twisted words.
But Superintendent Hale was anxious to proceed, and he had assured Lawyer that young Whitman would arrive soon. So now Hale stood in front of them, papers in his left hand, a black suit draping his tall, narrow frame.
“My friends,” he began, “you see us here as your friends, sent by the president of the United States to talk with you.” After every sentence, Reverend Spalding, who stood beside him, repeated his words in Nimíipuutímt.
“We have thought it best to speak to you now, rather than to wait until Mr. Whitman arrives, and to tell you what we propose, that you may have time to think about it and consider it well. You may use your own pleasure in regard to answering or talking to us, until Mr. Whitman arrives.”
Lawyer had told Hale what kind of rumors were circulating: that the bluecoats intended to drive the Nimíipuu off their lands, even that they had deliberately spread influenza among the People. He could see that the superintendent was nervous as he read from his papers: “The government of the United States desires to act justly towards you against the injustices of men who would wrong you and do you harm. It is for this that your Great Father, the President of the United States, has placed troops here. They are to protect you, to see that justice is done to you, and not to drive you away from your homes, as some bad men have told you. The soldiers are here to prevent bad men from driving you away.
“We do not propose that you should leave your own country. We do not wish it. We only desire that you would relinquish such portions of your reservation as you do not really need, and instead of being scattered in small bands over a large extent of country, we wish to bring you nearer together, so that your rights, your lives, and your property can be better protected than it is possible to do whilst you continue as you are.”
Lawyer could hear the murmur of many voices behind him. Now, he thought, we will finally find out just how much land they want.
Robert Newell held up a large map with a line drawn around a small area from the Place of Butterflies down the Clear Water almost to the Elk City Road, then northwest through the middle of the Camas Prairie to Waha Lake and north again to the Place of Butterflies. As Hale began to speak, Lawyer realized with a shock that this was the reservation he proposed. It did not include the Salmon River country in the south, the River of Hemp or the Wallowa Valley in the west, the Bitterroot Mountains in the east, or anything beyond the Clear Water in the north. His heart pounded and he could barely breathe. The Soyappos meant to take nearly all their land! Most of the Christian bands lived in the small area Hale had marked off, but the others would never accept losing their lands. And even the Christians needed to gather roots on the Camas and Oyaip Prairies, gather for Kaooyit at Ewatam, visit the mountains in the summer. How could the Soyappos even dream that the Nimíipuu would give away so much land?
People began to cry out as Spalding made Hale’s meaning clear. The superintendent explained that the valley lands would be surveyed into lots “so that each of you can have a farm in his own right and have it secured to him by a paper, just as the whites do. Then nobody can disturb you.” The government would buy the lands to be given up. “Those of you who live on that portion of it which is to be relinquished will be paid for the improvements you have made, such as your fields that are enclosed and cultivated. Think about what has been said, and see if it is not best for you to settle down as we propose, and become a farming people.”
Lawyer sat in stunned silence as people behind him stood and shouted in anger.
* * *
Daytime Smoke gazed at the millrace, flooded by memories of squatting on his knees in the mud with a hundred other Nimíipuu, digging. He and his family had arrived here yesterday, with Looking Glass’s band. Flint Necklace had died in the Season when Cold Air Travels, and his son Looking Glass had moved his people upriver, to a site near where Smoke had grown up.
Smoke found himself walking toward Spalding’s old house. The roof had a hole in it and the logs needed rechinking. He remembered carrying those logs up from the river, then back down. He and his family were camped almost directly on the land he had plowed and planted and irrigated, so many snows ago. It seemed like another lifetime. What was it he had hoped to gain? Looking back, it felt as if he had been under some kind of spell.
As Smoke rounded the front of the Spaldings’ house, Reverend Spalding came out the door. It was like seeing a ghost. His hair and beard were partially gray, but there was no mistaking the fierce eyes and long beard. Spalding stopped when he saw Smoke, and the two stared at one another, dumbfounded. Finally they smiled, both of them as pleased as they were surprised, and walked toward one another. Smoke felt a wave of nostalgia as they shook hands and greeted one another. “Your wife, she is here, too?” he asked.
Spalding shook his head sadly. “She passed on more than ten years ago.”
Smoke’s face fell. “My heart weeps to hear this.”
“And your wife?”
“She died of measles before Whitmans were killed. Along with my son, Takes Plenty.”
“I am sorry, my friend.” Spalding put a hand on Smoke’s shoulder, and Smoke could feel his sincerity. Spalding said he had been living in the Walla Walla Valley for four years with a new wife and his daughter Eliza and her husband, who had a farm on the Touchet River. He had been trying for years to get his missionary board to send him back to the Nez Perce, but they had refused. Finally the government had appointed him to teach in the new school it was building here.
Spalding nodded warmly and congratulated Smoke when he explained that he had remarried and had a new son. Then he asked the question Smoke had been dreading: “Have you returned to the Lord, Mr. Clark, or have you joined the heathen party?”
Smoke looked away, stared at the river. He did not want to lie to his old teacher, nor to offend him. “It is not so simple as I once thought,” he finally said. “I still have my Gospel of Matthew. Jesus is good; I like his words. It is white people I have trouble with. They killed my mother, my wife, my son, my new wife’s parents. They have invaded our lands, murdered our people, violated our women.”
Spalding nodded sadly. “Yes. We must find a way to protect your people. Reduce your lands, so soldiers can protect you, keep the gold miners away.”
Smoke gazed at him. “You too want to take our lands?”
“No, I don’t want your lands.”
“But you want to help soldiers take them?”
“To protect your people. Many of you have settled down as farmers. If the rest of you do, you will not need the gold country.”
Smoke gazed at him for a long moment. “We choose to live in our traditional way. I have tried both, as you know. I prefer my mother’s way.”
“Yes, I remember.” He extended his hand, and they shook. “I’m sorry I failed you, my friend.”
Lawyer gazed out at the Clear Water, swollen with snowmelt. The hills across the river shone green under a gentle sky. This would be a good day to give the Soyappos their answer, he thought.
Yesterday Reverend Spalding had read aloud the terms of the treaty they had negotiated with Governor Stevens eight snows before, which made it clear that their reservation was theirs forever and no white men was allowed on it without their permission. The Nez Perce had never broken this treaty, Lawyer had pointed out; only white men had.
This morning, the Soyappos had been embarrassed by a new settlement Shooting Arrow had found, halfway to Lewiston. They had quickly ordered the soldiers to destroy it and throw the logs into the river, but the People were angry, and some were preaching war. Hale stood on weak ground, and he knew it.
When the council began, Lawyer rose and faced the commissioners. He wore his black suit and white top hat with three eagle feathers rising above it. In his hand he held a small notebook, and around his neck hung his tobacco pouch, dangling its three squirrel tails. Speaking English, he reviewed the history of his people’s contact with Soyappos, starting with Red Hair’s visit. He told the Soyappos how the headmen had sent children to the Red River School, in King George Land, and sent four men to Red Hair’s village, to ask for teachers and Books of Heaven. Next he reminded them of Dr. Whitman’s murder, and how Timothy and his warriors had helped flush out the murderers, who were tried and hanged. Later, he said, when Snake Indians were murdering white men who passed through their country, he had sent men to help Major Haller punish them. Then, when war broke out in 1855, his people had protected Governor Stevens, escorted him safely back to his own troops. Three years later, Timothy had helped save Colonel Steptoe and his men. Finally, Lawyer had sent 30 warriors to help Colonel Wright defeat the Spokans, Pointed Hearts, and Palouses.
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