“I cannot understand how your government sends a man out to fight us, as it did General Miles, and then breaks his word,” Joseph said. He cited all the officials he had met—the president, the secretary of the interior, the commissioner of Indian affairs, numerous congressmen. “They all say they are my friends, and that I shall have justice, but while their mouths all talk right, I do not understand why nothing is done for my people.… Words do not pay for my dead people. They do not pay for my land, now overrun by white men. They do not protect my father’s grave. They do not pay for my horses and cattle. Good words will not give me back my children. Good words will not make good the promise of your war chief, General Miles. Good words will not give my people good health and stop them from dying. Good words will not get my people a home where they can live in peace and take care of themselves. I am tired of talk that comes to nothing. It makes my heart sick when I remember all the good words and all the broken promises.”
In 1871, the government had put Henry Spalding’s Presbyterians in charge of the reservation, and now the national church took up the Nez Perce cause. The Presbyterian General Assembly sent an emissary to investigate Joseph’s claims about conditions in Indian Territory. After his report, Presbyterian churches from across the nation petitioned Congress to send the Nez Perce back to Idaho. Others joined their crusade, none more important than General Miles. Though chastised by the secretary of the interior for speaking against the orders of the president, Miles continued to demand that his government honor the terms he had negotiated.
In 1884, Congress at last voted to allow the Nez Perce to return. Unfortunately, whites in Idaho still had warrants out for the arrest of Joseph and others, and they intended to serve them. “We won’t be responsible for their lives 24 hours after their arrival,” wrote the editor of the Lewiston Teller. Hearing the threats, the Indian Bureau decided it would be too dangerous to send Joseph back. The commissioner suggested splitting the Nez Perce into two groups, an offer they adamantly refused.
Aware of the stalemate, Joseph’s Sinkiuse friend Chief Moses offered him and his people a home on the Colville reservation, in north central Washington. Because it was their only way out of Indian Territory, Joseph finally accepted, and 150 others joined him. The rest returned to the Idaho reservation.
When the surviving Nez Perce boarded the train in Oklahoma, in May 1885, only 268 remained. According to two separate sources, not one infant born in Indian Country had survived.
The years in Indian Territory had been equally hard on marriages. After their baby died, Springtime left Thunder Rising. Later, he took in one of Looking Glass’s wives, to save her from starvation. When the train neared home, Bear Woman had to choose between her husband and her daughter, a grown woman now living in Lapwai, where Bear Woman had grown up. In the years since her husband’s surrender, she had rarely seen him smile. The burdens of leadership, while his people endured such suffering, weighed on his heart like an anvil. She chose to return to her home and her daughter.
For the rest of his life, Joseph fought for his people’s right to return to their beloved homeland. Three times more he traveled to Washington, D.C., often with the financial support and help of General Miles. In 1899, he was allowed to visit the Wallowa Valley for a week, but the government steadfastly refused him permission to live there.
Nor did it allow the Indians to keep their reservations, in any meaningful sense of the word. In 1887 Congress passed the Dawes Act, which gave each living member of all reservation tribes an allotment of land and opened the rest to homesteaders. On the Nez Perce reservation in Idaho the sales began in 1895. By the 1960s the Nez Perce owned 50,000 acres in individual allotments and 32,000 acres as a tribe—about one tenth the 1863 reservation, itself less than a tenth of their original lands.
Joseph lived out his days on the Colville Reservation, where many descendants of those who settled with him live to this day. He spent long hours sitting outside his tipi, staring at a photo of his only surviving child, Sound of Running Feet, whom he had not been allowed to see since that fateful day when he helped her catch a horse and ride north. In a sad echo of earlier history, the northern half of the Colville Reservation was “purchased” from the Indians and opened to gold miners in the 1890s, and soon the rest was overrun by miners. In 1903 Joseph again visited Washington, D.C., to protest. General Miles set up a dinner with President Theodore Roosevelt, where the elderly chief made his case. The president promised to send someone to investigate, but no one ever arrived.
Soon after his return, Thunder Rising asked his surviving wife to bring him his eagle feather headdress. “I may die at any time,” he said, “and I wish to die as a chief.” While she was gone, he slipped into unconsciousness.
The story of “Chief Joseph’s War,” as the whites mistakenly named it, has emerged as one of the iconic tales of the Old West, alongside that of Lewis and Clark. To this day, the Nimíipuu have much to teach their fellow countrymen. Perhaps this is the larger meaning of the final words spoken by Thunder Rising to Loftier Mountain Heights, in that long-ago speech in our nation’s capitol: “Whenever the white man treats the Indian as they treat each other, then we shall have no more wars. We shall be all alike—brothers of one father and one mother, with one sky above us and one country around us and one government for all. Then the Great Spirit Chief who rules above will smile upon this land and send rain to wash out the bloody spots made by brothers’ hands upon the face of the earth. For this time the Indian race are waiting and praying.”
A Note on History
Part of the appeal of historical fiction is our hope that, by reading a novel, we may sense “what it was really like” in some other time and place. Hence when I read historical fiction, I always wonder what is fact and what is fiction. Assuming many of my readers have the same question about The Coming, let me attempt to answer it.
It is a fact that William Clark had a Nez Perce son; Daytime Smoke (his real name) was introduced numerous times to newspaper reporters, generals, and other white Americans. The Nez Perce tell us he was among the 800 who fled their homeland when attacked by the U.S. Army in 1877 and that he, his daughter, and his granddaughter were among the 386 who surrendered with Joseph nearly four months later. He was subsequently listed as a head of family on ration rolls in Oklahoma, where his name appeared on 1880 census rolls but on no records after 1880.
I have been able to discover little else about Daytime Smoke. Hence much of the life I have invented for him is fiction, as is the affair between Clark and Swan Lighting on Water. We know a Nez Perce woman bore Clark’s child, but we know little else. Nez Perce oral tradition tells us she was the daughter or sister of Red Grizzly Bear. Because he was already the tribe’s leading war chief, who had suffered 80 wounds, I found it more plausible that Swan was his daughter.
While the details of Swan’s and Smoke’s lives are fictional, I have tried to portray Lewis and Clark, their time with the Nez Perce, and the tribe’s history as accurately as possible. Most of the events I recounted involving the Corps of Discovery actually happened: they were recorded in members’ journals by Zoa L. Swayne, who collected Nez Perce oral tradition in her book, Do Them No Harm!, or by Nez Perce historian Allen Pinkham and his colleague Professor Steven Evans in their book Lewis and Clark Among the Nez Perce. Lewis and Clark’s journals tell of curing a paralyzed Nez Perce man with violent sweats and horsemint tea, for instance, and Swayne’s book includes a tale of two men playing a trick on the Corps with live badgers. Swan’s ’isxíipit ceremony was recorded by Clark—no spelling whiz—on October 9, 2005: “A woman faind madness &c. &c. Singular acts of this woman in giveing in Small potions all she had & if they were not received She would Scarrify her Self in a horid manner &c.” Pinkham and Evans explained the possible meaning of this event in their book. Even the novel’s title is drawn from Nez Perce oral tradition: they called the arrival of Lewis and Clark “the coming.”
Similarly, I have rendered Nez Perce interaction with
American mountain men and missionaries as accurately as possible. The missionaries left voluminous letters and diaries, collected and published by Clifford Merrill Drury. All the events I have described happened, though I have taken the liberty of changing dates, to better serve the story, and inserting Daytime Smoke into events—such as the whipping of Warm Robe—in place of others. I have given as accurate a portrayal of the fur trappers and missionaries as is in my power, including the events surrounding the Whitmans’ murder and the Spaldings’ escape.
I have also remained faithful to the historical record regarding the treaty councils of the 1850s and 1860s and the wars of the 1850s and 1877. All my characters—white and Nez Perce—existed, with the exception of Red Bear, Widow Bird and her family, and Yellow Hair. (It has long been a mystery why a blonde white girl was seen with the Nez Perce during the Big Hole Battle.) I have tried to portray all characters as they were, based on the ample historical record. Written proceedings of the councils still exist, and many histories of the tribe have been published. The best and most comprehensive is Alvin M. Josephy Jr.’s masterwork, The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the Northwest. L.V. McWhorter’s books were also extremely useful. From 1907 through the 1930s, this Yakima Valley rancher befriended a Nez Perce named Yellow Wolf and recorded his and his friends’ memories, even traveled with them to the battle sites of 1877. Yellow Wolf: His Own Story relates one warrior’s memories of the war of 1877, while Hear Me My Chiefs tells a broader story of the tribe’s history and the war. Though I invented the character of Red Bear, many of his wartime experiences were based on Yellow Wolf’s account.
In essence, I have placed the characters whose lives I had to invent—Swan, Widow Bird, Calf Shirt, Smoke, and his family—within events that actually happened. In doing so, I have tried to capture historical realities as faithfully as possible. If is often said that fiction can reach a level of truth history cannot touch, and that has been my goal throughout.
Capturing the reality of Nez Perce Indians in the 19th century was admittedly a daunting challenge, and I am sure there are flaws in my account. Some feel that a non-Indian writer should not write about Native Americans. Yet this book is about the collision between two civilizations, and it includes as many white characters as Nez Perce. If a novelist were not allowed to cross racial lines, this story could be told by no one.
Let me close with a few words about language. Any Nez Perce name can be rendered in different ways when translated. Young Chief Joseph, whose real name was Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekht, has been called by most English wordsmiths Thunder Traveling to Loftier Mountain Heights. A Nez Perce scholar, Phil Cash Cash, explained what the name really means in his article “The Poetics of Numípu (Nez Perce) Naming”:
In this particular case, Young Chief Joseph’s personal name describes a mythic thunder being that lives in Wallowa lake. Its behavior is captured in the verb stem láhtqivs, ‘to move up and out of the water’ (Aoki 1994:301). Oral tradition describes the thunder being ascending from the depths of Wallowa lake to the surrounding mountain peaks to perch. Its movement would cause the land to quake in its wake.
Writers face an obvious challenge in rendering such a name in English. I have chosen to use Thunder Rising to Loftier Mountain Heights for two reasons: it approximates the consensus view, and when I shorten it, I prefer the ring of “Thunder Rising” to “Thunder Traveling.” White Bird’s Nez Perce name technically meant White Goose but has come down through history as White Bird; White Bird Creek, Canyon, and Hill are all named after him. I chose to continue this tradition, largely because I prefer the ring of White Bird to White Goose.
Many Nez Perce changed their names during their lifetimes, often more than once. I have tried to avoid this whenever possible, to spare the reader confusion. I have also included a glossary of Nez Perce names, places, and phrases and a family tree of Daytime Smoke’s family, in case readers find themselves unsure about a term or character.
Two final points about language. First, the word the does not exist in Nez Perce, so I have left it out of dialogue by most Nez Perce characters, unless they were fluent in English. Second, my characters have engaged in extensive use of sign language. This may strike some readers as unrealistic, but in fact, the Nez Perce made frequent use of sign language, often speaking and signing at the same time. American Indian sign language was almost universal in the West, used constantly to communicate across language barriers. As the deaf know today, sign language can communicate almost anything.
Acknowledgments
Writing this book has been a long process of learning and unlearning, trial and error. I owe debts of gratitude to many people who have helped along the way.
In particular, my deepest thanks go to a dear friend and successful novelist, William Patrick, who read multiple versions of the manuscript, provided feedback, edited, and taught me the fine and demanding art of writing fiction.
I owe debts of gratitude as well to others who read the manuscript at different times and offered valuable feedback, including Bob Cannon, Aileen Nalen, Peter Plastrik, Madeleine Shearer, and Bob Thompson. Janet Shaw not only read an early manuscript and offered encouragement but was incredibly generous in sharing her research materials and introducing me to Nez Perce leaders.
I am also grateful to others who shared their time and expertise with me, including Margo Aragon, Bob Chenoweth, Steve Evans, Levi Holt, Diane Mallickan, Alan Marshall, Kevin Peters, Jaime Pinkham, Tisa Pinkham, Rudy Shabala, and Robert West. Rich Wandschneider at the Josephy Library and Fishtrap, the writers’ conference, was particularly supportive and helpful across many years. Molly Gloss taught me a great deal, in a course at Fishtrap. Steve Russell helped me figure out how to cross the Nez Perce Road to the Buffalo, now called the Lolo Trail. And the late Barb and Harlan Opdahl, of Triple “O” Outfitters, led me across the trail, in the footsteps of both Lewis and Clark and the Nez Perce.
My sincere thanks also go to my agent, Kristine Dahl, for her steadfast and honest help over many years; to George Gibson, publishing director of Bloomsbury USA, for his belief in this book; to my editor, Anton Mueller, for finding the weak points in my narrative, insisting that I fix them, and applying his fine editing touch to the result; and to Sara Kitchen, who shepherded the book through production with patience and understanding.
Finally, my heartfelt thanks go to Christyne Vachon, my partner and wife, whose careful eye, critical advice, and unwavering support made the task of dragging this novel across the finish line possible.
David Osborne
Gloucester, Massachusetts
Glossary
CHARACTERS
Bat That Flies in Daytime = Lawyer
Bear Coat = Colonel Nelson Miles
Cut-Off Arm = General Oliver Howard
Shooting Arrow = Old Joseph
Sparkling Horn = Ellice
Tauitau = Young Chief
Thunder Rising to Loftier Mountain Heights = Young Joseph
Tilokaikt = Crawfish Walking Backwards
Toohoolhoolzote = Sound of Striking Timber
Tamootcin = Timothy
Thunder Eyes = James
PLACES
Big River = Columbia River
Buffalo Road, or Road to the Buffalo = the Lolo Trail, over the Bitterroot Mountains
Buffalo Heart Mountain = Heart Mountain, just north of Cody, Wyoming
Celilo Falls = The largest falls on the Columbia, now submerged a dozen miles west of the Dalles Dam; they were the site of enormous trade gatherings involving dozens of tribes from the northwest.
Eel Creek = Asotin Creek, just south of Clarkston, Washington
Ewatam = Tolo Lake
Great Waters = Ocean
King George Land = Canada
Kooskooskee = Clearwater River
Land Above = Heaven
Lapwai = The Place of Butterflies, where the Spaldings built their mission; now called Spalding
Little Stream Valley = Walla Walla Valley
Little Stream = Walla Walla River
Medicine Line = Canadian border
Meeting of Waters = Junction of the Snake and Clearwater Rivers
Old Woman’s Country = Canada
Oyaip Prairie = Weippe Prairie, in Idaho, northeast of Kamiah
Place of Ground Squirrels = Big Hole Valley, in Montana
River of Hemp = Snake River
Shining Mountains = Rocky Mountains
Stinking Water = Shoshone River
Swift Water = Yellowstone River
Tepahlewam = Split Rocks
Troubled Water = Missouri River
Tukupa River = South Fork of the Clearwater River
Valley of Winding Waters = Wallowa Valley
Valley of the Nepahah = Grande Ronde Valley
OTHER NEZ PERCE WORDS AND PHRASES
Allalimyah = The Spirit of Wind, who sends people their wyakins (spirit guides)
Big Bellies = A native nation that lived in north central Montana, also known as the Gros Ventres of the Plains, or the Atsina. The Big Bellies of the Missouri River were the Hidatsa, also known as the Minetarees, who lived near the Mandans, further east.
Bostons = Americans
Chinook = A patois spoken by many natives and whites in the Northwest
Chopunnish = Nez Perce
Cutthroats = Sioux
Elder Brother = the North Star
Firerock gun = Flintlock musket
Himíin = Wolf
’Isxíipit = A ceremony used to see into someone’s spirit, to understand if they were good or evil, friend or foe.
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