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Reviews
The Nez Perce Nation Divided: Firsthand Accounts of Events Leading to the 1863 Treaty
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Edited by Dennis Baird, Diane Mallickan, and W.R. Swagerty
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University of Idaho Press, Moscow, 2003. Illustrations, maps, bibliography, index. 406 pages. $50.00 cloth.
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Reviewed by G. Thomas Edwards
Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington
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| Through extensive research in the National Archives, the Oregon Historical Society, the Beinecke Library at Yale, and regional newspapers, Dennis Baird, Diane Mallickan, and W.R. Swagerty have compiled essential documents related to Nez Perce history from 1858 to 1863. This collection also covers military history and the mining rush into what became Idaho Territory. |
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The Nez Perce were granted a reservation of eleven thousand square miles in the Walla Walla Treaty of 1855. During the gold rush of 1861–1863, thousands of miners, including many Oregonians, sought gold in the Clearwater and Salmon River watersheds, where they disregarded the treaty and abused the natives. This intrusion alarmed Indian agents, soldiers, editors, and politicians because miners had triggered Indian wars in the 1850s. The initial, naive response of Indian agents and soldiers to trespassing liquor traders and miners was followed by the implimentation of unjust government policies. |
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In 1859, Oregon Superintendent of Indian Affairs Edward Geary reported: "The Nez Perces are characterized by mental power, energy of will, bravery and docility, and are larger and more muscular than most of the other tribes.... As a tribe they have ever been well affected towards our Government" (p. 37). He warned that the "usual disastrous consequences must ensue" if liquor was introduced to Indians and offered an impossible solution: an official should "examine all packs [as] an effectual check on this iniquitous traffic" (p. 37). Major Enoch Steen was equally unrealistic, predicting that when soldiers ordered trespassing gold seekers to leave they would obey rather than violate the law. Geary soon wrote of the need for an unexplained protective policy that would "be worthy of a great and magnanimous nation." A failure to act would result in "death by savage hands ... and the extirpation of the Indian race" (p. 54). Meanwhile, Indian Agent Andrew J. Cain argued that, because miners could not be barred from the Clearwater region and would inevitably provoke a war, the Nez Perce should surrender all of their "gold bearing country" (p. 53). Many other federal officials, including Geary and Oregon Senator James Nesmith, advocated for a new treaty that would shrink the reservation. |
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In 1861, the beleaguered Nez Perce permitted miners onto certain lands on the condition that the military would preserve order. Geary informed the military that the Indians opposed the "intrusion of the whites" and that troops should be quartered near the mines "to enable the Agent to prevent the liquor traffic, to bring all offenders to speedy trial, and [to] protect the inhabited portion of the reservation from unlawful intrusion" (p. 86). Soldiers could not, as Geary knew, provide such sweeping service. |
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While officials planned for a new treaty, thousands of prospectors rushed into the reservation, and many wrote descriptive letters. One boasted that his group defied a military effort to keep them from "our wild and uninhabited land" because they did not need "kingly passes through a lot of savages" (p. 74). Another charged that transportation monopolists promoted the outrageous "Salmon river excitement" (p. 187). These documents relate Lewiston's emergence as a city, including one visitor's description of it as a place lacking "houses, virtue, decency or comfort; where religion is forgotten, and the law is a farce; where whisky shops, gambling houses and brothels predominate, where blacklegs and traitors rule everything" (p. 189). |
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Gen. Benjamin Alvord, an admirer of the Nez Perce, voiced concern about both their ill treatment and meddling secessionists. His policies, including troop assignments and the establishment of Fort Lapwai, deserve analysis. Obviously he provided much better protection for Oregon Trail travelers than he did for Nez Perce Indians, but Alvord's role in taking Nez Perce land is less crucial than Nesmith's support for a new treaty. |
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In May 1863, the Lapwai Indian Council produced a treaty that reduced the reservation's size to eleven hundred square miles and widened the breach between the Nez Perce who supported the treaty and those who opposed it, including Chief Joseph. The Nez Perce Nation Divided includes the council's proceedings and observations by various witnesses. Fearful of the tribe's future, Lawyer, one of the Nez Perce who would sign the treaty, reminded council members of "our acts showing our friendship to the whites, and our respect for Law" (p. 358). Other pro-treaty leaders, feeling the pressure of government negotiators, also expressed concern. One pleaded: "be merciful to our children, and see that they are attended to as long as the mountains stand" (p. 373). |
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This book includes biographies and a useful index, but it lacks maps, needs editorial elaboration, and does not cover the period between the treaties of 1855 and the end of the subsequent wars in 1858. The editors simply interpret the period: "A mixture of astute politics, an aversion to war, and plenty of good luck saw the Nez Perce people through this period, and they emerged on the side of the victors" (p. 2). The tribe had actually aided the army, winning Gen. George Wright's praise. Alvin Josephy's The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the Northwest (1965) recounts this important military history, and his outstanding book will often assist those who study this excellent document collection. |
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