Coming Home to Nez Perce Country

Coming Home to Nez Perce Country PDF

Author: Trevor James Bond

Publisher: Washington State University Press

Published: 2021-07-27

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 1636820743

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In 1847 two barrels of “Indian curiosities” shipped by missionary Henry Spalding to Dr. Dudley Allen arrived in Kinsman, Ohio. The items inside included exquisite Nez Perce shirts, dresses, baskets, and horse regalia--some decorated with porcupine quills and others with precious dentalium shells and rare elk teeth. Donated to Oberlin College in 1893 and transferred to the Ohio Historical Society (OHS) in 1942, the Spalding-Allen Collection languished in storage until Nez Perce National Historic Park curators rediscovered it in 1976. The OHS loaned most of the artifacts to the National Park Service, where they received conservation treatment and were displayed in climate-controlled cases. Josiah Pinkham, Nez Perce Cultural Specialist, notes that they embody “the earliest and greatest centralization of ethnographic objects for the Nez Perce people. You don’t have a collection of this size, this age, anywhere else in the world.” Twelve years later, the OHS abruptly recalled the collection. Eventually, under public pressure, they agreed to sell the articles to the Nez Perce at their full appraised value of $608,100, allowing just six months for payment. The tribe mounted a brilliant grassroots fundraising campaign, as well as a sponsorship drive for specific pieces. Schoolchildren, National Public Radio, artists, and musicians contributed. Major donors came forward, and one day before the deadline, the Nez Perce Tribe met their goal. The author draws on interviews with Nez Perce experts and extensive archival research to tell the Spalding-Allen Collection story. He also examines the ethics of acquiring, bartering, owning, and selling Native cultural history, as Native American, First Nation, and Indigenous communities continue their efforts to restore their exploited cultural heritage from collectors and museums--pieces that are living, breathing, intimately connected to their home region, and inspirational for sustaining cultural traditions.

Dividing the Reservation

Dividing the Reservation PDF

Author: Nicole Tonkovich

Publisher: Washington State University Press

Published: 2021-06-18

Total Pages: 592

ISBN-13: 1636820484

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Alice Cunningham Fletcher was both formidable and remarkable. A pioneering ethnologist who penetrated occupations dominated by men, she was the first woman to hold an endowed chair at Harvard’s Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology--during a time the institution did not admit female students. She helped write the Dawes General Allotment Act of 1887 that reshaped American Indian policy, and became one of the first women to serve as a federal Indian agent, working with the Omahas, the Winnebagos, and finally the Nez Perces. Charged with supervising the daunting task of resurveying, verifying, and assigning nearly 757,000 acres of the Nez Perce Reservation, Fletcher also had to preserve land for transportation routes and restrain white farmers and stockmen who were claiming prime properties. She sought to “give the best lands to the best Indians,” but was challenged by the Idaho terrain, the complex ancestries of the Nez Perces, and her own misperceptions about Native life. A commanding presence, Fletcher worked from a specialized tent that served as home and office, traveling with copies of laws, rolls of maps, and blank plats. She spent four summers on the project, completing close to 2,000 allotments. This book is a collection of letters and diaries Fletcher wrote during this work. Her writing illuminates her relations with the key players in the allotment, as well as her internal conflicts over dividing the reservation. Taken together, these documents offer insight into how federal policy was applied, resisted, and amended in this early application of the Dawes General Allotment Act.

The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the Northwest

The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the Northwest PDF

Author: Alvin M. Josephy

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 742

ISBN-13: 9780395850114

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This is the story of the so-called Inland Empire of teh Northwest, that rugged and majestic region bounded east and west by the Cascades and the Rockies, from the time of the great exploration of Lewis and Clark to the tragic defeat of Chief Joseph in 1877. Explorers, fur traders, miner, settlers, missionaries, ranchers and above all a unique succession of Indian chiefs and their tribespeople bring into focus one of the permanently instructive chapters in the history of the American West.

Nez Perce Country

Nez Perce Country PDF

Author: Alvin M. Josephy

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2007-12-01

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 0803276338

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The rivers, canyons, and prairies of the Columbia Basin are the homeland of the Nez Perce. The story of how western settlement drastically affected the Nimiipuu is one of the great and at times tragic sagas of American history. This work describes the Nez Perce or Nimiipuu's attachment to the land and their way of life, religion, and culture.

Chief Joseph Country

Chief Joseph Country PDF

Author: Bill Gulick

Publisher: Caxton Press

Published: 1981

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13:

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From their meeting with Lewis and Clark in 1805 to the death of Chief Joseph in 1904, the story of the Nez Perce Indians is epic drama. No setting could be more spectacular than the rugged, beautiful homeland of this tribe. The Nez Perce friendship with white newcomers ended in the tragically bitter Nez Perce War. The participants in the developing drama tell the story in their own words, through excerpts from diaries, letters and contemporary accounts.

Encounters with the People

Encounters with the People PDF

Author: Dennis W. Baird

Publisher: Voices from Nez Perce Country

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780874223309

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Organized both chronologically and thematically, Encounters with the People is an edited, annotated compilation of unique primary sources related to Nez Perce history¿ Native American oral histories, diary excerpts, military reports, maps, and more. Generous elders shared their collective memory of carefully-guarded stories passed down through multiple generations, beginning with early Nimiipuu/Euro-American contact and extending until just after the Treaty of 1855 held at Walla Walla. The editors scoured archives, federal document repositories, and museums in search of little-known documents related to regional cultural and environmental history¿most published for the first time or found only in obscure sources. Part of the Voices from Nez Perce Country series, this essential reference work includes a thorough, up-to-date, annotated bibliography.

Nez Perce Country

Nez Perce Country PDF

Author: Alvin M. Josephy

Publisher: Bison Books

Published: 2007-12

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13:

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The rivers, canyons, and prairies of the Columbia Basin are the homeland of the Nez Perce. The Nez Perce, or Nimiipuu, inhabited much of what is now north central Idaho and portions of Oregon and Washington for thousands of years. The story of how western settlement drastically affected the Nimiipuu is one of the great and at times tragic sagas of American history. Renowned western historian Alvin M. Josephy Jr. describes the Nimiipuu’s attachment to the land and their way of life, religion, and vibrant culture. He also chronicles the western expansion that displaced them, beginning with the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1805 and followed by the influx of traders and trappers, then miners and farmers. Josephy traces the ill fortune of the Nez Perce as their homeland was carved up by treaties, creating an atmosphere of hostility that would culminate in the Nez Perce war of 1877 and conclude with Chief Joseph’s famous pronouncement: “I will fight no more forever.” Despite the challenges of the past, the Nimiipuu have maintained their ties to the land. In his introduction to the book, Jeremy FiveCrows details how the tribe has fought for self government to undo the damage wrought by shortsighted practices.

Voice of the Old Wolf

Voice of the Old Wolf PDF

Author: Steven Ross Evans

Publisher: Washington State University Press

Published: 2021-07-07

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 1636820670

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Lucullus V. McWhorter met and befriended Yakama and Nez Perce warriors in 1903, forming deep relationships and accumulating facts, stories, and perspectives that would otherwise have been irretrievably lost. Adopted as an honorary member of the Yakama tribe and given the name Old Wolf, he served as a stirring spokesman for non-treaty bands and captured prominent Nez Perce voices in his classic Western histories, Yellow Wolf (1940) and Hear Me, My Chiefs! (1952). Originally published in 1996, Voice of the Old Wolf is the only biography of Lucullus V. McWhorter (1860-1944). Author Steven Ross Evans focused on the Yakima area rancher’s unique roles as Nez Perce tribal historian and collector of traditional lore to help fill a significant gap in the chronology of Nez Perce history--the post 1880s to the 1940s, and assembled numerous excellent photographs, many previously unpublished. This edition includes a new foreword describing the vast McWhorter collection held by Washington State University.

The Nez Perce Nation Divided

The Nez Perce Nation Divided PDF

Author: Dennis W. Baird

Publisher: Caxton Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 496

ISBN-13:

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The Nez Perce and their Sahaptian kin once lived in a vast but loosely described territory stretching from the Bitterroot Mountains in the east to the desert of what is now Washington and Oregon in the west. In 1805 the tribe welcomed the Lewis and Clark expedition, who remarked on their intelligence, hospitality, and the natural abundance of their land. A peaceful coexistence with the few white explorers, trappers, and missionaries abruptly ended in 1860 when the discovery of gold precipitated a rush of thousands to north central Idaho. Somewhat crazed by the dreams of instant wealth, the adventurers took little heed that they were invading the Indians' land and breaking U.S. treaties. Among the accounts is a rare Nez Perce description by Sam Lott (Many Wounds) of the 1862 murder of two Nez Perce by white miners. Dennis Baird and his colleagues scoured the country and collected the existing firsthand accounts of that time of very rapid change. White officials, officers, missionaries, and journalists were lucid, compassionate, and surprisingly in favor of the Nez Perce. However, the prevailing national attitude toward Indians supported the wholesale "taking" of Indian land, which led to the disastrous Nez Perce Treaty of 1863 and greatly downsized their reservation.