Conclusion

The Bitter Harvest

The American Board’s mission was to assure the Christianization, the civilization, and more importantly, the colonization of the Nez Perce people.98

It is a given in any colonial situation that the colonizing power presumes that its culture is inherently superior to the right, the obligation and “civilizing mission”--the “white man’s burden,” as it were--to explain this to its subjects. . . . there remains a clear distinction between the colonizer and the colonized; a more or less pure ‘them/us’ dichotomy.99

Colonization was racism wearing the thin disguise of benevolence. As one colonizationist so aptly put it:

“If it is our deliberate judgment that they ought to be removed, let us remove them. Let us so do it as for the common good of all--not sordidly or wickedly--but with a compassion and a conviction, as earnest as the force which necessity may oblige us to employ.”100

In defense of the Spaldings’ mission with the Nez Perce, it has been argued that:

. . . this is placing too much blame on the couple who came to live with the Nez Perces. The Spaldings were not the harbingers of evil or the sole culprits in the tragic story of the American Indian. Rather they were a mediating force who attempted to prepare the natives for the transition between their world as it had been to the new world that was inevitably coming.101

White American historians have also tried to justify the Spalding’s use of violence, arguing:

. . . it is hard for us to pass judgment when all the factors are not known to us. We must remember that these few white people were living among the uncivilized indians, and perhaps times did arise when the only language the natives understood was that of force.

Surely the verdict of the 'reasonable world' is that Spalding was right.102

However, the Spaldings were most assuredly not the frontier hero and heroine that they have been portrayed to be. “The myth of the frontier hero, is an invented tradition, rationalizing violence against Indians for a newly emerging society of colonists and their descendants.”103

It has been argued that judged by the harsh standards of the nineteenth century the Spaldings could not be considered racist, but merely ethnocentric.

Though the Spaldings were ethnocentric, they were not racist in their attitudes toward the Indians. Henry and Eliza did not perceive the savage/heathen condition of Indians as due to race, but instead to a product of circumstances.”104

It has also been argued that “cultural intolerance of the most extreme kind was quite compatible with optimistic racial egalitarianism.”105

However, many, many of the great minds of the Spaldings’ era believed that their scheme to colonize the Blacks and the Indians was racist. People such as Jeremiah Evarts, Theodore Dwight Weld, William Lloyd Garrison, Charles Storrs, Beriah Green, Elizur Wright, and countless others, bitterly opposed colonization and devoted their lives to convincing the American public, the federal government, and the Spaldings themselves, of the great truth that all men are created equal.

As a last resort, historians have grudgingly admitted that while Henry Spalding may not have had honorable intentions concerning the Nez Perce, they believe Eliza, at least, should be held blameless, claiming she did not share his beliefs. It is a fact that during this time period many missionary marriages were arranged. The missionaries met their prospective wives one week, married them the next, and left for their mission outposts the following week. In such cases, the missionaries may indeed have discovered they did not share the same beliefs. However, Henry and Eliza’s marriage was an exception to this rule. Their courtship had been an extended one, lasting several years. Eliza had been Henry’s sole confidant and companion during his last year at Western Reserve, and stood by him in spite of the vehement opposition to his beliefs by the abolitionists. She knew his beliefs extremely well and had she not respected them, she would never have married him.106

The failure of the Spaldings’ mission among the Nez Perce was inevitable due to their own racial prejudices. The inconsistencies within their own beliefs meant they could never have accepted the Nez Perce on “equal” terms, even had they been Christianized and civilized to their satisfaction.107 As one modern historian has written:

To raise [the] problems of social incorporation, cultural assimilation and marital amalgamation points beyond the inconsistencies of Indian policy to the great consistencies among nineteenth century American values. . . .108

The Spaldings may indeed have believed that Indians and Blacks could be civilized and Christianized and made into productive members of society, but they would never have accepted them as their equals in that society. Their many years of dedication to and support of the ideals of the American Colonization Society prove their belief in the innate, biological inferiority of the Blacks and the Indians. Thus, the fruits of their labor in the Lord’s vineyard were destined to be for their lips only. To the Nez Perce Indians, for whom the Spaldings had so unselfishly devoted their lives, the harvest was very bitter indeed.

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98. In a letter to the American Board, Henry Spalding had written:
Regarding white settlement. The country without doubt will sustain a great population. . . . But as the Indian population is sparse, . . . there will be remaining country sufficient for an extensive white population.

Gray, A History of Oregon, 239.

99. Ward Churchill, Fantasies of the Master Race: Literature, Cinema and the Colonization of American Indians (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1992), 141-42.

100. Murray, Presbyterians and the Negro, 81.

101. Dawson, “Laboring in My Savior’s Vineyard,” 102.

102. Drury, Henry Harmon Spalding, 180-81, 237.

103. Laurence M. Hauptman, Tribes and Tribulations: Misconceptions about American Indians and Their Histories (Albuquerque, N.Mex.: University of New Mexico Press, 1995), xii.

104. Dawson, “Laboring in My Savior’s Vineyard,” 89-90.

105. Coleman, Presbyterian Missionary Attitudes, 6.

106. Dawson, “Laboring in My Savior’s Vineyard,” 82-83.

107. Berkhofer, White Man’s Indian, 159.

108. Ibid., 149.