Nimipu

The Bitter Harvest

The story really begins with the Nez Perce or Nimiipu Indians. Nimiipu, pronounced “nee-MEE-poo” is what the Nez Perce call themselves. It means “the people.” Nez Perce is the name that was given to them by French trappers. They had lived in the valley of the Clearwater River from time immemorial. The Nez Perce name for their home was “Lapwai,” or “the place of butterflies.” “They fished the streams, hunted the woodlands, and dug bulbs of the edible camas lilly on the high plateaus.”92

The words of the Indians themselves best recount their stories:

He would cut off potatoes and the potatoes with the eyes he would give to his followers, Christian followers, and the ones without eyes, he would give to the non-Christian Indians. And they would all plant their gardens and, lo and behold, potatoes would grow up on this site, and nothing would grow over here. And they’d come and say, “well, why won’t something grow over here?” And Spalding would tell them, because they “believed.”

Mari Waters, Nez Perce.93

They were a spiritual people, they wanted to learn as much as they could about the creator and about receiving more power, so that they could do the right things in life.

Sandi McFarland, Nez Perce.94

The Wise Ones said we might have their religion, but when we tried to understand it we found there were too many kinds of religion among the white men for us to understand, and that scarcely any two white men agreed which was the right one. . . . this bothered us a good deal until we saw that the white man did not take his religion any more seriously than he did his laws, and that he kept both of them behind him, like Helpers, to use when they might do him good. . . . These were not our ways. We kept the laws we made and lived our religion. We have never been able to understand the white man, who fools nobody but himself.

Plenty-Coups, Crow.95

We do not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills, and winding streams with tangled growth as “wild.” Only to the white man was nature a “wilderness” and only to him was the land “infested” with “wild” animals and “savage” people. To us, it was tame. Earth was bountiful and we were surrounded with the blessing of the Great Mystery. Not until the hairy man from the east came and with brutal frenzy heaped injustices upon us and the families we loved was it “wild” for us. When the very animals of the forest began fleeing from his approach, then it was for us the “Wild West” began.

Luther Standing Bear, Oglala Sioux.96

If the white man wants to live in peace with the indian...we can live in peace. There need be no trouble. Treat all men alike. . . . give them all the same law. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. You might as well expect the rivers to run backward as that any man who is born a free man should be contented when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases. We only ask an even chance to live as other men live. We ask to be recognized as men. Let me be a free man...free to travel... free to stop...free to work...free to choose my own teachers...free to follow the religion of my Fathers...free to think and talk and act for myself."

Chief Joseph, Nez Perce.

In 1832 William Lloyd Garrison prophetically foresaw the outcome of the American Board’s attempt to colonize the Nez Perce:

It is my sober conviction, that no contrivance or enterprise could possibly be planned more fatally calculated to obstruct the progress of christianity in a heathenish country, than the establishment of a colony. . . . In every settlement of this kind, no matter how choice the original materials--vice will soon preponderate over virtue . . . oppression over liberty, and impiety over godliness. The natives will see just enough of christianity to hate and shun it; finding that its fruits are generally bad--that it has no restraining influence upon the mass of its nominal professors,--they will not easily comprehend the utility of abandoning their own [religion]. Their confidence will be abused--their lands craftily trafficked for nought--their ignorance cheated--their inferiority treated oppressively; and then what must naturally follow? Why--WAR--a war of retaliation.97

(Emphases added.)

This was exactly what happened, when on November 29, 1846, after years of silence and oppression, their voices unheard and ignored, the Nez Perce and Cayuse Indians decided it was time for their say in the debate over their colonization.

(For more information concerning the Whitman massacre, see this link to newspaper articles from “The Oregon Territory and It’s Pioneers” site by Stephenie Flora.

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92. “Nez Perce National Historic Park: Nez Perce People,” in Sights Magazine, Inc. [magazine-on-line]; available from http://www.sightsmag.com/ usa/mt/nezp/sights/nepe/nepe.htm; Internet; accessed 18 December 1998, 1 (hereafter cited as “Nez Perce People”).

93. How the West Was Lost, vol. 1, I Will Fight No More Forever, Jim Berger, ex. prod., Chris Wheeler, dir., Sonny Hutchison and Katherine Carpenter, prods. (Bethesda, Md.: Discovery Enterprises Group, 1993), Videocassette.

94. Ibid.

95. Philip Weeks, Farewell My Nation: The American Indian and the United States, 1820-1890 (Arlington Heights, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1990), 194.

96. Ibid., 34.

97. William Lloyd Garrison, Thoughts on African Colonization (Boston: Garrison and Knapp, 1832; reprint, New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1968), 28, 29 (page citations are to the reprint edition).