We should not be surprised that the Nez Perce welcomed the emaciated members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition who staggered into one of their camps in September 1804. The only resident to have dealt with whites, a woman named Watkuweis, vouched for the kindliness of the strange people, and the Nez Perce hoped that the American explorers would bring a better world.
Lewis and Clark’s primary goal of finding a convenient route across the continent had been thwarted, so they were eager to further another of the Expedition’s goals: drawing indigenous nations into political and economic alliances with the U.S. They told the Nez Perce that the U.S. would soon establish a trading post offering reliable access to firearms and would broker a truce with their enemies. The Nez Perce, encouraged by these assurances, hosted the Expedition on both their outbound and return journeys. They showed them how to fashion dug-out canoes and cared for their horses over the fall and winter.
The history of the Columbia Plateau did not unfold as Lewis and Clark had promised. True, American John Jacob Astor’s Pacific Fur Company appeared at the Columbia River’s mouth in 1811, determined to tap the interior fur trade. But American traders made only occasional forays into the area after the 1810s. The Astorians were soon replaced by the Montreal-based North West Company and the London-based Hudson’s Bay Company, both of which had more experience working with indigenous peoples.
All three companies were frustrated by the indifference that the Umatilla, Cayuse, and Nez Perce often showed toward the fur trade. In 1818 the North West Company established Fort Nez Perces just north of what would become the Washington border. But this region was never a center of the trade, and Fort Nez Perces always remained small. In 1830 and 1831 it produced less than 1,000 beaver pelts, and in 1845 it was staffed by just ten men.
The North West Company and Hudson’s Bay Company were interested in getting Native peoples’ trade. They cared little about their beliefs. This pattern shifted with the arrival of the Whitmans and the Spaldings, American missionaries who settled among the Cayuse and the Nez Perce, respectively, in 1836. These Presbyterian missionaries were determined to convert Indians to Christianity. The Whitmans failed in this and drew an increasing number of whites onto Cayuse land outside of what is now Walla Walla, Washington. Several Cayuse responded to these pressures and the outbreak of a measles epidemic, which they also blamed on the Whitmans, by killing the missionary couple and ten others in 1847.
These killings led to the Cayuse War and drove the Presbyterians from the area, but the Catholic priests who had recently arrived proved better able to both win converts and avoid violence, though their numbers remained small.
© David Peterson del Mar, 2005
