Horses appeared on the Columbia Plateau in the early 1700s and quickly changed its economic, social, and political relations. They made it possible to travel and therefore hunt much farther afield, especially across the Rocky Mountains, where buffalo were thick. But horses also made these peoples much more vulnerable to raids from groups that lived several hundred miles away and who were acquiring firearms.
The Plateau peoples tried to protect themselves by giving more authority to war leaders, men who had grown wealthy and powerful by amassing hundreds of horses. Even as they eased hunting and travel, horses caused a widening gap between rich and poor and prompted warfare.
Smallpox preceded American and European exploration on the Columbia Plateau. It arrived in the last quarter of the eighteenth century and killed about one third of the populace. These deaths weakened the physical and psychological resources of Native peoples and prompted shamans and others concerned with the spirit world to find an explanation for the horrendous deaths.
Prophets announced that the world would soon end, that the living would soon be reunited with the dead, that strife and suffering would cease, and that this new, perfect world would be ushered in by the arrival of new, very different peoples.
At the turn of the nineteenth century the Cayuse, Umatilla, and Nez Perce found themselves reeling from losses inflicted by disease and raids but hopeful that these times of trouble would soon pass.
© David Peterson del Mar, 2005
