Kate and Sue McBeth, Missionary Teachers to the Nez Perce

1850

. . . By the early 1850s, American agents and other white visitors were reporting that many Nez Perces, especially in the Alpowa, Lapwai, and Kamiah areas, had gardens, orchards, and livestock and that a Christian-influenced cult—built on the Spaldings' teachings, but possibly reflecting also a revival of their own cult of the early 1830s—was widespread. Whole bands again assembled daily for morning and evening prayers and observed the Sabbath with services conducted in their own tongue by one of their own number. As the economic wealth of men like Lawyer and Timothy increased from their agricultural and pastoral activities, their political counsel, supported by William Craig, gained added stature, and their advice to follow the white men's laws and not to oppose a power that could destroy them even won acceptance by some headmen who had been anti-Christian and anti-American.

Yet the sharp division within the tribe remained. Many headmen and war chiefs like the doughty Looking Glass, Me-tot Wep-tes (Three Feathers), and Tip-ya-la-na Ka-ow-poo (known to the whites as Eagle From The Light) ignored the Christian element and continued to follow their traditional beliefs and practices, to rely on their shamans and guardian spirits, and to cross the mountains to hunt buffalo and war on the Blackfeet, Sioux, and other enemies. They still distrusted the Americans and often met with the headmen of other tribes . . . who also believed that soon the Americans again would try to take their lands. (pp. 79-80)