Kate and Sue McBeth, Missionary Teachers to the Nez Perce

West of the Cascades, meanwhile, the white population was increasing, and in 1853 Washington Territory was created. In the National Capital, Isaac I. Stevens, a 35-year-old, politically ambitious veteran of the Mexican war, was appointed governor and Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the new territory and was simultaneously given charge of the most northerly of four survey groups of civilians and military men being sent by the War Department to find the most feasible route across the trans-Mississippi West for a railroad to the Pacific. Stevens was energetic and dynamic and saw his three jobs complementing each other toward a single end that would advance his career. As governor, he would gain national prominence, he hoped, by building up the population and prosperity of the new territory. That meant, in his opinion, finding a railroad route more feasible than any farther south and that could be used to lure settlers to the territory and link their commerce with that of the rest of the nation. As Superintendent of Indian Affairs, he would be in a position to clear Indians from the route of his railroad, as well as from lands needed by new settlers.

Stevens started west with his main survey group from St. Paul, Minnesota, but directed another party under Capt. George B. McClellan, the future Civil War General, to explore in an eastward direction from the Pacific Coast and find a pass over the Cascade Mountains for a rail line. By the summer of 1853, McClellan and his men were in the Yakimas' country, and other military and civilian groups, as well as individuals, on Stevens's survey business were crisscrossing the lands of the Palouses, Nez Perces, and other tribes. All of the tribes wondered what they were doing and became alarmed when some Yakimas, who were assisting McClellan's men, were told that next year a Great Chief (Stevens) would buy the Indians' lands in a treaty meeting and open them to white settlers.

The Nez Perces were again filled with anxiety, which was not allayed when, on several occasions, members of Stevens's expedition suddenly appeared in their villages, having crossed the Bitterroots by both the Lolo Trail, which Lewis and Clark had taken, and the southern trail, which ran from the upper Bitterroot Valley in Montana to the South Fork of the Clearwater River and over which the Nez Perces had once brought Samuel Parker. Stevens himself crossed the mountains north of the Nez Perce lands, but on his way to Fort Walla Walla and the lower Columbia, he met many Nez Perces. Though he said nothing about wanting the Indians' lands and soon proceeded with all his men to Puget Sound, most Nez Perce headmen were sure that the danger of war had again arisen.

They were not wrong. Stevens had found a feasible railroad route, and in 1854 he returned to Washington, D.C., by sea and secured permission to make treaties with the northwestern tribes, as well as the Blackfeet on the northern plains, where he wanted to bring intertribal peace to safeguard the railroad. . . . (pp. 80-81)