Kate and Sue McBeth, Missionary Teachers to the Nez Perce

1868

Though Lawyer made many special appeals to officials who visited the reservation, he got no satisfaction. Soon after the ratification of the 1863 treaty, he addressed a letter to President Johnson asking if he could travel to Washington to confer about the wrongs his people were suffering. Since it happened that the government then wished to amend the recently approved 1863 treaty to acquire more reservation land for a permanent military post at Fort Lapwai, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs thought it was a good idea to take the head chief to the East, where he could see how strong the United States was and perhaps prove more amenable to making another land sale. In March 1868, accompanied by agent James O’Neill and interpreters Robert Newell and Perrin Whitman, Lawyer, Timothy, Jason and U-tsin-ma-likh-kin left Lapwai and journeyed to the National Capital by way of Portland, San Francisco, Panama, and New York. In May, U-tsin-ma-likh-kin died of typhoid and was buried in Washington. But the other three Nez Perces signed a new agreement on August 13, ceding land for the military post and receiving assurances of protection of their timber, of additional 8-hectare (20-acre) lots off the reservation if there was not enough room for everyone once the nontreaty bands moved on the reserve, and of making good Nez Perce Indian school funds that had been stolen by white officials. No non-treaty band leader was among the Indian delegation, or signed the new agreement. Once again, Lawyer and his followers had assumed to speak for every band. Newell, whom the Lawyer faction trusted, was appointed the tribe’s new agent, and the party left Washington on August 22, reaching home via railroad and stage on September 22. As the Indian Commissioner had surmised, the might and power of the American nation and the size of its eastern cities had not been lost on the three Nez Perces. More than ever, they were proud to be friends of so strong a country. (pp. 108-109)