Kate and Sue McBeth, Missionary Teachers to the Nez Perce

The Horse and the 18th Century

Whether odd pieces of Spanish goods had traveled northward from New Mexico to the Plateau region prior to 1700 via a trade contact chain of tribes is not known. But about 1730, or slightly earlier, horses had reached the Nez Perces from that direction. After the Ice Age, horses had become extinct in the Western Hemisphere, but Columbus had reintroduced them in the Americas. In 1680, during a Pueblo revolt against the Spaniards in New Mexico, a large number of horses fell into Indian hands. Thereafter, by trade or through raids, the animals spread northward from tribe to tribe on both sides of the Rocky Mountains.

Traditional lore among the Nez Perces says that they first saw horses among their close relatives and allies, the Cayuses of Oregon. Learning that they had been acquired from the Shoshonis, they sent a group south to trade for some. It is estimated that it took a generation for a people to become fully adjusted to the use of the horse, but in time all Nez Perces became mounted and found the horse a valuable addition to their lives.

The abundance of nutritious grasses in Nez Perce Country favored the increase of the animals. In the summer, the high, green meadows offered huge areas of pasture, and when it turned cold, the people could drive the horses down toward their villages in the protected valleys and canyons that provided protein-rich bunchgrass, willows,, and other forage for winter. Wild animals that normally attacked horses were relatively few in the region, and the many rimrocked chasms and densely wooded mountains kept the horses from dispersing and moving elsewhere. . . .

Almost alone among all the native peoples on the continent the Nez Perces practiced selective breeding. No one knows how they acquired the skill, although it has been surmised that one or more of the far-ranging members of the tribe may have spent some time among the Spaniards in the southwest. In their own region, they were the only Indians who became horse breeders, and they did so remarkable quickly. In 1806, during the visit of Lewis and Clark, a Nez Perce gelded some of the expedition’s horses, and , following the swift recovery of the animals, Lewis noted surprisedly, "I have no hesitation in declaring my beleif that the indian method of gelding is preferable to that practiced by ourselves." Yet the Nez Perces had owned horses for less than 100 years. The story that they specially bred spotted horses, known today as Appaloosas, as war horses is a widespread myth that arose in the 1930s as part of a campaign to make them commercially popular. The Nez Perces favored and bred any color or kind of horse so long as it was swift and intelligent and pleased them.

The horse brought many changes to the Nez Perces. The people could now travel farther and for longer periods of time, transporting more supplies, trade goods, and provisions, as well as longer tipi poles for larger and roomier portable lodges. They were able to reach and intensify their use of more distant and less accessible fishing, gathering, and hunting sites, and their hunts in the rugged plateau country became easier and more extended and successful. . . As they extended their horizons and increased their trade, they acquired more goods from other peoples, as well as many new ideas and elements of material culture that influenced and altered their lives.

. . . The greatest impacts on them, however, came from dramatically increased and broadened relations with the plains tribes in the east. With horses, many more Nez Perces than before left their villages in the late spring or early summer to travel across the Bitterroot Mountains to hunt buffalo. The parties, often band-sized and under strong leaders, stayed on the plains for six months to two years, frequently with Flatheads and Kutenais. As they roamed across the northern and central plains . . . they met and traded with friendly bands of Eastern Shoshonis and many other tribes and, on occasion, clashed with some, particularly the Blackfeet, Cheyennes, and Crows.

. . . With the arrival of the horse and the growing number of people who rode to the buffalo country, however, traits and customs of the plains way of life were increasingly developed or adopted. Nez Perces packed their horses with berries and roots, cakes of camas, dried fish, salmon oil in sealed fish skins, bows of mountain sheep horn, seashells, mountain grass hemp and other products of the Northwest and traded them on the plains for dressed buffalo robes, rawhide skins, buffalo-hide lodge covers, beads, feathered bonnets, stone pipes, and various goods that had come from farther east in intertribal trade. . . .

. . . The Nez Perces participated in the development of the historic Plains Culture, contributing to it as well as receiving many ideas and influences. They increased their use of buffalo meat, substituted buffalo hides for grass mats as covers for portable conical tipis, employed numerous buffalo-bone implements and tools, fashioned painted plains-styled rawhide bags and pouches, and adopted feathered headdresses, vests, plains dances and songs, and new details of dress ornamentation. . . . They enriched the Plains Culture with their own products, including horn bows, otter-skin sashes, one-skin poncho shirts, long two-skin shirts and dresses, and fur caps of mountain goat, wolf, and ermine, ornamented with horns, bird feathers, and shells.

At the same time, the Nez Perces adopted many elements of the plains war complex. On the plains, bands raided each other for horses, trophies, honors, and captives, and the raids produced counter-raids for retaliation and the freeing of prisoners and retaking of stolen property. Young Nez Perce males grouped themselves around the ablest and most valiant warriors, who became figures of prestige and power, and tried to advance their own position by such exploits as counting coup, stealing horses, or killing an enemy. Strong war chiefs emerged, who if they were not also the leaders of the bands, were given full authority in hunts and during war emergencies. They were usually elevated to their status by a band’s association of warriors, whose members also engaged in special rituals, conducted initiations, and were generally responsible for war activities. . . . Through the years, many Nez Perces distinguished themselves by bravery, and tribal lore still celebrates stirring war exploits on the plains, as well as against the Nez Perce enemies in the south, by such heroic chiefs and warriors of the past as Ka-ow-poo (Man of the Dawn), E-pa-leekt He-lum-kah-wat (The Cloud Gatherer), Wa-yookh Te-ma-nihn (Marked Legs), Pa-kah-toss Ow-yeen (Five Wounds), Ha-hkauts Il-pihlp (Red Grizzly Bear), Tuna-kehm-mu-toolt (Broken Arm), Me-tot-wa-tes (Three Lands), and Noose-nu Pahk-kah-tim (Cut Nose). . . .

Not all Nez Perce villagers went to the plains, and the degree of plains influence differed in various regions. Where horses were in most use and the people traveled most often to the plains, economic class distinctions appeared. Horses were considered personal property and objects of wealth. They could be exchanged as gifts and bought and sold by barter, as well as acquired in raids, and men of distinction were often able to increase their status and power by owning a large number of horses. . . . Among some bands that rode regularly to the plains, the ties between the people grew stronger through marriage and other associations, and the villages combined. Some of them were given up, and others became larger. Those bands most affected were along the Clearwater River and its tributaries, while those least affected were farther south in the deep canyon countries of the Snake and Salmon rivers, where the old Plateau Culture continued strongly.

In the middle of the 18th century, conflict on the northern plains intensified between the Nez Perces, Flatheads, Kutenais, and Eastern Shoshonis on the one side and the confederated Blackfeet tribes on the other. The Nez Perces and the other western tribes had supplied the Blackfeet with most of their horses, either through peaceful trade or as the result of raids, but about 1755, the Blackfeet tribes, comprising the Piegans, Bloods, and Blackfoot proper, together with their allies, the Atsinas and Sarcis, began to receive British and French guns through fur trade channels in Canada. Without white men’s arms, the Nez Perces and their allies were thrown on the defensive and over a period of years lost many people and horses and were almost driven back into the Rocky Mountains.

A large disaster struck the Nez Perces and other tribes in 1781-82. White traders inadvertently introduced smallpox to some eastern tribes, and the sickness spread across the plains with devastating effects to many tribes, including the Blackfeet, the Nez Perces and Flatheads, and other peoples on the Great Plains and the Plateau, none of whom had defenses against diseases which the white men had brought from Europe. The Blackfeet apparently lost about half their people, and Nez Perce losses may have been as great, or nearly so. At times within the next 20 years, it is conjectured, epidemics coming possibly from white sea traders on the Pacific Coast or from Spaniards in the Southwest also ravaged the Nez Perces and other northwestern tribes.

The 1781-82 epidemic undoubtedly decimated Nez Perce villages, stripped the people of some of their headmen and prominent leaders, undermined and weakened their societies, and for a time demoralized the survivors. . . .

There is no doubt . . . that by the late 18th century the Nez Perces were aware that the whites were the source of many strange and desirable possessions, including guns, powder and balls, knives, ironware, and other articles. Some of the white men’s goods, in fact, had already made their way, by trade or stealth in warfare, into the Nez Perce Country. . . . The Eastern Shoshonis and Nez Perces, in addition, are known already to have had a name for the white men whom they had yet to see. The Shoshonis referred to them as Soyappo, and the Nez Perces called them Allimah. Both terms meant "people of the long knives or big blades" and were probably derived from similar expressions that more easterly tribes used.

Immediately prior to 1800, some Nez Perces, taken prisoner by other tribes on the Montana plains and brought to trade centers on the Saskatchewan or Missouri rivers, were the first of their people known to have set eyes on whites. Among them, according to a Nez Perce story, was a woman who became known as Wet-khoo-weis, which meant "returned home from a far-away place." She had been sold from tribe to tribe and eventually to a French Canadian or halfblood, with whom she lived for a while among whites in central Canada. She was treated kindly and given medicine to help her trachoma, a contagious eye disease that was prevalent among the Nez Perces, but in time things did not go so well for her. She ran away and after many adventures, managed to return safely to her own people on the Clearwater River. When the Lewis and Clark expedition arrived in Nez Perce Country in 1805, Clark saw her, but he was not told that she had advised her fellow-villagers to receive the white visitors with friendship. "These are the people who helped me" tribal tradition quotes her as counseling the Nez Perces. "Do them no hurt."

It is possible that awareness of the steady movement of the whites toward them, coupled with the shock of population losses from epidemics, filled the Nez Perces with anxiety and apprehension. But it is clear that their desire for white men’s goods, especially guns and ammunition with which to counter their enemies, increased. In the first years of the 19th century, they may have been aware from the Kutenais and Flatheads of attempts by English fur traders to get past the Blackfeet and cross the Rocky Mountains into the Plateau country. It seems probable that they looked for guns from those traders, for Nez Perce parties from time to time traveled north with the Kutenais and Flatheads, searching for whites, even as the Lewis and Clark expedition was heading west on the Missouri River, a group of Nez Perces managed to reach the home villages of the Hidatsa, or Gros Ventre, Indians hear present-day Bismark, North Dakota, and buy six guns from them. The Nez Perces got safely back to their band in the Kamiah Valley in Idaho with the guns, and when Lewis and Clark were at Kamiah, they gave the Indians powder and balls for the weapons. (pp. 37-46)