II

Early Life

Parent – Home Influence – Work – Pioneer days in Idaho – Letters

Kate Christine McBeth was the second child in a little family of four daughters and one son. The parents, Alexander and Mary McBeth, were born near Stirling, Scotland. Alexander McBeth was a stone mason, had an unusually good education for the times and was especially conversant with Scottish history and poetry.

Shortly after finishing his apprenticeship, he took his kit of tools and traveled over to "Glesca" – the meca of the youth of his community. The first Sabbath found him a curious attendant at the church where the celebrated Chalmers preached. He was bitterly disappointed to see a frail, young man in the pulpit instead of the famous preacher. This was probably Hewitson, who had deep spiritual power though always cumbered with weakness and ill health. The stranger spoke with convincing earnestness and was the means of leading young McBeth to Christ.

Shortly after this, McBeth and his wife with their one wee bairn, Susan, emigrated to this country and for a short time lived in Knoxville, Ohio where Kate was born August seventh, 1833. Later they moved to the neighboring village, Wellsville, which ever after was home to the McBeth family.

One of Kate’s earliest recollections was an alarming illness of her father. A severe fever prostrated him and it was feared he could not recover. Kate had never seen her mother shed tears before, but one Sabbath morning she laid her head upon her husband’s pillow and sobbed,"O, Alec, Alec, whatever will we do without you"? "Mary, wife, where is your faith? ‘Once I was young but now I am old, yet never have I seen the righteous forsaken or their seed begging bread?"

He rallied, finally regained his strength, became a contractor, accumulated property and was a man of influence. An elder in the Presbyterian church, he developed into a remarkable Bible student and always had the respect and confidence of the entire community.

His sudden death when Kate was only twelve years old, left a helpless family dependent on the thrifty, energetic Scotch mother, who had deeply sympathized with her husband in his purpose to give each of the children the best education obtainable.

Susan was graduated from Stubenville Seminary, Kate from a fine Academy in Wellsville of which Dr. Lowrie was principal. Immediately upon graduation, she secured a position in the Wellsville public school.

While she was a strict disciplinarian, absolute justice, a lively appreciation of humor, a contagious laugh made her popular, especially with boys, and before long she had an enviable reputation for interesting them in their school work. "Jolly" is an adjective an old friends of this period still used in describing her!

While still very young and inexperienced, the school committee struck terror to her timid heart by formally visiting her and asking if she would teach a class of unruly boys who, although having had several efficient teachers, had proved utterly unmanageable. The committee told Kate that she was their last resource; if she could not control these boys, they would all be expelled from school. They were big, husky fellows, many older than she, but after a few strenuous days perfect order was established and before long good scholarship attained among these boys, warm friendships were made which lasted through life.

Meanwhile, out in Fairfield, Iowa, in the academy which later developed into Parson’s College, Susan was teaching. The attachment between these two sisters had always been peculiarly strong and when Sue wrote urging her to come West that they might work together, Kate’s devotion was so deep and tender, that it was the compelling force which prompted her first long absence from home. In those days, a journey to Iowa was a most serious undertaking and was not to be lightly ventured. But she went and the sisters were associated together for several years.

On one occasion they were obliged to make a change in their boarding home and the first Sunday morning nothing was served for breakfast but flapjacks. Susan would never eat anything cooked on Sabbath, so refused the hot cakes when they were passed to her. The younger sister, however, was not so heroic, and put one on her plate, though she did not taste it. Their hostess, knowing well the principles of her Puritan boarders, soon brought in some cold bread. Leaving the dining room together, Sue laid her hand on Kate’s shoulder, gazed at her with piercing eyes "Can I never, never trust you? Why are you so weak?"

North Swickley attracted her back East and here for a number of years, Kate taught boys from cultured homes in Pittsburgh. Her duties included escorting her charges to church. One Sunday, not a single boy could be found – all had run away! Kate’s conscience would not allow her to miss a church service simply because she could not find her usual company, but deeply chagrined she started off alone. More time than she had realized had been spent in trying to find the boys, and a little late she took a short cut through the cemetery, were she behind each sheltering tombstone a boy was hiding in Sunday clothes, with clean hands and quite willing to follow her to church. When an old woman, in far away Idaho her eyes would fairly dance describing the lively boys popping up behind the stately tombstones.

Sunday afternoons, she kept the lads quiet by telling Bible stories, and often boys from homes where one would naturally expect intelligent Bible instruction would come such queries as ""Say, Miss Kate, are those fellows living yet?" or, "is that true? Did it really happen?" One Sunday, a prominent clergyman, Dr. Taylor, was sitting outside the open door during the story hour. His attention was arrested and held by her graphic narration. Eagerly demanding, "Miss Kate, where did you ever learn your marvelous art of story-telling?" "On my father’s knee," was the quiet reply.

Later, a position of honor and responsibility in Beaver Seminary held her for a number of years and which she only resigned because changing conditions in the old home demanded her presence. The younger sister had married years before, Susan was a contemplative scholar, a poet while the strong, generous, energetic Kate had become "the burden bearer of the little family in Wellsville."

Securing the district school in the country neighborhood, she now lived at home with those who needed her watchful care. Shortly after making this change she was exposed to small-pox, a disease far more terrifying in those days than now. Promptly seeking shelter in a little old house, on the home place, empty at the time but used for storing corn, she lived there alone, until all danger of infection had passed.

This little corn house years before had been a refuge of another kind to Kate. After her father'’ death, she professed her faith in Christ and expressed a desire to unite with the Wellsville church. But Sue, even then the stern, dogmatic theologian, feared Kate was unduly influenced by grief at the death of her father and worked faithfully and long until assured that her younger sister’s feet were firmly planted on the Rock of Ages. During this very trying ordeal, Kate sought seclusion in this same little old corn house, where in quietness and deep though she doubtless formed the habit of prayer, which later became one of her dominant characteristics.

Long years after, when teaching theology to the Indians in the far West, she often used these two experiences in her own life, telling the Nez Perces that in the little old corn house she met the Lord, found there strength and courage, even as Jacob did at Bethel. All these varied services were her unconscious preparation for her mission. Looking at these years in the light of her life that followed, every change, every experience brought knowledge and wisdom for use in Idaho. She did not enter upon her great life work until she was a mature woman, and she learned to speak fluently the Nez Perce language after she was forty-seven year old.

Again, it was largely the deep and abiding love she had for her sister which drew her to the great Northwest, where Susan had pioneered in 1871. The sisters met in Lapwai (1877) and while the exigencies of the work would not permit them to live together, they were near enough to see each other occasionally and were always in closest sympathy.

"Straightway" the term so frequently used by Mark in his Epistle – is the one word which characterizes Kate Christine McBeth. Essentially a woman of action, she also had highest Christian ideals and was exceedingly strict. This austerity, however, was sweetened and delightfully humanized because all knew, she was far more sever in conscientiously holding herself to her own letter of the law than in demanding like observance from others. Naturally, she inherited the Scotch restiveness of temperament. A charming willfulness, closely bordering, at times, on irascibility marked her dealings with white people, but never with her beloved Red Children – with them she as tender and forbearing as a devoted mother with her fretful baby. She was indeed their "Peka Soyapu" – their white mother.

To her dear friend, Helen Clark another rare missionary to Indians, she wrote "Don’t be discouraged with revelations of the Indian character. How often my (now sainted) sister said to me, "we must not judge them in spiritual things by the same standard as the whites". Both the McBeth sisters sere fond of tracing traits of character common to the Scotch and Indians. Perhaps this helped in their understand and appreciating one another.

This love for and faith in her Indian friends is illustrated by the following incident. She was visiting Helen Clark, and while on a picnic was watching the Indians with a pleased, happy expression on her face. Turning suddenly to Miss Clark she said, "Don’t you love all Indians? I do." On the same visit, while waiting for a train, an acquaintance of Miss Clark’s said, "I don’t see how you cultured women can work among those dirty Indians. You certainly will get a great reward for your many sacrifices." "You spoke of sacrifice," sternly replied Miss McBeth, then looking meaningfully at Helen Clark, "Not you, or I." Kate’s temperamental impatience revealed itself in her correspondence, in which she was usually unsatisfactory.

In writing, she was an impressionalist. Nouns and even verbs were often omitted, but striking characterization, charming imagery, quaint, colorful expressions make one fairly sick at heart that she had not taken a little more pains with her correspondence.

Marvelous was her memory and the journal which she kept intermittently for many years was the briefest possible record of outstanding event which, when relating, she would elaborate with a wealth of picturesque detail.

Kate McBeth was the best story teller I have ever known. Seated in her big rocker by a crackling fire, for hours she would recount with marvelous color setting history of the far Northwest, Indian legend and story and experiences of the long ago.

She was absolutely fearless. At a time when there was no order or little restraint, she lived alone with her Indian friends, with no white people within miles.

Always on a very small salary, with no allowance for travel or housekeeping, her economy, thrift and wise buying enabled her to live comfortably. She had plenty of good food, which was most appetizingly cooked, attractively served, and generously shared with all who came, whites or Indians alike.

On one occasion, she thus answered a friend’s query: "Am I troubled with Indians coming to eat? Seldom a day passes without some of them eating in my home. Women coming to sew must have a little bite, which I usually take in to them on a tray, but the advance class in theology sit at my table and the ministers from everywhere. How little our boards know of the expense of a home and yet we must have our homes, no matter how humble."

Favorable seasons, when the orchard yielded much fruit, she freely shred it with the people, but she never sold a cent’s worth of anything to anybody. None knew better than she how severely Indians criticized those who made money out of them. To homestead land or in any way profit materially out of Indians, she positively refused to do.

They were always paid for any services they rendered the Mission, and she frequently advanced small sums of money to them. She never lost a cent through an Indian. Sometimes, years would elapse before the debt was paid – but all borrowed money was scrupulously returned. A number of times she herself defrayed the expenses of her students when she wished them to have travel advantages and the experience of attending great meetings. In later life, personal friends put money at her disposal for such use.

When the Nez Perces received the payments for their lands, many of them immediately went to the Mission and begged her to keep their moneys. She positively refused to do this, but directed them to the bank which she herself used. Those who followed this wise advice avoided the watchful money sharks waiting to catch the unwary.

While Kate McBeth was a remarkably clear headed businesswoman, a strict disciplinarian, always a keen theologian and a most practical Bible student, she delighted in the current literature of the day and keenly enjoyed a good romance. Shortly after Ian McClaren’s masterpiece came out, she wrote to a friend, "Have you read "Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush" It is so Scotch, so home like. Do read it if you can, or perhaps you had better read it here when you come up next summer."

Miss Susan McBeth had passed away before my first visit among the Nez Perce, but from all reports and from the very high order of literary work she left, she must have been a woman on unusual mental attainment. She was a fine Greek and Latin student, with keen literary perception, poetic temperament and a distaste for manual work, thus amusingly illustrated:

The daughters in the old Ohio home, were responsible for a certain proportion of daily housework. Once when the dishes were to be washed, Sue picked up a poker, probably because it was the first thing that attracted her attention!) waved it aloft and announced that whoever first made a rhyme on the poker need not wash dishes! Her verse was almost instantly forthcoming, and she calmly walked off to a waiting book, while Kate did the extra share of work in the hot, stifling kitchen.

Kate always said that her sister inaugurated the plan of carefully selecting a few young Nez Perces men of established Christian character, and of training them for definite Christian leadership. Miss Susan McBeth laid the foundation of the unique theological seminary among the Nez Perces, where all lectures were given by one person – a woman, born years before in far away, bonny Scotland.

One of our missionaries among the Indians, relates a racy conversation she had with a minister, shortly after her arrival in the far West. In telling of the various tribes among who work had been done, he spoke very highly of the Nez Perces, but added,

"There are two dreadful women among them. They even went to the floor of Presbytery and withstood the Men." When the new worker, a little later met Miss McBeth, almost the first thing she said was, "Did you a mere woman, dare to withstand the men at Presbytery?" It was Miss Susan! She had trained a young Nez Perces for the ministry, but although he was very bright she was not satisfied, because she feared the root of the matter was not with him. She begged Presbytery not to license him and when it refused, she went to Presbytery and plead her cause unavailingly. Turning to the Presbyters, she said,"He will be a thorn in your sides as long as he lives," and pointing her finger at the chief offender, in her stern Scotch authoritarian manner, "I’ll. meet you at the bar of God for this."

Miss Sue’s work was confined to teaching the men theology, and Miss Kate, at that time trained the women. Her classes were in simple English branches, the Bible, and what now is called Domestic Science. The first sewing machine ever used in that part of the country was in the Mission; she is indeed a very poor Indian woman now who has not her own machine and what is equally important, knows how to take good care of it.

Since Miss Susan McBeth’s death (1893) Miss Kate has had the training of the men. Shortly after Kate began her theological work, she wrote to her comrade on the Indian field, Helen Clark, as follows; "I wish you could come down and be with me for a little while. There is no minister here now. I do the best I can to prepare the elders to preach, but have to help in the service. In my preparations, I still follow my earliest plan of writing out in simplest English, my talk – then translate it carefully, but do not write out the translation. I usually walk to church, about three miles, and as I go along I talk it all over in Nez Perces. Solitude is good for us." "The thermometer has been over a hundred all the time and it has been very dusty. Thirteen Nez Perces men, ministers, elders, and students, are now on a missionary trip to the Shoshones. All good men and able to preach."

To the same warm friend, a little later, she wrote:

"Now, by dear girl, you say you read between the lines, that I think women should not speak or teach in the church. Oh no! I do it myself when the churches are crowded, but only when ministers and elders are absent. I think it is better when the minister is absent to prepare an elder, for they love the teaching and have often surprised me in taking just what I had taught them and making an instructive service from it.

"To use an ordinary interpreter (one not instructed in Bible language) the truth is often misunderstood and power lost. The best part of my work is preparing ministers and elders for work among their own people. We have some good working elders who do not know a single letter. Years ago, I bought some Bible picture books and gave one to each of them, keeping one of each kind for my own table. They visit me often, one at a time; I know when a particular book is picked up, that my visitor has already selected a picture for me to tell its story, the teaching from it and of course a practical illustration. I believe you could take your good old Abraham and a picture book and prepare him for a better service among his people, than that of a white minister, with an indifferent interpreter."

After Sue’s death and when Kate became the sole worker in the theological seminary, she had associated with her, Mazie Crawford, her niece, who in those days worked among the women and children. Now, Mazie Crawford is the theological teacher, while her younger sister, Elizabeth trains the women and children – thus continuously and progressively the work goes forward.

Largely the success of the Nez Perces Mission has been due to a good plan, a wise policy, practically unchanged through forty-two years and faithfully and conscientiously executed. Stability is required for successful work among Indians. Susan McBeth’s keen, trained intellect, planned well, but Kate’s sound mind, discernment, exceptional physical strength and business ability made her a strong executive and the great educator of the people.

She made leaders of the Indians, made them do their won work and do it systematically. A government official, not a Presbyterian, has said that the results of missions among the Nez Perces are the best of any in the country and attributes this to Miss McBeth’s training of leaders. The life stories of some of these Indian men strikingly reveal the power and influence of their teacher.