In the
early 1800s President Thomas Jefferson sent Meriwether Lewis and William
Clark to find a passage to the Pacific Ocean. Lewis and Clark arrived in
what is now Idaho in 1805 and may have been the first nonnative people
to set foot on our soil. Sacajawea, a Lemhi Shoshoni Indian, was an
important part of the expedition, serving as a translator and guide. Her
presence with a party of men was a signal that the expedition was not on
a mission of war. Historian Stephen Ambrose points out that had the Nez
Perce Indians of Idaho attacked the Lewis and Clark expedition, they
would have found themselves in control of the largest supply of
armaments in the Northwest. Instead, they were hospitable and helpful to
these explorers.
Sacajawea, State Historical Museum /Photo Citation 19
Throughout the early 1800s explorers and trappers of European origin established a lucrative fur trade in this area. In what became a pattern throughout Idaho history, commerce was often successful because of the labor of ethnically diverse people. Indians and Hawaiians, as well as a few blacks, worked in the fur trade. Our geographic name Owyhee refers to Hawaiians working in Idaho during this time period. Almost the entire staff of the fur trading post Fort Boise in the 1830s were from the Hawaiian Islands.6
The Way West
It is estimated that between 1849 and 1860 about 250,000 emigrants crossed Idaho heading west. Idaho historian Leonard Arrington reported that emigrants killed more Indians than vice versa. Major John Owen, a military officer speaking at the time about the Bannock and Shoshone Indians, said,
“These Indians were the avowed friends of the White Man. I have had their young men in my employment as hunters, horse guards, and guides. I have traversed the length and breadth of their entire country with large bands of stock unmolested. Their present hostile attitude can in great measure be attributed to the treatment they have received from unprincipled White Men passing through their country. [The Indians] have been robbed, murdered, their women outraged and in fact outrages have been committed by White Men that the heart would shudder to record.” 7
Nez Perce Indians
Shoshone Indian children
Photo Citation 22
Photo Citation 21
Indians became increasingly upset with white settlers using Indian land for farms and livestock. In 1863 troops from Fort Douglas came to Bear River in southeast Idaho to assist law enforcement serving a warrant on a Northwestern Shoshoni Indian. In the ensuing Bear River Massacre, as many as 368 Indians were killed, including 90 women and children. More Indians died at Bear River than in any other Indian disaster in United States history, including Wounded Knee in 1890, in which 146 Indians died. Modern historians consider the loss of life of youths, women, and children at the end of the Bear River battle unforgivable.8
Chief
Joseph and the Nez Perce
Relations between settlers and Indians in northern Idaho were often more peaceful than in other areas of Idaho. In 1877, however, the Bureau of Indian Affairs ordered the Nez Perce in Wallowa to move to the Lapwai Reservation in Idaho. The Nez Perce did not believe they should have to leave their homeland and considered a violent response, but Chief Joseph and White Bird restrained them. Most of the Nez Perce were resigned to making the move, but a few rebelled and killed several white settlers.
The Army’s General Oliver Howard sent the cavalry in, and the incident became a full-scale confrontation known as the Nez Perce War. Chief Joseph and White Bird tried to avoid further conflict by leading their people out of Idaho. General Howard overwhelmed the Nez Perce with a force of 600 troops near Kamiah in northern Idaho. The survivors fled up the Lolo trail towards Canada and Sitting Bull’s camp, taking women, children, old men, and livestock with them.
The Nez Perce’s 1,400-mile march ended on October 5, 1877, when the Army stopped them just 30 miles from the Canadian border. Chief Joseph handed over his rifle and said his now-famous words: “From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.” Joseph’s band was sent first to Kansas and ultimately to Oklahoma, where many died from disease epidemics. After many years of petitioning, Joseph and surviving members of his band were transferred to the Colville Reservation near Spokane, where Joseph died in 1904.9
Chief Joseph /Photo Citation 23
Opinions of the Time
Feelings about the plight of the Indians were mixed. Not all accounts were sympathetic to Indians. In a 1933 Idaho history advertised as “precise, faithful, unprejudiced, with the impartiality of a mirror,” Byron Defenbach writes that “(in) many ways (Indians) were more like animals than human beings . . . [and] scarcely above the wild creatures around them.”10
An Army general quoted in 1878 in the New York Times said this about the Bannock Indians: “The buffalo is all gone, and an Indian can’t catch enough jack rabbits to subsist himself and family. What are they to do! Starvation is staring them in the face . . . There remains but one thing for them to do—fight while they can . . . Our treatment of the Indian is an outrage.”11
FOOTNOTES: 5- Ambrose, Stephen E., Undaunted Courage, Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West, Simon and Schuster, 1996. 6- Arrington, p. 95. 7- Ibid., p. 159. 8- Ibid., p. 267. 9- Ibid., pp. 300-303. 10- Defenbach, Byron, The State We Live In, Caxton Printers, 1933, p. 20. 11- Arrington, p. 304.