Kate and Sue McBeth, Missionary Teachers to the Nez Perce

1844

. . . [U]nrest spread to the Nez Perces and other tribes and was quickened in 1844 by an event in California where a band of 50 prominent Nez Perce, Cayuse, Wallawalla and Spokan chiefs had journeyed to trade horses and furs for cattle. At Sutter’s Fort, the son of Peopeo Moxmox, the leading Wallawalla headman who had relatives among the Nez Perces and Cayuses, was brutally murdered by a white man. The band hastened back to the Northwest without the cattle and demanded that Dr. White enforce his laws and bring the murderer to justice. The subagent could do nothing for them, and when he suddenly left Oregon to return to the East, many members of the affected tribes called for a war of revenge against all Americans. They were talked out of it by Dr. John McLoughlin, the British head of the Hudson’s Bay Company in Oregon. (pp. 73)