Kate and Sue McBeth, Missionary Teachers to the Nez Perce

1876

. . . [T]he crisis was heightened in June 1876 by the murder of one of Joseph's close friends, Wilhautyah (Wind Blowing), by two Wallowa settlers, who assumed erroneously that he had stolen some of their horses. When the horses turned up soon afterward, the settlers again panicked. Moving quickly to avert a showdown, Howard sent word to Joseph to meet with Wood and other military officers at Lapwai. Joseph, Ollokot, and some 40 members of the Wallowa band journeyed angrily to the post, but they agreed to let the Americans bring the murderers to justice. At the same time, Wood and the other officers showed their sympathy and respect for the statesmanlike Joseph, who seemed satisfied by their assurances and pleased that Howard was recommending to Washington that the President appoint a commission to settle all difficulties.

Two months passed, however, before the murderers of Wilhautyah were forced to give themselves up to a court in the Grande Ronde, and then one of them was released without a trial and the other was exonerated. The long delay and the freeing of the two men, coupled with boastful threats made by irresponsible settlers to scalp Joseph and drive his people out of the valley, brought the Indians and the whites to the brink of bloodshed several times. Joseph and Ollokot found it increasingly difficult to restrain their young men, and once more Howard had to send troops into the valley. Finally, in September, Howard traveled to Washington to press for the creation of a commission, and in October the Secretary of the Interior acceded, setting up a five-member group, including Howard and Wood, to buy Joseph's land as a prelude to moving all the off-reservation bands onto the reservation.

The commission met at Lapwai on November 13, 1876, with Joseph, Ollokot, some 60 members of the Wallowa band, and a few members of the other non-treaty bands. The meeting was doomed to failure, for Joseph frustrated and angered Howard and the rest of the commissioners, save, Wood, by reiterating his claim of ownership of the Wallowa and his refusal to sell it. . . .

The argument of ownership seemed irrelevant to the commissioners, but when Joseph made it equally clear that his people would never sell their homeland, the council ended. The exasperated commissioners then recommended to the Department of the Interior that Joseph's people and the other off-reservation bands be directed to move onto the reservation "within a reasonable time," after which force should be used to move them. The commissioners, who had listened to Monteith, various missionaries, and some of the Christian Nez Perces, also characterized the non-treaty bands as being under the influence of Smohalla's Dreamer "sorcerers," and they recommended that the Dreamer religious leaders be suppressed or exiled to the Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. (pp. 118-119)