Culture Clash

We continually revise our cultural history, our understanding of who we are as a nation and as a people. It changes as we come to a different concept of who and what our nation is. Sometimes, as historians present us with new information or new ways of looking at existing information, that change in understanding is painful. Two issues that demonstrate this painful conversation of change are the way this nation has dealt with African-American and with Native Americans.

This past week my train reading has been The Last Indian War: The Nez Perce Story by Elliott West. In his preface West writes

The crisis of the Nez Perces and the war that came from it fell within the period usually called the "Civil War era" and dated between 1861 and 1877. This label presumes that the preeminent force of its time was the war to save the union. The war, the developments that caused it, and its historical aftershocks dominate not only the story but also the terms of significance. How valuable an event is to understanding mid-nineteenth-century American history depends on whether and how much it has to do with the Civil War, its causes, and its aftermath.

The problem with this big picture is that many developments with great long-term consequences have little or no place in it...

What do the overland migration to Oregon, Protestant missions to the Pacific Northwest, and Indians' prophetic religions have to do with the crusade against slavery and the secession crisis? Where is a common thread to emancipation, the Freedmen's Bureau, and federal occupation of the South on the one hand and western railroad surveys, reservations, Indian wars, and Yellowstone National Park on the other?

He spends the rest of the preface setting out his premise of a "Greater Reconstruction" and finishes by writing

Those broad points are best shown by giving them body through particular human experiences. Nothing shows that better than the story of the Nez Perces.

The Nez Perces were not the only Native Americans who were forced onto a reservation, nor were they the only Native Americans who maintained friendly relations with the growing United States and still have their land taken from them. Most of us are familiar with the case of the Cherokees and the Trail of Tears. The Nez Perces did not adopt the "white man's" ways as fully as the Cherokee. Their story is more one of a clash of cultures.

The government officials--both "Indian Officers" and military officers--failed to understand that the Nez Perces were not one united tribe but rather several interrelated clans (and family relationships with other peoples of the region). The Nez Perces never fully understood that the Indian and Military Officers reported to the government in Washington, DC.

Christianity also played a role. Missionaries, the general public, and the federal government saw Christianity as a "civilizing" force. Many of the Nez Perce converted, but they tended to integrate parts of Christianity into their own religion. Part of becoming civilized included settling down on a specific plot of land and farming rather than the nomadic hunting, gathering, and horse-raising that were the Neze Perce way of life. It was a way of life suited to the environment of the region in which they lived--most of Central Idaho and parts of Washington and Oregon. It isn't particularly good farming country.

The Nez Perces were "given" a fairly sizable reservation, but then gold was discovered in the area and the terms of the treaty were violated. The government's response?

The overwhelming consensus in the press and official statements was that the Nez Perces were in the right. Their lands were being illegally invaded. The intruders were called human bilgewater...In response, the Nez perce were said to be models of patience and reason, as fit their unblemished record of friendship. In May 1862, Oregon Senator James W. Nesmith delivered an extended hymn to the Nez Perces to his colleagues in the U.S. Senate. The Nez perces were handsome, intelligent, and virtuous, faithful to their word and protective of American citizanes. in return, they had suffered abuses and betrayals. Not that they were unique. From Maine to Oregon, Nesmith said, the government had consistently pledged what it could not deliver. Agents and missionaries had reduced Indians to "squalid thieves, vagabonds, and prostitutes." And now the old pattern was unfolding again. A corrupt and corrupting government was failing its responsibilities.

And Nesmith's conclusion? The Nez Perces must sign another treaty and give up more land. They had to be protected, and protection wasn't possible on the 1855 reservation. the only chance for protection was to have a much smaller reservation. Doing justice meant dealing with the results of botched policy by repeating what had been done in the first place, with the promise that the government would mend its ways, and right soon.

The same reasoning was used again at a later point in the government's dealings with the Nez Perces. Unfortunately for the government, because of the structure of Nez Perces society some of the bands did not sign the treaty. Instead, for a variety of reasons, including retaliatory attacks on white settlements, they decided to head for Canada. So began the Nez Perce War.

The war ended a few months later with the Nez Perces surrendering not far from the Canadian border. One of great quotes of U.S. history came from that surrender: Chief Joseph's "I will fight no more forever." Whether he actually said the phrase is debatable, but it is ingrained in our cultural memory.

This episode was never part of the history I learned in school. I don't know if it is now. Many of our communities refrain from teaching anything that questions how our nation has behaved in the past. And in others, there are citizens quick to raise a ruckus when a curriculum is introduced that even hints at pointing out flaws in the way our country has acted.

I don't think it's a case of assigning blame or pointing fingers at this point. It's a case of looking at what happened and learning from it.

Peace,
Jeff