Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez Perce by Kent Nerburn Read Free Book Online Page A

living in darkness. Missionaries were setting sail for Africa, Asia, the Pacific Islands, and anywhere else that the gospel had not yet been preached.
    When word reached the churches back East that a group of Indians from deep in the uncharted West had been seen wandering the streets of St. Louis in search of the word of the Lord, the effect was instantaneous. A call was put out for men who would endure the hardships of the unknown mountains and deserts and forests of the West to bring Christian teachings to these untutored children of the wild.
    Among the men who answered that call was the Reverend Marcus Whitman, a Presbyterian minister and physician from Ithaca, New York. Along with another intrepid missionary, Samuel Parker, he came west to St. Louis in the summer of 1835, four years after the Nez Perce had made their journey in search of the book, and declared his intention to travel across the plains to the annual gathering where trappers from the western interior rendezvoused with traders from the east to exchange furs for goods. From there, he announced, he and the Reverend Parker would continue across the mountains to the unknown interior to seek out the tribes that had shown such an earnest hunger for the word of the Lord.
    The rendezvous were great, raucous gatherings held each year at a predetermined site on the eastern edge of the Rockies after the snows had melted and the passes had cleared. The trappers came with furs they had harvested or purchased from the Indians to exchange for goods and supplies brought in on wagons from St. Louis and cities in the East. Many Indian tribes—some hoping to make deals directly with the traders, others simply wishing to partake in the camaraderie and revelry—came with their own goods for bartering. A general armistice was put in effect, and smoke from a thousand fires filled the sky while Indians and whites alike fought, gambled, traded, and drank far into the night.
    The Nez Perce often participated in these events. Many of them spent long periods—sometimes years at a time—living in buffalo country hundreds of miles across the great mountains from their ancestral homelands, and the horses they owned and the buffalo skins they gathered were valuable objects of trade. It was the one time when their failure to trap the beaver did not put them at a disadvantage in gaining the white man’s goods.
    The debauched nature of the rendezvous was legendary, and it did not make missionaries welcome guests. But the Reverend Parker and Dr. Whitman knew that this was the one place where they could make the connection that would get them to the tribes who had come to St. Louis seeking the light of Christian truth. So they joined with a trading caravan and made the long journey across the plains to the broad valley where the drinking and gambling and horse racing were already fully under way.
    Their arrival was met with something less than enthusiasm by the reveling mountain men. But the Nez Perce in attendance were overjoyed to see these Soyapo teachers of spirit law. More than white man’s goods, the Nez Perce desired the secrets of the white man’s power. And here at the rendezvous were men who knew that power.
    When the Reverend Parker and Dr. Whitman realized that there were men at the rendezvous from the tribes that had sent their messengers to St. Louis, they too were overjoyed. They willingly agreed to travel back with them to their country to begin establishing mission sites and teaching the ways of the Christian faith.
    The Nez Perce watched the men closely. It was important that they be men of strong power who could assist the people in gaining Soyapo secrets. Dr. Whitman soon showed that he was such a man. He cured many of the mountain men of a violent stomach sickness and removed an arrowhead from deep in the back of one of the trappers. He reminded the Nez Perce of Captain Clark with his miraculous powers of healing.
    But Dr. Whitman disappointed