Today's Heading: Homestead Valley and the Nez Perce War of 1877
Sub Heading: Huh?
Near four o'clock on a gloomy, slate gray afternoon in 1930 about ten
miles from the Snake River in southern Idaho, the first snow of the season
had begun its softly fall from a low-hanging slate-gray sky. A singular
adventure continued unfolding in a tidy but not very well illuminated
little bungalow on 4th Street South. The doctor had just given my mother a
mild dose of chloroform to still the pain somewhat when my auntie
Elizabeth, a Registered Nurse, handed him the obstetric forceps and he
began the tug that brought me and my squashed little head into the world,
fretting, even then. And in that instant the flag of the United States of
America claimed me as its own.
All catch a breath now, because here we go.
I was born in Idaho because my ancestors had migrated into the American
West and prospered, (more or less – that is, they eked out a living) on
land that had been taken from the original inhabitants by means and
methods that I as an adult have come to disapprove of, but which are
glorified in the American Flag and much admired by others.
I don't know much about, nor do I care much about, my ancestors beyond
several generations back. But I was personally acquainted with all four of
my grandparents and I still believe each of them loved me in their own
special way. Of particular significance to me now were two ancestors. One
was my paternal grandfather, C.A. Powell, who died in 1937 near the eve of
his 80th birthday, while I was still six years old. I remember him well,
his bald head and walrus mustache, his kind voice and oh so warm hands
that held mine in our walks around town. He had been born in Missouri in
1857. I was well into adult years when the realization stormed over me
that he was 19 years old when George Armstrong Custer went into history at
the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876. (Hey, Man, that ain't ancient
history!)
On my father's side of the family the most important figure in my
adulthood orientation is his grandmother, one of my paternal
great-grandmothers, and as far as I am concerned the matriarch of the
Western Branch of this particular family named Cook: Elizabeth Adeline
Cook, 1832-1916. Now (I believe the expression is) "we cut to the chase."
She died in 1916 – IN OREGON – though she had been born somewhere in the
MIDWEST. She and her brood had migrated into OREGON seeking a better life,
on land that had been "taken from the original inhabitants by means and
methods that I as an adult have come to disapprove of, but which are
glorified in the American Flag and much admired by others." She died in
1916 in Wallowa, then a small town in the divinely beautiful northeast
corner of Oregon, and still a small town in the divinely beautiful
northeast corner of Oregon. In the county of Wallowa. The homeland of the
Nez Perce Indians, who were sanitized by the United States Army in what
our history books record as "The Nez Perce War of 1877." (Check it out on
the internet. It's important to this blog.) In 1989 I finally located her
unmarked grave and eventually had a small monument placed on it:
"Elizabeth Adeline Cook; March 30 1832 – July 7 1916; Age 84 yrs 3 mo
7 days; Placed By Her Descendants July 1998."
So What?? So this: Her grave is in a bucolic cemetery situated across
the road from the Nez Perce Cultural Center that was established a few
years ago on the outskirts of Wallowa. The Indians have come home. My
great-grandmother and the Spirit of Chief Joseph share the Primal Dust
within shouting distance of each other. (I'm too old to know anything
about Google Earth, but if you can get it to work and you're interested in
northeast Oregon, check out Wallowa County, particularly the towns of
Wallow, Joseph and Enterprise. This was the Nez Perce heartland. To the
Chamber of Commerce it has become "the Switzerland of North America.")
Here the impatient reader should be heartened to learn that I'm about to
turn the corner and "head for HOMESTESAD" with this story. But first this
brief, and very important digression:
The "Big Hole National Battlefield" is a site is in an astonishingly
serene valley in the Bitterroot Mountains of western Montana that is
administered by the National Park Service, which commemorates certain
events of August 9 and 10, 1877, when elements of the 7th U.S. Cavalry
under the command of Col. John Gibbon ambushed nearly 800 Nez Perce
Indians who had refused to be interned at a small reservation and were
resting in their flight to Canada, where they hoped once and for all to
find their freedom from reservations. (Some historians would probably
argue that they really were terrorists who really wanted to hook up with
Sitting Bull who had fled to Canada after wiping out Custer the year
before at the Battle of the Little Big Horn and that together they would
plot to overthrow the government, or something like that.) Col. Gibbons
and his men had found them during the night and attacked just before dawn
as the Indians Slept. The quotation that follows is from a booklet I
purchased at the Big Hole National Battlefield a few years ago, entitled,
'Guide to the Trails at Big Hole National Battlefield' : "In their
initial charge, the soldiers under the command of Captain Sanno stopped
about 180 feet from the edge of the camp. The men fired two volleys into
the Camp before rushing among the teepees. One of the first teepees they
encountered was a maternity lodge occupied by a woman, her newly born
baby, and her midwife. Yellow Wolf later returned to the Big Hole valley
and recalled: "This teepee here was standing and silent. Inside we found
the two women lying in their blankets dead. Both had been shot. The mother
had her newborn baby in her arms. Its head had been smashed, as by a gun
breech or a boot heel."
The "Nez Perce War of 1877" is summarized thus by the National Park
Service, Department of the Interior, in the "Big Hole National
Battlefield" brochure: "The Nez Perce War was a result of cultural
conflicts. As the United States expanded westward the settlers felt it was
their MANIFEST DESTINY to take the land. (emphasis added. ed.) The Nez
Perce hoped only to preserve theirs. The war seemed unavoidable. It is a
dramatic example of the price paid in human lives for the westward
expansion of our nation….Sixty to ninety members of the tribe had been
killed, only about thirty of whom were warriors; the rest were women,
children and old people. Seven enlisted men were awarded the Congressional
Medal Honor. The officers received promotions. Colonel John Gibbon retired
in 1891 as a Brigadier General."
Now. Finally – Home – to HOMESTEAD VALLEY !! And to Manifest Destiny
revisited. The play goes on. Only with a different cast, and this time
we're the Indians.
Holiday blessings,
Ray Cook
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