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Making the Landscape of 1863

by Adam M. Sowards

andscapes emerge from history. Geologic history, of course, plays a formative role, furnishing the bedrock of our environmental past. But landscapes are more than volcanism and the migration of flora and fauna. Landscapes are cultural artifacts, for they include humans integrally. The Idaho landscape of 1863, then, must be understood in its historical continuum, as a place produced by nature andL culture shaping one another over time and in place. In 1863—the inauguration of Idaho’s territorial period—the landscape represented the culmination of millennia influenced by Native peoples and the short but influential hand of Euroamericans. As are all places, Idaho in 1863 was a landscape in transition. The indigenous people who called Idaho home since time immemorial lived in an inhabited landscape, a place animated by animal people and plant partners, a place where abundance and scarcity came in cycles with seasonal and climatic changes, a place where human and natural communities related in rituals of reciprocity. Ancient, but on-going, oral traditions stress how Animal Peoples prepared the world for Human Peoples, offered gifts and lessons, and, together, they mutually made the world. And so long as the stories still are told and traditions performed, they continue to make the world together. Idaho’s Native populations—from the Ktunaxa (Kootenai) in the north to the Bannaqwate (Bannock) in the southeast—represented several cultural groups, but com- mon notions of reciprocity and sharing guided Native peoples’ relationship with rest of nature. The Nimíipuu (Nez Perce) community would begin salmon season with rituals and a © David Jensen Photography Petroglyphs at Buffalo Eddy on the Snake River. 6 7

Facing page: feast—ka-oo-yit—to thank the Creator for Just as culture structured Natives While the Corps’ judg- noting women’s roles in Below: The North Meriwether generosity and the salmon for returning and peoples’ relationship with the Idaho ment about painful and gathering and preparing West Company’s Lewis noted the offering themselves to nourish the people. landscape, so too did it control those laborious lives smacks of the roots and the occa- David Thompson significance of followed Lewis A Schitsu’umsh (Couer d’Alene) woman Euroamericans who traveled through this their own cultural prefer- sions when they might camas to the diets and Clark in the of the Nez Perce, might offer a prayer and some tobacco be- landscape, some of whom even came to call ences, Lewis and Clark be consumed. Although exploration of and, while in fore digging the year’s first camas bulb. The it home. Although numerous nuances and recognized people in the Corps did not see the Idaho, establishing Idaho, gathered Newe (Shoshone) gathered for communal variations make cultural definition tricky, place making a living with landscape as animated Idaho’s first camas in bloom for hunts of antelope and rabbits—alternating three categories—science, religion, and the landscape. with spiritual powers as trading post on his plant collection. to provide the animal populations recovery economics—might be most important in The Corps’ gaze indigenous groups did, Lake Pend Oreille time—and then defining and shaping Idaho’s landscape as it lingered long enough they appreciated that a in 1809.The “Map celebrated with evolved toward the territorial period. on their return trip at detached scientific obser- of America,” showing the Done faithfully, these actions festivals includ- The Corps of Discovery straggled Camp Chopunnish on the vation of plants or ani- Company’s through Idaho at one of the expedition’s Clearwater River to make mals would insufficiently and countless others like them, ing the Round principal trading Dance while most difficult periods. Mazes of ridges and further and significant sci- © Gerry Queener capture their meaning. stations, dates repeated regularly over the individuals valleys blocked their way. Food ran out, and entific observations. Lewis If Lewis and Clark from c. 1817. In generations, ensured that nature asked animals hunger stalked them. Only the hospitality stocked his plant collection, while perceiving brought with them a science somewhat 1821 the North their permission of local Indians kept Meriwether Lewis and the value the Nez Perce placed on such root sensitive to human cultures, the next West Company would provide continuously. to take them William Clark and their crew successfully plants as small camas and cous biscuitroot. sojourners to Idaho had something else in merged with the Hudson’s Bay in a hunt. moving through Idaho. First, Sacajawea’s In describing these plants and others, Lewis mind: profit. Fur traders invaded Idaho’s riv- Company. Done faithfully, brother Cameahwait, a chief of a Lemhi recognized their intertwined cultural history, er valleys, raiding and ridding watersheds of these actions and countless others like band, provided necessary horses in August Nez Perce canoe, them, repeated regularly over the genera- 1805 near Lemhi Pass. Then, the Nez c. 1910, by Edward tions, ensured that nature would provide Perce, whom they called the Chopunnish, S. Curtis. continuously. furnished needed food on the Weippe Prairie a month later. Without the generos- ity of Native peoples and some good luck, the most significant explorers in American history would have struggled much more in Idaho’s mountainous middle. But they successfully traversed that landscape and did so with curiosity rooted partially in enlightenment science. Doing so, they began to analyze the landscape and how the inhabitants lived within it. For instance, Lewis noted the Lemhi River’s “loose stones and gravel” in which salmon spawned, while later noting how the Nez Perce led “painful and laborious” lives as they were “busily occupied in fishing for salmon” all through the summer and fall. Curtis Collection #2916-10, Library of Congress Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Provincial Archives of Manitoba Hudson’s 8 9

Peter S. Ogden their fur-bearing residents. If the language that was beyond comprehension or ability to lations of reciprocity. Fires were not set. Fish led Hudson’s Bay seems harsh, it is because the destruction shape to a significant degree. were not caught. Animals were not hunted. Company fur perpetrated in the name of profit wreaked Along with new products and economic Fields were not cultivated. Berries were not brigades in Idaho ecological havoc and noticeably changed interdependencies came the Euroamerican picked. Homes were not occupied. What to trap beaver with a goal of Idaho’s landscapes. traders. And along with them came Euroamericans found when they traveled creating a To stave off Americans who might set pathogens. Actually, diseases arrived before to Idaho was an impoverished and emptied “fur desert.” their sights on the far Country, Europeans did with the Shoshones being landscape. It was a place where centuries- the Canada-based British Hudson’s Bay hit by smallpox, the deadliest of contact old patterns of reciprocity between humans Company (HBC) sent traders known as the diseases, by the 1780s. Smallpox arrived and the natural world had utterly collapsed. Snake River Brigades under the leadership from the south with the horses and guns What history books once called the of Peter Skene Ogden and then John Work the Shoshones wanted, demonstrating “winning of the West,” or more benignly to the Snake River Plain and nearby moun- just how active and extensive Native trade the “settling of the West,” truly was a re- tains with the express purpose of creating a networks were. In northern Idaho, smallpox settling process, with new populations dis- “fur desert.” During its first year, the com- and other diseases traveled with other placing and refilling the landscapes in places pany harvested 4,500 pelts. Eventually oper- traders up the Columbia River system and like Idaho that had been largely depeopled. Henry H. Spalding, ating out of Fort Boise and taking over the spread through the Coeur d’Alene and Nez This can be overstated. Natives had not missionary to the American-built Fort Hall, they so successfully Perce populations, also affecting them be- disappeared, but their influence certainly Nez Perce. met their goals that trappers could only ginning in the 1780s. By 1850, indigenous declined as a new popula- muster 665 a decade later after diligently populations had collapsed by as much as

plying their trade. Cumulatively, 35,000 #815ba18688 Oregon Historical Society, 90 percent. This depopulation stands, along beaver pelts left southern Idaho bound for with slavery, as America’s greatest tragedy. The results in the landscape were eastern or European markets, mainly for fur Its consequences ramified again and again substantial. A keystone species in riparian hats. Market demand created the opportu- throughout Idaho’s coming history. zones, beaver affected much, and removing nity while the desire of British merchants to The cultural consequences are almost them had cascading effects. Six thousand forestall American competition created the unfathomable to us in the 21st century. The ponds gone meant that water flowed faster, impetus to trap out the country. young and the old—tribes’ most vulnerable erosion increased along with stream sedi- populations—faced the highest mortality ment loads, and habitat for various other rates. Their deaths held disproportionate creatures diminished. And those were only tragedy: The elders held accumulated tribal the mostly direct consequences. knowledge, while the young held the tribal Indirectly, the fur trade wrought further future. At a time when other economic, devastation to Idaho. The trade brought political, and cultural forces hampered trade goods that were attractive additions to their capacity to respond with full strength, indigenous economies and cultures. That tied recovering from the loss of so many family Idaho’s Native populations to markets far be- members severely stressed Native peoples. yond Idaho that functioned with little regard The consequences for the landscape for Idaho and with little influence from the also mattered. With Native peoples so residents of this far-flung corner of the con- reduced in numbers, they could no longer tinent. Native peoples had long traded, but maintain active management over their own the global market the fur trade represented lands, could no longer fully tend to their re- brought an astounding new scale to them Idaho State Historical Society 10 11

Mission, on the Lemhi River (“Limhi” at the Later, their daughter Eliza Spalding within and between tribal groups, sparked time). In these far-flung diverse landscapes Warren reported on their success from the often by the increasingly disruptive presence among disparate spiritual traditions, mis- field: “The Indians were settled in homes; of Euroamerican traders and missionaries, sionaries shared a commitment to convert their crops of grain were 20,000 to 30,000 often made pockets of Idaho little more Native peoples to one or another strand of bushels a year; the cows brought by the than nodes of violence. Nonetheless, mis- Christianity. missionaries had multiplied into numerous sionary families had shown that agricultural Changing the ways Indians inhabited herds; the sheep given by the Sandwich success was possible, and their publicized the landscape was of a piece with religious Islanders had grown into flocks.” This listing letters to family and friends in the eastern conversion. Whether Protestant, Catholic, of impressive agricultural achievements attracted land-hungry agrar- or Latter-day Saint, missionaries wanted preceded Warren’s praise of their spiritual ians ready to risk a continental crossing. Native Idahoans to settle down. That is, to harvest, suggesting that making the Idaho Beginning in the early 1840s, the be proper Christians meant being proper landscape yield domesticated plants and Oregon Trail—that most storied road— farmers. Not recognizing that Native peoples animals may well have been the most crossed the Idaho desert for about 400

National Park Service, Nez Perce Historical already cultivated plants, sacred and mun- significant change the Spaldings and other miles. Among the most heralded of Idaho’s tion with dane, in “unusual gardens” and tended missionaries initiated. pioneers (even though they seldom stayed Southern Idaho a new set of wild plants throughout their homelands, None of this was easy. Due to terrain, there), overlanders viewed the Snake River sagebrush country priorities organized missionaries imagined farms filled with fa- aridity, or poor soil, not all of Idaho’s land- Plain in mostly negative terms, largely greeted Oregon their shared space. miliar fruit trees and fields waving in wheat scape yielded easily to agriculture. Tensions because of its very unfamiliarity. Esther Belle Trail emigrants. The initial incursions of eventually ground by gristmills. Religious explorers and traders and their and agricultural instruction were a packaged science and market goods produced deal meant to inculcate a love of property excitement about Idaho. Their reports and productive labor among a population Henry Spalding and word of mouth surrounding activities missionaries saw as troublingly itinerant, operated the first in the mountains and plains of the Far West communal, and heathen—a project sup- printing press in encouraged more to come. Missionaries ported by the American government. When the Northwest at were next, and while missionaries cared a federal official, Elijah White, traveled to his mission among more about harvesting souls than harvest- Nez Perce country in 1842, he dictated the Nez Perce. The ing crops, their work represented significant press is now in the eleven laws meant to guide and punish collections of the shifts in the Idaho landscapes. the Nez Perce. Tellingly, their main purpose Oregon Historical Eliza and Henry Spalding established seemed to be to protect missionaries’ and Society. in 1836 a Presbyterian mission on Lapwai other Euroamericans’ property. For example, Creek among the Nimíipuu. The Jesuit “Anyone harming crops or taking down a Father Pierre-Jean DeSmet directed fence so livestock could come in would pay Father Nicolas Point to minister to the damages and suffer twenty-five lashes.” Schitsu’umsh at the Mission of the Sacred But missionaries demanded progress on the Heart on the St. Joe River, beginning in ground. Within two years, the Spaldings 1842, a mission later relocated to the Coeur reported that their mission had become a d’Alene River with Father Joseph Joset pre- “model farm,” and by 1839, they became siding. In 1855, Latter-day Saints established the region’s first irrigators. They were teach- the short-lived Fort Lemhi, or Salmon River ers and models of Christian cultivators. University of Idaho Library Special Collections, #6-122-1 12 13

Right: Hanna in 1853 gazed Grandure, and, Boldness Territory’s first across the landscape twas here.” Such novel- governor, Isaac and declared, “This … ties broke up the mostly Stevens. Northern region … extends 150 or desolate landscape. Yet, Idaho was a part of Washington a thousand miles.” If the positive aesthetic assess- Territory when it scale was unimaginable, ments generally came was established in so too was its dreariness, from a distance—say, 1853. as Hanna continued: from climbing a moun- “No one can imagine tain and seeing the the barren and desolate Snake River stretching Below: Ezra appearance of this part out before (or behind) Meeker’s map of the Oregon Trail. of the country unless he them. Day to day could see it.” It seems traveling seldom elicited Idaho’s landscape failed praise. to inspire. One diary offers But not always. typical ambivalence. In Some features of Idaho’s 1849, Gordon C. Cone

landscape did capture Library of Congress, #LC-USZ6-1419 wrote: emigrants’ imaginations. A deep gloom hangs Waterfalls were commonly praised, and over my mind when I contemplate this strange features, such as the City of Rocks, vast country. Altho—mountainous as a could bring some positive relief. In 1850, general thing, yet there is sufficient plain Leander Loomis waxed poetic there: “This land for cultivation, and the mountains afternoon Some of us concluded to take a would be admirably fitted for grazeing,

ramble among the rocky hills … and if ever but the want of rain in the summer #1918.114.9.36 State Historical Society, Washington we saw nature display herself, in beauty season is the reason that no vegitation is found here, and for the same reason it gloomy at prospects for settlement. Gustav Sohon can never grow here—consequently the In the trailing dust of the emigrant captured the country will never be settled, as a popula- trains, though, new communities did arise drama of mounted Nez Perce warriors tion could not subsist. eventually, joining the populations around as they arrived at This excerpt reveals cultural values of fur trade posts and missions. Doing so Isaac Stevens’ 1855 overlanders particularly well. Like others, properly required a specific change to the treaty council in Cone saw the landscape through the prism landscape. Before American citizens could Walla Walla. of a potential future, a future that followed acquire legal title to land and build their well-worn agrarian pathways. The landscape communities on the solid foundations of pri- was judged against its capacity to support a vate property, the U.S. government needed human population with domestic animals. It to extinguish Native title to the land through is also typical by offering paradoxical praise. a long-established and constitutionally-based The land was “sufficient … for cultivation” treaty process. and “admirably fitted for grazeing,” but To accomplish this, Isaac I. Stevens, it was too dry and ultimately made Cone Washington’s territorial governor and , 1917 or the Old Oregon Trail The Ox Team, 14 15

superintendent of Indian Affairs, convened could grow crops and good citizens—the Florence and Boise Basin. A gold rush to could extract wealth from the 1855 Walla Walla Council where, after connection being a long-standing as- Idaho was on. nature’s bounty. This com- complicated and contested negotiations, sumption in the American republic. All the main strikes but Boise Basin modification alienated the some of the Nez Perce signed a treaty that Euroamericans were free to extract wealth were on Nez Perce land. Such legalities mat- landscape from its histori- ceded millions of acres to the American out of nature. For tribal members, treaties tered little, though, for the U.S. government cal and cultural moorings, government. Other tribes, like the Coeur ceded millions of acres but also reserved obliged the Euroamerican pursuit of wealth. setting it on a new course. d’Alene and the combined Shoshone and lands and resources for Natives’ “exclusive The government abrogated their valid 1855 Although humans had Bannock, had to wait for treaties signed use and benefit,” as the Nez Perce Treaty treaty with a new one eight years later, one changed Idaho for mil- after armed conflict or further presidential put it. They also maintained “the right of that reduced the Nez Perce Reservation by lennia, the simplification proclamations. (Others, like the Kootenai taking fish at all usual and accustomed 90 percent and cleared the way for clear of nature to a collection of Gibbonsville gold and Northwestern Band of Shoshone places in common with citizens of the ter- title for the Euroamerican miners who had commodities—a significant miners with their Nation, received federal recognition only in ritory, and of erecting temporary buildings knowingly encroached on Nimíipuu land intellectual and economic sluice box, 1880, the late 20th century.) for curing, together with the privilege of illegally. transformation—revolutionized Charlie Lual on The treaty landscape—or more accu- hunting, gathering roots and berries, and This was in 1863, just three months the pace and consequences of

the left, and the University of Idaho Library Special Collections, #3-0055b rately, the evolving treaty landscapes—was pasturing their horses and cattle upon open after Idaho had officially become a U.S. landscape changes to come. Wonderlick Boys. Prospectors dis- meant to secure the future of the region. and unclaimed land.” In other words, tribes territory. And it is a fitting end to this story. Today, Idahoans are rightfully proud of While trespassing covered gold in For the federal government and immigrants, would continue their subsistence and other The convergence of territorial status and their magnificent landscape as a keystone on Nez Perce the Gibbonsville treaties opened up lands, making them cultural practices without outside interfer- the Nez Perce Treaty of 1863 should remind feature of the state’s identity. They were in Indian lands, District in 1877. available for private ownership where farms ence. Without such assurances, no treaties us how intimately tied up dispossession of 1863, too, when Idaho’s landscape seemed Elias D. Pierce led the party that would have been agreed to. The power of Native lands is with the expansion of the almost limitless and full of potential to discovered gold the nation—in its laws and its military— American state. the increasing Euroamerican population. in Idaho in 1860, would inscribe this on the very land and Too, it can remind us of some funda- A report issued that year by Captain John setting off a chain protect these agreements. mental changes that Idaho’s landscape was Mullan, who had lately been constructing of events that led Or not. undergoing. The landscape was no longer a military road across northern Idaho, cap- to the formation Elias Davidson Pierce, a peripatetic inhabited solely by Coyote and Fox and tured some of that enthusiasm: of Idaho Territory lawyer, soldier, prospector, legislator, farmer, Salmon; no longer was the land seen only The valley of the St Joseph’s is a beautiful in 1863. and trader, led a group of nearly a dozen as a vibrant, animate force and partner to gem, embedded miners onto the Nez Perce Reservation. the Nimíipuu or Bannaqwate or Ktunaxa. in a noble range …Idaho’s landscape … Although he attempted to gain permission Instead, it had become a contested com- of mountains. from the Nimíipuu, it was not forthcoming. modity, a reduction the result of new Viewed from an had become a contested In early fall of 1860, at Canal Creek in the peoples with new values and new powers. elevation, on a commodity, a reduction the Clearwater River watershed, the Pierce party The treaty process codified this change summer’s day, discovered gold. Pierce City was founded in and continued the process begun with the scenery and result of new peoples with December on the reservation in plain viola- Lewis and Clark (who brought science) and effect is grand and new values and new powers. tion of the law. By summer, 3,000 people the fur traders (who brought profit motive) picturesque—the had ascended into the foothills searching and missionaries (who brought an agricul- river winding for more precious gold. Lewiston started tural religion) to deaden the landscape. A from side to side in graceful curves, while in June 1861 and became the chief supply living landscape with which people related copses of willow, cottonwood, and alder center. Spinning out from that epicenter, intimately became diluted to something fringe its banks, and silvery lakes dot here prospectors soon found gold at Elk City and that was valuable mainly by whether one and there the green sward in which it is Lemhi County Historical Society 16 17

clothed. The spurs that form its either 1863 carried the weight of history, a history landscape of 1863. But we would be wise boundary, gently rising to an elevation that included basic natural processes along to temper our reverie with humility and with of a thousand feet, are densely clad with historical forces of death and dispos- our eyes wide open to the profound and with one of the finest growths of fir session, profit and plunder, care and cultiva- sometimes tragic ways Idaho had already and pine to be found in the mountains; tion. We can, should, and will celebrate the changed by that momentous date. and, enlivened, as it is, with here a camp of hunters and there the light bark canoe of the Indian, forms one Author’s Note I am grateful for the helpful comments and support of Rodney Frey, Keith Petersen, and Kelley of the most beautiful scenes it was Sowards. Although countless sources have influenced my interpretation of western environmental our fortune to meet with in the Rocky history, I wish to direct readers to work that has contributed most directly to this essay; I have marked Mountains. those sources from which I have quoted with an asterisk(*): A special place, to be sure. And a view that well represents the complexities Arrington, Leonard J., History of Idaho. 2 vols. Marshall, Alan G. “Unusual Gardens: The Nez of the 1863 Idaho landscape. Here was an Moscow and Boise: University of Idaho Press Perce and Wild Horticulture on the Eastern engineer, a harbinger of state-sponsored and Idaho State Historical Society, 1994.* Columbia Plateau.” In Northwest Lands, Northwest Peoples: Readings in Environmental modernity, taking time to wax rhapsodic Boag, Peter G. “Overlanders and the Snake River Region: A Case Study of Popular History. Edited by Dale D. Goble and Paul W. about nature’s beauty. This was time Landscape Perception in the Early West.” Hirt, 173-87. Seattle: University of Washington away from his enterprise of constructing Pacific Northwest Quarterly 84, no. 4 (1993): Press, 1999.* a military road through indigenous land, 122-29.* Morris, Lesley R. “Using Emigrant Diaries to an act that escalated tensions between Botkin, Daniel B. Our Natural History: The Examine Historic Environmental Conditions Euroamericans and local tribes and helped Lessons of Lewis and Clark. : along the Trail in the City of Rocks facilitate more movement of Americans Grossett/Putnam, 1995.* National Reserve, Idaho.” Overland Journal 26, into the region. The hunters and canoe- Frey, Rodney, in collaboration with the no. 2 (2008): 51-71. bound Indian in this idyllic scene would Schitsu’umsh. Landscape Traveled by Coyote Mullan, John. Report on the Construction of a soon find their lives constricted by the and Crane. Seattle: University of Washington Military Road from Fort Walla-Walla to Fort Press, 2001. Benton. Washington, D.C.: Government landscape changes already initiated and Printing Office, 1863. those looming near to the horizon. Frey, Rodney, and Robert McCarl. “The Ott, Jennifer. “‘Ruining’ the Rivers in the Snake Homes would be made and remade Confluence of Rivers: The Indigenous Tribes of Idaho.” In Idaho’s Place: A Guide to the Gem Country: The Hudson’s Bay Company’s Fur there and all through the territory long State’s Past. Edited by Adam M. Sowards. Desert Policy.” Oregon Historical Quarterly before and after 1863. All who have [Forthcoming] 104, no. 2 (2003): 166-95. called it home, all who have struggled Landeen, Dan, and Allen Pinkham. Salmon Walker, Deward E., Jr. “Shoshone (Western to make a home in Idaho have reckoned and His People: Fish and Fishing in Nez Perce North America).” In Encyclopedia of Religion with this landscape. Native peoples con- Culture. Lewiston, ID: Confluence Press, 1999. and Nature. Edited by Bron Taylor, 1541-43. tinue to hold precious their relationship Lang, William L. “Describing a New Environment: London and New York: Continuum, 2005. to this place. So do others. Although the Lewis and Clark and Enlightenment Science in West, Elliott. The Last Indian War: The Nez Perce mountains and plains, the birds of prey the Columbia River Basin.” Oregon Historical Story. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.* and elk, the rivers and forests can seem Quarterly, 105, no. 3 (2004): 360-89. straight from nature’s hands, they are Marsh, Kevin R. “Crossing Divides: An Woodworth-Ney, Laura. Mapping Identity: The Creation of the Coeur d’Alene Indian more than that. They are the products Environmental History of Idaho.” In Idaho’s Place: A Guide to the Gem State’s Past. Edited Reservation, 1805-1902. Boulder: University of history and choices. The landscape of by Adam M. Sowards. [Forthcoming] Press of , 2004 Peg Ownes/Courtesy of Idaho Tourism