“I . . . I don’t know. I just know that he needs me now.”
“I need you too.” He crooned the words with that husky voice he used at times that thrilled me. Yes, that is the word, I was thrilled that someone loved me—someone who held me, told me I was precious, adored, who cared for me. And who now was leaving in order to earn money so he could marry me. I wasn’t sure I wanted that . . . but I didn’t look forward to the drudgery of caring for my siblings and my increasingly erratic father despite what I knew my mother would want. “I need you to say yes to me, to make my longings honest.”
“You understand.”
“Yes.” He pulled me back down onto the quilt. “I understand that I love you, that I cannot live without knowing you love me too. Just say the words, Eliza.”
I wanted to. And yet a part of me believed that once I did, all would change. My strength would dissolve and then what? What if the rumors were true?
“I’ll keep you safe, Eliza. No one else on this earth will ever love you as I do.”
“And what if I can’t ever say it?”
“I would still marry you. I love enough for both of us.”
Could that be? Could one person love enough for two? I didn’t know. I wished I could ask my mother if one’s love was enough. I only knew my heart pounded, and that if he threatened to leave, I’d race after him shouting that I loved him. Then I’d be sunk, buried in the well of needing to be loved by someone other than my Lord and living in the depths of consequences such a separation would entail.
The Diary of Eliza Spalding
1850
Today, while they are gone to trial, my mind races backwards like a tongue on a broken tooth, always hunting for familiar, something worthy to think upon following my daily Scripture reading. I used to daydream as a young girl, of having an education and then marrying a man who adored me, promised to keep me safe. I wanted a dozen babies to play at my feet. I love S so. Yet how greatly my life has changed from those youthful thoughts. But today, while my child is grilled by lawyers, forced to recall that wretched time, I pray for her, that she will find happier things to think upon when the questions cease. I must do the same, pray I find happier memories to dwell on.
The day the printing press arrived at Lapwai! Oh how grand a day it was! We had hoped for so long for a way to bring the Word to the Nez Perce people who had welcomed us with such delight. They gave us a skin home to live in while they cut logs and built our house. Fish and elk and deer meat appeared at our door that saw us through that first winter. I saw then God’s grace in my not having a child to keep. Compared to Fort Vancouver, the “New York of the West” as I called it, our log hut in Lapwai was primitive at best. But it was home and our Indian neighbors warm and inviting, unlike what we heard from the Whitmans, settled among the Cayuse. Unlike what we’d been told to expect before we traveled west. I held no fear of the Indians then. None. I could observe the different ways The People did things, like the baby boards that kept a child secure as well as entertained while a mother cooked over an open fire. Older children ran free of the constraints of clothing, small loincloths for the boys; short skirts of leather for the girls. The People willingly gave me the names of items I touched, and I was ever grateful that the Lord blessed me with the gift of taking in languages with ease. With the printing press, I could give the language back.
Mr. S insisted that we plant a garden quickly that next spring, and the Indians worked beside us digging earth as well, though we had no plow, just hoes. He begged the Mission Board for money to buy plows, but such expenditures were not approved, just one of the many frustrations with us being so far—in a foreign field—on our own. While we worked, I learned words in Sahaptin more quickly, I found, than they could grasp our English. Shikam is what they called their handsome horses, many a light color with black spots sprinkled like bits of nutmeg across their rumps. Ravens or Koko flew above us as we worked. Each thing I saw was new, and when I pointed, Matilda or Timothy or Joseph would give me the Nimíipuu or Nez Perce name. I once asked what The People’s name meant and Joseph was thoughtful. “English give it the name for pierced nose. Those who did this are not of The People. We say Nez Perce means ‘We walked out of the woods through the forest.’ Before we had fine horses. But the English . . . maybe Clark used that nose name.” He put his palms up in surrender. “We are the Nimíipuu, The People.”
“We English spread from one thing to many,” I said.
Timothy answered: “It is as you say.”
I would remember that conversation later, after Waiilatpu and the Board’s decision forcing us to leave. But the language-learning! It was as though I was back in Hebrew and Greek classes sitting on hard wooden benches beside my husband at Western Seminary in Cincinnati—but here I sit on a Hudson’s Bay blanket with blue sky and fluffy Ipalikt (clouds) over us rather than the rafters of the college. I knew I would need to know their Nez Perce word, their Sahaptin language, if I was to share with them the stories of our Savior’s love. And that was why I had come all that way, to bring that good news to lighten the dark days of The People. The Nez Perce had come east to plead for teachers to bring them the Book of Heaven. I was prepared to meet that call in the everyday routines as God allowed.
Mr. S would soon ride off to place orders with the Mission Board and also spend what little cash we had at Fort Vancouver. Or he’d have meetings with the missionaries who came after us, taking their calls among the Spokane and other tribes. He left me alone during those travels, but I found the time a respite from his constant activity and direction. He so wanted our Mission to succeed, as did I. The women learned weaving and carding quickly, and the summer the printing press came, we plain wove 23 yards of flannel.
The Hall family came with the press. Dear Sarah Hall endured a difficult pregnancy and could not walk. She’d made the trip all the way from the Sandwich Islands where their mission work had been so successful. Having our own printing press was a luxury and we saw it as God’s divine gift for furthering our work. We did not hold it over the other sites that we had this gift, but I sensed envy, even then.
Little Eliza was but a year old when the Halls and Mr. Rogers and their giant boxy press arrived, the size of two pie cabinets with rollers and gears. Mr. Rogers would help S put all the parts together. Flats of typeface and reams of paper, precious paper. The party also arrived with Indian paddlers who had brought Sarah Hall lying on her back in a canoe while the men rode overland on horseback with the press, meeting Sarah at evening time, the men preparing the meals at the water’s edge. Once arrived, the Indians faded into the Nez Perce community as though family, but I heard one woman paddler, tall and stately, speak soft French and English. Sarah called her Marie and said she was of the Iowa Tribe. “She’s a long way from home. She arrived with the Astor Expedition of 1811.” She had been an overlander too, one who, like me, remained.
“We are all come from faraway places,” I said, to her agreement.
We settled the Halls in, placing Sarah on a pallet laid upon two timber rounds inside the house so she could be with me as I chopped potatoes and washed greens from our abundant garden. She spoke to Eliza as though she was an adult and I liked that. Baby talk never appealed to me, and after Eliza’s close call with death the first month she lived, I treated her like a companion.
“What’s she saying?” Sarah asked. I listened.
“She says you have pretty hair.”
Sarah laughed. “I’m not sure how it can be as I haven’t had a chance to wash it since we left Vancouver. I just hope the lice have not found their way as they did on board ship.”
“We’ll settle your clothes in cedar bark just to be sure. Something in the bark kills the fleas and ticks and might kill lice too. And later, if you wish, Matilda and I will wash your hair.”
“Lovely.” Eliza stroked Sarah’s golden hair and I saw the woman close her eyes in blessed rest.
“Come,” I whispered to my daughter. “Let Mrs. Hall sleep.”
> The Nimíipuu, Matilda especially, sensing the festive nature of the arrival of the Halls, brought fresh fish and planned a gathering in their honor. I found The People looked for any excuse to sing and dance and play their stick games. (It was only much later I learned that the stick games amounted to gambling, and I had some consternation over my having learned how to play the games and finding such delight in the sleight of hand, not knowing that such actions might mean the exchange of horses and valued pelts and hatchets. It’s odd I’d think of gambling on a day when my daughter testifies, perhaps gambling away the peace we’ve worked so hard for her to seize.)
Mr. S was at his very best that evening as well he should be. In such a short time he could boast (though he didn’t) a home for us, with a meeting place at one end large enough to house over one hundred Nimíipuu who came to hear him speak while one of the Nimíipuu criers translated. Fields of corn and potatoes and wheat surrounded our mission, and beyond were rings of tipis set like praying hands pointing to the sky. It was Mr. S’s belief that the Indians needed to be domesticated and be less wandering by seasons not only so they could consistently hear the Word and learn the Lord’s ways but because he worried there would be more white people coming into our country and they would overrun The People.
Mr. S described them as “Children. Such kind people, the Nimíipuu, while many of our ‘white tribe’ are not.” I agreed with the latter but not the former. They were not children. But they were curious, questioning, intelligent, caring people, non-judging. As for the white tribe? I cringed when I heard that the missionaries at The Dalles would not send supplies to those on a wagon train who’d taken a wrong route in 1845. Did that demonstrate mercy? They claimed the people had made a mistake and must live with the consequences, but the Samaritan didn’t ask the injured man why he’d taken a route known to be peopled by thieves. He simply helped him. My husband and I saw it as our mission to bring such mercy. To bring Jesus to their souls and prepare them for the changes that would come. Changes we brought about by our making it over the mountains with my father’s little wagon. If two white women could survive the trip, then before long there would be many others, not just missionaries caring for their souls, but those who would want their land: this hot, majestic, verdant, tree-barren hill country cut by sparkling streams. Were we wrong?
I sometimes feel guilty for my part in bringing about such change.
Mr. S and I had worked on the language together. I count it one of the most joyous experiences we shared, this effort to translate important biblical stories and songs into Sahaptin, their language. That I have that memory of the two of us pursuing a purpose together gives me peace on difficult days when we no longer have a mission. Dr. Whitman insisted the Cayuse learn English, and I equate that demand to some of the unrest we heard of among the missionaries themselves, the Whitmans and Eells, even those early years. I had been concerned when it was decided that we would not all remain together as one mission. But later, I was grateful my husband had decided—along with Dr. Whitman—that we would do more good to go where we’d been invited by the Nez Perce than try to convince another tribe that they wanted us.
But I digress from telling of a day of such joy when the press arrived. It confounds me how difficult it is to hold happy memories, how much easier to remember trouble. Perhaps the painful memories are ways to try to restore the time before the tragedy, and yet suffering arrives when one longs for what is not and can never be again. We did celebrate that evening, and for several days the Indians staged dancing and horse races, their skinny-tailed dogs sniffing and panting in and out of the tipis. The People baked salmon on sticks angled close to the fires, roasting the fillets as long as Mr. S’s arm, so that we could chew on the savory flesh in the morning, even when the fish had cooled. The dried slabs of fillet would keep for months. Eliza thrived on the meat, and we all had fishy breaths despite the liberal use of tooth powder.
During the afternoon respites when the Indians slept in the heat, we missionaries bent over the typeface and the press. Mr. S and Joseph had built a small building to house it, with windows to bring in good light, and there the men worked to put the parts together. Mr. Hall, tall and willowy, had an ease about him, and he was gentle with his wife as few men I’ve ever seen be. He joked, too, and I found it a delight to laugh. Mr. S is a serious soul, purposeful. He told me laughter takes up space better spent in work. Once, in seminary, he wrote a treatise on how to win six hundred million souls worldwide to Christ in twenty-one years. He had much to accomplish and I took it as no small gift that he had chosen me—no, God chose me for him—to do such work. Of course that was before I knew that Henry had asked someone else first to share his life with him and she had declined. Imagine my surprise to meet that very woman one day and share a seven-month journey across the continent with her and her husband. Later my child would be taught by her in far-off Waiilatpu. It was good I had the focus of the language to put into typeface and to print, keeping my own sinful, envious thoughts at bay.
Once the Sahaptin primer was complete, we intended to translate the book of Matthew into their language. They would be the first books printed west of the Rocky Mountains—a language primer and the gospel. They would exist because of Mr. S. And yes, in no small part because of me. I hope I am not being prideful.
Martha Jane, we call her, and Millie, my two youngest, play together today while Eliza and Mr. S are at the trial. Henry Hart, our one son, chops wood. I hear the distant chink-chink of the axe fall. He should be in school and would be if we had remained at Forest Grove. I sometimes wonder what tribe we displaced with the forming of a school and town, so many missionaries arriving on those plains at once. Maybe it too is sacred ground, as where the Whitmans chose their “place of the rye grass,” a field with meaning to those Cayuse people. I never took that love of landscape as a sacrilege as Dr. Whitman did. He recognized no sacred places of The People.
But I felt God close in certain landscapes, heard him whisper to me in the wind, felt his warmth at an evening fire, in the blood red of the sun setting over the hills at Lapwai. The land gave up so much to sustain us there: shelter, food, clothing, even the skin pants I learned to make, the carrying of guns and riding horseback lethal to cloth pantaloons once worn by my husband. And later sheep my husband introduced to the region brought wool and spinning and weaving dresses and shirts that actually fit and hadn’t arrived inside a wooden barrel smelling of whiskey or the sea sent two years previous by the Mission Board. It gave us memories worthy of the telling, which Mr. S did in lengthy letters to the Mission Board that were printed in their newsletters, helping raise finances to support our work here. There.
We are no longer there.
Later, Mr. S wrote pleading letters, but that is for another day. In that land of rivers and rounded hills we were allowed a successful ministry with many souls seeing Jesus and accepting both his love for each of them and forgiveness, too. Our Nimíipuu believers at last held language in their hands. Books. It was a miracle of no small measure. That’s what I must hang on to, not what happened after.
4
Secrets
My parents had shared a passion in their mission work. I doubt they had any secrets between them. Mr. Warren and I held nothing noble between us, though we did have a common goal of receiving my father’s permission for marriage. That challenge could bind us together like blackberry juice ink to paper, rarely fading.
Nancy and I shared a bond like that, she who also survived the killings. She knew my secrets, too, of meeting with Mr. Warren when I ought to have been making soap. We also shared the secret of how we healed or tried to. We talked of it while she held a skein of yarn around her thin arms as I rolled it into a knitting ball. I remembered few survivors, except for Nancy and the Sager girl. She had once stayed with us in Forest Grove when orphans from the wagon trains and tragedy flooded onto that Tualatin Plain. Nancy had been there that day in November when our world changed forever.
I barely knew Nan
cy then. She’d come overland in ’45 and stopped at Waiilatpu as so many immigrants did. But they rolled on into the Willamette Valley and returned in ’47 when Dr. Whitman needed a millwright. The Cayuse had burned his mill in that place of sweet grass where the Whitmans’ graves lie. Mr. Osborne, a big man with red hair that he gave to all his children, was a millwright, and so the family left their cattle and pigs in the valley and came back east across the mountains. “Going backwards” was how Nancy said her father spoke of their journey, but it promised to pay well and he had a contract for two years. And in his own way he hoped to contribute to the mission work by allowing Dr. Whitman more time to do what he was trained to do—treat people and share the gospel. Though my father once let slip that Dr. Whitman was never trained to deliver souls as my father had been.
As she holds the yarn, Nancy sits in a precise way. Every time. Feet together, her seat forward on the rocking chair that she does not let rock her into comfort. When she enters, she touches the back of the chair three times, looks out each window, straightens the curtains I’ve sewn, returns to the chair to sit. Only that chair. When I ask her why she does those things, she laughs and says, “You know.” And so I do.
I have my own rituals. I must say the Lord’s Prayer three times each morning and each evening before I fall asleep. If I fall asleep mid-prayer, when I wake I must begin again and add a fourth time. In the morning, I must lie awake going over all the terrible things that might happen in the day. If I do, I believe that the Lord will have heard me planning, taking care of my sisters and my brother, preventing their deaths by drowning in the Calapooia or from standing too close to a fire. If I hear the chop of the axe outside the window, I quickly imagine my brother’s death so that it might not occur. I imagine a difficult crossing on Kirk’s Ferry that my father takes daily to act as postmaster. That I survive each death of those I love gives me confidence to join the day. When I see Nancy, my heart beats steadily instead of the racing as it often does, for we are kindred spirits.