Idaho County free press. [volume] (Grangeville, Idaho Territory) 1886-current, 1889-01-18
THE NEZ PIERCE INDIANS.
TtCeIUe Hundred Indians ON
q Reservation of 10000 acres
of Fine Ldnd---1 Printing!
Press in 1886.

Press in 1896.
A little over sixty years ago printing
press was sent from the Sandwich Is
lands by the Presbyterian missionaries |
10 Rev. II. II. Spaulding, who brought
it up the Columbia river from the Whit
man mission, near Walla Walla, to the |
Presbyterian mission at Lapwai, twelve |
miles east of Lewiston. DR.. Marcus
Whitman. Rev. Spaulding and wife es-
tablished q mission among the Nez
Perces at Lapwai in December, 1886.
The press arrived in 1S47, and L. 0.
Hall printed on the press some small
dictionaries tn the Nez Perez dialect,
which were used in the mission school.
We printed new edition of this work
in our old newspaper Office at Lewiston
in 1882. and that edition, bearing the
Nee Perez NeUs imprint is the standard
text book on the reservation to-day.
The mission press was the first press on
the Pacific slope, with the exception of
the press on which the Deseret Neacs
was first printed by the Mormons at
Salt Lake city. The Spaulding press is
now in the capitol building at Salem,
Oregon, and we have an excellent pho
tograph of it on exhibition in the FREE
Press office. The original building in
which the Spsulding press was worked
Is still standing at the Lapwai mission.
Nearly third of century before
Spaulding came, Lewis and Clarke win
tered at the forks of the Clearwater,
thirty miles east of Lapwai. and at their
camp the Nez Perces saw the first white
people, the first horses and the first iron
tools.
In 1888, Rev. A. B. Smith established
mission on Kama creek, and attempts
ed to cultivate garden, but was COM
PEELED by Chief Ellis, to abandon the
place.
In 1910, the Jesuit missionaries, De
Smet. Mengarini and Point, baptized
several thousand Indians on Pen d
Oreile lake, and it was reported that
The Blessed Virgin personally appeared
to little Indian. At that time there
were at Lapwai, horses, cattle, sheep
swine and poultry. Chief Ellis had been
schooled by the Catholics of the Hudson
Bay Fur company, on the Red river O
the north.
Old Chief Joseph crossed over Snake
rix ln1 I a Il
tivated garden and schooled his child.
rem at the mission. He was half Cayus
and half Nez Perez. His son Joseph af
forwards left the mission and settled
without authority If the government
in the Wallowa valley, Oregon, from
which place be went on his famous raid
in 1877, was captured with his band by
Gen. Miles, banished to Indian ierrilor,
and from thence transferred in 1885 tc
the Colville agency.
AT the time of the Whitman massacre
November 20, 1917, Spaulding abandon.
ed the Lapwai mission and went to thu
Willamette valley, where he resided
until 1862, when he returned to Lapwai
Afterward, when Senator Nesmith wa,
appointed one of commission to in.
spect the agencies, he decided thai
Spaulding was incompetent, and he sus
pended him. Judge w. g. Langford
of Walla Walla. purchased Spaulding.
right to the Lapwai mission claim o
GAO acres, for $1,000.
Spaulding was absent about fourteen
years at his Waitsburg ranch, and re.
turned in 1871, to Lapwai, as teacher in
the employ of the U. S. Government
and died there in 1874. His remain.
were inferred in small grove at the
Mission. About ], 200 Indians now re-
, side on the Lapwai reservation, which
is few miles east of Lewiston and il
30x60 miles in size. Congress should
by all means, pass a law cutting up tn
reservation, apportioning it out to the
Indians, and selling the surplus to the
whites. The soil, climate and all the
natural conditions render this a very
desirable district for the homes of white
men, and it is very wrong for the go,
eminent to maintain the reservation.