At Fort Leavenworth, the others spent a winter and summer at a race track near the Missouri River. Many were stricken with malaria, and quite frankly, who in the world has anything nice to say about humidity, especially people acclimated to the cool and dry uplands of eastern Oregon and western Idaho?

As if that weren’t bad enough… In August, they were assigned to the Quapaw Reservation in northeast Indian Territory. Malaria, that generous host, was also there to greet them with open arms. One hundred of the people died in mere months. I still hate to think about the babies and little ones, and their parents helpless to do anything to change their fate.

I only learned the grim statistics later, by pestering the Army for records. The newspaper reporters so eager to follow the news of Noble Red Men dropped the story with their arrival in Indian Territory. Apparently valiant resistance and a yearning for freedom only sell so many papers. Editors and reporters understood that people really didn’t want to read about malaria and squalor over coffee and doughnuts, not when there is some other human interest for reporters to chase after.

Part of the problem was the citizens of Oregon and Idaho, who had informed their elected representatives that the Nez Perce were not welcome in their former homeland. (You know, that place where they had lived for hundreds of years before a single covered wagon rolled West toward them.)

As soon as the Nez Perce bailed out in 1877, pursued by the U.S. Army, settlers had snatched up all the Indian land. Think how embarrassing it would have been if The People had returned to claim what was theirs by inviolable treaty. Better keep them on a reservation in Indian Territory, where they might oblige by dying.

I never asked him, but I know that Chief Joseph never would have surrendered if he had known what was really in store for The People. He would have walked to Canada or died fighting.

I didn’t know much of this, as I scoured the paper in Omaha for scraps of news about my friends. Occasionally, if the paper needed some small piece of copy, there might be a small article about the tribe, now dying of malaria and homesickness at a rate that would have alarmed anyone except Congressmen or the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

My personal first year of exile ended when it became obvious to Omaha’s better crowd that I did not – let me put this delicately – display any overt signs of Indian alliances. Oh, the irony; the only danger to my virtue had been that odious wrangler. Gradually, Mother had a few trusted friends over for tea, where I was exhibited, allowed to say a few words, and given permission to pour. My tan faded to a more appropriate and privileged pallor and my cheeks filled in. I smile about it now, but even my bosom regained its former majesty.