Loren Yellow Bird, Sr.

Arikara and Plains Indian Historian

Trenton, ND

Prologue

September, 1904

Near La Grande, Oregon

I never planned to write an account of my summer with the Nez Perce, that summer of 1877. Even after all these years, scarcely a day passes that I don’t think of the flight, but I never seriously thought to commit the whole thing to paper.

At least I didn’t until last week, when my husband Duncan went to Washington state to visit his relatives. My daughter Millie was newly settled in town, and our two sons still at home were busy getting in the last cutting of hay. Nothing of importance was pressing on me, a rare occurrence. What to do?

I was looking forward to several weeks of relative calm in order to catch up on some reading, and to make those green tomato preserves Duncan likes so well. Knowing that Duncan loses track of time when he visits relatives, I really didn’t expect to see him anytime soon.

You can imagine my surprise during dinner five nights later when he opened the back door and came into the kitchen. I stared at him in surprise. He limped, so I knew rain was coming soon. He kissed me on the top of my head and sat down in his usual place.

As I got up to get a plate and fork for him, he reached out and held my arm as I walked past him. “Sit down, Smiley. I have something to say.”

Our sons sat there, too, waiting for him to speak, since he wasn’t one to make pronouncements. He kept holding my hand, not unusual for him, but somehow different.

“He’s dead.”

He could only mean Joseph. Silent, we looked at Duncan, hoping he would tell us more. He said nothing, but got up and went to the foot of the stairs. We watched through the kitchen doorway as he took off his Jefferson peace medallion and hung it on the newel post.

He gazed back at me. Through the years I have become better at reading his expressions, but not this time. “It’s over,” he said. “I mean, it’s really over.”

He went upstairs slowly, hand over hand on the railing. I heard the door to our bedroom close. The medal on its leather strip swung slowly back and forth. My boys looked at each other. I knew they didn’t understand why their father had done that, and I knew I couldn’t explain it to them in a sentence or two.

Duncan was right. It is really over. I must now write the story as I remember it.

Chapter One

In the morning, lying so close to my good man, I asked him where I should start. He suggested the beginning, which earned him a pillow over his head but only briefly. Husbands are so helpful, aren’t they?

“I may get some of the details wrong,” I said, when the pillow was behind his head again. “Will that upset The People? I’m no Nez Perce scholar.”