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“Bill Wigle. That snake. I thought he was a good man.” My father pulled his pants on over his long johns, outrage pushing at him as he grabbed a worn shirt, one I’d sewed for him some years back, yanked it over his head. “He paid attention in church.” He narrowed his eyes. “All he wanted was Martha Jane’s attention.”

“I don’t think he’s a bad person. But she’s so young.”

“Your opinion is not welcome. It was a mistake for you to marry Warren.” His jaw clenched. “She’s off copying you, eloping. I never should have let her live with you!”

“It wasn’t a mistake,” I defended. “It’s just that she’s not ready and I hoped she’d go to the Academy next year, like Henry Hart did. I hate to see her throwing away her chance.”

“She’s not getting out of my sight after this, I can tell you that.” His Rachel handed him his boots. “You were too lax with her, Eliza. Or this never would have happened.”

I did wonder when they’d formed this union, but should I say . . . “She was fearful she’d have to come back here.”

“Fearful?” He stopped, stared at me.

“When we move. To the Touchet country. If I go with Mr. Warren.” I looked away, patting Lizzie’s back, warm and safe against me as she slept in my arms.

His face grew red. “I’ll deal with that later. I’ve got to see if I can stop them. Oh, what did I let you do to my Martha Jane!”

Rachel watched the ruckus happening in her kitchen. “Don’t forget this.” She handed my father his hat as he stormed out the door. She turned to me then. “Tea? I can boil water now.” She nodded toward the wet spot at my breast. “You best feed that little one.”

“I can’t believe she did that,” I told Andrew.

“Millie’s the wild one.” He nodded at my sister eating porridge. She grinned. “I thought Martha had more sense.”

“She didn’t want to go back to Papa’s. Me either, really. But I suppose I’ll have to.” Millie stirred her breakfast.

“So you’ve decided to go with me,” Andrew asked. “Good.”

“I haven’t decided one way or the other whether I’m going to Touchet.”

“Where is that anyway?” Millie looked at us both.

“In Washington Territory in the best grassland and grazing country a man could ever wish to see. Water from a blue river. No one around to speak of. Indians are all settled with the Yakima war over and the Cayuse sent packing.”

“It’s . . . it’s not far from where I went to school once, at the Whitman Mission.” My fingers felt cold as I picked up the porridge bowls.

“Oh, gosh, why would you want to go back there? I’ve heard all the stories.” Millie shivered her shoulders.

I looked at Andrew. “I don’t know that I do.”

Two days later in the evening Martha Jane and my father arrived back at our cabin.

“Traitor.” She stomped past me.

“You’ll thank me one day, you will,” I called after her. “You’re
too young, Martha.” I put Lizzie on my hip. She could hold her head up well. To my father I said, “Where did you find them?”

“At his brother’s. I chased them through the Gap, but they had too much of a head start. Gave Wigle’s brother a piece of my mind, too, harboring a child-stealer.”

“Bill’s no stealer! He’s my future husband!”

I joined Martha behind the dividing blanket where the girls slept. Millie sat up and yawned. “Marriage is a big choice,” I said.

“One you made without meddling from anyone else. How dare you interfere in my life!” She turned, threw her small bag on her pallet, crossed her arms over her breast.

“I only did it because I care about you.”

“You just want me around to work, so you can be bossy. You’re not my mother. You never were. You, you act like you’re such a saint having survived a terrible ordeal.” She wiggled her hands by her ears, mocking my experience. “Well, I survived it too. I remember being huddled up with Mama wondering if Father was dead or alive, if you were dead, if we were all going to die.”

“You couldn’t have. You were too young to remember.”

“I remember,” she shouted. “But
I
didn’t let it shape every single thing I’ve done since, lording it over the rest of the world.”

I struck her across her face. Gasped at what I’d done.

Martha put her fingers to her cheek. Lizzie cried, buried her head in my breast.

“I’m . . . I’m so sorry.” I backed away. “I never should have—”

“No. You should not have.” She returned to stuffing more clothes into her carpetbag.

“You’ll break the seams.”

“I don’t care if I tear them to shreds! At least I’ll have done it myself without the . . . the . . . obstruction of a self-righteous sister.”

Tears streamed down her face and I approached to hug her.

“Don’t. Touch. Me.” She turned her back to me. “I’m glad Father doesn’t want me staying here. Anywhere near you is the last place I want to be.”

I spent the next day pondering my actions. Why had I interrupted Martha Jane’s marriage to Bill Wigle? I had nothing against the man. I barely knew him. But she barely knew him either. Yes, he was much older but that was common in these parts. A married man could claim twice the land and a woman could have her half in her own name if she chose. But there was really no need for Martha to claim land. My father had divided his property when my mother died, giving Martha Jane and Millie and Henry Hart parcels while he remained on one himself. As the eldest, I imagined I’d receive that piece when he died, but he’d designated a plot in the hills for me. Why was I so adamant about how other people lived their lives?

Andrew had left to care for the cattle while I was at Father’s, giving me plenty of time to stew and ponder. Lizzie fussed and I fed her while Millie moped about missing Martha. America Jane squirmed too, asking after her
papo
. My sisters were an integral part of our lives and now, here we were, split open like too-ripe melons. I hadn’t seen this schism coming, not a bit of it. My telling my father hadn’t brought me into his good graces either, the elopement affirming for him that I wasn’t a good influence on her. Martha acted like I was tainted meat, and Millie might well decide she didn’t want to be around me either. Or my father would reclaim Millie and they’d all be back looking after him and Rachel too. Yes, she could boil water. What a transformation. I shouldn’t worry.

But there was more to this, I knew it. That morning, we
read from Matthew and the words that stood out for me were these: “Go ye and learn what that meaneth. I will have mercy, and not sacrifice.”
Learn what this means.
I didn’t know how. I hadn’t been merciful toward Martha, though I intended that. I did think she was too young. I did hope she could go on to the Academy next year. And maybe there was a part of me that wanted to keep her from not seeing the shadow side of Bill in the way I’d missed seeing some of Mr. Warren’s darker ways. I wanted time to investigate Bill. I didn’t want her to sacrifice her life looking after an unpredictable man—even though back with my father she’d be doing just that.
What have I done?

I couldn’t go with Andrew to Touchet, not with the family splintered like kindling. We’d have to resolve those issues before we could go. Or perhaps this was God’s way of telling me not to go.
Oh Mama, how I wish you
were here to teach me what this means.

The Diary of Eliza Spalding

1850

We are charged by God to discover meaning in everyday life, to ponder and explore. God gave me the Nimíipuu who helped me, us. They were in my dark places and stayed there with me, did not simply push me through. I learned so much from the darkness. Learn what this means, Scripture tells us. I learned to lean on the Lord more in times of peril.

I write of a time when the Methodist Reverend Lee visited Lapwai for several days. I thought S impulsive when he suggested staging an Indian battle for the Reverend to witness. Our Nez Perce had attended Sabbath services with close to one thousand worshiping together, listening to S’s words. Reverend Lee was well impressed and then S suggested the sham display. Our Nez Perce came dressed with face paint and marked their horses too with much red and colorful ribbons and cloths tied into the horses’ manes and flowing from their staffs. Intricate beadwork shielded the animals’ chests, the sunlight glinting against the highly prized cut beads. The men carried guns and hatchets and long knives and rode their horses hard back and forth in front of us, stirring up powdery dirt. Some men were tapped to “die” at the point of a gun, falling from their horses. I held Henry Hart, who was not yet three, while Eliza clung to my dress through the spectacle of dust and noise and fearsome faces. Henry had insisted that we watch.

The actions frightened Eliza, as she’d never seen the fierce war paint, the howling, men falling from their mounts as though dead. And then, to my horror, their “murderer” would leap down and remove their scalp! Fake scalps placed there to be sure, but the swiftness of their knives around the “dead” comrade brought screams from Eliza that I could not stop. I handed Henry to his startled father and glared at him as I grabbed Eliza and carried her into the house. It took me hours to calm her. What had S been thinking to stage such a sight? I had words with him of this and he claimed naively that while such a display could have upset Eliza, Reverend Lee was fascinated by both the fierceness and the piety of the Nimíipuu, so different from his gentle Kalapuya in the Willamette Valley. “He’ll tell the Mission Board about how well our Indians are doing, how they like to perform to satisfy us.”

Reverend Lee’s Indians were but few and not fierce at all, simply surviving from the diseases he said were brought by the British on their ships. I thought then a man’s mind was surely different from a woman’s. Did they not know that at any moment that fake battle might not have been sham? That we might be the real dead whose scalps were taken? And for a child to witness this! I shiver. Thank God nothing bad came of it. Still, it was but five years later our Eliza did witness such atrocities. I wonder if she remembers that sham battle now that she is almost thirteen.

Almost thirteen. And she will become that young woman who must care for her brother and sisters and her father most of all, after I am gone. I must speak to her of duty. We women are required to recognize and keep to our commitments. I did. I did more than I imagined I could do, endured the isolation, the worry over my husband and children when they traveled far, the inexplicable acts of my husband at times. I wrestled with my questioning but found the Lord could withstand my inquiries. And while I didn’t always get answers, I got peace. That was enough. I might never have sought or found it in that way if I hadn’t had those times of danger. “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” Philippians 4:13. That’s the message I must give my children.