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Matilda had friends among the Cayuse, who often intermarried with the Nez Perce. She looked forward to a few days with them before returning, possibly bringing relatives back with her, a friend or two. We had five days together and they were precious. I’ve often thought since then that God gives us great joys that fill us so we can draw upon them like a well when times turn tough. I think that’s why after the massacre my mother often spoke of the arrival of the printing press, a remembered joy for when she suffered sorrow beyond words.

Matilda didn’t treat me as a child who shouldn’t be going off to school, who needed me at home. That was how I saw my mother’s wish to keep me close then. Matilda treated me as her friend. She told stories of others who lived close to our Lapwai mission, of the trapper Mr. Craig and his sometimes sneaky ways, or of the arguments over men her aunties had. My mother would have called this gossip and forbidden it, but Matilda spoke of life, of how people got along—or didn’t; how they fell in love—or out; something my parents never spoke of.

“Do you have a husband?” I asked Matilda. Birds hopped their way along the deer trail we followed beside the river. I watched the world between Tashe’s alert ears.

“I did. He died. I might find another.”

“Where do you look for husbands? Are they hiding?”

She laughed. “Some do. Celebrations are good places. Singing
and dancing and eating and game playing. One can find a good husband if one looks with clear eyes and is willing to haul them out of their activity.” She used the word
hol
, meaning to drag or pull. I imagined a husband stuck in a mud pile and laughed with her. Then she turned serious.
“Aiat hayaksa.”

“Women hunger?” I clarified. “I’m not hungry.”

She smiled. “It will find you one day.”

And so it did four years later. With Andrew Warren.

Mr. Warren had begun attending my father’s church services in the fall of 1852 shortly after I had turned fifteen. Perhaps to convince me of his faith or to convince Father that he was a worthy mate. Still too young and with the added responsibilities of the younger children, I hadn’t considered Mr. Warren’s earlier proposal much, instead enjoying the pleasantries of his company, not the least of which was a feeling of exuberance for doing so—taking his company—knowing that my father would object if he knew. I wanted a distraction from my father. He stayed up hours at night by candlelight writing long letters. He drank copious amounts of grain coffee and expended rare funds we didn’t have on elixirs he claimed built his concentration. He worked himself into a sweat chopping wood beside my brother, then forgot to bathe before the Sunday service. Several evenings former mission men came for meetings, and I heard them talking late into the night, sometimes my father shouting about Catholics causing all his troubles and shouting of justice “not being served until the Catholic part in this is understood far and wide.”

“The hangings are enough, Spalding,” I heard one of the men say.

“Never!”

“Vengeance is not ours, Reverend.”

“Don’t talk to me of vengeance. You still have a wife! You still have daughters not warped!”

I’m warped?
How was I twisted or deformed? Didn’t I do everything he asked me to do? Didn’t I fill my mother’s shoes as best I could? Didn’t I care for my baby sister, whom he teased while I prepared his meals? How was I misshapen?

“Not all Indians are troublesome,” my father said. “The Board must come to understand that. Marcus is the one who created the issues and he paid the ultimate price at the Cayuse hands. But we were asked to come, begged to come by the Nez Perce. Why can’t we return? Why can’t the Mission Board see that?”

His voice held a wail to it that made my heart ache for him. He and my mother had done so much with the people they served for ten years. I knew he longed to return to that Lapwai valley, to the work that had sustained him. But a part of me knew he could not go home again. My mother wouldn’t be with him. I wished he’d stop talking about it.

He mourned, he did. He took Henry with him on road trips, leaving me to tend the girls. Then other times without warning he would change his mind, tell Henry he had to stay and take care of the little ones and that I should pack for two days. We’d be starting a new church, he’d tell me, in some far-off valley. “I can still save souls,” he’d say. “Regardless of what the Board says.” Yes, he grieved. And some of how he mourned—his unpredictability and frenzy—frightened me. Andrew Warren was a steadier stream.

It was about this time that I began to hear rumors about Mr. Warren. Nancy Osborne told me one or two, that he met up
with fellow farmers—ranchers, he would call them—and they played cards. He sometimes lost “sums.” And he had a taste for liquor, I learned. I remembered Matilda’s stories, and thought these were just ways men played and kept their spirits up until they settled down to hearth and home. I did once venture a conversation with Mr. Warren about what I’d heard. He and I had made our way up the hill behind his parents’ farm; our horses were hobbled as we looked out over the valley below. There’d been some moments of holding, kissing, deep breathing, our bodies lying face-to-face along a quilt my mother set aside for picnics. I could stop the forward motion with my words and I did that now.

“I hear you have a taste for liquor, Mr. Warren.” I sat up, brushed my bodice, and breathed in the scent of his cologne still lingering at my throat.

He pushed his chin down and jerked away from me. “Whose lips are you listening to? Every man likes a little taste. Medicinal, that’s all I take it for. Helps me with the pining you’re putting me through.”

“You are singled out for such behavior. At the back of Brown and Blakely’s, I’m told. On a Saturday night or two. While others drink only to relieve their thirst, I hear that you drink beyond quenching. You’ve even been loaded on your horse and led home, or so I’m told.”

“You hear wrong. Haven’t any other good occupation to commit my efforts to. A certain young lady won’t commit herself.”

“I’ve told you the conditions.” In fact, if he had expressed his faith in God, I wasn’t at all sure that would be enough for my father’s blessing on our marriage. I knew I’d have to work on that, but his reluctance to commit suggested I had time. And during that time I looked forward to the kind things Mr. Warren whispered to me, the gentle stroking of my arm, the
way my heart beat faster when he came near, how time stood still when I was with him and did not start again until I heard the pounding of his horse’s hooves leaving me, my breathing and heart rate once again becoming as steady as a metronome.

“Then let it be known that I do accept your conditions. That I intend to speak to your father about your hand in marriage. I’ve secured a position in Oregon City, working at the docks.”

“You have?” Oregon City was some miles away, across a ferry, though on this side of the Willamette. It’s where the trial was held. I didn’t like to go there.

“The docks? But I thought you were a cattleman.”

“I need to earn funds to buy those cattle, and working for my pa isn’t making that happen fast enough. They need strong arms to load and unload cargo. I’ll come back on Sabbath days. That’s when I’d like to see you, proper.”

“I don’t think my father will—”

“Does he intend to keep you cloistered in that house until your sisters are married off?”

“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.”