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In Sahaptin Land 
I.—Wherein a Physician and His Wife Take Up 
Residence Among the Indians 
By CHAS. S. MOODY 
T HE really savage Indian has already 
ceased to exist, and the semi-savage 
Indian is rapidly passing. In a few 
decades of years at most the Indian will have 
been forced to adopt the ways of the white 
man, or else he will have gone to join the 
buffalo beyond the western sunset. 
It was my good fortune to pass a number of 
years among the Indians, living with them on 
terms of perfect equality and enjoying their 
confidence in a greater degree than I merited 
perhaps. This residence was at a time, too, 
when the Indians retained much of their sav¬ 
age simplicity and practiced many of their 
ancestral rites and ceremonies. Few white men 
have been permitted to enter the holy of 
holies' of an Indian’s life, and fewer still have 
been able to give an intelligent account of 
what they saw. Army officers have written of 
the Indian as a foe. Missionaries have written 
about him as a man with an immortal soul to 
save, novelists have surrounded him with an 
impossible halo of romance, but few have at¬ 
tempted to depict him as he really is. 
The Sahaptin Nation once occupied a great 
fertile territory lying along the Snake, the 
Salmon and the Kooskia rivers in Idaho, Wash¬ 
ington and Oregon. The Government deprived 
them of all their lands in Oregon and Wash¬ 
ington and confined them to a small territory 
along the Kooskia. I say small territory, and 
so it is by comparison with their former home, 
though at the time of which I write it was still 
several times larger than many of the Eastern 
States. This territory was always rich in game, 
and its waters teemed with fish. The climate, 
too, is perfect and the soil well adapted to the 
simple agricultural needs of the Indians. 
I desire to state at the outset that at no time 
shall I make use of the term Nez Perce. At 
present it is impossible to lay violent hands on 
those who first called them so. They do not 
now, nor have I been able to find any legend 
or tradition pointing to a time when they 
pierced their noses. They know themselves as 
Sahaptins and as Sahaptins I shall speak of 
them. 
At the time of our coming among the Sahap¬ 
tins, they were divided into several groups. Of 
these groups the principal one lived near 
Lapwai on a creek of that name some twelve 
miles east of the town of Lewiston, Idaho. 
Another occupied the land around the mouth 
of the Koos-koos-kia, something like forty miles 
from Lapwai, and yet another lived near 
Kamiah still further up the Kooskia. 
The Lapwai Indians were called the Agency 
Indians from the fact that the agency and fort 
were there, as were also the Catholic Mission 
and the Presbyterian Missions. At Ahsahka, 
where we were located, stood another little 
Presbyterian Mission surrounded by -its scores 
of Indian tepees. There were settlements of 
Indians scattered up and down the rivers and 
their tributaries, wherever a plot of land large 
enough to plant a field could be found. 
Let us return to Ahsahka and let me carry 
you back in imagination, at least, several years? 
It was early spring; upon the mountain up¬ 
lands the snow still lingered deep and white. 
With a heavily laden sled, my wife and I were 
tailing across the snow-covered waste. She sat 
among the household goods wrapped in the 
bedding and holding our little boy to keep him 
warm. We were following a dim mark where 
once, weeks before, another sled had passed. 
It was a toilsome journey. The weary horses 
floundered mid-side deep in the rotting snow, 
and their progress was a snail’s pace. Back at 
a sawmill they had told us that it was only four 
miles to the top of the Kooskia canon, and 
from there our journey would be easy. In 
reality it was only four miles, but under the 
conditions they were exceedingly weary ones. 
To add to the discomfort, night fell and wrapped 
the earth in gloom. It grew so dark that we 
could not see to proceed, so turned the sled 
out of the trail and came to a halt beneath the 
spreading branches of a great fir tree, where 
the snow was nearly gone. In short time T 
had a fire going, and the little woman was 
lifted from her perch and deposited upon a roll 
of bedding. The horses were unharnessed and 
given their oats, which they munched in con¬ 
tentment, the steam rising in a cloud from their 
heaving sides. It was not a very cheerful camp, 
that one on that bleak hillside overlooking the 
deep gash cut in the breast of nature by the 
rushing waters of the Kooskia. 
After the meal I made down our bed, and 
too tired to even talk, we soon fell asleep. At 
daybreak next morning I was awakened by a 
voice, saying, “Good morning, friend. Where 
are you going?” Starting, I reached for my 
rifle and sprang up. In an instant I knew that 
I should not need weapons, for I looked into the 
smiling face of a giant Indian mounted upon a 
diminutive pony. One sight of that broad smile 
dispelled all visions of painted savages on the 
warpath. He slipped off his pony, turned it 
loose, and set about raking together the embers 
of the camp-fire. He collected and piled on the 
dry limbs of a fallen pine until the fire glowed; 
then squatting before it, he took out a pipe, 
and filling it with tobacco, proceeded to smoke. 
My wife stirred and awoke. The baby sat up, 
rubbed his eyes and eyed the new arrival with 
round wondering gaze. 
We prepared breakfast, and our visitor, as a 
seeming matter of course, shared it with us. 
He took a great deal of interest in the little , 
chap and asked innumerable questions which, 
being couched in a strange tongue, were unin¬ 
telligible. When we were ready to start, our 
Indian friend lifted the baby off the blanket 
where he was sitting and started with him to- , 
ward the pony, with the evident intention, as 
my wife thought, of kidnapping him. I shall | 
never forget the scream she gave, nor will I , 
ever forget the look of surprise and consterna- , 
tion which overspread that Indian's face. We 
learned afterward that his intentions were of 
the best, that all he desired was to relieve my wife 
of the care of the child down over the rough 
trail. My wife, however, snatched the boy i 
away and cuddling him to her breast, climbed 
hastily into the sled. The Indian, taking no 
offense at being so rudely rebuffed, carefully 
tucked the covering about her, so that she 
might be warm, then mounted his horse and led 
the way toward the brow of the hill. 
The morning sun was just rising. The im¬ 
mense canon was filled with the mists of night 
until it seemed one might drive a team across 
on the snowy surface to the opposite side. A 
slight breeze sprang up and mists rolled away, 
disclosing the abyss at our feet. Miles deep it 
was with the lordly Kooskia rolling like a little 
silver thread at the bottom, so distant that the 
sound of its rapids came only to us as a gentle 
murmur. Strange as it seemed to us, half way . 
down the canon side the snow disappeared. The 
contrast between the bare ground and that 
covered with snow was very striking, for the , 
green grass came right up to the snow line, or 
seemed to do so from the height we were at. 
At the point where the snow ended stood an 
old farm wagon, left there by the Indians to 
furnish transportation between the river and 
the snow. Our friend indicated by signs that we 
were to leave our sled there and transfer to the 
wagon, and with his assistance we did so. 
When once more ready to start, he made us 
understand that the road was very rough, and 
