ABSTRACT
In 1879, Sue McBeth arrived in Lapwai, Idaho, to join the missionary group charged with the conversion and instruction of the Nez Perce Indians. While missionary presence in northern Idaho dated from around 1835, the arrival of McBeth in 1879 marked a new era in Anglo American and Nez Perce relations.2 The defeat of the non-treaty Nez Perce by the United States Army and their subsequent imprisonment and exile in “Eekish Pah – the hot place” allowed missionaries to concentrate on the “Christian” Nez Perce and bring them closer to the faith.3 Bringing Indians closer to the faith or converting them to Christianity necessarily implied that that they would not only adopt Christian beliefs, but would also take on the cultural aspects of Protestant Christianity in the late nineteenth century. These cultural expectations principally focused on “heathen” practices that missionaries and church workers believed were rooted in the “former” life and religious beliefs of the Nez
Perce people.4 The dual nature of reconstructing Nez Perce life and history, as practiced by missionaries and church workers, illustrated the amnesiac traits evident in knowledge created about the Nez Perce. The prevalent idea was to bury or kill former Nez Perce knowledge and beliefs while recreating a “new” person that followed the cultural expectations of Anglo Americans. Nez Perce knowledge, beliefs, and history were used against the Nez Perce themselves as weapons to justify their cultural destruction and to lower their social position in Anglo-American society.
