The Allotment Plot: Alice C. Fletcher, E. Jane Gay, and Nez Perce Survivance

7. Irresolutions and Incompletions

[225] 7. Irresolutions and Incompletions Were the accounts written by Jane Gay to be taken as fully accurate representations of events on the Nez Perce Reservation, Independence Day in Lapwai in 1891 might be seen as the end of traditional celebrations of that occasion. Wishing to emphasize the emergence of a strong Christian Native leadership in this more traditional area of the reservation, Gay recounts the effects of a petition written with her aid (in the guise of the Cook) by a committee of Nez Perce Presbyterian elders determined to see the “prohibit[ion of] the old fashion ” of “horse races and circling warhoop procession” at the upcoming celebration.1 Within a week the commissioner of Indian affairs sent telegrams to officials at Lapwai, directing them to “[a]llow no racing, gambling or other immoral practices anywhere in vicinity of school,” to the great consternation of both the agent and the group of Lapwai Nimiipuu who had begun to plan the celebration.2 These angry partisans, according to Gay, blamed the missionary Kate McBeth for interrupting their plans, and “the guilty Cook escaped . . . the consequences of her rash deeds” (C, 361). While this account is not incorrect, it is riddled with eloquent silences. This was the last account of a Fourth of July celebration Gay wrote and published.3 She framed it as an ending brought about by the Presbyterian elders at Lapwai. “[A] great step has been taken in the right direction,” she writes. “Hence forth there will be two parties [226] in the tribe and a spirited fight will go on” (C, 362). At its base, the statement is false: there had been at least “two parties” —if not more—among the Nimiipuu from the advent of white missionaries and settlers, and despite an interim agreement made in 1887 to hold a “joint [Fourth of July] celebration,” subsequent festivities had been held both in Kamiah and in Lapwai.4 Moreover, at Lapwai the observances had often featured both camp meeting activities and more traditional observances. In 1891 there was indeed “no war procession.” But this omission did not signal the complete triumph of Christian rectitude, nor the end of traditional activities. Rather, as Gay admits, at that celebration “a race track was marked out on the uplands and for a whole week the ponies galloped and the blankets were staked and lost and won, and just outside the school fence the camp was pitched” (C, 361). What happened on that occasion might more correctly be read as a pause than as a conclusion. By the next year the prohibitions had been forgotten. Although Gay and Fletcher attended the 1892 celebration , neither wrote of it to any extent. Fletcher noted briefly in her field diary: “Fantastic procession / Miss Gay taken off by John McFarland who takes photographs with a stealth box.”5 Other records establish that any threat to the children at the Fort Lapwai Industrial School posed by “immoral practices,” real or imaginary, seems to have evaporated, at least in part because in July 1892, according to Superintendent Edward McConville’s report to the commissioner of Indian affairs, “The entire school was invited to spend the 4th of July in Lewiston, Idaho, and to assist in the exercises of the day, while the band furnished the music for the occasion. The band, followed by the school boys in uniform marching, and the girls riding, and carrying banners of the different States of the Union, made a display of which I was very proud.”6 Meanwhile, in Lapwai , “James Reuben, the leading Indian orator of America, was the principal speaker.”7 Darwin James, a Presbyterian church official visiting the area for the Board of Indian Commissioners, offers the most revealing evidence that the prim rectitude of the 1891 camp meeting was a momentary aberration. Shortly after observing the Lapwai celebration in 1892 he reported to the commissioner of Inendings [227] dian affairs, “The debauchery on July 4th was shocking, the Indians gave themselves up to revelry & low practices.”8 In short, in every respect the festivities in 1892 resembled those held for at least the past fifteen years. They included the war procession and they elicited the customary outraged Presbyterian response. In another sense, Gay’s account of the pivotal import of the 1891 petition and the resultant contretemps was correct: missionary and Presbyterian interests were at the heart of the problem. The concerns of...