Selling Your Father’s Bones: The Epic Fate of the American West

By the measure of the ignoble history of colonial missionary work, Henry Spalding was certainly a success. By 1843, profound and insoluble conflicts were beginning to appear in the Nez Perce community, scuppering their response to the next, decisive, wave of white arrivals. In June 1843 around a thousand people set off from the town of Independence on the banks of the Missouri, to make the 1900-mile wagon journey in search of free land and new lives in the Oregon Territory. After division, comes conquest.

Dancers at the Tamkaliks Celebration, Wallowa Valley, Oregon.