0800722329 (8 page)

“My name is Rachel Johonet Jane Smith. Well, I guess Spalding too. But you may call me Mother if you wish.” Her voice was clear as a mountain stream. I wanted to muddy it.

“And if I don’t wish?”

“Eliza. Don’t be rude.”

Rachel pressed her gloved hands on my father’s arm as she turned to him. “No, no, that’s fine. I appreciate a child who speaks her mind.” That won her one check for good with me. “Then Rachel would be preferable. I do understand your reluctance.”

She had kind words for each child, noting Millie’s new front teeth and Martha’s arched brows. Henry, nearly as tall as Rachel, nodded formally to her. To me Rachel said, “Your father
speaks so highly of you, Eliza, of such a helpmate you’ve been to him. And of your . . . tragedy. I’m so sorry.”

“There’s no need for you to be sorry,” I said. “You had nothing to do with it.”

My father cleared his throat. “Good, good. Let’s get settled in then, shall we, Rachel, dear?” He lifted the carpetbag he’d carried, pausing to walk with it to his bed . . . their bed.

Her eyes gazed around our simple home and I saw it as she did: a plank table with two benches on either side and one chair at the end. My father’s. The rocking chair on the rag rug I’d made. Our beds were stuffed with bedstraw, a plant that grew beside the river in the moist areas. Henry and I slept in the loft; the little girls on mats nearest my father’s bed. Rachel pushed down on that pad with a flattened hand. “It feels so . . . different.”

“You’re accustomed to feather ticks, I suspect.” This, from my father. “We have fewer amenities here. I tried to explain the conditions to you, Rachel.” She’d arched her eyebrow. “Mrs. Spalding.” His correction brought a smile to her wide face.

“Something to order then. A person’s sleep is paramount to good health.
Godey’s Lady’s
Magazine
affirms it. I’ll be subscribing to that, as well. The magazine is excellent training material for young girls. I’m sure you’ll like it.” She smiled at Martha, who curtsied. I’d never seen my sister curtsy nor grin as huge as the one she gave Rachel when the woman lifted Martha’s chin in her gloved hands and whispered, “Such beautiful features.”

“My mother corresponded with the editor of
Godey’s
,” I said. “We have copies here.”

“Did she, now? How glorious for you all.”

“Just old ones,” Martha said. “Old copies.”

“Well, my, that’s unexpected. And excellent.” She removed her yellow gloves. Both dress and gloves had brown accent
piping. Her crinolines swirled as she surveyed beyond our faces and filled the small space further. “A quilt will form as a divider until we can add a room for the children’s beds, don’t you think, Henry?” My brother opened his mouth. “I don’t think I can . . .” then closed it. We’d never heard a woman call my father “Henry.” He’d always been “Mr. S” from my mother and “Reverend Spalding” or “Postmaster” from other men and women in our town. Or Father.

“He didn’t know to whom you were speaking.” My father expressed an awkward chuckle. “We call him Henry Hart. His mother’s maiden name.”

“You’ll be plain Henry then, Husband,” Rachel clarified. “That way there’ll be no confusion. Isn’t that right, Henry Hart? And we’ll keep your mother’s name. Ever in our presence. Henry Hart. That’s lovely.”

She won another point from me as my father nodded. He certainly couldn’t be besotted with her, could he? It was a marriage of convenience, and at that moment I found myself less troubled by her presence than by the surprise of it, that I had failed to see any signs. Still, it would be good to have an extra hand at fixing meals, making soap and candles, carrying water buckets, milking cows, weeding the garden, drying fish and berries, letting out the hems of little dresses. I might even have more time with Mr. Warren. Despite the trepidations, the possibilities suddenly sounded delicious.

“Now then, let’s rustle up some grub.” My father used a phrase I’d only heard spoken by men tending sheep back at our mission in Lapwai. He rubbed his hands together too, a gesture foreign to him. He acted . . . giddy.

Five pairs of eyes turned to Rachel Johonet Jane Smith Spalding.

Her blue eyes wide, her mouth a perfect
O
, she said, “Surely you don’t expect me . . . ?”

After a moment’s pause, my father spoke. “No. Of course not. You’ve traveled far today and must be tired. Eliza, please prepare our supper.”

I turned toward the cupboard where we kept the flour, soda, salt, and blackberry syrup to stir up syrup bread.

“Dear Henry. Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t my dear brother-in-law explain?” Rachel removed the hat pins while she spoke. “I don’t cook. I’m a professional woman. I’ve never even boiled an egg.”

The Diary of Eliza Spalding

1850

I am ill now, not even able to be up and boil eggs for my children. Henry Hart prepares them as Mr. S and Eliza spend time and money in Oregon City at the trial. I hear the chatter of my children being nurtured in the kitchen.

Today I found a letter to my brother Horace among his things stored here in Brownsville. In March 1846 I had written to him:

“I thank God, whom I serve from my forefathers with pure conscience, that without ceasing I have remembrance of thee in my prayers night and day; Greatly desiring to see thee, being mindful of thy tears, that I may be filled with joy.” Paul writes these words to Timothy and me to you, my dear brother Horace. I thank you for sending me the message of our father’s death. He was a good man, though how I wish he had found his way to the Lord’s blessings. But we cannot know these things. At the last moment, my prayers for him may have been answered and I will see
him again in a better place. I pray too that our dear mother awaits him with open arms and that one day you will be there with my sisters and all of us as well.

It is of great joy that you will come west and bring my inheritance such as it is. Our father had said quite clearly that upon his death I must return to New York to secure my land as my siblings acquired, which is of course impossible. Even though things are more settled than in ’42 with Mr. S no longer being considered for dismissal, we lack both funds and the will to make such a lengthy trip, and heaven knows what would happen to our work here in our absence. Your plans to come by ship to Vancouver are wise. Send us word upon your departure and we will prepare to bring you here from the Fort at Vancouver. If you can make your way to Fort Walla Walla, that would mean a much less arduous trip for Mr. S to meet you and bring you to our Lapwai mission. What a joy it will be to hold you again, dear brother. My regards please to my sisters whom I hold in my heart.

Ever your faithful sister,
Eliza

While Henry Hart prepares our eggs, three-year-old Millie and five-year-old Martha speak together in a language almost their own, their leaving dolls making a happy family—the dolls made of leftover cloth, a cotton ball for a head, and yarn to mark the sleeves as arms. They appear cheerful, not stricken by all that happened, not scarred as Eliza is. She endured so much. I worry that she is too stalwart, too strong. Even a tree must bend in the wind or it will break, have its roots exposed. I fear her breaking and my not being here to tend to her healing.

I awaited Horace’s arrival that day with such joy the year before everything happened. I was eager for his companionship. The tensions between us and the other missionaries, the Smiths and the Whitmans, grew ever worse. Dr. Whitman sometimes refused to act as the mission doctor, which was his responsibility. He would not come when I gave birth to Eliza, until it was almost too late. The child nearly died. Other times he told Mr. S what he must and must not do in bringing the faith to our Nimíipuu. He seemed jealous—such a childish emotion—when Timothy, Joseph, and a white man, Connor, asked for baptism. We had not brought the Indians to the faith “in English.” Such a petty thought. We were not forced to learn Greek or Hebrew before we found the faith. We learned in English, our language. Why not teach in Nez Perce?

Marcus Whitman’s intrusions troubled us and things only got worse with the arrival of the Smiths. Marcus was not trained as a minister of the word. Mr. S was. He felt we should not be teaching in the Nez Perce language, that our Indians should learn English. Yet the Whitmans rejoiced with the printing press and the publication of our primer and the book of Matthew, both in Nez Perce language called Sahaptin. At least outwardly they rejoiced. The Halls did celebrate. They taught Hawaiian at their mission. Like us, they did not require English for their converts and they too were successful in bringing people to experience love. I miss Sarah Hall immensely.

And what good was English, just to speak to us? We could easily speak their language after a time, even little Eliza. We taught the scriptures to the young men who did know English, and as criers, they taught their people. I drew pictures to describe Noah’s ark and God’s provision and rainbow promise. And they did a splendid job of reteaching the women and children, the braves and the elders. Yes, they may have missed some nuance of the faith but what they needed to know—that Jesus loved them as they were and would greet them in Heaven—they understood. To my thinking, is there a greater message?

All the missionaries, wives, and children had a meeting at Waiilatpu, all of them, in ’42. I refused to attend. I didn’t want to hear the bickering nor their unkind words about Mr. S—and me, I suppose. My teacher training allowed me to draw, sing, play harmonica music, hymn-sing, and do every handiwork I could imagine, giving experience to words, using head, heart, and hands. Our Nez Perce learned quickly! I drew the Bible stories of the woman with the lost coin, using bones from their stick games for currency—or did I paint dentalia, the small round mollusk shells used as currency? My memory fades. I painted David and Goliath, drawing an Indian boy and man. A river stone and slingshot caught their interest, easily. I painted pictures using inks I made from red berries and black berries and the sunny flowers that sprang forth in spring. All ages loved the colorful stories and I felt useful, as though the talents given me had found a place of investment.

I think the Whitmans and the Smiths were envious. So I remained at home with the children while the others went off and met in ’42 at Waiilatpu and did the business of sending reports to the Mission Board. I knew something wasn’t right when Mr. S returned early. He claimed it had been a contentious time but they’d resolved hard issues. Later, as we lay side by side on the bird-feather mattress, he whispered what had happened. A letter from the Board awaited him at the meeting. It was full of complaints lodged by other missionaries against us! Because of these unfounded complaints, Mr. S and Dr. Whitman, too, had been dismissed.

“Dismissed? That can’t be! Why?” I edged up on my elbow, brushed my long braid aside.

“They say we’ve lost our way, not brought sufficient heathens to the Lord.” It was how they counted success, by numbers rather than by how people changed their lives.

“Well, maybe not Marcus but you have. We have.”

He lay with his hands as in prayer across his stomach. “Perhaps we have focused too much on getting the Indians to settle near the mission. We did it for a good reason, to protect them, especially since Marcus invites the immigrants, makes them feel welcome so they’ll stay and we’ll have a state one day. That appeals to him more than saving souls. But maybe we spend too much time in plowing furrows rather than in planting seeds of faith.” In the moonlight I could see him blink rapidly. “I may have failed us, Eliza. I may have failed us.”

I reminded him of Young Timothy coming to the Lord. Of Joseph, seeking baptism, giving up the ways of the medicine doctors and the strange spirits. How could he speak of failure? “Are we abandoned here, then? All our work we’re to forget ever happened? And go where? How? We have nothing but the clothes on our backs. Or is even my nightdress the property of the Mission Board?” I felt a panic new to me, greater than when I almost died coming here across the continent. Was it shame, a fear of failure? Anger at whom? I inhaled, slowed my heartbeat, resolved to remind myself we were in God’s hands. I kept my voice calm. I could see Mr. S was distressed beyond words. “Who lodged these complaints?”

“Smiths, I imagine. Maybe the Eells.”

I rose from our bed. The moon shone full through the single window casting a square shadow onto the puncheon floor. I paced. I knew Narcissa and Marcus still grieved the drowning of their little Alice, born not long before our Eliza. Perhaps that’s what brought on all the chaos, the complaints. Grief is a shape shifter. Narcissa could be demanding and they complained that they were not well treated by their Cayuse Indians. When they came here, they could see that we had friends among The People. Matilda and I laughed together as sisters, shared stories in a language Narcissa didn’t understand. We saw the Nez Perce as people, not just heathens needing our Savior. We were willing to let them teach us things about them, about living here. At that time, it seemed to me the Whitmans had abandoned their efforts to bring the Book of Heaven to their Indians, whom they dismissed as stubborn, demanding money for the use of their land. Instead the Whitmans focused on the emigrants who came, more each year. The Whitmans prepared for settlement, for the arrival of new pioneers who would take even more prime land from the Indians, and spent their time selling goods to those on wagon trains while we spent our love on the Nez Perce and their souls.