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On the Arrogance of Pioneers

Last month I was fortunate enough to free up a few days on my calendar and used the time to escape to the Blue Mountains. It’s an ecoregion that I am incredibly fond of, and it had been a few years since I had spent time there. I made time to visit the Nez Perce Wallowa Homeland in Wallowa, OR. This 320 acre portion of the Wallowa Valley is a miniscule fraction of the traditional home of the Wallowa band of the Nimíipuu (Nez Perce), and was purchased by the Wallowa Band Nez Perce Trail Interpretive Center, Inc. with help from a variety of public and private grants. The Wallowa Band have graciously made this place available to the public from dawn until dusk, and it features a gorgeous four mile loop trail as well as waterfront land along the Wallowa River.

I arrived pretty late in the day, and it was quite warm, so I only made it up the switchbacks on the ridge up to the lookout gazebo. Still, the view was stunning, and afforded an incredible view of a large portion of the valley and the mountains that create its western border. I can absolutely understand how Hinmatóowyalahtq̓it (Chief Joseph) and his people would have been heartbroken to be forced away from this place that had been home for so very long, and where their ancestors were buried.

As I drove west on 82 back to my hotel, I passed by several ranches that fenced in everything from quarter horses to longhorn cattle. Signs proclaimed what year some of these ranches were founded; one in particular bragged that it had been around since 1884--just seven years after the Nez Perce War in which the Wallowa band had been violently removed from the valley. Hinmatóowyalahtq̓it himself died of heartbreak in exile twenty years after that ranch was founded on thousands of acres stolen from his people.

What thoughts did this lead to? Find out under the cut.

I spent the rest of the drive thinking about these ranches, and how they reminded me of my travels through the Midwest on my twice-a-year peregrinations back home to the Missouri Ozarks. The highways throughout the Great Plains and beyond are dotted with little museums preserving and elevating the history of the largely white American settlers who flooded into lands west of the Mississippi through the middle of the 19th century. While in recent years some have begun highlighting the indigenous cultures displaced by this colonization, there remains a frequent emphasis on "the pioneer spirit" and the hardships settlers faced in "taming the wilderness" with plows, guns, and livestock.

John Gast's famous painting "American Progress" depicting Manifest Destiny as a giant white woman leading settlers and farmers into a sunlit American West, while in the darkened margins indigenous people, their horses, and wild animals flee before "progress".

But what about the hardships faced by the many thousands of indigenous people forced to leave their homes and settle in reservations hundreds or even thousands of miles away? At least the pioneers chose to go west and take over the land; the indigenous people didn't have a choice, and most folks don't take the time to compare and contrast these two migrations. That goes against the dominant narrative. Manifest Destiny proclaimed that American settlers must spread across the width of the continent, from sea to shining sea, and turn it into farmland. By the time these settlers arrived, the indigenous people had already been reduced greatly in number by European diseases, and those who remained were not seen as properly using the land*.

And yet--and yet--no one questions whether things could have been done differently. In what is now Oregon, the various tribes lived within a complex trade and social network with etiquette and shared cultural practices that helped to keep the peace and respect each other's lands when visiting or passing through. When the first white traders arrived, indigenous communities often folded them into these networks, and traders who respected the boundaries were welcomed. This wasn't unique to the Pacific Northwest, either.

What if this had remained the status quo? What if, instead of Europeans and then the U.S. government waging war on Native Americans and forcing them off their land, we had instead worked toward coexistence with the people who had already been here for thousands of years? What if we had managed the same accomplishments we have, in everything from medicine to transportation, but with collaboration with indigenous people rather than domination? We could have gone in with diplomacy, and instead decided to take the easier scorched earth approach in pursuit of profit and power.

No, we can't change the past. But we can look at the present and plan for a better future. That requires us to look at the stories we tell about how the West was "won", and ask why we cling so hard to the narrative of the "good" pioneers, and the Indians who just got in the way, or who supposedly attacked settlers for no good reason. Every time we dig our heels in and insist that "Well, we won and they lost and that's just how it is" or "They weren't even using the land, and it's been in my family for seven generations and we made that ranch what it is", we cut off the opportunity to expand on those narratives and get the whole story. The defensiveness keeps people from having to ask difficult questions and find themselves with uncomfortable answers.

But then, who wants to be made out to be the bad guy, especially when American exceptionalism has told us for generations that we are the best, the greatest, and we can do no wrong? Once you put a crack in that façade, the whole structure on which the pioneer narrative was built starts to crumble. That's scary for people who have known nothing else, and it's not surprising when people who benefit from owning thousands of acres of stolen indigenous land wrap their arms and legs around the justifications for that theft.

It takes real courage to question generations of assumptions and suppressed history while listening and reading to indigenous narratives that go counter to what you were taught. It is brave indeed to look at your current situation--and the history behind it--without getting bogged down in kneejerk defensive reactions. And it is real strength to not then wallow in so much guilt that you never leave the pity party, but instead search for solutions.

I am certainly not an expert in this. I'm one American of assorted European genetic strains, raised in the Midwest surrounded by small towns and cattle farms but long since ensconced in the Pacific Northwest, trying to figure out how to be a better part of the community. And not just the human community, either, because this discussion about what we did to indigenous people for centuries also extends to our behavior toward other living beings, too. But I do know it starts with at least thinking about and questioning the narratives we've been taught in school, in popular culture, and in how our government has treated indigenous people throughout its entire almost 250 year history. If you're like me, consider this an invitation to do the same.

*Just because indigenous communities in the West weren't practicing intensive agriculture in the American sense doesn't mean they weren't farming. Plants might be spread to new places, controlled burns were used to keep prairies and meadows open, and many cultures relied on seasonal migrations to different parts of their land depending on food availability. Extensive trade networks across the continent meant that extra food often found its way far from its land of origin; preserved camas from the Willamette Valley might ultimately be traded for a bison hide in what is now Colorado.

Much of my work was developed on unceded Chinook land on the Long Beach Peninsula in southwest Washington. To help the Chinook Indian Nation regain their federal recognition, and gain access to resources like treaty rights and healthcare, there are some simple but effective ways anyone can help at ChinookJustice.org.

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