Lewis and Clark Among the Nez Perce: Strangers in the Land of the Nimiipuu

This extraordinary new look at Lewis and Clark among the Nez Perce represents a breakthrough in Lewis and Clark studies. Lewis and Clark Among the Nez Perce is the first richly detailed exploration of the relationship between Mr. Jefferson’s Corps of Discovery and a single tribe.

James Ronda’s groundbreaking Lewis and Clark Among the Indians (1984) reversed the lens for the first time, to look broadly at the Lewis and Clark expedition through the Native American point of view.

Nearly three decades later, Nez Perce historians Allen V. Pinkham and Steven Ross Evans have examined the journals of Lewis and Clark with painstaking care to tease out new insights from what Lewis and Clark wrote about their Nez Perce hosts. Pinkham and Evans evaluate both what Lewis and Clark understood and what they misunderstood in the Nez Perce (Nimiipuu) lifeway and political structure. More particularly they have re-examined the journals for clues about how the Nez Perce reacted to the bearded strangers. They have also gathered together and put into print for the first time the stands of a surprisingly rich Nez Perce oral tradition.

Lewis and Clark Among the Nez Perce is a generous and careful re-evaluation of what we all thought we knew about Lewis and Clark west of the Bitterroot Mountains. It is also a template for a series of tribal histories of the Lewis and Clark expedition that will be inspired by this book. Incidents we thought we knew backward and forward suddenly take on a new light when the historical lens is reversed.

Allen V. Pinkham served in the United States Marine Corps and later earned a two-year degree from Lower Columbia College, in Longview, Washington. Following a long career in the private sector, he moved back to the Nez Perce Reservation and dedicated himself to serving the public as a story-telling educator-author and serving also for nine years (1981-1990) on the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee. He co-authored, with Dan Landeen, the book, Salmon and His People, and wrote a chapter for Alvin Josephy’s, Lewis and Clark through Indian Eyes. He also served on the National Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Council, and helped create the Chief Joseph Foundation, a cultural support organization for tribal youth. He was also on the Board of Trustees for the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. He currently lives at Lenore, Idaho.

Steven Ross Evans, (Ph. D., history, Washington State University), taught history for thirty-three years at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho, before retiring in 2001. He also led a parallel life in the construction trade working out of the Alaska Laborer’s Union, Local #341, Anchorage, and retired from that in 1991. For the last eleven years he has been working with Allen Pinkham researching and writing on the Nez Perce Indians and the Lewis and Clark expedition. His wife, Connie, is a member of the Nez Perce Tribe of Idaho and they have three children and five grandchildren.

Frederick E. Hoxie is Swanlund Professor of History, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and coauthor of The People: A History of Native America.