Randy Stapilus - It Happened in Idaho: Remarkable Events That Shaped History

Copyright 2002, 2011 by Morris Book Publishing, LLC

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission should be addressed to Globe Pequot Press, Attn: Rights and Permissions Department, P.O. Box 480, Guilford, CT 06437.

Layout: Sue Murray

Project editor: Gregory Hyman

Map: M. A. Dub Morris Book Publishing, LLC

The Library of Congress has cataloged the previous edition as follows:

Stapilus, Randy.

It Happened In Idaho / Randy Stapilus. 1st ed.

p. cm. (It happened in series)

Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7627-1026-3

1. IdahoHistoryAnecdotes. I. Title. II. Series.

F746.6 .S73 2002

979.6dc21

2002070582

ISBN 978-0-7627-6022-0

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Idaho is such a divided state it defies easy description. The south is swathed by the flat, dry Snake River Plain; the west, east, and north are an amalgam of barren foothills, lush farmland, and tree-covered peaks. Idahos middle is occupied by high and jagged mountains, severely limiting travel. Its only north-south road is commonly called the goat trail because of its ruggedness. The reasons for settlement as well as the economic and social bases in the north and south and east and west are radically different. The state is even said to have three capitals: Boise; Spokane, Washington; and Salt Lake City, Utah. It is split between two time zonesMountain and Pacific but the dividing line does not run north to south, as in some other states, but east to west.

The stories in this collection come from all over Idaho, and they reflect the diverse history and divided nature of the statedivisions that endure today.

Credit for a book about this divided state likewise has to be divided. Linda Watkins, Marty Peterson, Jim Weatherby, and the staffs of the Idaho State Library and Idaho State Historical Society were a great help in providing ideas and perspective on Idaho; and editor Charlene Patterson and artist Lisa Harvey shaped this book. Thanks to everyone who helped.

9000 B.C.

The sun was setting, light was fading, and the hunters hurried to prepare their campfire for the night. There was urgency to their activity because the night was cool and getting colder.

The hunters were in a valley, but it was a high valley that could be reached only by climbing over mountains first. In the lowering light, the nomadic band could see high, jagged peaks off to the north and lower ones to the south. This valley was not an especially good place to stay. There was little water, just a few thin streams here and there, and few plantsmainly sagebrush and the camas plant, which provided some sustenance. The high desert was hot in the summer and cold in the winter. There was no real value in sticking around in this type of country.

But the hunters were here for a reason. Big game wandered through the area, following the streams down from the mountains, grazing on the valleys vegetation. Deer, bears, bison, and other animals came through on regular migrations. They had attracted the attention of this band of hunters, who in their explorations had found this valley crossroads. Here, the hunters also found small, hard stonesobsidian, mainlythat they could use. By day, in addition to hunting, they kept a lookout for stone quarries, though the best sites were several dozen miles away, south over the low mountains, or even farther over the hills to the west.

In the firelight the hunters prepared their weapons, pounding flakes from the core of the stones they had found and placing them under the campfire, heat-treating them. It took about eight hours to get the stones just right for reshaping. Once they were ready, the hunters turned the stones into sharp killing toolspoints. The hunters used small rocks or sometimes part of an antler to hammer the stone into a sharp, V-shaped point. The points were almost always three to four inches long and less than an inch wide. After they shaped them, the hunters attached the points to sticks, or shafts, and used them to bring down game.

Sometimes the points were used as articles of trade when bands of hunters encountered each other. Some of the stone carvers were more skilled than others, and the best looking of the pointsnow called Clovis points, after the place in New Mexico where a large cache of them was first foundwere highly prized. Sometimes the points were lost, or left behind, or came loose from their sticks, or remained buried under the campfire. And some of them were stored and simply never recovered.

About eleven thousand years later, as William Simon was using a bulldozer and carryall to move dirt on his farm near Fairfield, in the Camas Valley in central Idaho, he looked into the shallow trough he had made, which was about eighteen inches deep, and discovered several flinty little spear points. He called some neighbors to help him look around, and they found more.

He brought them to the attention of researchers at Idaho State University in Pocatello and at a state museum in Boise. The researchers were astounded at the find: These points were much older than any found before in Idaho. The researchers started a new wave of efforts to reconstruct the lives of Idahos earliest residents who, it turned out, had lived in the area much earlier than previously suspectedas early as 9000 B.C.

Much about the day-to-day lives of Idahos first residents remains a mystery, but the small items they left behind, such as the shaped stones, give us clues about these early people and their lives in what would become the Gem State.

1805

Captain William Clark had no sense of any special danger when he and a few of the soldiers in his expedition walked out of the forest and into a clearing in a high meadow. Clark saw a few small animals but no people. He walked awhile, until he spotted three small Indian boys playing in the field.

Clark had seen few people besides the members of his expedition in recent days, and he wanted to make contact with these Indians. The expedition he led with Meriwether Lewis was in serious trouble, and it needed help.

The explorers approached, but the boys ran off, first hiding in the woods, then sprinting to their village. They were Ni Mii Pu, now called Nez Perc, and their message of strange-looking peopleif people they weresent an instant alarm through the camp. Some of the members of the tribe urged that the interlopers be killed immediately. The risks involved in letting them continue on, invading the tribal homeland, were too great.

They would not have had much difficulty dispatching the white men. On this day, September 22, 1805, on the Weippe plain in north central Idaho, the expedition had come as close as it ever would to a premature end.

The Lewis and Clark Expedition had left St. Louis, Missouri, in May 1804, and by the time they met these Native Americans in what is now northern Idaho, they had been moving west for nearly a year and a half. It was a rigorous journey, far from help of any kind. They had spent their first winter in North Dakotanot an easy place to live during the winter months. Their encounters with Native Americans had been widely varied; some native people were friendly, some were not.