Child Raising the Nez Perce Way by Paty Jager

Wallowa Lake

I have a spirit trilogy that is set among the Nez Perce Indians of NE Oregon. The Lake Nimiipuu as they called themselves wintered and summered in the Wallowa Valley where I grew up.

To write this trilogy I had to study and research the Nez Perce Indians in the 17 and 1800's.

The children of Nez Perce families were taught by their grandparents. The grandfathers taught the boys how to make weapons, hunt, fish, track, and fight. Grandmothers taught the girls how to take care of their families, do the chores, and help their men. The elders passed down the stories of the trickster coyote and how "The People" came to be. By reading books of their legends I learned how the legends taught the children basic truths about life and how to conduct themselves to be good Nez Perce.

Grandmothers also taught the girls about the coming of age and were by their sides during marriages and the births. When a girl began her menstrual cycle she would stay in the menstrual lodge for the duration of her bleeding. It was believed the women carried strong powers during this time and were susceptible to getting pregnant. They also thought this strong power would overrule the man's power.

This isolation served a purpose. They held private discussions about personal problems and conditions of health, exchanged views on herbal medicine, and composed songs. They cooked their own meals in the lodge and didn't touch anything outside nor could they attend any ceremonies during this time.

They used buffalo hides with the fur still on for menstruation pads or buckskin and milkweed. The pads were put in a hole in the middle of the dwelling and buried. 

After puberty girls were no longer allowed to play with boys and stayed in a lodge with their grandmothers and aunts and taught the ways of women until they married.

In book two of the series, Spirit of the Lake, Dove, a young maiden who becomes pregnant from an attack by a Whiteman, is sent to live with the old woman to keep her from speaking of the incident and causing trouble. The story takes place after the treaty of 1863 that took away the Wallowa Nez Perce's land but wasn't signed by the Wallowa Nez Perce. Because they could be removed from their land at any time against their will, the leader's worked hard, sometimes too hard, to keep peace between their people and the Whitemen moving into the valley.

  

Blurb

Can a spirit set upon this earth to see to the good of the Nimiipuu stay true to justice when revenge burns in his heart?

Wewukiye, the lake spirit, saves a Nimiipuu maiden from drowning and bringing shame to herself and her family. Learning her people ignored her accusations against a Whiteman who took her body, leaving her pregnant,Wewukiye vows to help her through the birth and to prove the Whiteman’s deceit.

Dove slowly heals her heart and her distrust as Wewukiye, the warrior with hair the color of the sun, believes in her and helps her restore her faith in her people and herself.  

On their quest for justice, Dove reveals spiritual abilities, ensnaring Wewukiye’s respect and awe. But will these abilities seal their future or tear them apart?

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Paty Jager is an award-winning author of 25+ novels and over a dozen novellas and short stories of murder mystery, western historical romance, and action adventure. She has garnered a RomCon Reader’s Choice Award for her Action Adventure and received the EPPIE Award for Best Contemporary Romance. All her work has Western or Native American elements in them along with hints of humor and engaging characters.



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Yellowstone's Haunted Love Story

By: Peggy L Henderson

Kite Hill Graveyard near Mammoth Hot Springs

Since it’s only a few weeks before Halloween, I thought it wouldn’t be too far out to write about ghosts and spirits. 

Several ghost stories float around about Yellowstone National Park. There is the headless bride that haunts the famous Old Faithful Inn. There is the story of the vanishing hitchhiker, several Crow and Bannock spirit legends; just to name a few. 

The one story that intrigued me was the one of Mattie’s spirit.  Not only is her story one of myth and mystery, but it is also a timeless love story.

There are two graveyards within Yellowstone National Park. One is the military yard at Fort Yellowstone, the other one is called Kite Hill near Mammoth Hot Springs, which holds fourteen civilian graves. Some of those graves are unidentified. Two of the graves are of people who committed suicide, one was murdered, and one died in an avalanche. 

There are also eight known graves scattered throughout Yellowstone. One of these graves has been of special interest to a lot of people. It is said to contain the spirit of Martha Jane Shipley Culver. She was born on September 18, 1856. She was known as Mattie all her life. 

Mattie grew up working in textile mills in Massachusetts, where tuberculosis was common. When she was seven years old, her father was killed in the Civil War, which forced her family to separate and live with various relatives. When her sister Millie married, Mattie went with them to Montana in search of a new life. The textile mills had already taken their toll on Mattie, and she might have already known that she had tuberculosis.

Mattie, her sister and brother-in-law homesteaded near Billings, Montana, and that was where she met Eugene Gillett in 1882. After a one-year marriage, Eugene died tragically of tuberculosis. 

For years, she lived alone at the Park Hotel in Billings, until she met the newly appointed manager, Ellery Culver. The two shared many of the same experiences from early childhood. Ellery served in the Civil War like Mattie’s father, and later worked for the Northern Pacific Railroad like her first husband. They married in 1886. A year later, Mattie gave birth to a daughter, Theda Culver. 

Firehole River

Ellery Culver accepted a job in Yellowstone National Park as Master of Transportation with the Yellowstone Association and set off for the park. Mattie joined him later, and the family resided at the Firehole Hotel, situated along the banks of that river.  In the fall, they returned to Billings to spend the winter there. By their second year, in 1888, Mattie knew she was dying. Her husband’s job required him to travel to nearby towns, but Mattie decided to stay in the park that she’d come to love, and she even spent the winter there rather than return to Billings. 

Mattie died on March 2, 1889. Her tombstone reads that she was thirty years old, but she was actually thirty-two. 

Nez Perce Creek Picnic Area along Firehole River. Near site of Mattie's grave

When she died, the ground was too frozen, and there was too much snow to dig a grave. Soldiers stationed in the park placed Mattie’s body in two barrels laid end to end, and covered them with snow. A week later, her husband and a friend prepared a real grave for his wife’s final resting place. They used a partition from the Firehole Hotel that had been her home, and a place that she loved, and fashioned a coffin. Ellery buried his wife along the banks of the Firehole River. 

Ellery took his one-year old daughter to live with Mattie’s sister Millie, who had moved west to Washington. Hearing  the spirit of his wife calling him back to Yellowstone, Ellery returned to work in and around the park, drawn to the Firehole area where Mattie lived and died. In 1891, the Firehole Hotel was burned down to make way for a new hotel some miles away. This left Mattie’s grave in solitude along the river.

Tragedy once again struck Ellery, when his daughter Theda became ill, and at nineteen years old, answered her mother’s call and died. 

Poor health forced Ellery to move to California, where he died in 1922. The park service would not allow his body to be buried alongside his wife in Yellowstone, and people who have visited his grave in California swear that he is not there, but has joined his beloved wife along the banks of the Firehole River. 

Many people who have visited Mattie’s grave are repeatedly drawn back to the area. It is said that her spirit walks along the riverbank, and if you listen closely, you can hear her humming to the birds and animals, and beckon you to return time and again.

 --from Yellowstone Ghost Stories

(all photos are my personal property) 

Peggy L Henderson

Western Historical and Time Travel Romance

“Where Adventure Awaits and Love is Timeless”

Author of:

Yellowstone Romance Series

Teton Romance Trilogy

Second Chances Time Travel Romance Series

Blemished Brides Western Historical Romance Series

                

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Bedlam in the Old West

 

Did you ever wonder what happened to mentally ill individuals in the Old West? Something made me start thinking about that, maybe because Halloween is coming and abandoned asylums are supposed to be among the most haunted places one can find. Or, maybe because my great grandfather, James Knox Polk Leggett, died in such a place.

General Henry Gray, 28th Regiment commander

J.K.P. as he was called, enlisted in the Confederate Army in 1862, in Bienville Parish, LA; 28^th Regiment, Louisiana Infantry (Gray’s). He was captured and released by Union forces. After the war, he married my great grandmother, Mary Leggett. From ancestry research, I concluded they were first cousins. Such marriages were not uncommon in those days.

Bessie Mae Leggett Horner & William Daniel Horner; 50th Anniversary photo

 

The two had eleven children, my grandmother, Bessie Mae, among them. Her folks moved to Van Zandt County, Texas, where she was born in 1882. Sadly, her father had mental issues. According to information I received from a distant cousin, J.K.P. even threatened suicide. At some point, Mary or someone else, had him committed to the North Texas Hospital for the Insane, formerly named the North Texas Lunatic Asylum. Later, the name was changed again to the Terrell State Hospital, for the town where it is located.

Terrell State Hospital 1909

From the Texas State Historical Association, I learned the first State Lunatic Asylum (now Austin State Hospital) opened in 1861, when twelve patients were admitted. Before then, “individuals with a mental illness or mental retardation were kept at home, sent out of state for treatment or custodial care, or confined in almshouses or jails.” The second facility, in Terrell, opened in 1883. A third asylum, The Southwestern Lunatic Asylum, opened in San Antonio in 1892.

Did other western states open mental institutions in the 1800s? They sure did. In Gold Rush days, dangerous criminals and mentally ill individuals were imprisoned on a ship called the Euphemia, docked offshore from San Francisco. In 1850, 12 people judged to be "insane" were locked in the Euphemia's hold.

You can read the full story of the Euphemia here: http://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=The_Prison_Ship_'Euphemia'

 

Several other asylums opened in California over the next decades. One, the Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino, opened in 1893. Known simply as "The Insane Asylum" to the public, by 1898 the facility was so overcrowded that the staff could not properly care for patients. Between1893 and 1934, it is believed that over 2,000 patients died and were buried on the hospital grounds.

State Hospital, ca. 1900 California Historical Society Collection/Creative Commons License

Colorado established the state's first public mental hospital, the Colorado Insane Asylum, in 1879 (now the Colorado Mental Health Institute Pueblo.) Eleven individuals were admitted. By 1923, the hospital housed 2,422 patients.

These are only a few examples proving that mental disease was just as big a problem in the “good old days” as it is today. The major difference lies in how the mentally ill were treated back then. They were often victims of neglect and downright cruelty. Many of the “treatments” they were subjected to, including lobotomies, electric shock and isolation in restraints, are consider brutally inhumane today. But back then, such things were standard operating procedure.

 

Lyn Horner is the award-winning author of western historical and romantic suspense novels packed with high adventure, sizzling romance and flashes of paranormal powers.

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