Graves And Grizzlies (June 1967 | Volume: 18, Issue: 4)

Graves And Grizzlies

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Authors: Andrew Garcia

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June 1967 | Volume 18, Issue 4

When in 1879 Andrew Garcia, a young Spanish-American trader, proposed to the eighteen-year-old Nez Perce girl ln-who-lise, he made her two promises: that they would be married properly, by a priest, and that he would lake her to find the graves of her father and sister. These relatives had been killed two years earlier in the Battle of the Big Hole, near present-day Wisdom, Montana, during the last rout of the Nez Perce Indians (see “The Last Stand of Chief Joseph” in the February, 1958, AMERICAN HERITAGE). In-who-lise’s sister had been shot to death as she ran out of their tepee, and her father had died two days later of a stomach wound, ln-who-lise was obsessed with finding their graves, for according to Nez Perce belief, the spirit of a dead person not properly buried would wander in eternal misery.

In-who-lise herself had been shot through the shoulder and clubbed in the face by a soldier’s gun as she attempted to escape. The wound healed, but one of her front teeth had been broken off by the butt of the rifle; the Pend d’Oreille Indians who took her in named her ln-who-lise, or “Broken Tooth.”

That Garcia, who was then about twenty-four, genuinely loved his Indian bride is demonstrated in this picaresque, tender, utterly ingenuous account written almost forty years later, ln-who-lise died before she was twenty, and Garcia later married three more times; but when as an old man he wrote his memoirs, what he chose to record was his early years among the Indians, and his courtship and brief marriage to the appealing Nez Perce maiden. Bennett H. Stein found the manuscript, stored in old dynamite boxes, in 1948, five years after Garcia's death in Missoula, Montana. Mr. Stein has reorganized and punctuated it, but the words themselves are Garcia’s. The following article is an excerpt from the memoir, which will be published in August by Houghton Mifflin Company under the title Tough Trip Through Paradise. Our story starts when Garcia and his bride, driving a bunch of pack horses, reach the Big Hole battlefield. —The Editors

 

I had wanted to see the Big Hole battlefield, and now that I had my wish, I hope to God never to see another sight like it again!

We tried to find the grave of In-who-lise’s sister, Lucy, but our search was in vain. The sight was awful to see. Human bones were scattered through the long grass and among the willows across the creek, and on this side of the creek human bones and leering skulls were scattered around as though they had never been buried. Only the soldiers’ graves were in fair condition.

This ghastly display of Indian dead made me doubtful for the first time in my life if there is a Jesus or a God. And to make matters worse, my wife, since the time when we came to this cursed place, has been crying and calling to her dead sister’s