| Lucullus Virgil McWhorter | |
|---|---|
| Born | January 29, 1860 Harrison County, West Virginia |
| Died | October 10, 1944 Prosser (North Yakima), Washington |
| Occupation | Farmer, Writer, Native-American-civil-rights advocate |
| Language | English |
| Nationality | US |
| Education | Self Educated |
| Genres | History, Anthropology |
| Subjects | Nez Perce War, Yakama Nation's culture and spiritualism, Nez Perce culture |
| Notable work(s) |
Hear Me, My Chiefs |
| Notable award(s) | Was given a name by the Yakama Nation, "Big Foot".[1] Adopted into the Yakima Nation and given another name, Hemene Ka-Wan (Old Wolf).[2] |
| Spouse(s) |
Adelia A. Swisher (married 1883)[1] |
| Children |
Ovid Tullius McWhorter (born 1884)[1] |
Lucullus Virgil McWhorter (January 29, 1860–October 10, 1944) was an American farmer and frontiersman who documented the Native American tribes in modern-day West Virginia and the Plateau Indians in Washington state.
His studies were anthropological, studying culture and history of the tribes. His work took on a political side as well; by doing what he did, McWhorter became a voice for the Plateau Indians against mistreatment by the United States federal government and fought to make this mistreatment known to the public. He was considered an amateur in his day, but today his anthropology studies are deemed important enough to have a permanent home in a university's special collections department.[1] His work is seen today by the researchers as being "significant" in his field, preserving the cultural heritage of the Native American Tribes of the Columbia Basin[3]. His papers are an "essential and valued resource", and the collection of his papers is "widely and intensively used."[3] After more than 60 years, his the work he did remains "extremely valuable for outreach and teaching purpose."[3]
His work earned praise from Professor Alanna Kathleen Brown, writing about a new biography for him, Voice of the Old Wolf: Lucullus Virgil McWhorter and the Nez Perce Indians, in the Universe Magazine, Spring 1997[4]. She called him an "amazingly interesting, courageous, dedicated, and insightful man."[4] As to his accomplishments, she said:
For over 400 years, while Euroamericans were moving west, they pretended that they settled a "wilderness." When confronted by native peoples, the vast majority asserted the privileges of a superior race, using force and law to take what they wanted, justifying their greed as the manifestation of divine will. For Indian peoples, their coming meant the largest genocide in human history. McWhorter understood, and was appalled. He dedicated his energies to comprehending the cultures of the Indian tribes who surrounded him, and he committed himself to recounting the legends and epic personal stories of those he saw passing. McWhorter also continually argued for fair treatment and decency towards Indians whenever he could be an advocate. For this love, he was ridiculed and isolated by many of his own white peers.[4]
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Lucullus V. McWhorter was born one of twelve children to Reverend John Minion McWhorter and Rosetta Marple McWhorter on January 29, 1860 in Harrison County, Virginia (an area later admitted into the union as a part of the state of West Virginia).[5] From his childhood on, Lucullus rejected a formal education and instead adapted his own methods of learning through his love for nature and the out-doors. He married his wife Adelia A. Swisher on March 17, 1883, and together they produced three children: Ovid (born 1884), Iris (born 1886), and Virgil (born 1888). However, their marriage was cut short when Adelia died in the winter of 1893. He later married his second wife in 1895 and in 1897, moved his family from Upshur County, West Virginia to Darke County, Ohio. Here, he continued his work as a farmer and rancher and his in-depth study of Indian tribes through constant reading and research through experiencing Indian life. Though his studies on Indian tribes of West Virginia held great significance to the history of tribes in West Virginia and his founding of the journal, The American Archaeologist, with A. C. Gruhlke and J. R. Nissley helped further his research; McWhorter had his sights set on the American West.[6]
McWhorter left Fort Jefferson, Ohio on February 26, 1903 and headed west to settle in Yakima, Washington[7] (called North Yakima until 1918[8]). He arrived in April and set up a ranch on the outskirts of North Yakima on the Yakima River. By choosing this area, McWhorter put himself directly on a trail that connected the town of North Yakima with the nearby Yakima Indian Reservation. "Anyone from the reservation with any business in town soon found the McWhorter place a convenient spot to camp, and the eager McWhorter began to make friends almost at once among the Yakamas."[9] The close observation of the Yakamas’ culture and spiritualism, he found to be simple and inviting. This led him to question his own religion of Christianity and he ultimately renounced Christianity altogether, but began a comparative study between different religions.[10] McWhorter’s frequent contact with the Yakama Indians would lead to his championing the struggles of the Yakama Indians against federal officials and other white settlers.
The plight of the Yakama Indians had been well established by the time McWhorter arrived in Washington. In 1855 various Indian leaders signed treaties establishing, amongst other things, reservations.[11] The Yakima Indian reservation was one of three reservations established during this time. The treaty guaranteed the Yakama Indians rights to their land; however, miners soon converged on Yakama reservation land prompting a three year war that ended with the defeat of the Yakama Indians in 1858.[12] As the years progressed, Whites would continue to encroach on the Yakama Indian Reservation and in 1887 Congress would pass the Dawes Allotment Act, which added legal weight to white claims on Yakama land.[13] Then in 1906, Washington Senator Wesley L. Jones proposed a bill in congress that would require Yakama Indians to give up three-fourths of their land in exchange for irrigation rights.[14] Seeing that the odds were against the Yakama Indians, McWhorter quickly took action.
McWhorter would befriend then Chief of the Yakama Indians, Yoom-Tee-Bee, as he sought to aid the Yakama Indians in their fight to preserve their rights and land. Together, the two would ride on horseback across the Yakama reservation talking to residents and encouraging them not to sign anything for US government officials.[15] He would become a prominent figure in Yakama Indian affairs, sitting in on tribal councils and writing scores of letters to congressmen as well as prominent Native American civil rights activists on the east coast to bring the struggle of the Yakamas to light.[16] McWhorter would later publish a pamphlet, The Crime Against the Yakamas, in 1913 further detailing the Yakamas long history of abuse at the hands of the United States government.[17]
Chief Yoom-Tee-Bee died in 1910, but as a result of his and McWhorter’s efforts, the Jones bill died in congress in 1914.[18] Later that year, McWhorter would receive a letter of thanks from Yoom-Tee-Bee’s successor Stwire G. Watters, in which he states, "We prayed for someone like you to come to us."[19] McWhorter’s efforts would lead to him being ceremoniously adopted by the Yakama tribe, being given the name Hemene Ka-Wan, Old Wolf.[2] He would continue to be an active force in the Yakima Indian reservation for the rest of his life, attend council meetings, acting as a mediator between the Yakamas and the Bureau of Indian Affairs,[20] and published an additional pamphlet in 1916 detailing the continuing plight of the Yakamas, The Continued Crime Against the Yakamas.[21] McWhorter’s constant advocacy for Indian rights against the oppression of the US government was a lifelong mission, one that contributed to his other passion of recording Indian history as narrated from Indian perspectives.
Lucullus V. McWhorter’s first encounter with a Nez Perce Indian was by chance in 1907 when a man by the named Hemene Mox Mox, or Yellow Wolf came to his ranch near the Yakima River in Washington State. After learning of Yellow Wolf’s experiences as a Nez Perce warrior and veteran of the Nez Perce War of 1877 they would befriend each other. McWhorter saw the need to record Nez Perce accounts of their history. "To hear Yellow Wolf," he wrote, "was to be impressed by the unquestionable candor of his conviction that he and his associates were fully justified in all their actions".[22] With a translator, McWhorter began studying Yellow Wolf’s life and the history of the Nez Perce which would produce two pieces of work by McWhorter called, Yellow Wolf: His Own Story and Hear Me, My Chiefs!.
Up until then, the only accounts written about the Nez Perce and the War of 1877 were by white U.S. soldiers who fought against the Nez Perce Indians in the war, thus they told the story as a one sided argument. General Oliver Otis Howard was the commanding officer of U.S. troops pursuing the Nez Perce during the Nez Perce War of 1877 and would write his own historical record in 1881 titled, Nez Perce Joseph: An Account of His Ancestors, His Lands, His Confederates, His Enemies, His Murders, His War, His Pursuit and Capture, and depicting the Nez Perce campaign.[23] This was the motivation for McWhorter to tell the Nez Perce story so to preserve Native American Identity. Many years before the arrival of McWhorter, the Nez Perce had gone through much change since the signing of the Walla Walla treaties on June 11, 1855, "It had taken the commissioners less than a month to acquire over thirty million acres of land in three future states…and added a fresh layer to the shifting sands of Indian identity along the Columbia River".[24] Between 1855 and 1877 the Nez Perce Reservation would diminish into a fraction of what it used to be.
After several disputes over land and resources the Nez Perce people were growing weary of the whites influence over their land. The actions of three Nez Perce boys would be the breaking point and bring about the beginning of the Nez Perce War in 1877, "General Howard has shown us the rifle. We answer ‘Yes.’ We will stir up a fight for him. We will start his war!"[25] By recording what Yellow Wolf had told him McWhorter would take action in telling the Nez Perce story in Yellow Wolf: His Own Story. Yellow Wolf’s story would be the anthem of all Nez Perce who lost and fought for their way of life. He depicted the "non-treaty" Nez Perce not as savages, but as strong people that were resilient to their American oppressors. In doing so, McWhorter challenged the stereotype that had long been perpetuated by Indian histories told through white eyes.
Later in McWhorter’s life, he would pursue to complete his "Field History" of the Nez Perce which would later be called Hear Me, My Chiefs! Nez Perce History and Legend.[26] It would not be published until after his death. In 1951, his son Virgil McWhorter would complete his father's field history, so to depict the Nez Perce narrative. His final piece of work would cover how the Nez Perce came to be a thriving people throughout Washington State’s Palouse region and the events following the end of the war of 1877. "On his deathbed, McWhorter made a request to his son, Virgil…to see his still untitled Field History through to publication."[27] It was his dying wish that the voice of the Nez Perce people would be heard and told through their perspective.
The friendship that McWhorter found with Yellow Wolf and the Nez Perce Indians proved to be invaluable to his historical findings. Up to his death in 1944, McWhorter remained very active in Nez Perce relations with the Bureau of Indian Affairs.[28] For most of his life he fought to preserve Native American identity as a persistent historian and caring friend. Without the efforts of Lucullus McWhorter the Nez Perce story would have been left to those ignorant of true Nez Perce life and culture.
McWhorter lacked a formal education. His inspiration for conducting research into Indian life, culture, and history was garnered largely from what he read. His voracious appetite for literature led him to the opinion that most books that had been written on Indians were lacking in that they included little or no input from actual Indians.[29] McWhorter therefore, decided to combine his passion for advocacy with his pursuit for writing a history of Indians as told by actual Indians. In addition to McWhorter’s ranch, which allowed frequent encounters with Indians, he sought additional contact with Indians through the creation of mock Indian encampments that toured the Pacific Northwest rodeo circuit.[30]
These mock Indian encampments included traditional Indian dress, dances, and drumming. Indians from both the Nez Perce and Yakama tribes were frequent attendees. The reason for this is because the rodeo circuit mirrored the tradition seasonal round, or nomadic ways of life, that Indians had traditionally followed before the treaties that established reservations in 1855.[31] These rodeos provided McWhorter with the opportunity to interview multiple Indians, "…with each rodeo or fair McWhorter learned more of the tribal oral tradition and he recorded what he heard. He well understood the unique opportunity at hand."[32] The vast plethora of interviews provided McWhorter with the ability to fact check his history quite easily. Facts were often repeated by multiple persons, thus adding more weight to their potential for being faithful accounts of events. Furthermore the rodeos provided the Indians and McWhorter as well, with a source of income.
In addition, these rodeos were in stark contrast to other rodeos, like those of Buffalo Bill Cody. Instead of a ‘white-washed’ version of the west, McWhorter’s rodeos presented traditional Indian culture to white settlers and served to stem the tide of ignorance that was so prevalent during the time. Through these rodeos McWhorter was able to find additional contacts who shared his interest in Indian advocacy and history. In particular, at the Frontier Days celebration at Walla Walla in 1914, McWhorter was introduced to a lady named Cristal McLeod, also known as Mourning Dove. Mourning Dove was a half-blood Indian of Okanogan descent who had written, but not published, a semi-autobiographical novel called, Co-ge-we-a, The Half-Blood: A Depiction of the Great Montana Cattle Range. McWhorter would befriend Mourning Dove and help her publish her novel largely because her novel embodied the struggle of Indian culture versus white culture the McWhorter ardently fought to remedy.[33]
Another contact he made was with a former mountain man, Andrew Garcia, who had married three Native American women in his early life, including a Nez Perce woman who had been among those fleeing with Chief Joseph.[34] The meeting with Garcia and the letters between Garcia and McWhorter resulted in Garcia writing several thousand pages about life in Montana and among the Native American tribes there, and the creation of a book, Tough Trip Through Paradise.[34] The book gives some detail about the results of the native's encounters with the 7th Cavalry.[34] The pages that Garcia wrote are of sufficient historical significance to be kept by the Montana Historical Society, and might not have been written without that encounter and correspondence with McWhorter[34].
McWhorter’s unique combination of advocacy and history allowed for him to befriend Indians, allowing him access to firsthand accounts of Indian history and legends. McWhorter was very much a historian who put his heart into his work, in contrast to the typical tendency of historians to remove themselves from the project to sustain objectivity. The history he sought to write was about a people who he felt of as family.[35] McWhorter was able to involve himself personally in his subject and still produce a product that attained academic acceptability.