We met up with Tribal leader Alan Pinkham at Mussellshell Meadows, ancestral land where the Nez Perce historically dug for camas bulbs. He and other tribal leaders had brought a group of young Nez Perce youths to the meadow to teach them about their Nez Perce heritage.

The following is excerpted from his speech to the Nez Perce youth:

Maybe I should tell you a little bit about Lewis and Clark.
Can you imagine what this place looked like before an Indian saw a white man?
What would it look like?
What would it be like?

Before we even saw a white person, we described that person. We knew what he looked like. When they came over the mountain, in this direction, we described that person, because we knew he was coming.

This new kind of people that was coming, he's going to talk a language we never heard before; and he's going to have white skin, and his eyes were going to be different colors than ours. And with him he's going to bring some good things and bad things. And that's what happened...

This is a prophecy. We knew what was happening. Even before we seen a white man we knew what was happening. Because Nez Perces traveled, from here as far east as the pipe stone quarry in Illinois, and as far south as the people who lived in adobe, the Navahos and Pueblos. So we knew everybody around here; we knew all the tribes...

So it was no big surprise. We were just surprised that sometime in September some of these people come walking out of the mountains traveling in the late fall of the year. We were wondering, why would they be traveling so late in the year? You can get snowed in up there. They almost got snowed in up there.

But we helped them out. We told them which direction the ocean was; it was that way.

The reason I know about this is because my father, when he was a young boy just like you, these three old men would sit and talk about these old days, a hundred years before, and they would talk about the coming of the white man...

So, you've got a history here, and that's what we're trying to teach you. And part of what this prophecy was, these three old men would say, when these new people come, they're going to make things that go through the air, and they're going to make things that crawl upon the ground...
 
This prophecy said that they would draw a line across the earth, and then they would say, this is yours, this is mine, and start dividing the earth with that line. This was part of the bad part of the prophecy...

This is a story that very seldom is told. I started telling this three years ago, what the prophecy was, and that's what I want you to learn. Don't ever think that we were just out here wandering around in the wilderness. We were here, we knew what was in that direction, and we knew what was in that direction and this direction. We knew everything, so we weren't surprised when these new kind of people came.

That's part of what I want you to learn, so maybe sometime later you can tell somebody else the same story. So that's why you're up here. That's all I have to say.

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