Return of the Wolf
On the crowded landscape of atrocities committed against the American Indians, the tragic story of the Nez Perce stands out as one of the most shameful. In 1855, the Nez Perce homeland--some 13 million acres covering parts of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, was officially recognized by the U.S. government. With the influx of gold rush settlers over the next 20 years, however, the Treaty of 1855 collapsed. The U.S. Army soon issued orders that the tribe was to move from Oregon to a small reservation in Idaho.

Many of the Nez Perce complied, but several bands who had not originally signed the treaty, refused to recognize its authority. They were warned that their failure to submit would result in military action. As the elders were considering the ultimatum, some young Nez Perce killed several settlers. The Army immediately dispatched troopers, who caught up with the tribe in Idaho at Whitebird Canyon.

Superior marksmanship and brilliant tactical fighting of the Nez Perce routed the Army at the Battle of Whitebird Canyon. It was a Pyrrhic victory, however, for now there was no turning back. About 800 Nez Perce men, women, and children fled north, traveling more than 1,100 miles over four months as they desperately sought refuge in "Old Woman's Country" Queen Victoria's Canada. In all, they fought 14 separate battles and skirmishes with the Army in relentless pursuit.

Asylum, however, was not to be. On a gray, snowy, bone-chilling day with a cloud ceiling so low it obscured both the mountains and the advance of the blue-shirted soldiers of General Nelson A. Miles, most of the Indians were caught in a final bloody siege that took place in the shadow of the Bear's Paw Mountains in north central Montana. The Nez Perce were just 30 miles south of the (Canadian border.

The despair of the tribe was made clear in a now-famous surrender speech on October 5, 1877, by Chief Joseph, whose Indian name translates to mean Thunder-Traveling-Across-a-Lake-and Fading-on-the- Mountainside. He ended his speech with the phrase "Hear me, my chiefs. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever."

Vanquished, the Nez Perce became a nuisance to the U.S. Government, which shipped the freezing, starving band by train to Indian Territory, Oklahoma. But their suffering was not over. In the "Hot Country," as the Indians called their new home, more of their people died than had been killed in the war. Not until 1885 was the tribe permitted to return to the Northwest. By then the old ways had vanished in the dust of the arid plains, and the Nez Perce culture was shattered.

Wolves had been central to the life destroyed. "The wolf was one of the most important powers, because of his ability to hunt, to share food with the pack, to walk on the snow with his huge paws," says Axtell, gently flicking back shoulder-length, silver-gray braids. "They also have a language." He nods. "You can hear them."

The kinship the Nez Perce people have with wolves is something they take very seriously, Axtell continues. "We traveled in bands, they traveled in packs" he says. "When people on a journey heard a wolf, they'd get up early and head toward the sound; there was game there. The wolf was telling them where to go. For a long while, wolves have been missing. Now they're back. The circle of life is stronger."

The wolf and the Nez Perce shared similar fates. When white settlers pushed west in the 1860s and 1870s, they killed wolves as a matter of course. Methods were simple. The bison were shot and their carcasses laced with strychnine. Much of the killing was done by professional "wolfers" who earned $2.50 per pelt, sometimes making $3,000 a season. Later, the killing got even more efficient. A bounty was levied on wolves, and in four decades more than 80,000 wolves were slaughtered in Montana alone. Wolves were shot, poisoned, and trapped, and their offspring were dynamited in their dens. By the 1930s, the extermination of the wolf in the lower 48 states was complete.

With the renaissance of the Nez Perce culture, wolf stories are being told again, and some of the old names that have not been used for a long time -Red "Thunder and Higheagle being heard once more. "We're not given all the wisdom and strength we need," says Pinkham, "so we turn to our elders, the animals. We need to concede Nature's Wisdom. We take from the wolf a sense of survival. Look at everything the wolf has had to struggle with. Look at its tenacity. Look at how omegas, the submissive wolves in a pack, are treated. Perhaps there's a lesson here."

The wolf's return to Idaho mirrors Pinkham's return to his tribe, to his roots, seeking out a culture he'd left behind. He vas born in 1956 in Lewiston, Idaho, just 15 miles west of Lapwai--the capital of the Nez Perce Nation, although Pinkham was raised on the Yakima Reservation to Washington state. He left the reservation for college, graduating from Oregon State University in 1981 with a degree in forestry. Remaining on the West Coast, Pinkham embarked on a series of jobs in forestry, for the state, for private industry, and for the U.S. Forest Service. Some of those clear- cuts out there are mine," he admits.

In 1978, a controversy erupted in western Oregon. An herbicide used by foresters to control weeds was suspected as the cause of an unusually high number of miscarriages. Pinkham did not like the way the government and the companies involved attempted to downplay the significance of the issue in terms of the relatively low number of cases. "We had a community that had suffered these tragedies and we were only laying science on the table," he says. "That wasn't right."

He was beginning to sense that something was missing from his life; an urge to connect with a deeper cause gnawed at him. Then, he recalls, "I came hack to Lapwai for a visit, and I felt like an outsider." As he was singing and drumming with a group of Indians on the reservation, Pinkham realized that it was time to come home. "I was educated to be a forester," he said. "I was working for private industry, making clear-cuts and using herbicides. There was a void in my existence, an emptiness in the Cultural and spiritual side. I had forgotten about it."

He moved back to Lapwai and became manager of the Nez Perce Department of Natural Resources in 1990. About that time, the federal governnent was making plans, as required by the Endangered Species Act, to reintroduce the gray wolf to its former range in Idaho and in Yellowstone National Park. It was expected that management responsibility for the wolves would be assigned to Idaho Fish and Game. Still, the Nez Perce hoped to become part of the management team. The conservative Idaho legislature was not pleased by the prospect of the wolf's homecoming, however, and blocked the state wildlife agency's involvement.

Instead of becoming a partner, the tribe, under Pinkham's direction, agreed to assume sole responsibility for managing the wolf throughout its recovery area in Idaho. "We wanted the federal government to recognize us as a legitimate player, especially since this was taking place in our treaty area," says Pinkham. While the Nez Perce reservation occupies some 760,000 acres, the Treaty of 1855 had given tribal members the right to hunt, fish, and gather food in Idaho, southwestern Washington, and northeastern Oregon. Much of that land overlaps the recovery area.

Not long after the wolves' release, one of the animals was shot on a ranch near Salmon, Idaho (see "The Iron Creek Incident," December 1995). It had been observed feeding on a calf. When Fish and Wildlife Service agents arrived to investigate at the ranch of Gene Hussey he told them to get off his land, emphasizing his sentiments with a barrage of rocks. A necropsy later revealed that the calf had been stillborn, and that the wolf had fed on the animal after it had died. Hussey denied shooting the wolf.

Three more Idaho wolves have died. One apparently starved; another was killed by a cougar. A third drowned after being snared in a trap. Two other wolves are unaccounted for; either they perished, left Idaho, or their transmitters no longer are functioning. Despite these losses, the reintroduction has been a success. Of the remaining 29 animals, nine pairs have formed, and three of those pairs have reproduced In the fall of 1996, there were at least four pups, the first Idaho generation since the early 1900s.

It's a minor miracle, affirms Curt Mack, a biologist who works for the tribe, that the wolves mated so quickly. "They've exhibited an uncanny knack to pair up," he says.

The tribal program calls for working with people who live within the territory of the new wolf packs. In a state in which there has been widespread anger over the wolf's return, the program seems to have worked remarkably well. If the wolf enters private property, the owner is notified. Several pages of information, including the location of the wolves, are sent out monthly to all who are interested.

If a single element predominates in the tribe's philosophy toward wildlife, it is humility.

"I don't think the Indian was the first natural resource manager," Pinkham says. "Nature managed us. Nature told us when to go to the mountains and harvest berries, when to go to the river and catch salmon. We're the managers; but deep down Nature remains our caretaker, physically, economically and spiritually." At the end of a dirt road that winds through towering; ponderosa pines, 11 wolves lounge in an enclosure surrounded by a very tall, chain-link fence. "Come up to the fence, bend down, and let them sniff you," invites Megan Parker, a researcher and biologist who lived with the pack for more than two years. Parker coordinated the pack's relocation to the Nez Perce Reservation near Winchester, a tiny Idaho logging town. A few wolves, large animals with huge heads, approach, curiously sniff me, and then, seemingly pleased, lick my face and hands. A few others lie on the ground, panting and watching through heavy-lidded eyes.

A private group called the Wolf Education and Research Center (WERC), in partnership with the Nez Perce, is building a facility where visitors will be able to see the wolf pack, which was established by Jim Dutcher for a documentary film. When Dutcher was finished filming, he gave the wolves to WERC. The animals are housed in a 20-acre, double-fenced enclosure on 300 acres donated by the tribe. Observation stations in the style of old longhouses are being erected so people can watch the animals from a distance. The wolves have restored pride and power to the Nez Perce; it is also hoped they will attract needed revenue to the reservation, where unemployment in winter can reach 70 percent.

The return of the wolf to the Nez Perce homeland is only one wildlife project that the tribe is working on as they painstakingly piece their culture back together. They have been stocking the river with wild salmon, trying to restore the fish that once were a centerpiece of their diet and their spiritual life. They are also joining the federal government in a project to reintroduce grizzlies into the Selway Bitterroot wilderness of Idaho and Montana. Things, says Pinkham, are becoming whole. "We have a victory song about the wolf that we can sing," he exults. "The wolf gives us the confidence to ask 'who's next'' Who else will be coming home."

1997 Wildlife Conservation -By Jim Robbins.