While at Long Camp on 6 June 1806, Broken Arm shared news that Shoshones had traveled to the mouth of the Walla Wallas seeking to reconcile with the Cayuse people living there. The captains must have been elated as “their nation [the Shoshones] had received the talk which was given their relations on the head of the East fork of Lewis’s river [Lemhi Valley] last fall, and were resolved to pursue our Councils.” Clark’s name for the Cayuse, the Ye-E-al-po Nation, may have been his phonetic spelling of the Nez Perce name for them—Waiilatpu.[2]Moulton, Journals, 7:342n5; Theodore Stern, Handbook of North American Indians: Plateau Vol. 12, ed. Deward E. Walker, Jr. (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1998), 417.

Some believe Yellepit to be Cayuse rather than Walla Walla. The point is somewhat moot. The Cayuses and Walla Wallas were already inter-marrying nearby peoples such as the Umatillas and Nez Perces. The isolate Cayuse language was declining in favor of the Sahaptian Nez Perce language. Despite that, the Cayuse remain a distinct people, ignobly connected with the murder of the missionaries Marcus and Narcissa Whitman along with eleven others in 1847.[3]Robert H. Ruby, John A. Brown, and Cary C. Collins, A Guide to the Indian Tribes of the Pacific Northwest (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010), 17–19; Stern, 395.

Cayuse horsemanship was at such a high level that Indian ponies became known as Cayuses. Many early American settlers came to use the term derogatorily, to them meaning an inferior or unruly horse. But today, The Cayuse Indian Pony of the Northwest is a distinct and desirable breed.[4]See “Breeds of Livestock – Cayuse Indian Pony,” Oklahoma State University, http://afs.okstate.edu/breeds/horses/cayuseindian/index.html/ (accessed 9 October 2021).

 

Related Pages

Notes

Notes
1 Steven L. Grafe, Peoples of the Plateau: The Indian Photographs of Lee Moorhouse, 1898–1915) (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 2005), 82.
2 Moulton, Journals, 7:342n5; Theodore Stern, Handbook of North American Indians: Plateau Vol. 12, ed. Deward E. Walker, Jr. (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1998), 417.
3 Robert H. Ruby, John A. Brown, and Cary C. Collins, A Guide to the Indian Tribes of the Pacific Northwest (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010), 17–19; Stern, 395.
4 See “Breeds of Livestock – Cayuse Indian Pony,” Oklahoma State University, http://afs.okstate.edu/breeds/horses/cayuseindian/index.html/ (accessed 9 October 2021).

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  • The Lewis and Clark Expedition: Day by Day by Gary E. Moulton (University of Nebraska Press, 2018). The story in prose, 14 May 1804–23 September 1806.
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