Eunice Boeve

Lewis and Clark reached the Weippe Prairie of central Idaho in Nez Perce country in September of 1805 where they would very likely have been killed if not for one Nez Perce woman, who, having lived among the whites, pleaded for their lives. The woman was Wet-khoo-weis which in Nez Perce means “returned from a far place." According to Hohots Llppilp (Red Grizzly Bear) who met Lewis and Clark on the Snake River, she was the only member of their people who had ever seen a white man. Without this one woman the bones of Lewis and Clark might well have been interred in the land of the Nez Perce, their journals burned in a campfire, maybe a small mention of their lives in history books and the oral history of the Nez Perce elders.
Although the Bannocks and the Nez Perce were enemies, Wet-Khoo-weis, a Bannock, somehow came as an infant to live with the Nez Perce. When she was about 12, her family traveled to hunt the buffalo in western Montana. There she was captured by their enemies the Blackfeet and either traded to or taken by the Minitarries, a.k.a as the Hidasta, of North Dakota. After being held a captive of one tribe or another, she was sold to a white man in Southern Manitoba in Canada. There she lived among the whites and gave birth to a son. When her husband decided to take them to his homeland of Scotland to live, Wet-Khoo-weis, her heart still in the land of the Nez Perce, decided to run away. Equipped by a white woman with a horse, a blanket, food, and a hatchet, she and her baby son set out for her own homeland. How she made it is something of a miracle. She left Manitoba in the autumn traveled through winter, and spring, where finally in the warmth of summer she reached the land of her people. Although young, she was like an old woman for she had suffered much, the worst, the death of her baby. It seems almost like a plan, like destiny, that she would be taken to the land of white people, feel an urge so strong to return to her birthplace and be there to save the lives of Lewis and Clark.
One source for the story of Wet-Khoo-weis is Hear Me My Chiefs by L.V. McWhorter.
I’m now reading Angry Housewives Eating Bon-Bon by Lorna Landvik. It sounds dumb, but it’s a very engrossing story of five members of a book club from 1968-1998. The title is the name of their book club chosen after one husband’s disparaging comment about their social gathering.

The love of books is a love that requires neither justification, apology, nor defense. Langford
Happy reading! Eunice Boeve