the struggle over the spalding-allen collection

247 Pages·2017·3.33 MB·English

by  Bond, Trevor James

WHY SHOULD WE HAVE TO BUY OUR OWN THINGS BACK? THE
STRUGGLE OVER THE SPALDING-ALLEN COLLECTION

By
TREVOR JAMES BOND

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY
Department of History

MAY 2017
© Copyright by TREVOR JAMES BOND, 2017
All Rights Reserved
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© Copyright by TREVOR JAMES BOND, 2017
All Rights Reserved
To the Faculty of Washington State University:
The members of the Committee appointed to examine the dissertation of TREVOR
JAMES BOND find it satisfactory and recommend that it be accepted.

____________________________
Robert McCoy, Ph.D., Chair

____________________________
Robert Bauman, Ph.D.

____________________________
Jennifer Thigpen, Ph.D.

___________________________
Jeffrey Sanders, Ph.D.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I owe a great debt to Dr. Tabitha (Beth) Erdey and Robert (Bob) Chenoweth at the Nez
Perce National Historic Park. Beth Erdey processed the bulk of archival records that made this
research possible. She also provided access to images and put me in touch with many of my
interviewees. Bob Chenoweth recorded a wonderful interview regarding the Spalding-Allen
Collection and also preserved boxes of valuable documents. Linda Paisano kindly recorded an
interview and she also provide me with catalog records and other information on the Plateau
baskets that Marcus Whitman collected and sent to Dr. Dudley Allen. I am thankful to Dean Jay
Starratt for his support in trusting me to balance my research and other responsibilities while
working full time.
This project would not have been possible without Nez Perce voices. Thanks to Nakia
Williamson and Josiah Pinkham for steering me through the Nez Perce research permit process
and for recording expansive interviews. I am also deeply indebted to Bill Picard and Kevin
Peters who shared their knowledge in oral histories.
Thanks also to Lesley Poling, Registrar, at the Ohio Historical Society, Amos Loveday
former curator of collections at the Ohio Historical Society, Bob Carroll, retired OHS board
member, Ken Grossi, Archivist at Oberlin College and Ashley Morton, at the Fort Walla Walla
Museum. Leah Pepin at the Burke Museum assisted with several details. Frank Walker and
Susan Buchel, now retired from the National Park Service, graciously recorded interviews.
Melissa Sarlin and Bill Huntington at Whitman College sent the Spalding and Allen
correspondence. I was fortunate to have a patient and stellar committee Robert McCoy (chair),
Jeff Sanders, Jennifer Thigpen, and Bob Bauman. I am grateful for Robert McCoy’s expert
guidance through many petitions. Noriko Kawamura read an early draft as part of a History 525
writing seminar.
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I am fortunate to be a part of a community of scholars, Will Hamlin, Cheryl Gunselman,
Kimberley Christen, Debbie Lee, and Nicole Tonkovitch. I am also grateful for Steven Grafe’s
scholarship on the Spalding-Allen Collection. Thanks to the Pettyjohn fund in history committee
chaired by Professor Orlan Svingen for covering the costs of the excellent transcriptions created
by Teresa Bergen. I appreciate the beautiful photographs of the Spalding-Allen Collection taken
by Zac Mazur and the assistance of NEPE staff including Bob Chenoweth, Beth Erdey, Linda
Paisano, Kevin Peters, and Lynn Pinkham who took the collection temporarily off display and
handled the items so that we could photograph them.
My parents, James and Nancy Bond, remain a constant source of support patiently
encouraging me through all of my educational endeavors. Most importantly my wonderful wife,
Robin Bond, encouraged me at every step, listened to my minute progress along the way, and
continues to inspire me to be a better person.

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WHY SHOULD WE HAVE TO BUY OUR OWN THINGS BACK? THE
STRUGGLE OVER THE SPALDING-ALLEN COLLECTION
Abstract
by Trevor James Bond, Ph.D.
Washington State University
May 2017

Chair: Robert McCoy
In 1836, Henry Spalding and his wife Eliza joined Marcus and Narcissa Whitman on a
mission to bring Christianity to the Indians of the Oregon Country. In 1846, Spalding acquired
Nez Perce clothing, artifacts, and horse gear which he shipped to his friend and supporter, Dr.
Dudley Allen, in Ohio. In exchange for these Native American goods, Dr. Allen, a benefactor to
the Presbyterian mission sent needed commodities to Spalding. After Allen’s death, his son,
Dudley, donated the Spalding-Allen Collection to Oberlin College in 1893. Oberlin College in
turn loaned most, but not all, of the collection to the Ohio Historical Society (OHS) for safe
keeping where it languished for decades.
In 1976, curators at Nez Perce National Historic Park (NEPE) rediscovered the
collection. After negotiations, OHS loaned most of the Spalding-Allen artifacts to the National
Park Service in 1980 on renewable one-year loans. However, in 1993 OHS abruptly demanded
the return of the collection. In negotiations with OHS, the National Park Service learned that
OHS would sell the collection, but only at its full appraised value of $608,100 with a six-month
deadline to provide the money. The Nez Perce Tribe raised the money within six months with
help from thousands of donors and purchased the collection where it is now on loan to NPS.

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This project explores the attempted dispossession of Nez Perce cultural heritage. In his
barter of Nez Perce goods, Spalding sought to end traditional Nez Perce culture, by advocating
that the Nez Perce adopt western dress, agriculture, and a stern version of Christianity. Ironically,
at the same time Spalding worked to “civilize” the Nez Perce, he also created an archive of their
earliest documented material culture. The ethics of acquiring, bartering, owning, and selling
Native cultural history will be explored. This research is important for it demonstrates that
collections are never impartial or neutral, instead archives reflect the interests of their creators
resulting in a complex, and often problematic, historical record. The origins of collections—their
provenance—is critical for the future ethical curation of indigenous collections held in museums
and archives.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................................................... iii
ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................... v
LIST OF FIGURES .................................................................................................... viii
INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 1
CHAPTER
1 The Nez Perce and the Missionary Collector ............................................... 18
2 The Ohio Years ............................................................................................. 47
3 From Loan to Recall ..................................................................................... 76
4 Securing the Collection .............................................................................. 110
CONCLUSIONS......................................................................................................... 130
WORKS CITED ......................................................................................................... 146
APPENDIX
Oral History transcriptions .............................................................................. 151

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LIST OF FIGURES
Page
Figure 1. Henry Spalding’s letter describing the “Indian Curiosities” he collected for
Dudley Allen ................................................................................................................. 33

Figure 2. Nez Perce woman’s dress collected by Spalding .......................................... 36
Figure 3. A decorated Nez Perce woman’s saddle ....................................................... 40
Figure 4. One of two surviving pairs of moccasins in the Spalding-Allen Collection . 58
Figure 5. Nez Perce man’s cured hide shirt .................................................................. 72
Figure 6. Nez Perce cradleboard made circa 1846 ....................................................... 82
Figure 7. Nez Perce man’s hide shirt decorated with dyed porcupine quill work and
Venetian glass beads ..................................................................................................... 93

Figure 8. Letter from a student at Butte View elementary school in Emmett Idaho .. 116
Figure 9. Nakia Williamson drawing the woman’s saddle in the Spalding-Allen
Collection .................................................................................................................... 122

Figure 10. Detailed drawing by Nakia Williamson of the construction and design of the
woman’s saddled in the Spalding-Allen Collection.................................................... 123
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INTRODUCTION

On April 27, 1846, writing from Lapwai —Nez Perce for the place of the butterflies— on
the Clear Water River, the missionary Henry Harmon Spalding addressed a letter to his “Dear
Brother” and former Western Reserve classmate, Dr. Dudley Allen. Spalding wrote, “after many
promises & a long delay I have started the boxes containing a small collection of articles of
Indian manufacture with some specimens of stone &c, all designed for yourself.”1 Spalding
regretted that the two “Grey Bear skins & a pack saddle” were not shipped because “it was
thought they would be destroyed on Board ship by rats.” Who knew that bear skins are a rat
delicacy? Fortunately, the boxes that Spalding did send to Allen stuffed with priceless Nez Perce
and Plateau Indian artifacts down the Columbia River survived the journey to Ohio. It was a long
trip: some 465 miles west down the Columbia River to Fort Vancouver. From there, they
travelled across the Pacific to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaiʻi), then south around the cape of
South American to Boston followed by an overland journey west to Ohio.
Roughly 150 years later, in an ironic turn, this collection that Spalding assembled became
the focus of a major struggle over ownership between the Nez Perce Tribe and the National Park
Service on one side, and the Ohio Historical Society on the other. The Spalding-Allen
Collection, the context of its creation, its subsequent survival, and the prolonged efforts of the
Nez Perce and the National Park Service to acquire and keep the objects in the Nez Perce
homeland will be the focus of this dissertation, the first scholarly treatment of this story.
The act of collecting is a topic of increasing scholarly interest. As the scholar Curtis
Hinsley observed, collecting is “an expression of desire through the exercise of power over

1 Steven Grafe, “’Our Private Affairs in Way Of Barter’: Correspondence Between Dudley Allen
and Henry Harmon Spalding, 1838-1848.” Idaho Yesterdays Volume 40 No. 3 (Fall, 1996), 3.
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