The Wetxuuwíitin’ Collection Returns to its Ancestral Home •••••
A Reversal of Fortune for the Nez Perce Tribe • • • • •
BY SABINA DANA PLASSE PHOTOS COURTESY OF ZACH MAZUR
The Nez Perce Tribe in north-central Idaho consists of more than 3,500 citizens in Lapwai, Idaho, on the Nez Perce Reservation, which covers 770,000 acres. The aboriginal land of the Nimiipuu people, who are the Nez Perce Tribe, once comprised portions of Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and Montana in a vast area that was more than seven and half million acres. In 1836, Presbyterian Reverend Henry Harmon Spalding and his wife joined a mission to the Nez Perce land, now known as Idaho. Spalding arrived in the area as a minister and became a trader, but also tried to inform Nez Perce Tribe members of the prospects of being a Presbyterian. Nonetheless, he managed to obtain Nez Perce Tribe items and historical relics. Between 1841 and 1846, Spalding acquired Nez Perce [Nimiipuu] clothing, artifacts, and horse gear, which he shipped to his friend and supporter of his Presbyterian mission, Dr. Dudley Allen, in Ohio. Dr. Allen, in exchange, sent back commodities that Spalding needed to continue his mission work. What became known as the Spalding-Allen Collection, a collection of Nez Perce Tribe member items representing artisans in their prime, offers an accessible history and an understanding of the Nez Perce people. In 1893, after Allen died, his son, Dudley, donated the Spalding-Allen Collection to Oberlin College. In time, Oberlin College loaned most, but not all, of the collection to the Ohio Historical Society (OHS) for safekeeping, but unfortunately, it languished at OHS for decades. Finally, in 1976, curators at Nez Perce National Historic Park (NEPE) rediscovered the collection. Through negotiations, OHS loaned most Spalding-Allen artifacts to the National Park Service (NPS) in 1980 on renewable one-year loans. However, in 1993 OHS abruptly demanded the return of the collection. In negotiations, NPS 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. Diligently, the Nez Perce Tribe raised the money within six months with help from thousands of donors and purchased the collection in 1996. In a turn of events in November 2021, the OHS, now The Ohio History Connection, returned the $608,100 to the Nez Perce Tribe. In June 2021, the Nez Perce Tribe renamed the Spalding-Allen Collection the Wetxuuwíitin’ Collection, which means “returned after a period of being away.” Cultural Resources Program Director of the Nez Perce Tribe and historian Nakia Williamson-Cloud says, “The renaming of the collection is a significant step to reclaiming ownership of one of the most important ethnographic collections in existence.”
{cáwtiwaanin’ wispóolsam’x, Woman’s Dress, Nez Perce} A Nez Perce woman’s cured deerskin dress with attached yoke extensions and hem inserts decorated with glass beads, elk teeth, dentalium shell, thimbles, and fringe. The dress was made circa the 1820s to 1840 and is part of the Wetxuuwíitin’ Collection.
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