Were the Nez Perce surprised to see white men in September of 1805?
We knew they existed way to the east before Lewis and Clark even came here. So we understood a lot of things about this whole continent we called an island, because it was surrounded by water. And we knew of these strange people. We didn’t even know if they were human beings because they didn’t look like us, but we knew they were coming. It just surprised us that Lewis and Clark showed up one day in Sept of 1805. We had a lot of questions about them. They had a peculiarity about them. And they had an ability we didn’t have that is writing. The elders said we needed to understand how they do that. Actually it was how do they do business? Well, they do it by writing. We finally determined they were human beings. How then do we deal with them? Well, we need to get what they have and we need to learn to write like they do. And they sent out a bunch of missionaries, thinking that what we wanted was the Bible. Well it wasn’t the Bible. Writing was part of it. We understood who the earth was,
