Josephy Center for Arts and Culture - The Confluence: where the Nez Perce and Settlers met

The Josephy Center teamed with the Wallowa History Center and Nez Perce elders from three reservations, to document and explore the places and occasions of first meetings of white settlers and the Nez Perce Indians—often in the Oregon Wallowa Country. Local historians and tribal elders, met to examine the “Confluence” of two rivers where Whites and Indians met first met.

The first settlers arrived in the Wallowa Valley in 1871. It took only six years for the clash of values and lifeways to result in the forced expulsion of the Native people from the land.

In addition to gaining as much Native knowledge as possible about these places, the project facilitated the reintroduction of the wal?wáma band to their ancient homeland. This band of Nez Perce have essentially lived in exile on the Colville Reservation in north central Washington. In 1877 Nez Perce War survivors were not allowed to return to the Wallowa and were dispersed to Lapwai in Idaho and to Colville in Washington eight years after their forced removal from the Wallowa Country.

The settlers, always intent on “improving” lands and waters by cultivating, draining, irrigating, flattening lands, and damming, diverting, and straightening waters, saw the Wallowa Valley as opportunity. Opportunity to establish an old, European derived way of life in a new place.