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by Nancy Winecoop
 I was born in the log house on Walker's Prairie, February 5, 1865, and have never been very far away. My earliest recollections are of teepees all around our house. In these were my father's patients. [Nancy's father was Dr. Frederick Perkins - chw.] It would be called a sanitorium today. He treated these sick people and fed them right. We were poor with the rest of them, but I know my father got a lot out of life that people never dreamed of. My first memories are of a houseful of children on benches, stools, on floor and beds, studying. All the furniture was, of course, crude and homemade. It was hard enough to get a few necessities like needles and pins. I remember how precious they were to my mother. Strange to say, I was not put to study. I was frail, yet I was always busy about the place. Perhaps they thought those duties more helpful to me than mental training. I have been asked if I went to college, but my school education consisted of about five months in the public school, and I have never had a lesson in grammar. My education has come by absorbing what went on around me. My grandmother was my best teacher. It was she who taught me the mysteries of creation and nature's plan for her children, besides the religion handed down from one generation to another by word of mouth. The stars, the mountains, the trees and rocks all had meaning. My grandmother lived with us, clinging always to the Indian customs. She preferred food cooking in baskets by placing hot stones among the food. I can see her yet, lifting the hot stones with two sticks and dropping them into the baskets. We might prevail upon her to sleep in the house during winter, but as soon as spring came we would miss her. We always knew then that she had set up her teepee not far away and would remain there until winter snows drove her in. I was with my mother's people a great deal. I can remember lying on the mat after the evening meal, my feet toward the fire in the center of the teepee. The only light was from that little blaze. I shall never forget the feeling of contentment. The evening meal was the only meal served, the rest were scraps of dried fish or camas carried in the belt. Early in the morning the men went to hunt or fish and the women to gather camas and berries. The evening meal depended on their success. Usually there was a great feast. There were different ways of weaving the grass mats. Circular mats were made for the round teepees. There were three mats for these. The one at the bottom was about four yards long, the others shorter. Cat-tail stalks were used. All the small ends together, making it narrower at one end. Other mats were woven by alternating the ends, first a small end, then a large. Pine boughs were covered with grass for beds. During the day, grass mats were laid over the beds. At night they were spread with blankets and skins. Once or twice a year my mother went up to the old village near Kettle Falls. Whenever Angus McDonald saw her he would give her money because, he said, my grandfather never got the worth of his furs in trade. When he took his bales of rich pelts he might see a knife or blanket or copper kettle which took his fancy and he would take that one thing and walk out, leaving valuable furs worth many, many times the amount, never stopping to bargain. Angus McDonald came to visit us at times. He was fond of my parents. We always were at the mission during Corpus Cristi, as my mother was a Catholic. The records of their marriage were probably burned with the old mission. My father was a Presbyterian. It was from him that I absorbed Presbyterian doctrines, aided by the missionary work carried on by Rev. Walker's and Rev. Eell's converts. We lived on the old mission ground not far from where the monument is now, near the town of Ford. These Indians had escorted the missionaries and their families out of the country after the Whitman massacre, but they carried on the religious teachings of these two men, going from teepee to teepee, singing, praying and reading the Scriptures as well as they could. The missionaries had been with them ten years. My mother went with us to these meetings. Sometimes Nez Perce ministers came. It would be the time that salmon were running that my mother would take us to Kettle Falls. She took a couple of barrels and filled them wih salted salmon, then she dried large quantities. All year we had salmon to eat.
 When I was five years old I was at Kettle Falls with my grandmother and watched the Indians spear salmon. There seemed to be a sort of shelf of rock where the Indians stood. I could see the salmon leaping, but the spearsmen struck only at the ones which fell back. I asked my grandmother why that was, and she said, "Those salmon are the weak ones - they have no strength left to fight. If they speared the strong ones they might be pulled from the rocks into the foaming water below." Several men stood on the rocks and the salmon were taken from the hooks and passed along up the banks to the women, old men and children, who carried them away to be prepared for salting and drying. The settlers in those days were like one big family, Hallers and Waites and Fletts would come to Walker's Prairie and we would all go from one place to another, have games and feasts. Father was a natural teacher. He taught the men to box and wrestle. I remember hearing him say that at Angus McDonald's school he taught the children table manners as he helped serve their meals. One place in Colville valley was called Che-we-lah (water snake country). Thomas Brown lived there. He was part Indian but his wife was a Scotch woman named Mowatt. His descendants are there yet.
 We moved farther away, to a hill which people call Happy Hill, because my father was always happy and cheerful, although he had much to discourage him. He was still looking after the Indians when he was sent for one stormy day in the winter to come to an Indian who was thought to be dying. His name was Cornelius, afterwards chief of the Spokanes. Father packed his bedding, food and medicine on his pack-horse, and riding another, went out into the storm. He rode twenty five miles and stayed three days, saving the Indian's life. The blizzard was not over when he started back and he got lost. He wanderered about in the hills for hours and became snowblind. His horse took him home finally, but he never recovered his eyesight entirely. He was forced to give up his work, so it was left to mother to make a living. She tanned hides and made buckskin jackets, vests, moccasins, gloves and purses. She had customers from here to New York. Maybe some of my father's relatives were Ellen Perkin's customers. Father's later years must have been very sorrowful. He could barely see and one day he was splitting wood and injured his arm. The result was blood-poisoning, which he was not able to check until he had lost his arm. My mother died of Pneumonia. Father went to live with my brother on Kelly Hill. There he died and was buried on one of the hilltops in the valley he loved. I don't suppose his grave is even marked. As long as he lived, he was a friend of the Indians. I have to cry now as I recall those old days. I didn't know those common, every-day things would be history. In 1877-78 when eight chiefs went back to Washington, DC, they were asked what they wanted for their people. Their answer was, "We want religious education." In answer to this call, Miss Helen Clark came to the Spokane Indians. She worked eight years with them, learning the Spokane language so well that she could correct the interpreter. A log schoolhouse was built for her by the Indians. She taught all week and preached on Sundays. She taught them cooking, sewing, knitting and mending. When the agency was established at Wellpinit, the schoolhouse was used for a blacksmith shop and burned down. The church was torn down and the lumber used in the church we have here today. I donated an acre of my allotment for the school we have now.
From the book: Told by the Pioneers, (Tales of Frontier Life as Told by Those who Remember The Days of the Territory and Early Statehood of Washington). A Washington Pioneer Project, published 1937. - Editor.
Sources: Winecoop, Nancy, "Told by the Pioneers," Pioneer Branches, Colville, WA, Volume 13, Number 3, (April 1998), pp. 64-66. (There are no photographs or maps with this article. The photo of Curt and Nancy comes from In The Stream, An Indian Story and the map from Children of the Sun. The picture of Kettle Falls comes from my personal collection - chw.)
Nancy Perkins Wynecoop was the second wife of John Curtis Wynecoop, a grandson of Strickland Wynkoop, as Tom Wilbur explains:
"Strickland Wynkoop, born at Bucks County, Penna., 1789/90, married, first, likely at Huntingdon County, Penna., Martha EGBERT. About 1820 they went to Franklin County, Ohio. Their children, from a published Bible record:
John Curtis Wynekoop arrived in Washington State in 1879 and married Christine Perkins in 1883. John Curtis, known as Curt, was a big red-haired man. He and Christine had three children:
Christine passed away in 1893 as the result of injuries received in a fall from a horse. In 1894 Curt married Christine's younger sister Nancy. They had nine children: All of the above information comes from Nancy Perkins Wynecoop and Nettie Wynecoop Clark's book, In The Stream, An Indian Story published in 1985. Tom would appreciate hearing from anyone descended from Strickland Wynkoop and may be contacted at [email protected]. For more information on the Spokane Indians I can heartily recommend David C. Wynecoop's Children of the Sun where you will find more information on camas and other edibles, along with a history of the tribe's uncomfortable relations with the Federal government over the years. It's a good read! Chris
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