Lapwai began as a
mission to the Nez Percé established in 1836
by Henry and Eliza Spalding, who came west with Marcus
and Narcissa Whitman. It was far more successful than Waiilatpu,
the Whitman's mission in Cayuse country downriver, counting Chief
Joseph's father among its converts. By Joseph's time Lapwai had
become a reservation, and in 1889 Alice
Fletcher arrived there to administrate the 1887
Dawes Act,
breaking Lapwai into allotments and thereby trying to break the tribal
bonds that united its people.
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