01Biography
Eliza Hart married the minister Henry Spalding in 1833, and in 1836 the couple crossed the plains with the Whitmans. They founded a mission among the Nez Perce (Nimiipuu) at Lapwai, in present-day Idaho. Eliza was the first of the missionary party to learn the Nez Perce language. She wrote out Bible lessons by hand and drew pictures to go with them. At times more than 200 students came to her school, and she often taught a few who then taught the others.
02Why they matter
Learned the Nez Perce language, made picture lessons from the Bible by hand, and taught at the Lapwai mission from 1837 to 1847.
03How they died
When the Whitmans were killed in November 1847, Nez Perce friends at Lapwai, among them the leaders Timothy and Thunder Eyes, protected the Spalding family. Her ten-year-old daughter Eliza was at the Whitman Mission that day and was held captive with the other survivors until their release. The Spaldings moved to the Willamette Valley in 1848, and Eliza died of tuberculosis near Brownsville, Oregon, on January 7, 1851, aged 43.
04Legacy
Her remains now rest beside her husband's in the Spalding Mission cemetery at Lapwai, part of Nez Perce National Historical Park.