01Biography
Henry Harmon Spalding was a Presbyterian minister sent west by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. In 1836 he and his wife Eliza traveled to Oregon with Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, riding with a fur company caravan across the Rocky Mountains. The trip showed that women could make the overland journey.
In November 1836 the Spaldings settled among the Nez Perce at Lapwai, in present-day Idaho. Eliza opened a school, and in 1839 Henry set up the first printing press in the Pacific Northwest and printed books in the Nez Perce language. He baptized some of the first Nez Perce converts, but he could be harsh, and he quarreled with Nez Perce leaders and with the other missionaries. After the Whitman killings of 1847 the family fled to the Willamette Valley. He went back to Lapwai in 1862.
02Why they matter
The 1836 crossing he made with his wife and the Whitmans showed that women could travel overland to Oregon, five years before the first emigrant wagon companies.
03How they died
Spalding spent his last years at Lapwai, carrying on his mission among the Nez Perce. He died there on August 3, 1874, aged 70, and was buried at the mission. In 1913 Eliza's remains were moved from Oregon to lie beside him.
04Legacy
The mission grounds and the cemetery where Henry and Eliza are buried are now the Spalding Site of Nez Perce National Historical Park, near Lapwai, Idaho, which is also home to the park's visitor center.