One of the most well known stories in our tribe, and even in our tribe so many people need to learn it, is the Wetxuuwiis story. The Wetxuuwiis story is so vital and instrumental to the Lewis and Clark Corp of Discovery. Without her they may not have been able to continue. She basically saved their lives with what had happened to her and her experience. It is a heroin, a Nez Perce heroin, that came to the rescue of soyaapo, our soyaapo friends Lewis and Clark and the Corp discovery. Because of her experience when she was captured from the enemy tribe she ended up going back east. Further east she ended up being traded to another tribe until finally she ended up in these great waters, the Great Lakes area where she saw the first soyaapo person, the first white people. She, from our tribe, was the first one to see these different type of people and when she was on her journey back she escaped from this enemy tribe and she made it back all the way to her people, the Nimíipuu. She was able to tell them about these new people to come and that they were as many as there were leaves on a tree and that there were just so many and they had all the fine wealth. With her what happened after that, after she was returned, she was stolen or she was lost and she returned. That is what her name Wetxuuwiis means the one that has been captured or the one that has been lost and then they returned. That is where she gets her name.

So when she shared that story over and over again the people were aware of that story and so when they first encountered Lewis and Clark in 1805 they were familiar with the Wetxuuwiis story. They thought these soyaapo people were creatures, people with eyes blue and green and different type of hair. They thought they were creatures. They didn’t know if they should kill them or what they should do with them because they were dangerous or they could be something harmful for the tribe. So when she heard of all this talk it was her that said do them no harm these are the people that treated me well after I was stolen. And so they did, the Nez Perce treated them well, treated them friendly, sent them on their journey, kept their horses for year and were good people to them. And we still are.