All was deathly silent in the small village of Kamiah, in what would one day be the state of Idaho. A small, white chapel bore testimony that the Gospel of Jesus Christ had come to the western mountains. The fir trees and surrounding mountains stood silently around the house of worship as people gathered in quiet groups. They talked, prayed, and pointed to a little house framed with simple boards and roofed with cedar. Inside that house, a man was dying.

The dying man was Henry Harmon Spalding, the beloved pastor of the Nez Perce Indians. The people he loved were gathered around, awaiting the end.

Slowly, a tall Indian strode into the clearing and made his way toward the house. This visitor was Chief Timothy, a man who had once been a savage but was now a Christian. Chief Timothy was one of Henry Spalding’s earliest converts to the Gospel, and he had proven to be a faithful follower of Christ.

It is said that in the final days of life, the mind rushes back to earlier memories. According to the written record of others regarding Spalding’s final hours on earth, the sight of old Timothy brought back a flood of memories to the veteran missionary.

Henry Spalding’s memories included the distant village on the eastern side of the continent where he had been born, an illegitimate child. He reflected upon his own conversion to the Gospel and the first time that he as a young man had heard about the people who lived west of the Rocky Mountains. Spalding recalled the young lady, Eliza Hart, who had agreed to become his wife and cross an unknown continent at his side. He testified that he knew Eliza was now waiting for him in Heaven, and that he would see her soon.

Forty years earlier, Spalding and fellow missionary Marcus Whitman and their wives had left everything they had and known in order to bring the Book of God to the Indians of the Northwest. Other memories he pondered were of his first sight of the rugged mountains, the first grizzly bear, the first hostile Indian.

Spalding carried some scars in his body as well as in his soul. It is not easy to be a pioneer missionary in a hostile land. But Spalding had always risen to meet every challenge. When most of his comrades had died or retreated homeward, Henry Spalding was still there. He knew God was not merely a God of the fertile plains of the East. He was also the omnipresent God of the rugged mountains of the West!

A friend who knew Spalding well once said that he was “inured to hardship from infancy.” The veteran missionary had been chased by bears, thrown from horses, hunted by savages, and distrusted by his own companions. Even his fellow-laborer Marcus Whitman had often misunderstood and slandered him.

Working closely together on a mission field is always difficult, and differences of opinion can divide good men. The zeal of Henry Spalding made him clash with anyone whom he considered as lacking such ardor. Meanwhile, Whitman sometimes viewed Spalding as uncompromising and cantankerous.

But when Whitman’s daughter Alice Clarissa drowned in a creek, Spalding had made the arduous 120-mile trip through the mountains to comfort his grieving friends. Beneath his rough beard, sunburned face, and fiery eyes, Spalding had a soft heart. He mingled his tears with those of Whitman and his wife as he preached the funeral of the little girl. His text was from II Kings 4:26: “Is it well with the child? It is well.”

So firm was Spalding’s love for the Whitmans that he entrusted his own eldest daughter to their care. His daughter was with the Whitmans on the fateful day of their martyrdom at the hands of the Cayuse in November 1847.

Spalding and his wife were threatened with death numerous times, but the Lord had delivered them each time so they could carry on the Lord’s work. Their mission compound, called Lapwai, was protected by converted natives such as Chief Timothy, who would not let hostile hands touch their beloved teacher.

While the Whitmans went to an early martyrdom and reward, the Spaldings were left on earth to continue the task of taming the West with the Bible and the hoe. After losing his beloved wife Eliza in 1852, Spalding continued, “stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord” (I Corinthians 15:58).

During his long, faithful ministry in the Northwest, Henry Spalding lived to personally baptize more than 1,000 converts. His ministry extended beyond the Nez Perce tribe to embrace the neighboring tribes of the Cayuse, the Spokane, the Walla Walla, the Yakima, and the Coeur d’Alene.

Spalding had lived to see the Oregon wilderness attain the status of statehood. By the time of his death, the transcontinental railroad had been laid. The mountains over which he had once walked on foot beside a mule were now crossed by trains. On his last trip to the East in 1871, the elderly missionary had gazed in wonder as the landscape slipped past the window of his comfortable railcar. On this eastward trip, Spalding was hailed by large crowds wherever he went.

During the time he spent in the East, he always preached to crowded churches, telling the people the fascinating story of the mission work in the Northwest and the blood of martyrs that had hallowed that ground. Spalding pleaded that the work was not over, and that the West could not be won with the railroad, barbed wire, and the Winchester rifle, but that the Gospel of Jesus Christ and that alone could tame the wild frontier. The U.S. Senate applauded his efforts and famous newspapers sang his praises.

But Henry Spalding would not bask in personal glory. He set his face toward the western sun and returned to his old station at Lapwai, wanting to die at his post of duty. Indeed, his last years were some of his most fruitful, as he began to train a host of young Nez Perce pastors and teachers who would continue his work.

Even at the age of seventy, Spalding worked as hard as ever. That year, he traveled more than 1,500 miles on horseback. He lived with the Indians, slept on the hard ground, ate their food, and taught them from the Book of God. He gave the Nez Perce a written language and translated large portions of Scripture for his beloved people. He also taught them to sing, and Spalding loved nothing better than to sit in the white frame church and hear the sweet songs of Zion being sung by his converts.

The singing now called the old man to the present. The loved ones about his bed were singing a favorite hymn, a hymn loved by his wife Eliza who was awaiting him in glory: “The delightful day will come, When my dear Lord will bring me home, And I shall see His face.”

Near Spalding on a bedside table was his well-worn Bible and his journal. The last entry in that journal was written with a shaky hand, telling of the baptism of several natives from the Umatilla tribe. The last two natives who were baptized by Spalding were a husband and a wife. Interestingly, they took the Christian names “Marcus” and “Narcissa Whitman.” Under their baptismal record, the final words of Spalding’s journal were these: “Bless the Lord, oh my soul.”

Reverently standing over the dying missionary, Chief Timothy’s dark cheeks were wet with tears. The chief joined in the singing and afterward opened his personal copy of the Gospel of Matthew, translated by Spalding into the Nez Perce language. Chief Timothy offered his dying pastor a few words of comfort from the Book of books. Then, the chief joined his hand with the hand of the old missionary. To his teacher he gave these final words of parting:

“You are my great interpreter. You was [sic] sent by God to me and to this people, to teach us life, the Word of God. You are going first. God only is good and great. Jesus alone gives life. Now don’t be concerned. I will never turn back. My wife will never turn back. This people will never turn back.”

With these final, encouraging words echoing in his heart, Henry Harmon Spalding completed his earthly pilgrimage and entered into the eternal rest that is reserved for the people of God. He was buried at Lapwai, his old mission station, under a grove of trees. His grave is carefully maintained by a grateful people to this very day. He had committed the truth to faithful men, men who would teach others also. Spalding’s life testimony had indeed been steadfast, “always abounding in the work of the Lord.”

Sources and Further Reference:

Drury, Clifford M. Henry Harmon Spalding: Pioneer of Old Oregon. Caldwell, ID: Caxton Printers, LTD, 1936.