The boat stopped in front of a sandy stretch of beach along the Snake River near Lewiston, Idaho.
A man named Jeffery Scott stood up. He’s Nez Perce, also known as Nimiipuu, and the boat had arrived at an important place in his ancestral history. He told a long story about the beach, tracing his forebears from there to an encounter with Lewis and Clark to Sitting Bull’s camp in the mid-1800s to modern-day Lewiston.
I studied him while we were aboard the River Leader as he gave an impromptu speech during the cultural Hear the Echoes of Our Ancestors Jet Boat Tour. His cracked hands had obviously seen hard work. His face, weathered and taut, had spent many hours in the sun and wind. His personal history lesson turned into a heartbreaking and funny tribute to his mother, who had died a few months earlier. He sounded like I felt when I gave my mom’s eulogy less than a year before.
Scott said his mom spoke the Nez Perce language (nimipuutímt), and he didn’t. When she spoke it in front of him, he knew, somehow, that she was talking about him. He smiled at that memory, a smile that gave the rest of us on the River Leader
