MATLOCKS TELL OF NEZ PERCE DAYS, by Hu Blonk

Mr and Mrs William Matlock, lived their youth among the Nez Perce and still talk Indian today. [1954] She was the first white child born in Whitman County and he came across the plains in a big emigrant train, menaced by Indians most of the way. Sunday they celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary. Matlock is 83 and his wife, 82. He's a lanky man, whom you can easily visualize in early days riding over the Western hills, one leg dangling on each side of a horse, and she's what you'd imagine a pioneer Western woman would look like. Today she retains the "tomboy" temperament that featured her girlhood days.

Mrs. Matlock's family came west after her father served as a soldier for the North in the Civil War. They settled near Kamiah Butte, where she was born on a soldier's homestead in 1873. When Mrs. Matlock was two or three years old the great Nez Perce up-rising occurred. The women and children fled to Fort Walla Walla while the men remained behind to protect their crops, buildings, horses & stock.

The situation got worse and worse, Mrs. Matlock recounted until soldiers from Fort Spokane and Fort Walla Walla rounded up a thousand of the Indians' horses and shot them along the banks of the Spokane River near then Fort Coeur d'Alane. I saw the bones of those horses, said Mrs. Matlock.

After three years at Fort Walla Walla the women and children came home, where Mrs. Matlock raised with four brothers grew up to be an attractive girl who could hold her own with any man, indian or white, at their own game. At least once she engaged in a personal rough and tumble fight with an indian youth who was annoying her. "I had my heel on his neck" she said.

When she was 12 the family moved to Hawk Creek, which is a tributary to what is now Lake Roosevelt on the Columbia River. Between that time and when she was married at 20, she had nothing to do with girls. She raced on "Little Don" against indians at picnics and Indian gatherings, winning most of the time.I have never played with anyone but boys, she said promptly.

Mr and Mrs Matlock first met when the former was seven years old.

He was born in Missouri in 1871 and with his folks came West in 1872 with two mule teams forming part of a 200-wagon emigrant train. It took the pioneers 1&1/2 years to reach the Northwest. The first winter they spent at Council Bluffs, Iowa. In the spring they resumed their journey, particularly hazardous on the Great Plains. Each night the wagons would be drawn in a circle, the women bedded down in the center, and the men, as guards, at the wagon edge.

For $150 Matlock's father [Preston Matlock, no. 1.3.10.] bought a squatter's right for 160 acres on Palouse River, near Colfax, Wa. The long - married couple met when Matlock got into a fight with one of her brothers, her family having moved from Kamiak to the Colfax area. His life too was featured with many pioneer day exper-iences, such as a stampede of a large band of horses by a cougar in Montana which almost cost Matlock his life and the drowning of his horse in a river crossing, from which he narrowly escaped by grab-bing the horses tail.

They got acquainted at the romantic age when Mrs Matlock riding a spirited horse fell off because a saddle cinch broke. "He picked me up. she said, I'd of never fallen off if it hadn't been for that cinch breaking." Later they started going to dances, which resulted in their marriage in Colfax in 1894.

All during their youth their lives intermingled with those of the Indians, whom they praise as friendly people as soon as the uprising was over. "I never remember of any Indian ever stealing anything. From then we learned to say "Killabun Sis" (probably not spelled right), meaning "Hello, where you going ?"

The Matlocks moved to Wenatchee in 1930, after living in Spokane, Canada, Seattle and Algona (near Seattle).

Locally, Matlock was night engineer for the Independent Fruit shippers, " the largest apple cold storage warehouse in the world" he said. he establishment in now known as Cascadian Fruit shippers. In 1942 he retired.

Mrs Matlock was unusually spry for many years. At the age of 40 she won first in a free-for-all women's race at a picnic, first in the women's race, first in the grandmother's race and first in the married women's race. Her hobby is fishing, which she does to the limit, despite her age. He is a fisherman too. She grows flowers as a second hobby and he vegetables, of which most of the neighbors partake.

Their two children and their families live nearby. One is Mrs. C.P. DELFELD and the other A.R. MATLOCK. They have one grandchild.

Age has not dulled their memory. They can remember as though it was yesterday when an Indian brave came up with a number of large trout and how Chief Piatote picked up each one, stuck his finger inside the fish's mouth to make the eye protrude out, and ate each one.

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