Abraham's Conceits

About the Book

         In the second half of the 1800s, the United States turns her attention to the demands of Manifest Destiny, which include killing or containing the tribal people of North America and establishing a transcontinental, Anglo nation. Among the last tribes impacted are those in the Columbia River Valley and on the Columbia Plateau of the Pacific Northwest.
         At the same time, a movement called Washani sweeps across that area in reaction to the ascent of the Anglo-Americans. The spiritual leader is a shaman and prophet of the Wanapum tribe named Smoholla, 1813-1895. His influence on the other tribes becomes enormous. One of these is the Yakima, of what is now eastern Washington, and this tribe is one of two featured in the story.
         James Wilbur grows up in Upstate New York, son of a Presbyterian minister. Most, if not all, of our founding fathers were Presbyterians. His father believes God is a Presbyterian and that Methodism is a lesser religion. Naturally, James finds his way to what his father considers the Devil's trifecta: Methodism, the Methodist ministry and missionary work.
         James Harvey Wilbur marries Lucretia Ann Stebens on 3/9/1831, when both are nineteen. They have a daughter named Ann. Lucretia Wilbur is not a church-chosen partner for James. She smokes cigarettes, drinks whiskey and is a free thinker. The Wilburs are sent west by ship to build the first church in Portland, Oregon, and to tend to that flock.
         Thirty years go by. Ann grows up, marries and dies of influenza. The Wilburs, then forty-nine, head to the Columbia Plateau to begin a new life, arriving at the Yakima Indian Reservation in 1859. Both teach English; James works to convert the Indians to Methodism.
         The Yakima call him Father Wilbur right away; not out of affection, as is historically recorded, but as a joke, his being afflicted with paternalism and prone to pontification.
         James goes back east to Washington and badgers Abraham Lincoln about the corrupt government agent at the reservation, so President Lincoln appoints James to that post.
         James now uses his combined power to further his own agenda for the Yakima, which is assimilation through commercial agriculture. He soon realizes that isolation and death are the true aims of the reservation system, and that his helping the Yakima to transcend those intentions is an abomination to almost all the other White people. He is not dissuaded.
         Reservation life in the 1800s is marginal. Father Wilbur offers food, education and land, in exchange for conversion. Teams of oxen, John Deere plows, seeds, fruit trees, cattle, homestead claims; it grows, as the converted Yakima (eventually about 25% to agriculture and a lesser percentage to Methodism) become established in the world of market agriculture.
         Almost immediately, these farms and ranches become self-sustaining. To fund his program, however, James turns to misallocation of government funds - all in God's name.
         James Wilbur has maniacal rules, and his main rules conflict with the traditions of the people. The Yakima have a social security system dependent on polygamy, whereby widows and orphans are woven back into the community, also sheltering the aged in the process. It's not about wealth, sex or power. It's about survival through remarriage and adoption.
         James thinks of polygamy in sexual terms and gets hopelessly stuck there. Along with a bit of Mormon History, there is a comparison of these two forms of polygamy.
         The land of the Columbia Plateau is initially fertile, and James has no trouble selling the produce of the new Yakima farmers, because more settlers come to Oregon every day. After 1884, James helps converted Indians file homestead claims off the reservation.
         The Yakima are a conservative people and most of them reject Christianity and market agriculture. These people are known as Traditionals, and are referred to by James as blanket Indians. They don't recognize his rules concerning monogamy and religion.
         If you want the supplies and assistance available through Father Wilbur, you may have only one spouse. For him, it's a simple trade of survival for conversion, but for those who feel they have no choice, it's a family-destroying and heart-wrenching experience.
         The other main rule, about Methodism, has more rules attached. No leaving the reservation, no drinking, no gambling and no dancing are among them. He adds to the damage of his insistence by demanding these changes be both immediate and absolute.
         Father Wilbur never keeps a dime of the redirected money for himself. He gets away with this despotism and funding his program through theft for six years, until 1870, when the army returns after the start of Reconstruction. His crimes are then discovered, he is fired as agent, and most of the personal restrictions he imposed are abolished.
         In an instant, he falls from power. Even his church casts a dubious eye on him and suggests he might better contribute by contacting unsurrendered Indians.
         Lucretia convinces the church's leaders that she can watch the flock while James is away, her already having rapport with the people, and James walks off into the wilderness.
         What happens next involves a band of Nez Perce, a secular Jew named Sam Rathckowscki and the story of Abraham and Isaac, which is at the core of this book.
         Abraham's conceits are two: that he owns his children, and that God speaks to him. Abraham and his family enter the story. Catherine the Great, her last lover, and her son Paul the Nut also make cameo appearances.
         Sam's story is told, taking him from northern Russia to New York City, and then west as an interpreter with the Lewis and Clark Expedition, where he is invited to join the band of Nez Perce just mentioned. He remains there and marries four Nez Perce women.
         If you want to know what happens to James Harvey Wilbur in the wilds of Idaho, what transpires in his month with the Nez Perce, and about his then drinking antebellum whiskey at the White House with President Grant (in a meeting that really took place) you'll want to read this historically accurate and slightly fictionalized story, most of which is true.

About the Author

          The writer lives like a Yeti in the Santa Lucia Mountains of Coastal California, writing books, of which Abraham's Conceits is the second published; preceded by a nonfiction work, Killing Joaquín, also released through Xlibris. In 2014, there are six more, as yet unpublished
          Born: White Plains, New York, 1946.
          Education: Hackley School, Tarrytown, New York (1964); Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida (B.A. 1968).