About the author
Paul Scott (b.1904) and Beryl Scott’s book Eliza and the Indian War Pony was based on the true story of Eliza Spalding. Her parents were missionaries to the Nez Percé and Cayuse Indians, and Eliza grew up speaking the Nez Percé language fluently. She was sent away to a school run by a Mrs Whitman, where she learned to read and write. The Cayuse Indians feared for their lands (rightly, as we know) with the influx of white settlers, and they massacred some of the settlers at the mission where Eliza’s school was based, including Mrs Whitman. The remaining settlers, including Eliza, were taken hostage, and Eliza was used as a translator between the Indians and the hostages. When they were ransomed, she was returned to her family.
Finding the book
Easy to find.
Links and sources
More on Eliza and the Indian War Pony
More on Eliza Spalding’s parents
Terri Wear: Horse Stories: An Annotated Bibliography
Bibliography (horse books only)
Eliza and the Indian War Pony
Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co, New York, 1961, 172 pp.
Chief Timothy gives a beautiful war pony, Tashe, to Eliza, the first white child to be born in Oregon Territory. She rides Tashe to school until relations between Indians and settlers
deteriorate and the Whitman Massacre is the result.
