illiam Craig was born in Virginia in 1807. At the age of seventeen he killed a neighbor following an argument. This action sent him fleeing west, where he seldom spoke of his early life, possibly fearing arrest for his crime.

Craig the Mountain Man
He was known to be a trapper-explorer in the American West as early as 1829. In partnership with several other men, he established a rough log post named Fort Davy Crockett, at the Green River in Brown's Hole, a favored wintering site for the Indians in the northwest corner of Colorado. Patrons of the establishment included mountain men Joe Meek, Doc Newell, Jim Bridger, and Kit Carson.

In 1833, he temporarily traveled to California with a group sent by Captain Bonneville under the command of Joe Walker. Craig achieved some notoriety when he played a prank on his commander, tricking Walker to dive headfirst into the Humboldt River where only a few inches of water covered soft mud. Scrambling out of the mud, and scooping mud out of his eyes, Walker went for his rifle, but Craig was able to stay out of gunshot range until his anger subsided.

In the summer of 1840, Craig and his trapper friends learned that supply trains would no longer be passing by Fort Davy Crockett, so the watering hole was closed, and Craig header further west.

Arrival at Lapwai
According to the diary of Henry Spalding, Craig, the mountain man, arrived in the Lapwai Valley on November 20, 1840. Unlike most of the mountain men, he stayed in the valley, settling about eight miles up from the Spalding Mission. He was the first non-missionary settler in what is now the state of Idaho.

He married Pah-Tis-Sah, called Isabel, the daughter of James, also known as Big Thunder, a chief of the Nez Perce. He raised the ire of the missionary by advising his father-in-law that he should charge Spalding for the use of his land, water and timber. Despite some bad blood between the two, however, Craig's knowledge of his adopted people allowed Henry Spalding to make a dictionary of the Nez Perce language, enabling the missionary to teach the tribe how to read and write. At the time of the Whitman massacre in 1847 Spalding found safe haven in Craig's home.

First Indian Agent for the Nez Perce
Craig was a well-educated man of his time, capable of writing well-composed letters and reports. He was the first appointed Indian Agent for the Nez Perce in 1848 in the hope that his good offices would keep the tribe out of the Cayuse War. He remained in that role until 1858. He served as the interpreter for the Nez Perce at the Walla Walla and Blackfoot Councils. The Nez Perce thought so highly of Craig that they asked Isaac Stevens to put a provision in their treaty allowing the former mountain man to keep his homestead in a reservation otherwise off-limits to whites. His homestead was often used for councils of the Nez Perce, occasionally drawing crowds of up to two thousand people.

A quote from Red Wolf from the proceedings of the Walla Walla Council of 1855 reads:

I have only one or two things to speak. I want Mr. Craig to stay there in the Nez Perce country, and not go away. The reason why I wish Mr. Craig to stay there is because he understands us. He speaks our language well. When there is any news that comes into the country we can go to him and hear it straight. The same for us when anybody comes to speak to us, he will sit down with us and we understand them. It is good for him to stay there to interpret on both sides so that each can understand the other.

Officer of the Volunteers
Craig served as a volunteer in the Yakima Indian War, eventually attaining the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Over time, he appeared to feel frustration over certain side effects of the treaties, writing in a report from Walla Walla in September, 1858:

Subtly some evil disposed persons have begun to introduce whisky…the pernicious and bad effects of which have become most glaringly apparent within the past few months. From what source they obtain it is impossible to tell…many of the Cayuses and Walla Wallas living in the valley have been leading a most dissolute and renegade life lately, under no control whatever.

Craig's Later Years
During the winter of 1858-59 Craig left Lapwai and briefly became the first postmaster of the burgeoning new town of Walla Walla. Upon leaving that post he returned to his farm, from which he ran a hotel and stage station. The record shows that he also worked on the Lewiston-Virginia City Wagon Road Project in 1866-67.

In April of 1869, William Craig died following a paralytic stroke at the age of sixty-two.

Sources:
Stevens, Isaac Ingalls A True Copy of the Record of the Official Proceedings at the Council in the Walla Walla Valley 1855. Fairfield, WA: Ye Galleon Press, 1985.

Richards, Kent D. Isaac I. Stevens: Young Man in a Hurry. Pullman, Washington State University Press, 1993.

Ruby, Robert H. and John A. Brown The Cayuse Indians: Imperial Tribesmen of Old Oregon. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1972.

Ruby, Robert H. and John A. Brown The Spokane Indians: Children of the Sun. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970.

Baird, Dennis, Diane Mallickan, W. R. Swagerty, eds. The Nez Perce Nation Divided: Firsthand Accounts of Events Leading to the 1863 Treaty. Moscow, ID: University of Idaho Press, 2002.

Haines, Francis The Nez Perces: Tribesmen of the Columbia Plateau. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1955.

Drury, Clifford M. Chief Lawyer of the Nez Perce Indians. Glendale, CA: The Arthur H. Clark Company, 1979.

Nicandri, David L. Northwest Chiefs: Gustav Sohon's View of the 1855 Stevens Treaty Councils. Tacoma: Washington State Historical Society, 1986.

Josephy, Alvin M. The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the Northwest. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997.