The History of the Yakima Valley, Washington, Comprising Yakima, Kittitas and Benton Counties, The S.J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1919, Volume II, page 378 LUCULLUS VIRGIL McWHORTER. For an extended period Lucullus Virgil McWhorter has been a resident of the northwest and his work here on behalf of the native Indians has been most far-reaching, beneficial and resultant. The story of his life activities is perhaps best told in a biography written by J. P. MacLean, which reads as follows: "Mr. McWhorter is an unassuming man, without scholastic learning, thoroughly honest in purpose and always willing to listen to others. When his mind is decisively made up he acts without any thought of reward or encomium. In the services he rendered the Indians of the state of Washington he incurred the enmity of one of the most thoroughly organized gangs of land robbers in the history of this country, whose tentacles were strongly entrenched in the Indiana Department. Single-handed he coped with them, his only guide being that of simple justice. In every move he outwitted all though some of the shrewdest lawyers were at work. While his movements were silent, he did not disguise the fact he had determined to stand between them and the Indian. However, it is better for the narrative to reveal the truth. "Lucullus Virgil, son of Rev. J. M. McWhorter, M. D., was born in a log cabin built by his greatuncle, Thomas McWhorter, on the ancestral home, on McKinney's Run, a tributary of Hacker's Creek, in Harrison county, West Virginia, January 29, 1860. The following March his parents moved to Buckhannon Run, an upper branch of Hacker's Creek, in Upshur county. In this isolated little valley, with six brothers and two sisters, he grew to manhood, inheriting all the mountaineer's love of freedom and clan affinity. Many of his habits were solitary. The hills, woods and limpid streams were inexhaustible sources of pleasure. He lamented the passing of the native forest with its indigent life. His pro-primitive disposition and proneness for the wild precluded the collegiate course and West Point cadetship which were open to him. Four months of dreaded winter schooling until twenty-one years of age was all that his nature could endure. He chafed at restraint; and his distaste for textbooks was surpassed only by his infatuation for some of the poets, Indian and pioneer history, traditions and mountain folklore. He reveled in the legends of the wilderness. The hunter stories of the first settlers which he heard in childhood were never forgotten. The thrilling adventures of Jesse Hughes and his associates with the red warriors of the forest appealed to him as nothing else could. These tales of a past epoch eventually culminated in the pages of Border Settlers. "Unlike most of our pioneer annals, the reader will find this work strikingly non-partisan. The author has endeavored to give events without discriminating in favor of his own race. To him the aggressors in the Trans-Allegheny wars were too palpable to admit of controversy. Upon this point he is likely to be assailed, for he has crossed some recognized authorities; but his position is strongly entrenched with facts. Justly loyal to his own racial affinities, he has from early childhood been noted for his Indian sympathies. While yet in his early teens he prevailed on his little sister to bore his ears, preparatory to a life with the red men. The culminating set-back to this utopian dream was when, in anticipation of a visit to the parental home of a noted preacher from Ohio, his more `civilized' brothers forcibly applied the shears to his flowing locks. As he grew older, filial duty alone stayed his nomadic proclivities; but with each recurring flight of the wild geese the inherent longing for the boundless open was almost unendurable. Indian summer affected him inexplicably. The murky haze was from the smoke-flues of the invisible wigwams of the spirit Indians which haunt the Monongahela hills. The autumnal winds soughing in the trees scattering the crimson foliage, was a funeral dirge for the primitive life forever gone. "Early in life Mr. McWhorter read MacLean's The Mound Builders, published in serial form in The Star in the West, which found its way into his mountain home. The reading of this work had a very marked effect on his future career. Those old Stars were treasured for years and from their perusal a new world was unfolded, and there came a longing for delving into the past. Other archaeological authors were studied, which in time led to a practical examination of the various Indian remains in the Hacker's Creek valley, with a correct tabulation of all data obtained. Graves, mounds, stone-heaps and village sites were explored and their history revealed. No antiquities in the valley that he did not visit and note. Caves and aboriginal rock-shelters in other localities were investigated and their secrets wrested from them. But in all these excavations his veneration for the ancient was such that even the most lowly grave was invariably left restored to its former state. None could accuse him of undue desecration or vandalism. He became an expert on flint and stone implements. Thousands of relics were collected with accurate history of their finding, constituting the finest aggregation of antiquarian objects ever secured in central West Virginia, a region not rich in ancient remains. These in later years were placed intact and permanently in the museum of The West Virginia Historical and Antiquarian Society, Charleston, since created The Department of State Archives and History. In 1893 he was one of three who originated and published The Archaeologist, an illustrated journal intended to meet the primary needs of the archaeological student. This publication was suspended three years later. "In 1897 the home farm was disposed of and the author soon after settled near the historic Fort Jefferson, in Darke county, Ohio. In the spring of 1903 he consummated his lifelong desire to 'go west,' by moving with his family to North Yakima, Washington, where he continued for a time in the live stock business, which he had previously been following. His delight was Devon cattle. His father and himself brought the first of this active breed into central West Virginia. He held them in Ohio and selected the cream of seven different herds and took them to Washington. He and his two sons had, when they disposed of their business, the nucleus of the best herd in the United States. They exhibited throughout the northwest and the Pacific slope. "In his new home, situated only a few miles from the Yakima Indian Reservation, he found opportunity for the field study of ethnology, which he had combined with archaeology. He soon won the friendship of the tribe. He joined in their social gatherings and festivities. He camped with them in the mountains, participating in their feats of strength and testing the splendid efficiency of the sweat-house and the icy river bath. He mingled with them in their primitive worship, for which he has inherent respect. He has been instructed in the mystic rites of the 'medicine dance,' and the touching simplicity of the 'feast of the new food,' a ceremony of invocation and thanksgiving to Me-yay-wah, the Supreme: He has been welcomed at the 'funeral feast,' where the grief and respect for the memory of the dead is attested by wailing and the distribution of presents. Looked upon as one of their number, they have sought his counsel. As one aged warrior expressed it, 'He has ears and he hears straight. He has but one tongue and he talks from his heart.' So great was their confidence in him that Yoom-tee-bee, 'bitten by a grizzly bear,' a strong clan chieftain, adopted him into his tribe, conferring upon him all the honors of a councilman, under the name of a deceased sub-chief: He-mene-Ka-wan, 'Old Wolf.' This name in Klickitat, a tribe amalgamated with the Yakimas, is Hal-ish Ho-sat. At a later day, Too-skas-Pot-thah-nook, 'Seven Mountains,' the last surviving son of the great war chief, Owhi, adopted him in lieu of a deceased brother, Ko-tah-wi-nat, 'rain falling from a passing cloud,' a noted warrior of his day. "Chief Yoomteebee's newly made clansman soon became aware that his people were being systematically looted, that their right to the reservation streams for irrigation purposes, without which their lands are worthless, had been appropriated by white settlers; and that later this wrong had been arbitrarily sanctioned by an unfair ruling of the secretary of the interior, leaving the Indians entirely unprovided for. Also that through congressional legislation, steered by local `promoters' and land grabbers, three-fourths of all allotments within a large area were to be sold under a law that was equivalent to confiscation, permitting the allottees to hold twenty acres each, only, for which they were to pay for a water right on such terms and at such price as the secretary of the interior might provide. This appalling robbery, which if consummated meant ruin for the victims, he saw hanging over the Yakimas. Acting upon his own volition and without legal advice, he went secretly into the tight with the determination that if the game could not be defeated, he would in any event expose the conspiracy which he surmised to be far-reaching and powerful. His conjecture proved true and the odds against him were heavy. But casting his lot with that of Yoomteebee, the 'leader of the hostiles,' and enjoying the full confidence of that determined primitive-minded chieftain, he well knew what danger lurked ahead should he fail to break the mighty combine and the tribesmen be driven to the 'last ditch.' He kept his own counsel, but when the time came for the Indians to be approached by the government officials for the purpose of securing the contracts necessary for the consummation of the crime, he acted promptly. Mounted on Wild Eye, 'The Grey Cayuse,' he struck the Reservation trails night and day, warning his red brothers against signing any papers that might be presented to them. Chief Yoomteebee sent out other runners and soon the entire tribe was awake to the impending danger. They refused to sign, and the pet scheme to ensnare the Yakimas was foiled, nor did the despoilers know for a time from whence came the blow. "The first skirmish had been won and the lines of the enemy thrown into confusion. This, however, only augmented the ominous menace of an actual tragedy should the tribe turn. On March 10, 1910, Chief Yoomteebee died of pneumonia, leaving the tribe in mourning and the 'hostiles' without an aggressive leader. New measures, covert and subtle, were launched by the opposition and the fight continued. Wild Eye, an integral factor in the battle, covered hundreds of miles, traversing obscure trails in the darkness of night and on one such occasion crossing a swollen reservation stream on a rude Indian bridge of round poles, the loose timbers half floating on the flood, giving at every step of the faithful steed. Often for days and nights the rider did not remove his clothes, eating when he could and sleeping when and wherever weariness demanded a rest. He was always welcomed at the Indian's lowly home, but many times his bed was a blanket and a pile of straw in the open or the bare ground. The haunting appeal of Chief Yoomteebee. 'You are now my brother. You must always stand by my people and help them.' ever urged him on. During the thickest gloom of the trouble, Rev. Stwire G. Waters, who had been elected head chief of the tribe, said, 'I have been praying that the Lord would send a good man to help us, and he has heard me.' "For three years, single-handed he kept up the struggle, balking every effort of the 'system.' he then successfully invoked the aid of the Indian Rights Association. Mr. Brosius, the agent for this powerful, philanthropic body, entered the contest with spirit. He looked to the legal and strategic feature at the national capitol, while Mr. McWhorter kept guard on the Reservation. Judge Carroll B. Graves, an eminent attorney of Seattle, was employed, and in the end a victory was won, insofar as recovering free water for one-half of the land involved and preventing the jeopardizing of any part of the allotments in question. Mr. Brosius said that if it had not been for 'The Grey Cayuse' and rider, the Yakimas would have been despoiled of water rights to the value of several millions of dollars. The most effective and characteristic of the tribal petitions were drafted by Mr. McWhorter. "The white owners of twenty thousand acres of deeded Indian lands shared equally with the tribesmen in the fruits of this triumph, but strange to say, they blindly stood in with the opposition, or held aloof until the last stages of the struggle. Mr. McWhorter did this work, ignoring alike intimidating threats and warnings of social ostracism; spending months of time and considerable money without any expectation of compensation or reward; nor did he ever solicit or receive a dollar for the sacrifice which left him financially crippled. "In 1913, Mr. McWhorter published his 'Crime Against the Yakimas,' a strongly written pamphlet of fifty-six pages, illustrated, setting forth the flagrant wrongs heaped upon this tribe and the strenuous fight made by the chief men for tardy justice. It is a fearful exposure of an attempt at despoiling the nation's wards; wherein government officials, speculators and political cohorts under the cloak of philanthropic motives were combined to deliver the final coup de maitre to a helpless remnant of a race upon whose neck the heel of the conqueror has ground for the last four centuries. In the introduction, Mr. William E. Johnson, known and dreaded by the lawless whiskey vendors who haunt the western Indian reservations as `Pussie Foot,' in part, says: `Years ago McWhorter began mingling with the Yakima Indians. He earned their confidence. He fought their battles. He aired their wrongs in public. He spent his time and money in efforts to secure for them a square deal. He was formally adopted into their tribe by Chief Yoom-tee-bee, and is known among them as He-mene Ka-wan (Old Wolf). And, while he is an adopted member of their tribe and has participated in tribal affairs as a member of their council, he has never sought or received one dollar of benefit from such membership, "'Four years ago, when I began operations in Washington, suppressing the liquor traffic among Indians, as chief officer of the Indian service, I first crossed this man McWhorter's trail. I found him stirring them up to protest against the issuing of saloon licenses at Toppenish. I found the Indians under his influence, protesting against the issuing of saloon licenses at Wapato, at Parker and other places. I found him stirring up the Yakimas to petition the secretary of the interior, asking for the removal of the white man's saloon from their midst. "'In March, 1911, a bill was introduced into the Washington senate to destroy the splendid state law against selling liquor to Indians. The news came to me immediately over the wire and I telegraphed to many persons of influence in that state, asking assistance in defeating the infamous proposal. It was L. V. McWhorter who played the card that defeated the liquor grafters. He rode the Yakima reservation for two days. The result was, that, representing five hundred Indians, he sent a telegram to the sponsor of the bill protesting and imploring that it be withdrawn. And it was withdrawn, as the hundreds of scoundrels who have since been convicted under this law can testify. "'Because of my interest in my own race as well as my interest in the Indian, I rejoice that the following pages have been written, and written by one so well qualified to tell the sordid story as Mr. McWhorter. If the remainder of the white race were like him, there would be no Indian problems.' "During these years of friendly contact with the Yakimas, Mr. McWhorter obtained many of their traditions and folklore stories, to which he is constantly adding. These, with much obscure tribal history, because of the native eloquence of oratory which he carefully preserves, will, if ever published, constitute a valuable contribution to our Indian literature. Not the least interesting of his manuscripts is the personal narratives of a number of the warriors of Chief Joseph's band, Nez Perce war, 1877. Some of these cover previous tribal wars, and the thrilling experiences of the grim fighters, told in their own way, reveals the Indian character as seldom found in border history. The lack of money alone has prevented the completion of these researches and their publication in book form." On the 17th of March, 1883, Mr. McWhorter was married to Miss Ardelia Adaline Swisher, a native of his own state and a typical mountain woman of character and ability. Three children were born: Ovid Tullius, March 3, 1884; Iris Oresta, June 15, 1886; Virgil Oneco, June 7, 1888. Mrs. McWhorter died December 22, 1893. Mr. McWhorter's second wife was Miss C. Annie Bowman, who for several years was identified with state institutional work in Ohio and Missouri. Of the children the two boys are graduates of the Washington State College. The eldest was for a time agriculturist for the State Training School, Chehalis: later agricultural instructor, Snohomish high school; county agricultural agent of Clallam and Jefferson counties, and is now at Montesano, Grays Harbor county engaged in county agent work. He was married November 26, 1915, to Miss Bertha Heffner, a graduate of the University of Washington. The younger son after graduation from college, was engaged as agricultural instructor at the State College but for the past several years has been identified with the Bureau of Animal Industry of the United States Department of Agriculture as a specialist in sheep husbandry. He is superintendent of the United States sheep experiment station at Dubois, Idaho. He was married on November 21, 1916, to Miss Beryl Campbell, a graduate of the Washington State College. The daughter graduated from the Yakima Business College, and was married November 26, 1908, to Mr. W. George Ingalsbe; died February 28, 1917, leaving two children, Walter E., born June 15, 1911, and George W., Jr., born December 12, 1915. Barring a short residence at Toppenish, Washington, Mr. and Mrs. Ingalsbe made their home at (North) Yakima, Washington. Mrs. Ingalsbe is buried in the city cemetery. ******************************** Submitted to the Washington Bios Project in December 2007 by Jeffrey L. Elmer. Submitter has no additional information about the subject of this article.