Trevor James Bond

Washington State University (WSU) is a remarkable place, over the years educating hundreds of thousands, conducting innovative research in a wide variety of disciplines, and earning numerous intercollegiate athletics titles. Originally named The Agricultural College, Experiment Station and School of Science of the State of Washington, the school first opened on a wintry 1892 morning with six professors. Today, the institution has more than 2,600 faculty positions and annually awards over 7,000 degrees on multiple campuses--now exceeding 260,000 total since its first graduating class of seven. In Leading the Crimson and Gray, multiple authors chronicle the lives and legacies of those who served in one of WSU's most visible roles--president. These executives were responsible for raising funds, shaping strategic visions, addressing faculty and student concerns, attending to fiscal issues, and interacting with lawmakers and business leaders. There were early bitter battles over the Pullman location and curriculum. Other eras brought student unrest and social upheaval, wars, protests, and severe economic depression and recession. Their accomplishments were substantial. Early presidents launched the college, expanded the academic program beyond agriculture and science, established general education requirements, and took key steps toward eventual university status. Later presidents supported athletic achievement, strengthened enrollment, obtained legislative support for a capital construction bond referendum, increased research grants and contracts, completed major construction projects, effectively faced massive state allocation cuts, and won bipartisan state legislative backing for a new medical school. Combined, George W. Lilley, John W. Heston, Enoch A. Bryan, Ernest O. Holland, Wilson M. Compton, C. Clement French, W. Glenn Terrell, Samuel H. Smith, V. Lane Rawlins, and Elson S. Floyd left a legacy that makes the Cougar Nation proud.

Washington State University (WSU) is a remarkable place, over the years educating hundreds of thousands, conducting innovative research in a wide variety of disciplines, and earning numerous intercollegiate athletics titles. Originally named The Agricultural College, Experiment Station and School of Science of the State of Washington, the school first opened on a wintry 1892 morning with six professors. Today, the institution has more than 2,600 faculty positions and annually awards over 7,000 degrees on multiple campuses--now exceeding 260,000 total since its first graduating class of seven. In Leading the Crimson and Gray, multiple authors chronicle the lives and legacies of those who served in one of WSU's most visible roles--president. These executives were responsible for raising funds, shaping strategic visions, addressing faculty and student concerns, attending to fiscal issues, and interacting with lawmakers and business leaders. There were early bitter battles over the Pullman location and curriculum. Other eras brought student unrest and social upheaval, wars, protests, and severe economic depression and recession. Their accomplishments were substantial. Early presidents launched the college, expanded the academic program beyond agriculture and science, established general education requirements, and took key steps toward eventual university status. Later presidents supported athletic achievement, strengthened enrollment, obtained legislative support for a capital construction bond referendum, increased research grants and contracts, completed major construction projects, effectively faced massive state allocation cuts, and won bipartisan state legislative backing for a new medical school. Combined, George W. Lilley, John W. Heston, Enoch A. Bryan, Ernest O. Holland, Wilson M. Compton, C. Clement French, W. Glenn Terrell, Samuel H. Smith, V. Lane Rawlins, and Elson S. Floyd left a legacy that makes the Cougar Nation proud.

In 1847 two barrels of "Indian curiosities" shipped by missionary Henry Spalding to Dr. Dudley Allen arrived in Kinsman, Ohio. The items inside included exquisite Nez Perce shirts, dresses, baskets, and horse regalia--some decorated with porcupine quills and others with precious dentalium shells and rare elk teeth. Donated to Oberlin College in 1893 and transferred to the Ohio Historical Society (OHS) in 1942, the Spalding-Allen Collection languished in storage until Nez Perce National Historic Park curators rediscovered it in 1976. The OHS loaned most of the artifacts to the National Park Service, where they received conservation treatment and were displayed in climate-controlled cases. Josiah Pinkham, Nez Perce Cultural Specialist, notes that they embody "the earliest and greatest centralization of ethnographic objects for the Nez Perce people. You don't have a collection of this size, this age, anywhere else in the world." Twelve years later, the OHS abruptly recalled the collection. Eventually, under public pressure, they agreed to sell the articles to the Nez Perce at their full appraised value of $608,100, allowing just six months for payment. The tribe mounted a brilliant grassroots fundraising campaign, as well as a sponsorship drive for specific pieces. Schoolchildren, National Public Radio, artists, and musicians contributed. Major donors came forward, and one day before the deadline, the Nez Perce Tribe met their goal. The author draws on interviews with Nez Perce experts and extensive archival research to tell the Spalding-Allen Collection story. He also examines the ethics of acquiring, bartering, owning, and selling Native cultural history, as Native American, First Nation, and Indigenous communities continue their efforts to restore their exploited cultural heritage from collectors and museums--pieces that are living, breathing, intimately connected to their home region, and inspirational for sustaining cultural traditions.

Lucullus V. McWhorter met and befriended Yakama and Nez Perce warriors in 1903, forming deep relationships and accumulating facts, stories, and perspectives that would otherwise have been irretrievably lost. Adopted as an honorary member of the Yakama tribe and given the name Old Wolf, he served as a stirring spokesman for non-treaty bands and captured prominent Nez Perce voices in his classic Western histories, Yellow Wolf (1940) and Hear Me, My Chiefs! (1952). Originally published in 1996, Voice of the Old Wolf is the only biography of Lucullus V. McWhorter (1860-1944). Author Steven Ross Evans focused on the Yakima area rancher's unique roles as Nez Perce tribal historian and collector of traditional lore to help fill a significant gap in the chronology of Nez Perce history--the post 1880s to the 1940s, and assembled numerous excellent photographs, many previously unpublished. This edition includes a new foreword describing the vast McWhorter collection held by Washington State University.