Passionate participant

Every morning Lili Pasteur looks at the Appaloosa Horse Club certificate on her wall in Joppe, Netherlands. Its story holds deep meaning to Lili, who earned the award for five years of participation on the Chief Joseph Trail Ride.

The certificate represents far more than personal pride and achievement to Lili, a 64-year-old retired university professor, physical therapist and American history buff. Lili sees in that certificate a potpourri of cherished reminders of friendships and poignant moments associated with her Chief Joe experiences.

A serendipitous discovery

A 1991 trip to the American West started it all for Lili. Lili’s decision to go on the Chief Joe came after a visit to the Bear Paw Battlefield in Chinook, Montana, and the Blaine County museum where, she says, “the awesome audio-visual account just blew me away.”

“I had this dream of riding the Nez Perce Trail on horseback,” Lili recalls, and was thrilled to find that each summer, the ApHC did just that.

Lili joined the ApHC in 2003, took unpaid leave, leased an Appaloosa for the ride and received guidance from then trail master Jim Evans and his wife, Lynda, of Salmon, Idaho.

Since then, she’s rented a handsome, frosty-blanketed trail medallion winner named “Quicksilver” from Jim and Lynda, who now consider her a member of their family.

Guardian angels

Lili views her Chief Joe friends as a family of guardian angels—for good reason. She was truly a greenhorn that first year, as evidenced by Jim Evans’ recollection of her maiden ride.

“On assembly day, I was making my rounds and came across this small woman having a hard time with a saddle and trying to get on a horse,” he recalls. “It was Lili.” While Jim and Lynda helped her with riding gear, two “beacons” from Minnesota taught her safety and feeding basics, and Floridians Bobby and Suzanne Vetter pitched in, offering Lili a bed in their camper.

The friendship circle grew: The O’Neills, Chief Joe long-timers from Washington who checked on her daily and shared stories of early rides; Bob Swick, a trail ride scout who took an interest in her homeland; Cynthia Fowler, an elegant lady in western dresses; and Patience Reagan from New York, a veteran who’d returned to the ride in 2003—plus others extended the hand of hospitality, making Lili feel at home.

“Lili exemplifies the spirit of the Chief Joe because she has a reverence and understanding of the Nez Perce that transcends time,” Bob Vetter says. “She’s always willing to go the extra mile for anyone and is never afraid to ask a question.”

“Lili’s infectious camaraderie affects all who meet her,” says Lili’s tent-mate Patience, who’s completed 12 rides since 1979. “Lili’s view of the United States is refreshing. She loves all that’s here and wants to explore it after each ride.”

Coming full circle

Lili sees a connection between the plight of Chief Joseph’s people and her own family history where the horrors associated with World War II led to the brutal deaths of several relatives. Her Dutch homeland was occupied and oppressed for five years. Liberation occurred four months after her birth in May 1944.

“My parents stressed that we thank our freedom to the cost of many, many young lives that were taken to make that happen,” she explains. “I was taught great respect for those unknown men.”

That passion inspired an ongoing interest to read and experience historical events associated with Chief Joseph, including visits to the sites associated with the Nez Perce tragedy.

“I’ve been to all the places the Nez Perce went on their heartbreaking journeys into exile: Leavenworth, Kansas; Quapaw, Oklahoma; Tonkawa. You take their suffering with you, from place to place as if you’re on a pilgrimage,” Lili explains. “I went to Canada where a small band that escaped from Bear Paw found refuge. The Colville Reservation harbors Chief Joseph and Yellow Wolf’s graves, so I also went there.”

While visiting Nespelem, Washington, in 2004, Lili experienced a moment that intertwined her Dutch history with that of Chief Joseph’s.

Nez Perce Foundation Chair Charlie Moses accompanied her and introduced her to cemetery guide and WWII veteran Frank Andrews.

“As soon as he learned that I was from the Netherlands, he talked with gusto about his march through France after D-Day, the liberating of the southeastern part of my country and the four big battles he’d taken part in ’til the war ended in Germany,” Lili recalls. “I was flabbergasted. Sixty years after those happenings, still vividly in the minds of the Dutch, I sat with a Nez Perce who personally had contributed to the freedom we’ve experienced ever since—freedom that was brutally taken away and denied to his ancestors. I hardly could make sense of that.”

Ultimate appreciation

Lili has taken an active role in the Nez Perce Trail Foundation (www.nezpercetrail.net), recruiting members from around the world.

“This is just my commitment,” she says. “The trail ride to me is the ultimate road to awareness of the fragility of freedom. Generations to come need to know this; hence, we need caretakers like the foundation.”

To Lili, nothing compares to the beginning of each ride. “On Monday morning, still a chill in the air, when the scouts call out that we leave in 10 minutes, I mount Quicksilver,” she says. “We wait while hundreds of Appaloosas assemble. A last sip of water for the horse and then the final signal is passed along: ‘Moving out!’

“If I die at that moment,” she adds, “it’ll be the happiest way to cross the Great Divide that I can think of.”

Editor’s note: For more information about Dutch Appaloosa activities, visit www.appaloosa.nl/joomla/index.php. By Marianne Love