Career
He left his Virginia home as a young man and headed west, after allegedly killing a man in self-defense. He trapped with the Subletts and Jedediah Smith in the Blackfoot country until he joined Joe Walker"s California Expedition of 1833-1834. In 1836, William Craig, Pruett Sinclair and Philip Thompson established a trading post known as Fort Davy Crockett in Brown"s Hole, now in State of Colorado.
According to a later affidavit, Craig had, in 1838, married Pahtissah (he renamed her Isabel), a Nez Perce woman who was the daughter of Hin-mah-tute-ke-kaikt also known was Thunder Eyes.
Craig was friendly with the Nez Perce tribe: in 1848—in the aftermath of the killings at the Whitman Mission—Oregon Country"s provisional government Superintendent of Indian Affairs, Joel Palmer, appointed William Craig his agent to the Nez Perces. Craig served as interpreter between the Nez Perce leaders and Isaac Stevens at the Treaty of 1855 held in the Walla Walla Valley, and again at the Treaty of 1856.
In 1855 Governor Stevens appointed William Craig Agent to the Nez Perce people, a position held by Craig until political machinations cost him the job in 1859. William Craig was the first postmaster of "Wailepta" (Walla Walla).
He died of a stroke in 1869.
