Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez Perce (16 page)

Their childhood war games had involved riding full speed in circles around a post while hanging off the side of their horses and firing arrows at the post from beneath the animal's neck. By the time an actual battle came, they could ride full speed while loading and unloading rifles or preparing an arrow for flight, and they could fight from their saddle with a skill far beyond any possessed by the soldiers. Their marksmanship was deadly because they could roll off their horse, fire a rifle shot, and remount in a single motion, allowing them the steady accuracy of firing from a stationary position while still retaining the fluid mobility of mounted warfare.

They also understood white fighting techniques. It was not without purpose that White Bird had sat on his horse, day after day, at the edge of Fort Lapwai watching the soldiers drill. They knew that white soldiers fought under command, not singly. So the first act had been to shoot the bugler because they knew that a white army without a voice was an army without a mind. Next, they had sought to kill all soldiers who wore stripes because they knew that without commanders the men would be disorganized and helpless. White soldiers were not like the Nez Perce—trained to fight alone and able to signal each other with animal calls and blankets.

The battle had been over in a matter of hours. When it was finished, thirty-three soldiers lay dead, and the Nez Perce had suffered only a few minor injuries. But for many of the people it had felt like a hollow victory. There was no glory in killing young men who had died holding their hands over their faces and crying for their mothers.

But for the young warriors who had started the fight, and those who had gotten swept up in the battle, it was a time of great celebration. They had been outnumbered two to one, had been fighting with far inferior weapons, and still had defeated the white soldiers with ease. They had earned their manhood and had done what their chiefs had lacked the courage to do. To be a Nez Perce no longer meant to cower like old women. With the sixty rifles they had captured during the fight they could drive the settlers out of their land and reclaim the country that their grandfathers had been given by the Creator. With the help of their
wayakin
powers they would restore the honor of the Nez Perce. They would make the spirits of their ancestors proud.

But the older men saw danger. They knew now that all-out war was coming, and it would be war without victory. If they did not escape quickly, everyone from the youngest children to the blind and crippled elders would die at the soldiers' hands.

The entire camp had descended into chaos. Mothers were gathering their children. Young boys were running excitedly in hopes of being able to join in the fight. Some of the warriors had resumed their drinking while others were solemn and cold-eyed, readying themselves for sacred battle. The women were hurriedly stripping the bodies of the dead soldiers of their weapons and ammunitions. Some of the basket hat women were covering the bodies of the young soldiers with their best blankets. They wished to show that the Nez Perce had wanted no part of this fight.

There was no overall leadership, no overall control. Even the chiefs were unsure what to do. How were they to fight with women and children and elders among them? How were they to control young men who were beyond the reach of reason and convinced that they were serving the honor of their ancestors? How were they to flee with thousands of head of horses and all their household goods? They had packed for moving, not for battle or flight.

All they knew for certain was that the soldiers would now come, and they would not come in small numbers and with few weapons. Joseph had told the people that the whites were like grizzlies and the Nez Perce were like deer, and his conviction was about to be tested. The grizzly had been awakened.

Joseph himself sat exhausted in his lodge. With an infant daughter only a few days old, he had not wanted this fight. But once the shooting had started, he had gone into the battle, taking no lead but doing his part, always warning the warriors to be careful not to kill one another by mistake. He was still opposed to war. He did not see how it could come to good. He was still willing to go on the reservation, to try living among the whites and the Nez Perce who had accepted the Christian way. His people had done so when he was a child. Perhaps they could do so again. But if war had come and they must now all die, he wanted his death to come in his own beloved Wallowa, where his parents were buried and the land knew his name.

The other bands, however, were not of similar mind. Toohoolhoolzote still smarted from the insult done to him by Howard at the peace council, and his young men were ready to fight. White Bird too had a group of young warriors who had smarted too long under the indignities and injustices of the white intruders. The Palouse chiefs, Hahtalekin and Husis Kute, were Dreamers from the country of Smolholla and looked with no favor upon conciliation. Looking Glass, who had been the only other voice of moderation, had returned to his own country and disavowed himself of any involvement in the situation.

In hurried discussion, the chiefs decided that the people should cross back over the Salmon River to the west. The hills on the opposite side rose almost vertically and opened into rough mountainous country where the soldiers would have difficulty traveling with their heavy weaponry, and ambush by the warriors would be a real possibility. It also took them back across the river.

Rivers were the Nez Perce's best allies. The people knew the waters of their country like they knew the folds of the land. Just as Joseph and his people had been able to cross the thunderous Snake by allowing themselves to be carried by unseen eddies and currents, the assembled bands could use their knowledge of the Salmon to cross safely to the other side. The soldiers, who were ignorant of the character of the river and burdened with heavy equipment, would have a difficult time following. They would have to construct rafts, send men across on horseback to secure guide ropes, then put themselves at the mercy of currents they did not understand. Even if they were successful, it would put them far behind the people. If they were not, it was all the better. A soldier swept away in a strong current was as lost to the fight as a soldier felled by a bullet or an arrow.

Joseph supported the plan because it moved him back toward the Wallowa. Once they were through the rumpled mountains on the other side of the Salmon, there was only the Snake to cross in order to return to the trails that led up to his homeland. It was his hope that this crossing back over the Salmon would be the first step on the trail back to the Wallowa.

But the other chiefs and warriors were not looking at it as a chance for retreat. They saw it as part of a larger strategic action. Forcing the soldiers to do the one thing that they did most poorly—fording fast-moving waters—would allow the people to gain time. A few warriors would stay close to the river and goad the soldiers to cross, then hold them back with sporadic gunfire while the people and animals climbed the rugged hills and made their way north to another crossing point back by the Camas Prairie. There they could cross back to the side they were now on and make a run for the eastern mountains on the far side of the prairie. Then, if they so chose, they could make their way across the Lolo Trail to Montana and freedom among their friends and brothers, the Flatheads. Meanwhile, the warriors could scour the prairie and destroy any supply wagons coming down from Fort Lapwai to provide ammunition and supplies to the troops.

The strategy worked to perfection. Howard arrived at the Salmon River with his troops and his treaty Nez Perce scouts, only to find the nontreaty Nez Perce warriors across the river, taunting him. “You are getting fat eating government food,” they shouted across to James Reuben, who had joined up with the military to serve as one of their scouts. “Come and get us. We will take your scalps.”

Every time the troops tried to cross, a few gunshots sent them hurrying back to cover. The river too proved impossible to cross. Howard's men were incapable of navigating its currents without assistance, and all efforts to string a rope across the river to serve as a guy line ended in failure.

Between the gunshots, the river, and Howard's soldiers' newfound fear and respect for Nez Perce fighting skills, the troops were held at bay for four days. Meanwhile, the families moved far up into the ragged hills on their side of the river. Had they not been hidden from view by the rugged terrain and heav y stands of pine, Howard could have seen the long line of people and horses moving like small specks along the ridgetops, heading back north, where they did indeed cross the river twenty-five miles downstream, ending up back on the same side as Howard now stood.

Once the rear-guard warriors retreated and allowed Howard to proceed, the general sloshed his troops across, dragged his heavy supply wagons up to the ridgeline, and set out in clumsy pursuit. What he confronted was a landscape uninhabited by whites and unknown to the soldiers. As one of Howard's men wrote, it was “broken beyond my power of description—a perfect sea of mountains, gullies, ravines, and canyons.”

By the time they reached the Nez Perce's second crossing point, the Indians had crossed the river again and were moving toward the east, over the very same Camas Prairie where they had been camped prior to the attacks on the settlers and through which Howard and his men had marched only a few days before.

To make matters worse, this second fording spot proved more difficult than the first to Howard. After stopping to build a raft by dismantling a cabin owned by one of the treaty Nez Perce, he found that his men were incapable of getting it across the churning, roiling, winter-swollen river. He ended up leaving the turbulent waters and retracing his steps to the original fording place, thus leaving himself with a cold trail and the Indians with a much greater lead.

Meanwhile, the main body of the Nez Perce was now making its way across the broad, flat, fifty-mile-wide expanse of the Camas Prairie. It was a risky transit, for there was little cover other than low hills and swales. Though the white settlements were few and scattered, often consisting of nothing more than a few houses huddled around a grain storage building, movement across this broad open area left the people exposed to attack from soldiers or settler volunteers.

And such attacks were coming. The chaotic situation and rumors from soldiers, settlers, and nontreaty Indians alike had convinced the frightened settlers that a great Indian war was now upon them. Lacking any clear indications of the Indians' destinations or intent, they had formed into loose groups and set out in search of the renegades to kill them or drive them away from their land. All across the prairie, brief encounters and skirmishes were taking place between roving bands of warriors, intent upon protecting their people from the whites, and groups of military and settlers, intent upon protecting the white families from the Indians.

Mostly, the Indians prevailed. The young men were taking their newfound status as warriors seriously, and because of the guns and ammunition they had taken from the dead soldiers at White Bird Canyon, they were now well equipped for combat. With their superior skills of horsemanship and marksmanship, they were easily able to protect the people from the attacks.

But the chiefs still hoped to avoid an all-out war. They called off the warriors whenever approaching soldiers or volunteers halted their advance. With many blind, crippled, and sick among them, their only desire was to hold back the white attackers while the people made their way across the Camas Prairie country toward the base of the Bitterroot Mountains at the Clearwater River. There they would be at the foot of the trail over to buffalo country, and there they could hold council so each band could decide if it wished to run, fight, try to counsel with the whites, or surrender to an uncertain fate at the hands of white justice.

Joseph and the elderly White Bird had taken responsibility for caring for the people and assisting them in setting up camp and preparing for travel. As camp chiefs, they had organized moves before, but never under circumstances of flight. Helping the elderly, choosing camp sites, making sure that the younger boys kept the horses safe and fed, protecting the women when they went out to gather wood and food, and simply organizing so many people to move was a difficult task. Horses, dogs, camp gear, food, infants, sick and wounded, and elderly adults had to be watched over. With no overall leadership and each family able to act according to its own intentions, convincing all to follow a common purpose was a delicate task. But the need for defense made it essential that the group stay together.

With the young warriors at least momentarily under control and satisfied to serve as advance scouts and outriders, the mass of people and animals moved across the great bowl of the Camas Prairie and dropped down into the valley of the Clearwater River, just a few miles from the start of the Lolo Trail, which wound across the mountains into buffalo country. Here they made camp only a short ride away from the Weippe Prairie where their ancestors had first encountered Lewis and Clark, and only several miles up the river from where Looking Glass and his people were living peacefully, unwilling to be part of the hostility that was rapidly growing around them.

N
ONE AMONG THE NONTREATY
Nez Perce assumed that Looking Glass would play any part in the decision making or even be part of any meeting held by the chiefs. He had upbraided them all after the first killings and had sworn to stay far from any confrontation. But Howard had heard from various treaty Nez Perce that the chief was letting his young warriors join the renegades, so he had dispatched a group of soldiers and settler volunteers to Looking Glass's camp to stop him from assisting the belligerents.

Though Looking Glass's band had not adopted Christianity, they had adopted many of the white farming ways. Their little village on the banks of the Clearwater River included gardens of potatoes, corn, beans, squash, cucumbers, and melons as well as a few milk cows and beef cattle. It was a quiet, idyllic setting, with teepee lodges, split rail fences, and herds of horses grazing contentedly in nearby meadows.

When he learned that soldiers were coming, he placed a white flag on a pole in the direction from which they would arrive and sent a messenger out to meet them. “Tell them to leave us alone,” were his instructions to the messenger. “Tell them we are living here peacefully and want no trouble.”

But the soldiers, well fortified with liquor, refused to listen to the messenger and rode into the village, shooting and rampaging and looting. They trampled the gardens and smashed the women's cooking pots, then tried to set the teepees on fire.

The people became so frightened that one woman tried to escape across the river with her baby strapped to her back. She was swept away and the baby was never found. Others were wounded as they fled into the woods in panic.

The soldiers and volunteers continued their looting, taking buffalo robes and bags of powder and anything that looked like it might be of value. Then they destroyed what remained. They drove off all the horses and cattle and shot randomly at anyone they saw. Several of Looking Glass's people were injured, and the band lost almost all of its food and possessions.

By the time the other nontreaty bands had completed their successful crossing of the Camas Prairie, Looking Glass's people were staring at a decimated, leveled campsite with uprooted gardens, scattered and smashed household goods, and almost no shelters.

Unaware of this tragedy, the other nontreaties made their camp several miles away in a wide valley at the base of a high, almost perpendicular bluff. The same Clearwater River that ran by Looking Glass's ravaged village flowed through the center of the campsite, affording good water for the people and the horses and offering a fine, wide area for camping and grazing.

Here the chiefs and warriors and influential basket hat women took time to rest and continue their discussions. Should they flee across the mountains, then continue east to buffalo country? Should they cross the mountains, then turn north to the Old Woman Country the whites called Canada, where they heard that Sitting Bull had been allowed to settle in peace after the fight at the Little Bighorn? Should they surrender? Should they send the women and children into hiding while the men stayed back to fight? There was no easy answer because no one knew the number or intentions of the soldiers, and no one knew the full extent of the complicity of the treaty Nez Perce.

Whatever direction the various speakers were leaning, it all became moot when Looking Glass rode in with a dark and ominous message. “Two days ago my camp was attacked by the soldiers,” he said. “I tried to surrender in every way I could. My horses, lodges, and everything I had were taken away from me. Now, my people, as long as I live I will never make peace with the Americans. I am ready for war.”

Any remaining sentiment to trust the honor of the American soldiers and government now disintegrated. They had to fight or flee.

But while the people were discussing their choices, unbeknownst to them, Howard's soldiers were moving along the top of the bluff several miles back from the crest that towered over their campsite. He had made it across the river, losing several horses in the process, and had consolidated the forces that had been spread out over the prairie. He was now moving with a force of almost five hundred men. He had also picked up an intrepid war correspondent named Thomas Sutherland, who had recently graduated from Harvard and was trying to make a name for himself by reporting directly from the front, an idea considered novel and daring for the time. The two men had struck up such a good friendship that Howard had begun including the young correspondent in his command retinue.

So with his own soldiers, the remnants of the command that had been decimated at White Bird Canyon, a motley group of settler volunteers, and his own personal war correspondent who was issuing dispatches to the
Portland Standard,
the
New York Herald,
and the
San Francisco Chronicle,
Howard had begun moving to the south in an effort to loop around the renegades and catch them unawares. His march along the top of the bluff, with his supply wagons trailing far behind, was merely part of this positioning.

But one of the settler volunteers who happened to be wandering along the top of the bluff a ways off from the main command made a discovery that immediately altered the military's plans. Far below, on the flats across the river, the man saw what looked to be almost seventy teepees and hundreds of horses. Young Indian boys were engaged in horse races, and women were bathing in the river. Clearly, these were the hostiles, and clearly, the camp was not prepared for war. He immediately hurried back and informed General Howard.

Howard had assumed the Indians were in the area, but this was a stroke of unexpected luck. He now had not only the strategic advantage of high ground but also the incalculable advantage of surprise. Unfortunately for him, however, that surprise was not total. Indian lookouts had caught a glimpse of the settler as he peered down on them and had shouted to the others to mobilize.

The terrain too proved to be less of an advantage than Howard had hoped. Only two long, narrow wooded ravines snaked down from the high bluff, so any attackers had to either ascend or descend through those passages.

The warriors gained the edge by quick movement. Toohoolhoolzote, with a small group of men, secured a position behind some rocks and held the soldiers at bay until the full force of the warriors could be mobilized and sent charging up the ravines. As a result, the soldiers lost the advantage of attack and were reduced to shooting down on the tribe from above.

Once again, the soldiers' inadequate training proved to be their undoing. Their weapons were in poor condition, and many of the men had received target practice of only three shots a month. At so great a distance, even a skilled marksman would have been hard-pressed to do any damage.

They tried dragging their howitzers to the edge of the bluff, but because these guns were essentially great heavy steel cannons held by gravity onto wooden frames, they could not be leaned forward to aim down into the village. Instead, they had to be shot upward, serving only to send shells high into the air to land randomly on the distant countryside or to explode harmlessly in the sky with no effect other than to frighten the Indians below.

The Indian men, meanwhile, were quite willing to engage. They had a camp full of women and children to protect, and the attack on Looking Glass's innocent village had galvanized their anger. The warriors were also brimming with confidence. With fewer than two hundred fighters and limited weapons, they had whipped the soldiers at White Bird Canyon and had routed every attack by volunteers while they had recrossed the Camas Prairie. Everywhere they had gone they had left the bodies of white fighters in their wake, but not a single fighter among them had yet been killed.

The men stripped for battle, removing all but their breechcloths so that any bullet strike would not push cloth or animal skin into the wound. Then they went on the offensive, riding up the ravines, hidden by brush until they reached the top and took positions surrounding the soldiers. It was a noose, loosely formed, but one from which there could be no easy escape. On the bluff side, the soldiers were hemmed in by the precipitous drop off the edge of the cliff. In their rear, a group of warriors had taken up protected positions on a small ridge. On either side, blocking access to the ravines, other warriors had barricaded themselves behind trees and small rock breastworks and were putting up a steady hail of rifle fire.

It was a classic encirclement maneuver, and the soldiers could not escape except by breaking through the Indian lines. But because the Indians were well hidden in the terrain and were crawling through the brush on their bellies, camouflaged by grass tied to their heads, no one knew exactly where they were, so no one knew exactly how to attack.

Instead, the confused soldiers began firing in all directions, shooting some of their own men in the process. The Indians kept up their fire until the howitzers and Gatling guns were hauled back from the bluff and turned on them. On level terrain with an enemy right in front of them, these once again became effective weapons, and the Indians were driven back.

By nighttime, it had become something of a stalemate. The Nez Perce held their positions but had not advanced. To get to the soldiers, they would have had to cross a broad, open field hundreds of yards wide. Also, and for the first time, they had experienced real casualties. One of their warriors had been killed, and two others had been wounded. After darkness fell, some of the women crept up and rescued one of the gravely wounded men and carried him back to camp. But he too soon died. Death was beginning to visit the Nez Perce.

Fighting resumed the next day. Many of the warriors had moved back down to the camp under the cover of darkness. But many had spent the chill night on the bluff, shivering behind their small stone rifle barriers clad only their loincloths. But they knew that if they could endure the night, another scorching hundred-degree day was coming, and the soldiers, without access to water, could not survive for long. All they had to do was keep them from the spring at the top of one of the ravines.

The greater problem the warriors faced was that they were not of a common mind about the wisdom of this fight. While some of them saw this as an opportunity to entrap and defeat a large body of soldiers, others saw it as a waste of time and effort. The soldiers had not attacked the village, and there was an easy escape route for the people along the river's edge and back into the hills, so in their minds there was no need to risk death in a fight that was not necessary.

Accusations of cowardice were hurled, met by counteraccusations of stupidity. But the end result was that the warriors did not act in concert. Nez Perce warriors were trained to fight on horseback in moving battles, with quick strikes and withdrawals. The idea of setting a siege behind small rock barriers was not comfortable to many of them. It was not a tactic that allowed them to exhibit individual bravery, and it did not allow them to use their skills at horsemanship to good advantage. This was a soldier way of fighting, and many of them did not wish to fight like soldiers. So some of the warriors simply refused to fight and repaired to a rock-rimmed “smoking pit” that had been constructed at the base of the bluff for the old men to gather in and hold council.

When the Gatling guns and howitzers were turned on the few Indians still holding the siege, filling the sky with thunderous noise and an impenetrable cloud of smoke, it became obvious that the advantage could not be maintained. The warriors who wished to continue the fight became so disgusted with what they felt was the cowardice of the others that they abandoned their positions and began heading toward the ravines. They could see no good reason to die when their skills at fighting and protection would likely be needed again in the future.

When the soldiers realized that they were receiving no return fire, they broke for the Indian lines. The warriors who had remained on the bluff were soon in full-scale retreat. They scrambled down the ravines, with women who had come to assist on the battlefield trailing, terrified, behind. Above them they could hear the cheers of the pursuing soldiers mixed with the booms of the howitzer shells exploding over their heads.

Once in the valley they grabbed what they could and ran. Some of the chiefs tried to rally the men to make a stand, but there was no common will. The women in the camp were already fleeing with the children and the elderly. Pots of boiling meat were left gurgling on the fires, and almost all the camp goods had to be abandoned in hastily constructed caches.

Normally, Joseph and White Bird, in their capacity as camp chiefs, could have prepared the people for an orderly withdrawal. But the unexpected suddenness of the warrior retreat and the chaos and confusion that resulted allowed only the gathering of such goods as were at hand. People were running for their lives.

Yellow Wolf, a young warrior of twenty-one, was one of those who had stayed on the high bluff holding back the soldiers. When he finally found his horse and escaped down the ravine and across the river, the camp was almost deserted. But he could hear a woman crying amid the din of the howitzer explosions and rifle shots of the pursuing soldiers. It was Joseph's wife, Springtime, carrying their infant daughter, now only several weeks old. Springtime was trying frantically to control her horse, who was terrified by the explosions of the howitzer shells. The animal was bucking wildly, making it impossible for her to mount while carrying the infant on its cradle board.

She shouted out to Yellow Wolf that she was afraid for her baby. Yellow Wolf held the infant while she mounted her horse, then the two of them rode off together to catch up with the other fleeing members of the camp. Joseph was somewhere far ahead, trying to lead and control the frightened and disorganized families in their retreat. But this apparent abandoning of his wife and child in the face of fierce fighting did not go unnoticed.

Finding the Nez Perce gone, the soldiers and citizen volunteers poured into camp and began looting everything they could find. They took jewelry, small pouches of gold dust, and silverware that the Nez Perce had gotten in trade years before. Everything that was not of value they burned, while other settlers scavenged the area, poking into the earth with the ramrods of their muskets in hopes of finding caches of Nez Perce goods. Soldiers who tried to claim booty for themselves had it stolen when their backs were turned by settlers who had ridden up in wagons when they had heard the shooting in the distance.