Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez Perce (25 page)

Abandoning the most recalcitrant of the animals, the warriors pushed forward, driving the mules with shouts and whoops. A few of the men stayed behind and took positions behind the hump of a small ridge, intending to hold back the soldiers while the others got away.

When the soldiers came into view, this rear guard opened fire. The horse soldiers quickly dismounted and built tiny rock walls to protect themselves from harm. While they were barricading themselves and returning fire, the Nez Perce sneaked around their flanks and flushed them from their tiny earthen depressions. The soldiers retreated like deer into a small ragged aspen copse and huddled there behind hastily constructed stone breastworks barely a foot or two tall. From these pitiful barricades they exchanged fire with the Nez Perce for several hours while the warriors with the captured mules caught up to the weary families and moved toward the relative safety and cover of the land known to the whites as Yellowstone Park.

The warriors were chagrined at their mistake, but the people had no such feelings. The mules were distributed among the families according to their need, and the fact that Howard was now without pack animals gave them a feeling of security. They set up camp on the edge of a large, mountain-rimmed lake right on the edge of the pass into the land of the geysers. They were unaware that the forty troops Howard had sent ahead to block their passage had just left the area, convinced that the Indians they had been sent to stop had already passed by.

The lake, known to the whites as Henry's Lake, was a traditional camping area for Nez Perce hunters on the way to buffalo country. It offered good grazing, good fishing, and fine berry picking. It was a pleasant respite for the people after the harsh sagebrush and sharp stones of the country through which they had just passed.

But the high country nights were now getting cold, and the days were getting shorter. There was no need for undue haste, but the weather, as surely as the military, was gradually becoming their adversary. They needed to get such rest as they could while keeping an eye to both the changing seasons and the pursuing soldiers.

The raid on the horse and mule herd had given the people a palpable feeling of relief. Not only had the soldiers been slowed, perhaps even stopped, by the loss of their pack animals, the warriors had come face-to-face with Howard's troops for the first time since the Clearwater and had found them wanting. They were disorganized, poorly equipped, and no match for Nez Perce fighters. If the people could keep from being taken by surprise in night raids or ambushes, Howard's troops did not present any real obstacle. Only the teepee dog Bannock scouts presented any real danger, and they were interested only in Nez Perce horses. With proper vigilance the camp could move comfortably across the place of the geysers and over the mountain passes to their final destination in buffalo country.

This place of the geysers, long known to the Indians, had only recently gained the interest of whites. Years before, a man from the Lewis and Clark expedition had chanced upon it on his way back from the Pacific, and ever since, miners and trappers had wandered through its mountains and canyons in search of gold and furs. But most of white America knew it only through fantastic newspaper accounts of bubbling sulfuric pits, a towering two-stage waterfall, and spouts of steam shooting hundreds of feet into the air. It had even been dubbed “Coulter's Hell,” after the man from Lewis and Clark's expedition who had made the first report of its wonders.

Another traveler had dropped a plumb line from the top of the lower falls to measure its height and had reported it to be twice the height of Niagara. The upper falls, it was observed, added another Niagara to its height. Such stories had inflamed the public imagination and prompted Congress to declare the area a national park, the first such designation of any place in the country.

Still, few non-Indians had actually seen the place. It was in one of the wildest, most unexplored regions of the nation, surrounded by almost impassable mountains and situated hundreds of miles from the nearest railroad line. To get there, a person had to journey for days on narrow mountain trails while navigating rock slides, braving unpredictable weather, and dealing with bands of roving Indians.

Nonetheless, each year a few hundred intrepid souls made the difficult journey from civilization to see what had so captured the imagination of previous visitors. At any given time, this vast, trackless wilderness might be playing host to a tiny collection of traveling Indian bands, prospectors moving from the Black Hills to the gold fields of Idaho, curious soldiers on leave from their western posts, and the occasional tourist who had decided to enter this welter of mountains and rivers and geysers and hot springs in search of adventure.

Even General Sherman, head of the entire United States Army, had just completed a camping visit to the country. He had entered the park on a trail “so sharp and steep that every prudent horseman will lead instead of riding his horse” and had waxed poetic about the scenery of “the boldest mountain character.” Though he had been informed that the Nez Perce were heading this direction, it had caused him no concern because he was convinced Indians avoided this country because they associated geysers and hot springs with demons and hell.

In fact, the Nez Perce made no such associations. Their buffalo hunters had traveled through this area many times and were intimately familiar with its marvels and its complex and spectacular terrain. They had even learned to use its hot springs to cook their food. So after a day of camping at Henry's Lake, the people resumed their travel on this last difficult leg of their journey to the buffalo plains. They knew nothing about this new “park” designation, nothing about their near encounter with General Sherman—indeed, that such a man even existed—and nothing about the forty troops that General Howard had sent to ambush them at Henry's Lake. They knew only that they were now in country that formed the last barrier to the vast, rolling buffalo country and sanctuary among the Crows.

For General Howard, now two days behind and stripped of his pack mules, the situation was far more complex. His ambush at the pass into the park had failed because his forty soldiers had stayed only forty-eight hours, as they believed they had been instructed, then returned to the main body of troops before the Nez Perce even arrived. His Bannock scouts, now swelled in ranks by recent arrivals, were giving him problems. Never a trustworthy bunch, they were becoming unruly because of his army's slow pace and were causing him trouble by their horse thievery and butchery of wounded and elderly Nez Perce left along the trail. Without mules, his troops were not able to move quickly and were footsore and dispirited. Their clothes were torn and thin and completely unsuited to the growing cold of the high mountain nights. The screws that held the soles of their shoes to the uppers were breaking through and lacerating their feet. Many did not have to worry about this problem because their shoes had fallen apart, and they had now become accustomed to the morning ritual of wrapping their feet in rags in order to undertake their daily marches.

Their meals too had become a source of frustration as much as of nourishment. They were a monotonous repetition of fried pork fat, burned coffee, and hardtack biscuits so inedible that the men often soaked them in water overnight to make them soft enough to fry in pork grease. Many of the men were without blankets and spent the nights curled up and shivering on the frost-covered ground. They had not had an opportunity to wash their clothes for over three weeks.

Adding to these difficulties were the acrimonious telegraph exchanges between Howard and his superiors. While his men were resting at Henry's Lake, he had ridden seventy-five miles north to the small mining settlement of Virginia City in an attempt to procure more horses, mules, clothing, and supplies for his troops. There he had communicated by telegraph with General Sherman and with General McDowell in San Francisco, who, as head of the Army's Division of the Pacific, was his direct superior.

The condition of his troops had prompted him to ask for assistance from other forts to head off the Indians as they moved farther east. Sherman, more and more irritated with Howard's ineffectual pursuit, was unsympathetic. He was less concerned with the plight of Howard's men than with the ever more raucous ridicule being heaped upon his military in the press. The
Fort Benton Record,
discussing the capture of the mules, had surmised that the stolen animals might have been laden with newspaper accounts critical of Howard's soldiering and that the Indians had been forced to fight only because they had dawdled so long reading the press clippings they had captured.

Such damning press, coupled with Sherman's increasing impatience with Howard's plodding ways, caused him to issue a sharp rebuke to Howard's request for assistance. In pointed words, he questioned the general's stamina and implied that perhaps Howard was too old for Indian chasing and might want to consider giving over command to a younger man. He also pointedly instructed Howard to quit whining about conditions and supplies and to prepare to live off the land, as the Indians did and as troops had done during the Civil War.

Howard, stung to the quick by the challenges to his stamina and military skill, wrote back that he and his men were quite capable of continuing the pursuit “to the death,” as Sherman had requested. He resisted pointing out that living off the western land was quite a bit different from living off the gardens and orchards and pigs and cattle of southern families, as Sherman had done on his march from Atlanta to the sea, and that the Nez Perce had already stripped the land of any usable forage—facts that Sherman knew but conveniently had chosen to ignore. Instead, Howard pushed his men forward, trying to keep their spirits up while struggling to get the most out of his unwilling and untrustworthy Bannock warriors who were more interested in gaining Nez Perce horses and plunder than they were in actually catching the Nez Perce.

The land of the Yellowstone was difficult country, where mistakes had dangerous consequences. The ground around the bubbling springs was unpredictable and unstable, trapping any horse that broke through into the muck that lay right beneath the thin, brittle, earthen crust. The hillsides were almost vertical and covered with forests of lodgepole pines so dense that a man, much less a horse, had a difficult time passing between them. There were tight canyons covered with boulders and scree, and paths that ended at precipices and cliffs. A wrong choice of route, and travelers would find themselves trapped in a situation from which they could not easily escape.

None of this would have concerned the Nez Perce if they had been willing to take the broad Bannock Trail, which formed the traditional crossing into buffalo country. This trail was well known to all because it was used by all the tribes traveling to and from the plains of the buffalo. But it was also the route most likely to bring them into contact with troops and miners and hostile tribes. If there were soldiers, Bannocks, or anyone else in this country, it was on these well-known trails that they would be traveling.

So instead, the Nez Perce decided to move on less-traveled hunting trails that looped to the south. Poker Joe knew these trails, though not well. They were narrow, difficult passages, ill suited to the movement of large groups of horses and people but even more ill suited to the movement of troops and artillery. By sticking to these routes, the Nez Perce could maintain their advantage over Howard and minimize their likelihood of contact with hostile forces.

There was some discussion about the wisdom of subjecting the sick and wounded to such difficult travel, but in the end Poker Joe's decision was trusted. He knew this country better than anyone else. He was even rumored to have a house in a nearby town. His knowledge offered the people the best chance of safe passage across this difficult landscape.

Because of the people's concern about hostile forces and their uncertainty about the land, scouting parties were sent out daily in all directions. They were to watch for soldiers and also to identify and define the trail because Poker Joe, though familiar with the various trails, did not know them well.

As a result, the Nez Perce soon found themselves encountering some of the strange assortment of travelers who also had eschewed the well-known routes and were wandering in this wilderness. The first was a white miner named John Shively, who was returning to Idaho from a mining expedition to the Black Hills. He had lost his pack animals and had set out into the backcountry to search for them. The scouts chanced upon him as he was chopping wood for his campfire.

Some of the warriors sneaked up behind and grabbed him. He did not seem afraid, so they asked him if he knew where they could find the trail to the buffalo country. Since he had just come through the buffalo plains, he was familiar with the route. The warriors asked him to travel with them to show them the trail and promised him a good horse if he would do so. Somewhat reluctantly, he agreed. He put up a brave and amiable front but kept his eyes open for the first chance to escape.

Soon other scouts spotted a campfire in the distance. Creeping up close, they discovered seven white men and two white women dancing and playing music by a campfire. A quick council was held to decide what to do. Some of the young warriors, remembering the Big Hole, wanted to kill them outright. To them, all whites, whether men or women, were enemies because all had tongues and all could provide information to soldiers. It was their belief that any white person encountered had to be silenced.

Others opposed this course. Why kill now? they asked. We did not kill soldiers when the mules were stolen. And we have done no killing except when blinded by whiskey or when resisted or attacked. If we begin to kill women and innocent children, we are no better than the soldiers who are following us.

Yellow Wolf, who was leading, favored murdering the campers. But when he approached the group and one of the men greeted him with a handshake, he had a change of heart.