Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez Perce (27 page)

The chiefs were now faced with hard choices. Should they keep moving around in the high country, waiting in the cover of the mountains for Looking Glass's return, or should they move quickly onto the rolling plains to join with their Crow brothers and sisters before the arrival of the soldiers and the coming of the snows? Should they continue to divide and travel separately in an attempt to confuse the soldiers' scouts? Should they stay together to remain strong in case they were ambushed and needed to fight?

Perhaps most important, which route should they use to travel this last part of the journey into buffalo country? They were at the peak of the final range, and from here all dropped off toward the great, open plains. Ahead of them, three long canyons stretched off toward the sunrise like the space between fingers, each canyon separated from the next by a high, spiny range of mountainous rocky bluffs and vertical cliffs.

Each canyon had a trail through it—well known to all the tribes and all the Indian scouts. If the soldiers or their scouts saw the people begin their descent, they could send messengers ahead to alert other troops to block the trail at the bottom. By now it was clear that this was General Howard's method—to set traps in front, then try to close in from behind. If he succeeded in this instance, they would be caught. And once they had made the choice of a trail, they could not turn back.

The men met in council to consider the dilemma. The young warriors had, for the moment, turned their thoughts back to the people rather than to clearing a path by killing whites. They joined the discussion to offer their opinions and knowledge. Escape would be hard, they said. They had seen Indian scouts across a valley and had called out to them that the people wanted no more fighting, that they were all brothers and should speak together as friends. The scouts had called back that they did not wish to talk in words but only with their rifles. The young men had been unable to tell if they were Bannock, Snake, or even Crow. But it did not matter—whoever they were, they no longer had the hearts of brothers. Their hearts, now, were the same as soldiers'.

Worse still, some of the scouts had ridden ahead to the highest promontories, from which they could see far out onto the plains. In the distance they had seen many small fires, like a soldier camp, flickering in the darkness. It was as they had feared—General Howard had set another trap, just as he had done at the soldier corral. But this time there were no ridges for the people to use to circle around. And this time, the soldiers would not be settlers with weak hearts for fighting.

In counsel with the young warriors, Poker Joe formulated a plan. They needed to trick the soldiers and convince them to block the base of the wrong canyon. So they arranged for all the people to move toward the trail down into the canyon that opened farthest to the south. When they were safely ahead of the soldiers and their scouts, the warriors would take all the mules and horses and ride in circles to make a great confusion of hoofprints. Then they would drag branches behind so dust would rise up, making it seem to anyone observing from a distance that the whole group of people was moving in that direction.

While the warriors were doing this, the people would turn north and move up into the heavy timber of the high mountain ridge that separated the south canyon from the next canyon. They would proceed along this ridge through the forest until they could find a way down into this next canyon. The soldiers would see the dust and commotion and assume that the people had taken the easy trail down into the canyon to the south and would set up their blockade at the bottom. Meanwhile, the people would make their way down into the next canyon and escape into buffalo country.

Poker Joe was convinced this would work. He knew the canyons, knew the trails. He knew that even if the soldiers followed the people, the narrow gap that he was proposing to use to descend into the north canyon was too steep for soldier horses and too narrow for the soldiers' supply wagons. The people would be able to escape even if pursued so long as the soldiers at the bottom did not realize the deceit and return to block this more northerly trail.

Joseph spoke against this plan. He wanted to go the third way, the easiest, most frequently traveled way, up the valley called the Yellowstone. He knew there were mining settlements there and that the soldiers might easily find them, but he did not think the children and elderly could endure the difficult route that Poker Joe and the warriors were proposing.

He was willing to risk confronting the white settlers. He was even willing to consider surrendering if necessary. He wanted no more suffering, no more weeping and dying, no more spirits of the unburied dead wandering in the other world waiting for rest, no more elders insulted and mutilated when left behind to wait for death. Almost 150 people had died since this flight had begun. The time had come to say, “no more fighting.” It was time to think about the lives of those who remained, to do what was necessary to let them return to their homes and the land that they loved.

But others vehemently opposed this plan. They had come this far, and Crow country lay just ahead. They did not want to live on government reservations, like white men's cattle in white men's pens. Better to be like the buffalo, running free until shot down, living in the way the Creator had shown them.

The people even discussed the possibility of each band's going its own way and doing what it thought best. But returning scouts announced that soldiers were everywhere, as well as miners and other white people. They did not think surrender was a possibility. Too many white people had been killed, and too many had not been soldiers. It was their belief that all the people who could not escape would be massacred, and this would mean the oldest and weakest. Soldiers did not take Indian prisoners, and the Bannocks did not allow the people to die without torture and insult.

With uncertain hearts, the people agreed to Poker Joe's proposed plan of escape. Joseph remained silent. He knew that the council was right: they would not see their homes again. Too much blood had been spilled. The killings and burnings and lootings by the young warriors had sealed their fate.

So Poker Joe put his plan into action. He led the people across a high meadow into the timber while the warriors rode in circles, dragging branches tied to their lariats. With the riders raising what would seem from a distance to be the dust of a thousand horsemen, the people squeezed their way among the trees and ledges until they came to the narrow crevasse that Poker Joe had chosen for the descent into the more northerly valley. It was as deep as three men and barely as wide as a horse. The whole gully was filled with loose rock and scrabble and was so steep that it was easier to slide down than to walk.

With their horses falling against each other and scraping themselves raw on the deadfall and rocks, the people dragged their wounded and elderly down this half-mile, almost vertical, defile and out into the bottom of the valley.

Howard continued his distant pursuit, heading toward the dust and commotion made by the circling warriors, while the soldier waiting at the bottom blocked the end of the wrong canyon, just as Poker Joe had hoped.

T
HE SOLDIER
waiting at the bottom of the wrong canyon was Colonel Samuel Sturgis, a Civil War veteran with a checkered career, who had lost a son in Custer's rash debacle at the Little Bighorn only a year before.

He had been given orders by his direct superior, Colonel Nelson A. Miles, to ensure that the Nez Perce did not link up with Sitting Bull and his renegade Sioux, who were living across the national boundary in Canada, out of reach of the American military. Initially, this had meant patrolling the area of the northern buffalo plains near the Canadian border to provide a military presence to confront the Sioux if they came south or the Nez Perce if they turned north after exiting the mountains of the Yellowstone. But word had come that the Nez Perce were still in the mountains of the Yellowstone region and perhaps could be struck a fatal blow as they emerged. So Sturgis had come down from the buffalo plains at the instruction of his superiors and was nervously trying to outguess the Nez Perce as to which canyon they might take in their descent from the mountains.

Like all the soldiers now in the field in the West, Sturgis was hungry to be the man to catch Chief Joseph and these renegades. But like all the others, he was rapidly falling victim to the confusing military chain of command that had resulted when General Sherman told Howard to pursue the Nez Perce to the death, no matter where they went.

General Sherman was head of all the U.S. armies and so most answerable to political pressures generated in Washington and the press. He had a well-earned reputation for ruthlessness and decisiveness, and though he greatly respected the military skill of the Nez Perce, he did not intend to allow them to make a laughingstock of his military in the public mind. Neither did he wish them to join up with other tribes or even to give other tribes false hopes of success against the U.S. military. He knew that such a linkage, or even the perception of such a linkage, would cause a widespread panic in the West and a furor in the eastern press. His already maligned and underfunded military would be further gutted in the resulting political firestorm. He intended to catch the Nez Perce and deal with them in the most severe manner so as to make an example of them and to raise the rather bruised status of the military in the minds of the politicians who controlled the funding and the public who controlled the politicians.

Right below General Sherman in the military chain of command were commanders of separate jurisdictional regions, called divisions or armies, of which three were directly involved in the pursuit of the Nez Perce—the Army of the Pacific, which stretched from the western ocean to the Bitterroots, and included all of the Pacific Coast and Alaska; the Army of the Missouri, which covered most of the plains and Midwest; and the Army of the Atlantic, which covered the eastern seaboard, Appalachians, and original colonies.

General Irwin McDowell, based in San Francisco, was commander of the Army of the Pacific. The Army of the Missouri was commanded by General Phil Sheridan, based in Chicago.

When Sherman ordered Howard to follow the Nez Perce to the death and to do anything necessary to catch them, he was ordering Howard to cross from the jurisdiction of General McDowell into the jurisdiction of General Sheridan. It was unclear how much this order gave Howard the right to make demands of troops in General Sheridan's division in terms of deployment, supplies, and command.

Sheridan was quite happy to have the capture of the Nez Perce take place within his jurisdiction, but he was not disposed to have a commander from a different division operating with a free hand in his territory, and he was certainly not disposed to let this commander determine where his troops should go, how supplies should be distributed, and how a battle with the Nez Perce should be conducted when his entire area was still alive with Sioux and Cheyenne warriors who had been only partially controlled and pacified. He also wanted any glory for the capture to come to him and his men.

The divisions themselves were divided into departments, each responsible for a smaller geographic area within the division. General Howard headed one of these smaller areas, the Department of the Columbia in the Army, or Division, of the Pacific. It included Washington, Oregon, and Alaska. His equivalent officer across the mountains in the Army, or Division, of the Missouri was General Terry, who was in charge of the Department of the Dakota, responsible for maintaining order on the northern plains and the upper Rocky Mountains. Terry and Howard had recently crossed swords over an issue of seniority, and neither was fond of the other.

Within the departments were districts, which were still smaller geographical units with their own commanding officers. General Gibbon, who had attacked at the Big Hole, was in charge of the District of Montana, one of the subregions in the Department of the Dakota. Just to his east lay the District of the Yellowstone—also in the Department of the Dakota—under Colonel Nelson Miles. Both men were under the command of General Terry.

Below the districts were the actual fighting units—regiments, battalions, companies, brigades—organized around their special responsibilities of artillery, infantry, and cavalry.

Sturgis was the leader of the Seventh Cavalry unit of the District of the Yellowstone. His orders came from Miles, Miles's orders came from Terry, Terry's orders came from Sheridan, Sheridan's orders came from Sherman. Once Sherman had confused the issue by sending Howard across into Sheridan's territory with the mandate to pursue the Nez Perce to the death, men like Sturgis were caught in a snarl of jurisdictional disputes and political intrigues at which they could only guess.

Sturgis and his Seventh Cavalry of 360 men had originally been heading to the Judith Basin in the northern buffalo country close to the Canadian border. General Sherman had ordered Sheridan to assist Howard in his efforts to stop Joseph, and Sheridan had passed this order down to Terry, who had passed it down to Gibbon and Miles. Miles had taken it upon himself to send his man, Sturgis, onto the buffalo plains to effect a blockade. If the Nez Perce did indeed head north toward Sitting Bull, any transit would have to take place through this broad, open, high plains country.

Meanwhile, Gibbon, who commanded the District of Montana, just west of Miles's area, was sending his own men into the field to engage in the pursuit. All across the northern tier, from the Rockies to the Dakota high plains, men were on the march in an effort to surround, engage, or otherwise forestall the Nez Perce people, who were still wandering in the high mountains of the Yellowstone.

The whole buffalo plains region north of the Missouri River—the country where Sturgis had been heading—was a sort of no-man's-land between settled America and the British possessions in Canada. American troops patrolled its gigantic open spaces as needed to keep such order as they could.

Since the buffalo plains were the hunting area of many tribes, it was not uncommon to see hunting parties of Sioux, Assiniboine, Gros Ventre, Cheyenne, and others moving across their vast empty expanse. No one had been too concerned about this until Sitting Bull had retreated across this territory into the British possessions and set up camp under the protection of the British crown. Now the northern buffalo plains were seen as a potential staging area. Sitting Bull, with his hatred of whites and his mounted warriors reported to number in the thousands, was considered to be the match that could ignite the tinderbox of Indian dissatisfaction, and the prospect of his moving south with his warriors was the greatest single fear of all the military and settlers in all the central and northern regions of the West.

Since the buffalo plains lay within Miles's jurisdiction, the task of keeping Sitting Bull at bay fell to him and his men. When he had sent Sturgis toward Judith Basin, the one great, broad valley that provided a north-south transit from the plains to the country below, he had been trying to put in place a loose blockade that would keep Joseph and Sitting Bull from unifying their forces.

But Gibbon, who was closer to telegraph lines and thus privy to better intelligence and information, had received word that the Nez Perce were still in the mountains of Yellowstone Park. Since this was the most current information available, and Sturgis's Seventh Cavalry was the nearest significant military force, he countermanded Miles's orders and instructed Sturgis and the Seventh to turn south to try to form their blockade at the base of the mountains that formed the boundary of the park.

Now Sturgis was camped at the base of the high, rugged Absarokas—some of the tallest and most impenetrable mountains on the continent— under orders to stop an indeterminate number of Indians with indeterminate weaponry and to hold them back until they could be rolled up from behind by a general about whom he knew little and an army about which he knew even less. All he knew was that Gibbon had ordered him to establish this blockade, and it was up to him to make it work.

Because the Nez Perce had killed all the scouts who had tried to bring communications down from Howard, Sturgis lacked any meaningful intelligence. He was left to his own devices to determine which pass out of the mountains to block. He had ruled out the route Joseph had sought— north down the Yellowstone through the area of white settlements. That left only the two other canyons—the Clarks Fork and the Stinking Water. Both were deep,
U
-shaped glacial valleys flanked by granite walls thousands of feet high.

The Stinking Water appeared to be the easier of the two to descend. But Sturgis did not wish to take chances. He had given some thought to splitting his 360 troops so he could cover both possible canyon exits. But his sketchy information said that the Nez Perce warriors numbered over 400, and the stories of their ruthless fighting at the Big Hole and White Bird Canyon made him wary of confronting them with inferior forces. So instead of dividing his troops, he stationed them all near the Clarks Fork at a place where the two rivers lay only about forty easy miles apart, and he sent scouts out in both directions, figuring he could move south to the Stinking Water if either his scouts or a message from General Howard indicated that as the place where the Nez Perce would emerge.

In fact, the Nez Perce now had only slightly more than 100 surviving warriors—a number that Sturgis might well have been able to overcome even if he had split his troops. He surely could have held the people at bay until Howard managed to close on them from behind. But his lack of reliable information left him at the mercy of hearsay and his own dark memories of the Little Bighorn and the death of his son. He preferred to keep his troops together and take his chances.

Word soon arrived from some advance scouts that the route from the mountains into Clarks Fork canyon was impassable and that great clouds of dust had been seen on the route to the Stinking Water. So he quickly moved all his troops south toward that canyon escape route. Meanwhile, the Nez Perce slid and scrabbled their way down into the Clarks Fork canyon and easily made their escape from the mountains toward the land of their friends and allies, the Crow.

But if their escape from the army trap gave the Nez Perce any feelings of relief or excitement, those feelings were quickly dashed when Looking Glass returned with somber news. He had met with his friends, the Crow, and told them of the Nez Perce's desire to join with their people. They had greeted him warmly and spoken strongly of their deep friendship with the Nez Perce and of how they carried that friendship close to their hearts. But since the killing of the long-haired General Custer, the U.S. government had brought in more guns and built more soldier forts. Now, they said, soldiers were everywhere, and white settlers had moved everywhere into their land. They dared not help the Nez Perce for fear of starting a war with the white soldiers. There was talk among the whites, they told him, that the Nez Perce were trying to join with Sitting Bull to start a great Indian war. If the Crow helped the Nez Perce, they would be seen as part of this, and all would be killed, even women and children.

They admitted to Looking Glass that many of their warriors were now fighting on the side of the soldiers. It made their hearts heavy to do so, but they felt they had no choice. But if there was ever a battle, they promised they would shoot over Nez Perce's heads.

When this information reached the Nez Perce camp, everyone's spirits sank. None had expected that the Crow, who had sworn friendship and assistance, would turn their backs on their friends. It was because of the Crow promise that they had made this hard journey. It was because of the hope of sanctuary with the Crow that the people had kept their spirits strong.

Now they were alone in a strange country. They had no lodge poles for making shelter. Their horses were injured from hard travel and worn down from a sickness that made their wounds ooze and fester. The weather was becoming cold and blustery, with days of rain and snow and nights with winds that cut like the edge of a knife. Their people were sick, and soldiers were coming at them from all directions. Their own people and the people they had once considered friends were helping track them and trying to steal their horses. The land was getting flat, with no good places to hide and no good places to fight.

The chiefs and warriors again met in council. Their only chance, they believed, now lay with Sitting Bull, far to the north in the Old Woman Country. But it was not a good chance. Only several years earlier Looking Glass had led Nez Perce warriors against Sioux warriors in the battle between the Sioux and the Crow. The Sioux and the Nez Perce had since met and made a pact of peace for all time. But it was clear to all that the pacts made between tribes could no longer be trusted. None knew if this Sioux promise would be stronger than the pacts of friendship made by the Flathead and the Crow, but it was known that Sioux hearts were black toward the white man and that they at least had not become teepee dogs for the white soldiers. On this slender hope, the chiefs decided to put trust in the Sioux promise and head north toward Sitting Bull in the Old Woman Land.