Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez Perce (3 page)

Far from being the “Red Napoleon” or a towering figure of central leadership, Joseph had been a simple camp chief who had achieved his legendary status as much for being “the last man standing” as for anything he did during the journey. And he had done nothing to debunk the myth that built up around him in the subsequent years. Yet it was by letting that myth be built that he had kept the Nez Perce people alive in the national historical consciousness.

Small wonder, then, that the Nez Perce held conflicting views about the man. And small wonder that they looked with a jaundiced eye on writers like me who wanted to tell his story. We kept the flickering light of their cultural presence alive, but we did it by perpetuating a myth that distorted their history while ignoring a story that was every bit as worthy of being told.

At that moment, I knew what my literary task would be. I would try to unravel that myth, to put the story of Joseph in its proper perspective, to tell the story the way that it needed to be told.

This book is the result of a four-year effort to accomplish that task. It is also the endpoint of a profound personal journey. In those four years I traveled and retraveled the route of the great Nez Perce exodus, being awed by the distances, intimidated by the mountain passes and impassable terrain, astonished at the rock slides the men, women, and children navigated as they were chased first by one army, then another, in their desperate run for freedom.

I spent days and nights on the bleak Bear's Paw surrender site, wandering the hillocks and creek beds, shivering with cold on the edge of the shelter pits that the women dug with frying pans to protect their families from soldiers' bullets and the snow-driven high-plains Montana winds. I journeyed across the emptiness of the Dakotas, where the wounded and defeated captives were marched on their way to exile in the distant Indian Territory of Oklahoma. I walked the river bottoms of Kansas and the cruel flatlands of Oklahoma, where the pitiful survivors were detained and resettled like prisoners in our great, free, American land. By the end, there was not a foot of this journey that I had not traveled or at least shadowed.

In the course of that time I became intimate, as only a solitary traveler can, with the people who made that journey. White Bird, the seventy-year-old chief who would not trust white promises and continued the flight into Canada while Joseph surrendered; Sees Koo Mee, who in his youth had lost both feet and a hand to frostbite but still made the journey and fought by rolling and dragging himself into position; Noise of Running Feet, Joseph's twelve-year-old daughter, who was sent off alone across the snowy Montana plains in a desperate run to escape capture; Chief Looking Glass, the complex man of compassion and arrogance whose motives for leading the people slowly in the face of danger were never completely clear; and, of course, Joseph himself, the quiet leader and man of peace who allowed himself to be elevated to a cultural icon after the surrender in order to keep the nation's attention focused on the tragic plight of his beleaguered people.

As much as I could, through research and sympathy, I lived their life, knowing well that what I experienced was only a pallid and distant reflection of the searing emotional truth that was theirs and theirs alone. But I gave myself to the journey with all that was in my heart and mind.

And what I found was something far greater than I had ever imagined. I found a humbling, ennobling, tragic story that is almost unmatched in the annals of the American experience. I found a story of grandparents, too weary or wounded to continue the flight, who were given blankets and pitiful portions of food, then left behind by tearful family members to die on the side of the trail. I found a story of a young mother forced to kill her baby in order to stop the incessant crying, which would give away the fleeing people's location to the pursuing soldiers. I found a story of Nez Perce women giving water to terrified young American soldiers who lay wounded on the battlefield. And, yes, I found the story of Joseph, a man whose true greatness for more than a hundred years has been obscured by myth and shrouded in legend.

It is my hope that in this book I can give you, the reader, some feel for the sweep and scope of this little-known American story. It is a truly American saga, as much a part of who we are as any pioneer journey or grand exploration. To understand it is to understand better who we are as a people and at what cost we have made ourselves the nation that we have become today. We owe it to ourselves, and to those we have mythologized and silenced, to make sure that this story is heard.

T
HE NEZ PERCE
first encountered the European world, and the Europeans first encountered theirs, in a wide, pine-rimmed meadow in the foothills of the Bitterroot Mountains on a sunlit day in the autumn of 1805. There, in a flower-covered field called the Weippe Prairie, in the state we now call Idaho, three young Nez Perce boys were lazily playing with sticks and bows while their mothers and grandmothers dug camas roots on the far side of the clearing. It was the autumn gathering time, and the roots they dug would be dried and pulverized and made into meal for bread. A good harvest meant a good winter, and this year the harvest was good.

Smoke rose from fires near the buffalo-skin teepees, which were set in the same places they had been set for as long as anyone could remember. Each family had its own spot, each band its own area. The gathering had the gentle grace of a yearly ritual, when the different bands of the tribe came together from their distant homelands to share in the harvest, to meet family and friends, and to offer the firstfruits of the camas gathering in thanks to the earth for the bounty she had given.

Only women and children and elders were in the camp. The younger men had gone off across the rugged hills toward the south to confront the Shoshone, who had killed three Nez Perce peace emissaries the season before. It would be some time before they would return, and by that time the harvest would be finished and the bands would be ready to return to their respective wintering grounds in the lower valleys, where the snow seldom reached and the waters seldom froze. The sun was warm, the digging was good, and the day had an air of quietude and peace.

Through this golden autumn peace the three boys heard the snorts of horses and saw a glint of movement in the woods on a nearby hillside. Soon a figure emerged, then another and another, all on horseback, all unlike any the boys had ever seen. They had arms like men, legs like men. But their faces were covered with fur, like dogs. One of the figures had hair the color of sunset. Another was black and had hair like a buffalo. He looked like a warrior painted for night battle, except that the blackness was not paint but skin itself.

The boys tried to run, but the creature with the sunset hair caught up with them. He made gestures of peace with his hands and gave them lengths of red ribbon. He motioned for them to return to camp and bring back the leaders of the people.

The boys arrived at the lodges breathless and terrified. They pointed to the field and told of the pale beasts with the hairy faces and held up the ribbons they had been given. In the Nez Perce fashion, the youngest boy was asked to deliver the worst news about these beasts they had encountered. He huddled with the other boys for a moment, then turned and spoke solemnly. “They all had eyes like dead fish,” he said.

The strangers were led back to camp, where everyone gathered around them. They seemed by all accounts to be men, though not of any tribe that had ever been seen before. Their language was not recognizable and their condition was barely above that of animals. They were filthy and squalid and gave off a repulsive odor. With their hairy faces, there was some thought that they might be descended from dogs.

The “sunset hair” acted as the leader. He seemed friendly and offered gifts. Most important, he and the others with him carried guns with long barrels, a mysterious weapon of which the Nez Perce had only recently learned. Earlier that year, a band of hunters who had gone across the mountains to the buffalo country had traded for six of these strange weapons and brought them back to the Nez Perce villages. They spoke in awe of what these guns could do—about the terrific noise they made and how a ball placed in the long barrel could kill an animal from a distance far greater than that reached by an arrow.

The Nez Perce had long been known as the makers of the finest bows and arrows of any tribe, having learned to steam the horn of the mountain ram until it softened, then to shape it into a bow and strengthen it with rawhide attached with the boiled blood of the sturgeon or the grease from the skin of the salmon. Once hardened, these bows were powerful enough to launch an arrow completely through the body of a deer. All the tribes with whom the Nez Perce traded were hungry to obtain them.

But these long-barreled guns were even more powerful—perhaps not as efficient for warfare, but well able to pierce the leather shields of enemies and quite capable of stopping attackers and terrifying horses at a great distance. That these beings had these guns spoke of great power and influence, whether in fact they were men or beasts.

The dog-men were led down the hill to the camp of Twisted Hair, a chief who had been too old to go off on the raiding party against the Shoshone. Though frightened, he greeted the strangers with hospitality, feeding them a meal of camas roots and salmon. They seemed both appreciative and friendly.

While the strangers ate and slept, the situation was discussed in council. There was some thought to kill them, because stories had long been told about strange, pale-skinned men coming from the east who would bring sickness and ruin. But one old woman called Watkueis, or “She Who Had Returned from a Far Country,” spoke to spare their lives. Years ago she had been captured by Blackfeet while in buffalo country and had been passed from tribe to tribe until she had escaped and been taken in by some of these pale-skinned people who were living north of the Hidatsa country many weeks' journey to the east. They had treated her kindly and let her stay with them. She called them “Soyapo,” or “Crowned Ones,” because of the strange hats they wore on their heads. If these beings were Soyapo like those people among whom she had stayed, they deserved not only to keep their lives but also to be honored as guests. The Nez Perce accepted the counsel of this old woman and decided to welcome these strangers.

Soon more of these dog-men emerged onto the prairie—almost forty of them, also bedraggled and foul smelling. They all had strange and appalling habits, like the willingness to eat puppies. But they possessed objects of great power, like the guns, and objects of great beauty, like cloth and beads and flags of many colors. They also carried mysterious objects the Nez Perce had never seen, like glass that could gather the sunlight to make fires. They were on a journey in search of the great bitter-tasting water in the direction of the sunset and had been trapped in the mountains, almost starving, until the first group had worked its way out into the Weippe and found the three boys playing.

They were very appreciative of the kindness shown them and lavished many gifts upon the Nez Perce. They called themselves the Corps of Discovery. Their leader was a man named Captain Lewis, and the sunset-haired man was known as Captain Clark.

The Nez Perce soon grew fond of these dog-men. They were friendly and generous, and possessed many miraculous objects. For their part, the dog-men found the Nez Perce to be among the fairest and most honorable of the native people that they had encountered in their long journey from the East. Clark wrote that the Nez Perce showed “greater acts of hospitality than we have witnessed from any nation or tribe since we have passed the rocky Mountains.”

The Nez Perce accompanied the dog-men down from the Weippe to the river that they knew led to the great bitter-tasting water. They took them to their canoe-making spot where trees grew straight out from the banks of the river before curving upward toward the sun. They helped the men of the Corps fell these trees and showed them how use the natural curve of the trunk to create canoes with the grace needed to navigate the fast rivers they would soon be traveling.

Then they drew a map on a white antelope skin and sent the men on their way down the rivers toward the great bitter-tasting water. Twisted Hair and another chief named Tehoharsky accompanied them as far as the great falls where all the different tribes came to trade, to make sure that they would be treated well by the tribes farther down the rivers.

The kindness and honesty of the Nez Perce people so impressed Lewis and Clark that they left their horses and saddles with them, accepting the chiefs' words that when they returned after the winter snows their goods would be safe and their horses would be strong and well nourished. In exchange, the explorers gave the chiefs two more of the long-barrel guns and a hundred of the round balls that the guns used as ammunition.

When the Corps of Discovery returned in the spring, they found that the Nez Perce had kept their word. Only several horses had been ridden, and the chiefs showed great anger at the fact that this had been done. An American flag that Captain Lewis had given as a gift could be seen flying over the lodge of one of the chiefs, and the people greeted the returning travelers warmly. They even brought out two canisters of gunpowder that they had rescued after their dogs had dug them up from the place where the Corps had buried them the previous fall.

Because the winter had been long, the passes across the mountains were not yet open. After it became apparent that their horses' hooves would break through the snow if they tried to navigate the passes too soon, the Corps decided to stay among the Nez Perce until the snows had melted and the trails had cleared.

The Nez Perce made room for the travelers in their camp. Their winter dwellings were long, skin-covered shelters made by leaning two poles against each other, teepee fashion, and connecting these with ridge poles that ran in a line across the top. Some of these lodges could reach a hundred and fifty feet in length, and inside many families would have individual spaces, each with a small fire for warmth and cooking, with the smoke rising up and going out an opening along the ridge pole at the top.

Perhaps because of this, perhaps for some other reason, the Nez Perce were widely afflicted with a soreness and swelling of the eyes. Captain Clark, wishing to alleviate their suffering, began ministering to them with eye washes, which cured the affliction in a way that the Nez Perce considered miraculous. He also was able to cure their stomach ailments with a purgative that he had received from a doctor who had given him some rudimentary medical training before the Corps had departed from the East. It was volatile and brutal, but it emptied a man or woman in short order and gave a relief greater than the discomfort caused by the treatment itself.

Soon Captain Clark was besieged by Nez Perce seeking relief from various ailments. He often found himself staying up late into the night treating the sick and injured who lined up outside his tent. In one instance, he was able to cure a chief who had been unable to move his arms and legs for years. Prescribing sweat baths and plying him with laudanum, cream of tartar, and sulfur, he somehow made the man able to walk. This act of magical power, combined with the miraculous objects his men possessed, like the bar that could draw metal to it and the long tube that made far things seem near, made the strangers seem more powerful to the Nez Perce than any people they had ever met.

When the passes finally cleared and the Corps was able to go on its way, the Nez Perce clasped hands with the men, saying that for all times the Nez Perce people and the Soyapo people would be friends.

It was a promise that in the keeping and in the breaking would shape the lives of the Nez Perce forever.

The Nez Perce had always been a supremely confident and open-minded people. They lived in a lordly isolation on the high shoulder of land that ran north and south along the western base of the Bitterroot Mountains, the first craggy outcroppings that foreshadow the coming of the Rockies. To their west lay the people of the coast, to their south, the people of the desert, and to their east, over the mountains, the people of the plains. The Nez Perce were familiar with them all and ranged freely in all directions, trading their highly prized bows and arrows and beautifully crafted clothing and domestic goods for objects of value that the other peoples had to offer.

The Nez Perce were not a warlike people. Their land provided all they needed, and their interest in casual tribal warfare was almost nonexistent. As with all peoples, they had neighbors with whom they were on better terms and neighbors for whom they had no good feelings. But their land was big, their lives were good, and the Creator had blessed them with a place on the earth that provided them with all the material wealth they needed. Their only consistent clashes were with the Shoshone and Paiute to the south, who often encroached upon Nez Perce hunting and gathering lands. But even these clashes were sporadic and episodic and seldom engaged in except to redress grievances or as means by which young men could achieve personal honor or increase their status as warriors. Beyond these encounters, the Nez Perce were content to let all people live in peace where the Creator had placed them, and they expected others to do the same.

The tribe itself, which numbered about 4000, was spread out over a vast country that stretched over thousands of square miles. They lived in small, isolated bands separated from one another by the difficult terrain of the Plateau country. Some of the bands, like the Wallowas, lived in high mountain valleys surrounded by snow-covered peaks. Others lived far below along curving, twisting rivers. Travel between villages could be arduous, many-day journeys along switchback trails and across rushing, dangerous rivers. A traveler not familiar with the pathways could become hopelessly lost on a forested mountainside or end up standing at the rim of a canyon so dizzyingly deep that people or animals moving along its bottom would seem to be no more than tiny specks.

The difficulties of travel and the unique nature of the landscape in which each band lived kept the people separate except for the several times each year when they gathered at the sites where the bounty of the earth provided sustenance in which they could all share. Salmon runs, kouse and camas prairies, and places where game was plentiful became their common sacred sites and meeting places because it was in such places that the Creator had placed the richest gifts of life. Otherwise, they stayed to themselves, moving back and forth from high country to the river bottoms as necessary to follow the game or avoid the cruelties of a harsh seasonal climate.