Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez Perce (34 page)

Joseph looked to the north of the camp, where a small group of the best horses had been hidden in a draw. With the rest of the herd being run off by the soldiers, these remaining mounts needed to be protected at all costs. He raised his rifle in salute to the few warriors who had taken up positions on a point of rocks directly above these remaining horses. They were the farthest from the camp, and their situation was the most perilous. But they understood their mission. They saluted back, then returned to firing against the soldiers and Cheyenne who were rapidly surrounding them on the hillsides.

The battle was over in less than an hour. The camp was in shambles. Pans and clothing and children's dolls lay strewn about the ground. The soldiers had been beaten back, but they had gained the high bluffs that encircled the camp. The horses had been scattered, and the people had been split. Some had made it away toward the north, and the others who had not been able to gather their families or find their horses were now pinned down in the broad hollow of the campsite. It was impossible to know which warriors were still alive in the rifle pits on the hillsides and who had been killed. No one was even sure who had been among those who tried to escape and if they had outdistanced the soldiers or if they had been caught and slaughtered. The clear air of the morning was turning cold, and the children were hysterical. No one was sure what to do.

Most of the people had retreated to one of the deep folds on the far north end of the bowl. There they could keep out of the direct line of the soldier's fire, but they were backed into a corner. The warriors in the rifle pits on the hills above them would have to hold off any attack, or they could be slaughtered like animals in a pen.

The situation was desperate. Many of the children were only partly dressed, and many of the people were wet and shivering from running through the creek to escape the fighting. The old women had placed the frightened children beneath the buffalo robes and were trying to keep them calm and warm, while the younger, stronger women had begun digging shelter pits into the hillsides.

Joseph and the others who had not retreated to the gully or were not in fighting positions on the hills remained out in the open near the creek, piling saddles and camp goods around the perimeter of hastily dug rifle pits. They knew that the soldiers were just regrouping. They could hear their shouts and the snorting of their horses from the bluffs above. Another attack could come at any minute, and it was up to the remaining men to keep any charge from making it to the huddling women and children in the gully.

Soon a hail of bullets rained down on the camp from the east, and several dozen foot soldiers poured over the steep bluffs and out of the ravines to the south, shouting and waving weapons. From their rifle pits the Nez Perce shot them one by one, though many of the soldiers were able to dodge between the rocks and gullies and advance toward the camp.

A few made it all the way across the open creek bottom to the old campsite where Joseph and the others were barricaded. The men fought fiercely, shooting from behind the piled saddles at every uniformed figure who came into view. From the draw to the east they could hear fearsome screaming and firing but could not determine what was happening. Husis Kute, the Palouse chief, fearing the Cheyenne more than the soldiers, took it upon himself to focus his firing at their warriors. Through the smoke and mist he took aim at any warrior he saw, shouting, “I got one!” each time he saw an Indian fall.

At one point, one of the Nez Perce men yelled out to the attackers, “Who are you? We don't want to fight.” The only answer was the sharp snap of a rifle shot and the terrifying percussion of a heavy shell tearing into the ground on the edge of camp.

Darkness came none too soon. The people had withstood the attack, but they were deeply shaken. One by one, the warriors crawled back into camp, frightened, wounded, shivering from the cold. They needed warmth, but there could be no fires because the glow would provide easy targets for the soldiers on the hills.

The people huddled together under buffalo skins and passed around the few bits of cooked meat left in their stores. The warriors sat silently, refusing food so that the children could eat. Everyone was exhausted and numb.

In the cold darkness they tried to take stock of what had happened. Some of the young boys who had been playing by the creek said they had seen Indians in war bonnets riding on the ridge early in the morning but had been afraid to tell anyone. Warriors reported that they had seen Cheyenne the day before and had even eaten with them, but the men had said they were only hunting and were not working for any soldiers.

But there was little time for conversation. They had to use the few hours of darkness to their advantage. The wounded had to be retrieved and the bodies of the dead brought back to camp and buried. Weapons and ammunition had to be stripped from the fallen soldiers. They needed to bring water from the creek to slake the thirst of the injured and the dying, and the dead horses had to be skinned and dressed to replenish the dwindling food supply.

It was decided that the rest of the camp should move to the tight draw on the north edge of the hollow where the women and children had retreated after the first attack. There the women could dig better shelter pits into the banks and keep the people out of the line of fire. The draw also gave them a better chance to protect the camp from direct attack because the area was less exposed to charges from the cavalry and better situated to be defended by a few warriors strategically situated on nearby promontories.

Moving quickly and with as little noise as possible, they dragged their few remaining possessions across the several hundred yards of frozen ground to the narrow ravine. Some of the women were already digging into the earth with bowie knives and pots and pans while others were crawling out into the battlefield, ministering to the wounded and stripping guns and ammunition from the dead soldiers. One white soldier, too injured to crawl, kept crying out that he was thirsty. Some of the women brought him water in a buffalo horn and placed a blanket under his head. They had sons and husbands too and did not wish to increase his suffering.

The men who were strong enough to do so used the cover of darkness to scale the northern bluff and begin digging rifle pits with knives and the broad, flat-ended bayonets they had taken from the soldiers at the Big Hole. These pits would have to be deep and wide enough to contain several fighters, so fire could be leveled in all directions at once if necessary.

They worked hurriedly. Some pits were hollowed out to the depth of a man's waist; others were little more than depressions in the ground, barely deep enough to offer protection to a single fighter. Stones were then piled around the edges, with small cracks left in between, so the warriors could peer out without having their heads vulnerable to direct shots.

Everyone knew another attack would come at daybreak. White soldiers did not have the courage to attack Indians at night. But even in the darkness they had to be alert to the presence of the Cheyenne. Every animal sound, every shift in the wind, had to be listened to with caution. Indian warriors had no fear of darkness and could call upon spirit powers for assistance. And they did not move with heavy footsteps like white soldiers.

Huddled in one corner of the gully, old Alahoos was listening to the people recount their experiences of the day. It was he who had been chosen to keep track of the dead and to carry the story of the fight in his memory. One by one, people gathered around him to tell what they knew.

What they told him was numbing. Ollokot, Joseph's beloved brother, was dead. Toohoolhoolzote was dead. Pile of Clouds, one of the bravest fighters who had joined them in the Bitterroot, was dead. Husis Kute, who had been heard shouting out each of his kills, had made a terrible mistake. He had tragically confused Nez Perce fighters with Cheyenne warriors and had accidentally shot Lone Bird and two other warriors who had taken up positions near the soldiers' lines. Poker Joe had also fallen to a Nez Perce bullet.

When all the deaths were counted, Alahoos reported at least twenty killed, including many of the best warriors and several elders who had been doing nothing more than trying to hide from the bullets. Of the families who had escaped toward the north, he had found out little. Yellow Wolf had crept back into camp after holding off the soldiers who had chased after the families, but he could tell them nothing more than that the soldiers had gotten most of the horses but ultimately had been turned back. Whether the people had made it the forty miles to safety at the border, he could not say. He knew nothing of the fate of Noise of Running Feet. Nor was there word of the hunters and women who had left early in the morning to catch and skin buffalo. Perhaps they had been captured; perhaps they were hiding in the hills. Perhaps they had joined the fleeing families. Perhaps they were all dead.

As to the soldiers, no one knew what losses they had sustained or even who they were. No one knew how many Cheyenne they had on their side or how they were connected with General Howard. All anyone knew was that they had been wearing winter boots and heavy coats, not the skimpy torn capes and worn-out shoes last seen on Howard's men.

Other things too were brought forth to Alahoos. Young Elahweemah, so small he could barely get on a horse by himself, had been seen riding to the north with his little brother holding on tightly behind him. A soldier was chasing after them, shooting. One of the soldier's bullets had cut so close that it clipped one of the braids from the younger boy's head.

Two Moons told of seeing Grizzly Bear Lying Down throwing signs to one of the Cheyenne warriors, saying, “We have red skin, red blood. Why do you fight us?” The Cheyenne had signaled back that he would only shoot over the Nez Perce's heads. But Two Moons had seen that same Cheyenne kill a Nez Perce woman only moments later. The Cheyenne himself had escaped unharmed; he must have been a man of strong medicine because bullets could not touch him. Grizzly Bear Lying Down had soon been killed by a shot from a soldier's gun.

As the night deepened, the weather worsened. The wind picked up, and rain turned to sleet, then snow. The elders and the children huddled together beneath their buffalo blankets, listening to the moans of the wounded and the sporadic gunfire from the soldiers. The Old Woman Country now seemed like a distant, hopeless dream.

By morning, the stark reality of the situation had revealed itself. Most of the horses were gone. The soldiers had taken positions on all the bluffs as well as out on the plain to the west, and had them surrounded. No one knew if Sitting Bull had been alerted or even if he would come. The whole camp was covered in several inches of wet, heavy snow. They were alone and encircled in a vast, empty landscape.

The men huddled together in council. Some thought they should wait until nightfall and try to sneak the rest of the camp through the soldiers' lines. It would not be hard, they said. The soldiers were spread thinly, and there were great gaps in the line.

But Joseph was against this. He pointed to the wounded and the elderly and the women with young children. “They will never make it through,” he said. “And even if they do, what will happen to them? The ground is now covered with snow, we have few horses, and the people have no shoes.”

Yet they could hardly stand and fight. Their best warriors were dead. Fewer than a hundred men young and strong enough to carry on a good fight remained. The rest of the camp was made up of old men, barely able to see, and women and children. With the exception of some of the younger women, they surely could not be expected to take up arms.

Occasional gunshots cut through the gray dawn. A big gun boomed and roared in the distance. From up on the bluffs a voice shouted down telling them to surrender. One of the remaining young warriors shouted back contemptuously, “Come and take our hair.” It was a cruel and bitter challenge: in fact, a soldier had been seen the day before scalping one of the warriors who had fallen during the fight.

Joseph spoke for giving up. There was no way to continue the flight, he said. Whoever this new commander was, it would be better to talk to him than to wait for Howard, who had shown the rifle at the meeting in Lapwai and was probably following a day and a half behind. Perhaps this new soldier chief was a man of greater honor or was more important. He was surely a better general, and his men were better fighters. Perhaps he was a man with whom they could make an honorable peace.

White Bird and Looking Glass disagreed. White men's promises were never to be trusted, and besides, they still held out hope. During the night six men who knew the land had been sent through the soldiers' lines to contact Sitting Bull. At least one of them was sure to get there. Perhaps some of those who had escaped during the confusion of the first attack had already contacted Sitting Bull's scouts, and the Lakota chief was on his way. If he and his two thousand warriors arrived, it mattered little if this new soldier held the high ground or if Howard arrived with his men. The blood of the bluecoats would cover the ground, and the Nez Perce could travel in peace to the Old Woman Country.

In the end, the chiefs decided that the camp should hold out. The children were well protected in earthen hollows and pits dug in the sides of the draw. The warriors were positioned under buffalo robes in their rifle pits and were well supplied with weapons and ammunition that had been taken from the wounded and dead soldiers during the night. Though the people were low on food, and the earth in which they were hiding was damp and frigid, they still had their lives. They would stay in their shelters, huddled against the snow and freezing drizzle, and wait for Sitting Bull to arrive.

O
N THE SOUTH END
of the battlefield, on the hill above the Nez Perce camp, the soldiers too were huddled against the snow and wind, trying to stay warm in the early morning cold while Miles mapped out another strategy. His attack had been a failure. The Indians had not scattered as he had expected but had dug in and held their ground. He had succeeded in pinning down the Nez Perce, something no other commander had been able to accomplish, but almost seventy of his men had been killed or wounded—a number that might be acceptable if it had resulted in surrender and defeat but a numbing total when nothing more had been achieved than placing the Indians under siege. If a siege was all he had sought, it could have been achieved with no loss of life. This was not the kind of result that would gain him a general's star.

The night had been hell for his men, especially his wounded. The pack train with the tents had not arrived, so they had spent the dark hours shivering under thin blankets while their frozen clothes stuck to their bodies and their blankets became soaked from the snow and blood.

One by one the injured had succumbed to the wet and cold, dying with cries, curses, and desperate tearful pleas for mercy. His remaining men had been unable to bury the dead because of fears of the Nez Perce sharpshooters. Many of them had never been in combat before, and even the most experienced had never confronted a foe that shot with such deadly accuracy. Some claimed that they had seen Indians firing from as far as a thousand yards away, almost always hitting their target.

Louis Shambow, the white man in charge of the Cheyenne scouts, said that he had spent the day pinned down behind a rock, and every time he placed a small stone on top of it to see if the Nez Perce were still out there, it had been blown off by a direct hit from a bullet.

All the brave talk about avenging Custer had long since ceased. Each man now had to face the dark possibility that perhaps Custer's defeat at the hands of Sitting Bull had resulted not from bad strategy but from the superior fighting skills of the warriors who had opposed him.

All night men had fired randomly into the dark at any unusual sound, and there had been constant frightened reports of someone seeing shadowy movements on the hillsides. None wanted to contemplate what would happen if Sitting Bull's two thousand warriors, with their known penchant for torturing and mutilating, were to sweep down from the north to join these Nez Perce, who already had fought the troops to a standstill.

Miles shared their fears. A siege took time—maybe enough time to allow Sitting Bull to arrive. He knew his depleted forces were no match for the seasoned Sioux fighters. He did not want to see his men's throats cut and bellies slit. He did not want to be this year's Custer.

At the same time, he did not relish the arrival of his old commander, General Howard. He knew he had the Nez Perce trapped and that Howard was coming up behind, albeit with a small force. He had great personal fondness for Howard, but he desperately wanted this capture for himself. If Howard arrived and claimed command, the victory that Miles's men had suffered so greatly to achieve would be credited to the senior officer.

As he listened to the moans of his wounded, he knew that whatever he did, it could not be another direct attack. His loss of a fifth of his fighting force had been unacceptable—and his remaining troops, now fewer than three hundred, were demoralized and frightened. He had expected that a direct charge would result in a quick surrender, as it had with other tribes. But instead it had only increased the Nez Perce resolve. He was now faced with a dug-in foe that shot with uncanny accuracy. None of his soldiers was anxious to risk taking a hit from a Nez Perce bullet when they had seen that the wounded were being sorted into groups of those being left to die and those being given medical attention that amounted to little more than a quick bandaging followed by a swig of brandy laced with opium. And the prospect of field amputations—a terrifying practice employing knives to cut through the skin and muscle and a dirty saw to cut through the bone— dampened the battle enthusiasm of all but the most hardened fighter.

In addition, the weather had turned against them. Miles had used the mists and low-lying fog to his advantage as cover while he had approached the Indians along the far side of the Little Rockies. But these plummeting temperatures and this wet heavy snow now made his situation miserable. His men were well equipped with long underwear, buffalo hide greatcoats, and the newest-issue rubber-bottomed arctic overshoes. But still, they were soaked to the skin from sloshing through the mud and lying on the wet ground. Men who were wet and cold too easily lost their fighting will. A call for another charge would be met with something between indifference and mutiny. He needed a different strategy. He needed to find a way to force Joseph's immediate surrender or capture.

All night he had pondered how best to achieve this. Now, in morning light, he had a plan. After his men had eaten their meager breakfast, he ordered shelling to begin again. He did not want his troops to exhaust their ammunition; even when the supply trains and Howard's and Sturgis's men eventually arrived, they would need every gun and every bullet if they were to survive a possible attack by Sitting Bull's warriors. But he wanted the Nez Perce to realize that they were trapped and that there would be no escape.

He summoned the men who had arrived the previous evening with the Hotchkiss gun. This weapon was a new army prototype that was like a small cannon—a French-manufactured successor to the clumsier mountain howitzer that troops had used during the Civil War and in Indian battles such as at the Big Hole. Like the howitzer, the Hotchkiss could be broken down into pieces and packed on three mules, then reassembled on wheels and maneuvered easily in the field. It had a range of fifteen hundred yards—enough to pin down an enemy like the Nez Perce at a distance far too great for them to offer any meaningful return fire.

Unfortunately, as Miles found out, it suffered from a design flaw: its barrel position could not be raised or lowered sufficiently to allow for high trajectory firing or to allow it to shoot downward onto an enemy dug in below. If he left it at its normal trajectory, it would lob its shells far beyond the Nez Perce shelters. If he tipped it forward far enough to aim down at the Nez Perce encampment, it would fall on its nose.

Miles ordered his men to dig a pit for the yoke of the gun so it could be leaned backward and used to lob shells into the sky, like a mortar. Though it could not be aimed accurately in this fashion, the shells would make a fearsome noise and a frightening percussion whenever one landed. Even if only an occasional round hit its intended target, random terror from the sky would eventually wear down the will of even the indomitable Nez Perce.

With this weapon of terror in place, he set his plan for capturing Joseph into motion.

Meanwhile, in the Nez Perce camp, all was gloom and despair. The wet snow that had fallen most of the night had soaked the people and their few possessions. A raw wind was whistling and howling among the draws and gullies. The few warriors remained defiant, and young boys, striving to be men, spoke bravely of avenging the deaths if they were given weapons. But most had lost their heart for the struggle. The cold and hunger and sadness of families separated and loved ones left unburied had become almost too much to bear. The bodies of the dead lay scattered throughout the campsite, covered by only a ghostly layer of snow. The shells from the soldiers' guns were shaking the ground, threatening to collapse the shelter pits and bury the children inside. It was like a nightmare from which they could not awake.

The wait for Sitting Bull had become an obsession. Men anxiously scanned the northern horizon for signs of movement. Between gunshots they strained their ears against the worsening wind in hopes of hearing the sounds of hoofbeats from approaching horses. But there was only the snow and the gunfire and the great howling gales of the cold northern plains.

At one point, Looking Glass thought he saw a Sioux warrior approaching in the distance. He stood up in his rifle pit to get a better look and immediately was felled by a bullet through the forehead. The chief who had brought them to this place, who had been so sure that he could lead them to freedom and safety, had now too gone to the camp of the dead.

Throughout the camp, talk continued about giving up. All through the previous day the soldiers had been yelling down to them from the hills, telling them to surrender. A few of the Cheyenne scouts, hoping to save the lives of the women and children, even rode up to the gully to ask the Nez Perce to consider the army's offer. Three Nez Perce met them with handshakes and a beaded necklace that had been made by one of the young girls. The people would listen, they said, but no more. The Cheyenne peered into the pathetic hollow filled with crying children and snow-covered bodies, then rode back to deliver the Nez Perce response to the soldiers.

About noon, a voice came echoing down from the hills above. The speaker was using Chinook, but the message was clear: “Colonel Miles wants to meet with Chief Joseph.” The request was accompanied by a white flag, indicating a desire for a truce.

The request threw the Nez Perce into a state of confusion. They did not all have confidence in Joseph, especially those who were opposed to surrender. They knew he had been against this flight from the earliest days in Camas Prairie and that his heart was for saving the people, not for fighting. Many doubted that he would have the courage to refuse a surrender offer from the soldiers.

But Joseph tried to calm their fears. They should agree to the meeting, he said. He would make no decisions but only hear what this Colonel Miles, whoever he was, had to say.

White Bird, however, remained opposed. He feared that Joseph's heart would be swayed as he heard the crying children and death songs of the elderly while he sat in council with this new soldier chief. Besides, it was men of White Bird's band who had killed the settlers on the Salmon River and Slate Creek. As their leader, he would surely be hanged if he gave himself up.

They discussed why it was that Joseph had been singled out. Perhaps Howard had told this new commander that Joseph's resolve was weak. Perhaps his was the only name the commander knew. It did not matter, Joseph said. His ears would be closed to talk of surrender. Any action that bought time while they awaited the arrival of Sitting Bull was an action worth pursuing.

In the end, the others agreed. Joseph would meet with this Colonel Miles. If nothing else, he could count the soldiers' numbers and see their fortifications and weapons.

They raised a piece of white bunting on a stick, indicating their desire for truce, and sent Tom Hill, who spoke some English, across to the soldiers' camp to arrange the meeting. The people peered anxiously from their hiding places as Hill rode his horse through the corpse-littered snow to the soldier camp behind the far southern bluff. Few were confident that he would emerge alive.

After a long while he came walking into view with a soldier at his side. The man had a large mustache and long side-whiskers. He wore a heavy fur hat and a long coat with a fur collar. At this distance he looked more like a bear than a man. He walked with an air of authority and showed no fear in the face of the Nez Perce, who were training their weapons on him from all vantage points. This, they realized, must be Colonel Miles.

The two men walked to a rise halfway between the camps. Then Tom Hill called to Joseph to come across, but to come armed. Slowly, Joseph stood and prepared to approach. The soldiers peered down from their places on the bluff, equally anxious to see this Chief Joseph about whom they had heard so much. From what they understood, it was he who had led this unlikely retreat, he who had outsmarted and outmaneuvered Howard, he who had fought off Gibbon's surprise attack at the Big Hole, he who had tricked Sturgis at Clarks Fork. They had experienced firsthand the marksmanship of his warriors and had seen firsthand the toughness of his people. The thought that he could outrun and outfight the best the U.S. Army had to offer while traveling fifteen hundred miles with old women and children made him seem like a giant in their minds.

So the man who stood up and walked toward them came as something of a shock. He was just a man like themselves. He was broad and solid, about six feet tall, and wore his hair long, with a small braid on either side of his face. He had no war paint, no feathers, wore no warrior dress. What struck them most was his air of intelligence and calm. They had expected a creature of sinister demeanor and animal cunning. What they saw was a man with a warm smile and dignified bearing. Though he was obviously weary, he carried himself with great presence. He walked slowly toward them, carrying on a quiet conversation with the several warriors who accompanied him. As he approached, they could see that his shirt and blanket were riddled with bullet holes.

He crossed the body-strewn, snow-covered bottomlands and made his way up the rise to where Miles and Tom Hill were waiting. As he and Miles met, Joseph reached out his hand as a sign of friendship and peace. In full sight of the two camps, the men shook hands, then conversed a bit with the help of Tom Hill before walking together up the bluff toward the colonel's tent.

The sight of the handshake and the two men walking side by side under a flag of truce seemed, for the moment, to change the whole feel of the battlefield. Slowly, people from both sides stepped from behind their barricades. Keeping a wary eye on each other, knowing that rifles were poised on them from both camps, they moved cautiously down into the hollows and coulees in search of their wounded and their dead.

It was a poignant and surreal moment. The soldiers could hear the Nez Perce babies crying from their frigid dirt shelter pits in the nearby ravines. The Indian women looked in the faces of the soldiers and saw young boys no older than their brothers and sons. For a moment, time and the war stood still. Then they all set themselves to the grim task of brushing the snow from the corpses and dragging the bodies back to their respective camps.