Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez Perce (42 page)

The marketing of Joseph had begun in earnest.

F
OUR HUNDRED FIFTY
miles farther down the tracks in the more urbane city of St. Paul, there was great curiosity about this celebrated chief. The citizens had been keeping up with the story of the Nez Perce through the telegraph dispatches printed in their local paper, and they were having a hard time believing what they were reading.

The residents of Bismarck, though raw and somewhat naive frontier folk, were anything but naive when it came to Indians and Indian affairs. They had lived through Sitting Bull and the Custer massacre and resided right at the edge of country where Indians still roamed without restraint. They were not likely to be taken in by fantasies of Fenimore Cooper's noble savages. But the dispatches from the
Bismarck Tri-Weekly Tibune
made it obvious that the citizenry of Bismarck, almost without exception, had not only been charmed but impressed and deeply moved by these Nez Perce and their Chief Joseph, who had just spent four days in their town. Far from being treated as captives or refugees, they had been treated as honored guests and, by all reports, had behaved accordingly.

The St. Paul editors determined that the claim of a “banquet” for the chief attended by “all the citizenry of Bismarck” was only so much self-serving frontier puffery. In fact, their sources suggested, it had been nothing more than a good meal attended by some of the city's elite. But there was, nonetheless, something almost incomprehensible in the citizens' warmhearted embrace of these heathens who had fought with and killed so many American soldiers in the course of the last five months.

The
St. Paul Pioneer Press,
voicing the unspoken feelings of its citizenry in an editorial, raised the almost unthinkable possibility: given the “golden opinions” of the residents of Bismarck regarding Joseph, “which are altogether inexplicable upon the supposition that he is the average dirty, sullen, uninviting savage… Is it possible that the noble red man is not a myth…?” The people of St. Paul could hardly wait for the arrival of the train so they could finally see for themselves.

The Nez Perce, however, were feeling anything but noble. The train on which they were traveling terrified them. It was louder than anything they had ever heard and was moving at a speed beyond their comprehension. It rocked back and forth like a wagon about to fall over and screamed across the land like a wounded animal. The air inside was filled with coal cinders from the train's smokestack, and the wood stoves provided no heat to the drafty centers of the cars. The screeching of the wheels and the bumping on the track made sleep difficult and conversation impossible.

They rode through the cold November night in stark terror, huddled on the wooden seats, cradling their children and fearing for their lives. The soldier in charge showed them the toilet hole in the small room at the end of the car, but they could see through it to the tracks flying by below and were afraid to use it. So they held themselves as best they could, but when they could wait no longer, relieved themselves on the floor.

The train had received clearance to travel day and night on unimpeded tracks, so the only stops it made were to take on water for the boilers. At these, the desperate people ran out and relieved themselves or drank thirstily from water in nearby ponds. Joseph received no special treatment, but he did have the advantage of being under the care of a Captain Johnstone and Colonel Reed. They had traveled with the people on their overland march and were familiar to the chief. By staying near them and asking questions, he was able to glean some information about what was going on and what his people were confronting.

At the small town of Jamestown, a hundred miles east of Bismarck in the Dakota Territory, he and several other of the head men accompanied these officers to a local boardinghouse to eat dinner while the boilers were filling with water. After a quick meal the men hurried back to the departing train. But as it moved away from the station and built up speed, one of the Indians came running back through the cars, talking excitedly in Nez Perce. Chapman was quickly summoned, and it was learned that Joseph had not reboarded the train.

Colonel Reed pulled the bell cord to signal an emergency. The train screeched to a halt, then began backing toward the town. Through the window they could see Joseph running desperately up the tracks toward them. As he reached the train and climbed on, loaves of bread dropped from under his blanket. On the way back he had seen a house with bread displayed in the window and had stopped to purchase some for his family. While he was doing so, the train had begun to pull away. He had run as fast as he could and was lucky the train had stopped, or he might have been separated from the people he had sworn to care for and protect. The soldiers joked that if he had run so fast during the pursuit, Miles would never have caught him. But beneath the joking was the awareness that this chief cared so much for his people that he took a train's untimely departure as a crisis of separation rather than an opportunity for escape.

Though the train was a fearful experience for the Nez Perce, it was a learning experience for their chief. Its speed was beyond the fastest horse; its power to travel without rest beyond that of the fittest animal. At one stop, soldiers pointed out the telegraph wires and told Joseph that white men could talk through these. The chief was skeptical and challenged the men to talk to someone at the next stop and tell them to bring him a glass of water and call him by name. The men passed this message to the stationmaster, and he sent the instructions ahead down the line. At the next station a woman came out asking for Joseph. She held a glass of water in her hand.

Joseph understood immediately. This was how the soldier armies had located the people during their flight. This was how they could keep coming at them no matter how fast they traveled or how well they covered their path. The white man, indeed, did have power beyond anything the Indians could imagine. They could move words faster than the fastest Indian courier could ride.

This growing awareness of the power of white society hit Joseph full force in the great city of St. Paul. As the train made its way into the city in the deep November darkness, he could see flickering lights on the hillsides in all directions. There were shadows of large buildings—hundreds of them—far larger than the building where he had shared the feast with the people of Bismarck. And these buildings were made of stone, not wood. One street was lined on either side by small fires on tall poles. They gave off a pale greenish light that made the buildings seem like small mountains.

People were everywhere. They stood in front of the tracks, crowding so closely that the train could barely move through them. They pounded at the train windows and shouted out Joseph's name.

The Nez Perce cowered in the cars and stared out the windows at the shouting, waving people. There must have been thousands of them. Joseph, realizing what was happening, moved to the rear car and stepped onto the platform to a great cheer. He began shaking hands with the people, who chanted his name and surged forward to touch him. He shook hands until his arm ached and he had to quit, all the while hoping to see Colonel Miles, as he had been promised by the soldiers before he left Bismarck. But Colonel Miles never came.

The train left St. Paul at ten in the evening. The frightened people had been mobbed by the white citizens as they had stepped out of the cars to get air. They had been prodded and touched and crushed in upon until they could hardly breathe. By the time they were back on board and moving again, the iron horse seemed almost as much a refuge as a fire-snorting object of terror.

They rode on through the night, uncertain where they were going or what was to become of them. The sparks from the smokestack of the train flew by the windows like fireflies. The following morning they awoke to a feeling of gloom and despair. The sky had changed, the land was different. The trees were lifeless sticks with no leaves, and the air was strangely heavy in an unhealthy way. They passed white towns that seemed almost numberless, as many as there were Indian villages in their own country but larger, with more people, all crowded together. At each stop, the white citizens pushed against the train and peered in the grime-smoked windows, cupping their hands against the glass and shouting for Joseph.

The chief tried to oblige. While the train was stopped he would step out onto the platform of the rear car and wave. People would rush forward, presenting him gifts and asking him to speak. He tried to be respectful and show gratitude for their kindness, but his spirits were low. Often he would say only a few words, then fall silent or retreat to the inside of the car while the white faces continued to press against the windows.

The citizens who had gathered were mildly disappointed. They wanted to be like the woman they had read about who had given the chief her wedding ring at a reception line in Bismarck or the people who had been treated to his heathen eloquence at the banquet given in his honor. But the melancholy, sad-eyed man who stepped forth onto the platform of the train and greeted them with a winsome smile and polite handshakes seemed distant and disengaged, anything but a master strategist and a woodland orator. And his black, pointed hat with its green and black headband seemed somehow out of place on a Napoleon of the high plains.

He accepted their gifts graciously, even lighting up a cigar that was handed to him, but his heart was not in it. His concern was not to make white people happy, but to find a way to help his frightened people, who were huddling in the drafty, cinder-filled coaches, worrying about their lost friends and families and wondering if they would ever again be able to set foot on the earth that they once had called home.

L
ATE ON THE AFTERNOON
of November 27, 1877, the train snaked around a bend and moved along a wide river bottom at the base of a rolling, tree-studded bluff. In the distance Joseph could see a gathering of people and a group of soldiers standing in formation by a wooden railway station. Off to the left, toward the river, was a small city of white canvas teepees arranged in straight rows like a soldier camp. The guards on the train explained that this was Fort Leavenworth, and these teepees were where Joseph and his people were going to live.

As the train came to a stop, Joseph stepped off and looked up at the buildings that lined the top of the bluff. There were far more than at Fort Lapwai, far more than at the fort where they had camped near Bismarck. And, like the buildings of St. Paul, they were made of stone, not wood. The light was strange, the air heavy and damp. This did not feel like a good place for the Nez Perce people.

Slowly, the others emerged from the train and gathered around him. They stood in the cold awaiting his instructions while the curious townsfolk pushed toward them. Their packs and goods were nowhere to be seen.

Joseph led the frightened people to a grassy spot on the side of the bluff. He insisted that all communications with his people must go through him. When orders were issued, Chapman would interpret, then the chief would pass the word on to the families. He was still in charge of the well-being of those traveling with him, and he would allow nothing to take place without his knowledge or approval.

After several hours of waiting, the sick and elderly were put in wagons and taken down to the tents while the others walked across the cold, marshy, mile-wide field toward the place that was going to be their home.

The townsfolk who had come to witness the arrival milled about in the cold. They tried to speak to Joseph using first English, then French. But he did not understand. His physical appearance came as something of a surprise. He was squarer and heavier than they had expected. The newspapers had led them to expect an Indian of the sort they had imagined from Fenimore Cooper and Longfellow—noble, regal, perhaps wearing feathers and war paint.

This man had none of that. He wore a black hat and had a striped blanket draped over his shoulders, and he seemed weary and intensely human. They returned to their homes curious and a bit perplexed. But they would have more chance to get to know him in the following months. This tent camp was only a short buggy ride down the hill from the town, and they would be able to visit and observe the famous chief and his people whenever they wanted.

Joseph was escorted to the hospital tent where a section had been quartered off from the medical area by a canvas partition. This was to be his residence until a private tent with a floor and a stove could be erected for him nearer the camp of the guards. The rest of the people were assigned to the white canvas teepees that stood in formation along this marshy bottomland. Many wanted to remove the canvas and use their own skin lodge coverings, but the soldiers explained that their packs were on a different train and would not arrive for several days.

The weather was cold and the land boggy. A large river ran by the side of the camp, but it was brown and silty and not good to drink.

For the next several days, the people wandered around looking for bushes and medicine plants they recognized, but found none. The river seemed to have fish, but they were not like the salmon from their own country. There were many birds but few animals. It would not be a good place to seek the food with which they were familiar.

Nonetheless, if this was to be their home, the people were prepared to make the best of it. They set about constructing sweat lodges on the edge of the river and sent the young boys off in search of rocks to heat to make steam. Some of the children cut saplings and made bows and arrows. The women cleaned the campsite and washed the clothes.

Joseph took to the task of running the camp and serving as the spokesperson to the visitors who began frequenting the camp. He met with the soldiers and curious citizens in the confines of his tent. His wife and infant daughter stayed close by, as did the other head men. He was gracious and polite and always forthcoming with his answers about how the war had taken place. At every opportunity he expressed his desire for his people to return to their own country, as had been promised by General Howard and Colonel Miles.

Reporters took in his every word. Though Leavenworth was a sprawling town of almost fifty thousand, this chief and his Indians were its most fascinating story. The newsmen swarmed about him, noting his “well formed head,” his “well modulated voice” and his “frankness of features.” They described his “richly ornamented buckskin suit,” which they characterized as his “court costume,” and they depicted his audiences as something out of fantasies of the Orient, with the chief “reclining gracefully on a huge couch made of furs of wild animals,” surrounded by an entourage of his leading men.

Soon the townsfolk, fascinated by the stories and rumors, were streaming down from the their city on the hill to see this celebrated red man and his people. Within a few weeks, the number of visitors had increased so greatly that the major in charge of the camp was forced to restrict visits to Wednesdays and Sundays between the hours of one and four. Otherwise, he said, the crowds were so large and constant that it was impossible to keep the area clean.

On one Sunday, it was estimated that five thousand people made the trip down the bluff from the city to the teepee village by the river, almost all of them intent upon seeing the chief himself. They came in their Sunday finery—the men in their dark suits with silk handkerchiefs, the women in their long dresses with French lace collars. If they were not inclined to walk and had no transport of their own, they were able to purchase rides on Mr. Hall's omnibus, which departed at nine and returned at noon, making numerous stops along the way to pick up passengers wishing to see the Indians practicing their native way of life.

Eventually, the Nez Perce became such a curiosity that visitors were traveling from Kansas City and St. Louis for a chance to see the captives. The newspapers speculated that over half the people in the territory had made the visit to the river bottom and the native camp.

Joseph and the people did their best to accommodate the guests and even to take advantage of their presence. Young boys used their sapling bows and arrows to shoot nickels out of the forks of small branches in exchange for the right to keep the coins they hit. Women made gloves out of antelope skins purchased from hunters and sold them to the townswomen, irritating the local merchants, who were losing sales because their gloves could not compete in quality or style. Joseph himself tried to greet every visitor personally, shaking hands until he was too weary to do so.

But away from the visitors, life in the camp was an exercise in tedium and depression. The men, having no horses to ride and no animals to hunt, whiled away their hours playing cards or smoking. The women occupied themselves with such domestic tasks as sewing and cooking. Only the children found any pleasure in this strange, marshy landscape and the constant stream of white visitors that came and stared at them like animals in a pen.

It was possible to have sweats, but their deeper spiritual hungers remained unmet. This was not their land; their
wayakin
animals and spirits were nowhere to be found. Children could not be trained in the old ways, and the kouse and camas and berries and salmon did not live on these lands and waters. There were no buffalo, no elk, no beaver. The only way they could get hides was to buy them, and the only way they could get the wild meat they liked to eat was to trade their beef for it.

They waited each Saturday for the soldiers to hand out their rations. But the pickled pork, bread, and beans were not pleasing to them and did not feel like food from the hand of the Creator. The canvas tents leaked, and their few skin tent coverings, which had arrived with their goods, were frayed and torn. Each day their hearts grew heavier, and loneliness for their home country deepened. The wounded were not getting well, and the healthy were giving up hope.

On Sundays they would gather to perform their longhouse ceremonies as they had been taught by their ancestors. Each day they would heat the rocks and perform the cleansing sweats. They would sing the songs to their spirit guides, make the prayers they had been taught. But the Creator seemed to have turned his back on them. They were now in the world of the whites, and it appeared that only the white way possessed any power.

Joseph saw his people's failing spirits and did his best to keep their hopes alive. He continued to meet every white visitor who came to the village, even when he had no heart to do so. He knew that the task was upon his shoulders to tell each visitor the story of his people and to plead for their return to their homeland, as had been promised by General Howard and Colonel Miles. Perhaps if he found the right person, something would be done.

He signed autographs, scrawling a rude approximation of the words “Young Joseph,” as he had been taught over thirty years before at the Spaldings' mission in the Lapwai. He spoke constantly of his good feelings toward the white people and his hope that his people and theirs should remain friends forever.

He shared the pipe with visitors, though many recoiled at the prospect of touching their lips to the same pipe that had touched the lips of a savage. At all times he kept Ad Chapman at his side to make sure that his words were understood and his feelings were passed along clearly.

The white townsfolk tried to show kindness, but it was always with gestures of hospitality, not actions that would help return his people to their homeland. They even presented him with a special invitation to a concert up in the town, where it was felt that the soaring tones of Mrs. Jackson's soprano arias would uplift him after a lifetime of hearing only the “wild echoes of his song on the plains.” But at the last minute the army refused to allow him to attend, stating that it was against regulations for prisoners to leave the camp area, thus providing a stark reminder that the freedom he and his people experienced in the river lowlands was ultimately an illusion, and that, despite their humane treatment, they were in fact prisoners of war.

Nonetheless, Joseph continued his unceasing efforts to force the army to uphold the agreement made by Colonel Miles. One time he and seven other head men enlisted the aid of a sympathetic officer, Captain George Randall, to draft a petition to General Sherman asking for their return to their homeland, as they had been promised.

Sherman's response was swift and direct. “These Indians are prisoners,” he wrote, “and their wishes should not be consulted.” He had no interest in angering the western congressmen by reintroducing a troublemaker into their midst, and he had no interest in incurring either the cost or the problems that the relocation of these prisoners would entail. Randall was reprimanded, and the request was refused. Joseph and his people would remain where they were until Sherman determined how best to dispose of them.

Long into the winter Joseph fought for his people in every way he could. Every chance to speak he took. Every offer to meet with white citizens he accepted. He acted the gracious host, complimenting those he met and reminding them gently of the failure of the U.S. government to deliver what it had promised. While his people sat in the cold winter damp, falling deeper into depression and despair, he continued to reach out with professions of appreciation and friendship, hoping that someone with whom he spoke might have the power and influence to release them from this shapeless existence that was sapping their strength and killing their spirits.

As spring approached and the frozen earth of the bottomland began to thaw, the true squalor of their situation became clear. The Nez Perce sewage filtered into the groundwater, and spring runoff brought the waste from the town of Leavenworth flowing in their direction. The humidity spoiled their meat, and the river water, brown with silt, was almost undrinkable. They dug down into the marshy earth hoping that fresher water would filter up, but this too was foul and unhealthy.

With no resistance to white illnesses, the people began falling ill in alarming numbers. There was sickness in their stomachs, sickness in their lungs. White medicine could do nothing. Their own medicine men could do nothing. Those who had been clinging to life lost their will and died. Others who had arrived healthy fell ill and passed on to the spirit world.

The people constructed a small graveyard in the manner of their ancestors, surrounding it with fresh saplings. But the ground was marshy, and the bodies could not be well buried. Even Joseph's infant daughter, who had been born on the Camas Prairie, was stricken. He closed his teepee and brought those with strong medicine in to perform the healing ceremonies, but the sickness was slow to leave. All the while, white visitors gathered around the tent, remarking on the strange-sounding music and hoping that the chief would soon come out so they could get his autograph or maybe shake his hand.

By summer, conditions were almost unbearable. The arrival of the heat brought mosquitoes and new illnesses. The air was so heavy that it seemed impossible that birds could even fly. Terrifying thunderstorms with deafening lightning strikes cracked the sky in two. The canvas tents blew down or leaked profusely through the seams, soaking the people's clothes and spoiling their food. Soon almost half of the four hundred remaining people were too sick to move and spent their days lying in a delirium that the military physicians attributed to diseases ranging from whooping cough to malaria to influenza to tuberculosis.

Joseph continued to speak out, but his efforts had no effect. The Nez Perce were like a forgotten race. Aside from the small complement of soldiers assigned to guard them, and the streams of visitors that came down each Sunday and Wednesday to buy crafts and see the Indians in their “native habitat,” there seemed to be no one who even cared if they existed. No government person came to assist them in their quest to get home; no one even explained what, if anything, was going to happen to them.