Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez Perce (43 page)

Then, in mid-July, word came that the people were to be moved again. They were to depart on a special train and travel 150 miles south to Indian Territory. There they would be settled next to the Modoc, who had been sent there five years before. It was intended that the Modoc, who were from the same part of the country as the Nez Perce and showed promise in adopting white habits and customs, would have a positive influence on the Nez Perce and assist them in adapting to a civilized way of life.

The summer of 1878 had already become one of the hottest on record, with daily temperatures reaching well into the nineties and humidity so oppressive that it was almost impossible to get a full breath of air. People all across the Midwest were being felled by heatstroke and dehydration. Deaths in cities numbered in the hundreds.

On July 19, with the mercury hovering near one hundred degrees, the Nez Perce were herded across the broad open field from their campsite and up to the Fort Leavenworth railroad station at the base of the bluff a mile away. They had to drag their tent poles and goods, and the sick and the elderly were forced to make the journey without assistance through the unforgiving heat and sun.

The train cars that had been requisitioned for them had not yet arrived, so the people were forced to spend the night huddled under mosquito-ridden bushes and curled up on the empty siding near the station. Many of them had been weakened by heatstroke, and the humid, breathless night air offered little relief.

When morning came and the train had still not appeared, their situation became desperate. The sun was rising into an empty sky, and they had no cover under which to protect themselves. They sat by the rail siding, staring down the tracks into the shimmering heat for signs of an approaching engine. But no plume of smoke rose in the distance; no rhythmic chuff of an approaching engine cut the still, fetid air.

By noon the sun was an angry bead burning down on them with merciless indifference. The elderly lay in the bushes, trying to find any shade they could. The weak fell sick from the heat, and the children, already weakened by the poor water and diseases of the river bottom, began to fade into a lethargic torpor.

The few healthy among them tried to do what they could, but there was no way to offer relief. Joseph's wife fell ill, as did Chapman. One infant, unable to endure any longer, died in its mother's arms while she tried desperately to fan it and wet its brow to keep its body temperature down.

As the day darkened into evening, the train had still not arrived. By the following dawn, when it finally steamed into the station, the people were so weak that they could barely make it into the coaches. The doctor who had been assigned to travel with them went from car to car, ministering with such medicines as he had. But the military, in releasing the people to the Department of the Interior, had provided only minimal medical supplies, and the people were already too overcome by the heat to recover easily. Most slumped in torpor and delirium as the train slowly moved out from the Leavenworth station on its fifteen-hour journey south to Baxter Springs on the border of Indian Territory.

The train was scheduled to make few stops—and those only long enough to take on water. But news of the Indian transport train had been flashed along the telegraph wires, and residents of the towns along the rail line began gathering at their local stations in hopes of catching a glimpse of the famous chief Joseph and his legendary band of Nez Perce as their train passed through.

In Fort Scott, seventy-five miles south of Leavenworth, the townsfolk began lining up at one o'clock in the afternoon. The heat was relentless, and the station itself was soon filled with citizens in their Sunday finery, trying to keep cool while awaiting the Indians' arrival. An unscheduled “extra” that steamed past gave them a momentary surge of excitement, but when it was determined that this was not the train carrying Joseph, they settled in beneath the station overhang and in the few shady spots nearby, determined to stay as long as necessary to see the chief and his exotic band of savages.

By three, the crowd had swelled to several hundred. Men stood on the tracks peering into the hazy heat, hoping to be the first to announce the arrival of the transport. Eventually, the sound of a whistle rose up in the distance, and soon after, the train steamed into the station. The townsfolk rushed forward and surrounded the cars as the train ground to a stop. They were not going to miss their chance to see Joseph.

Inside, heatstroke had rendered most of the Nez Perce helpless. Two more children had died, and their mothers held their lifeless bodies close as the townspeople pushed up to the windows and peered in demanding a glimpse of the famous chief. Others of the Nez Perce were lying on the seats and floor, fevered and sick and incoherent. Even with the windows open, soot and heat from the engine had rendered the cars almost uninhabitable, and now, at this station, there were suddenly well-dressed white people sticking their heads in, crying out, “Where's Joseph?”

Some of the Indians would point one way, some the other—anything to keep these strange, ghoulish gawkers away. But the crowds would not relent. They climbed onto the platforms at the ends of the cars and pushed their heads in through the open windows. Once Joseph was discovered, they all surged toward his car, clambering onto the platform and trying to push their way inside. He slammed the door, but they pushed around to the windows and pounded on the doors. His wife was near delirium, and the families of the dead children were grieving and in shock. But the crowds would not back off. They had come to see the famous chief, and they would not leave until they had done so.

Soon, despite the sweltering heat in the car, Joseph ordered the windows closed and the blinds pulled down. The townsfolk grumbled and backed off, disappointed that the chief was so ungracious. This was not the noble red man they had been led to expect.

A few healthy Nez Perce came out and filled buckets with water for the rest of the passengers and were immediately surrounded by the townsfolk. Some of the young boys sold bows and arrows to the onlookers, and some of the women sold beads.

The townsfolk happily purchased their treasures and held them aloft. Though Joseph had not been the courteous and gracious host they had anticipated, the Sunday excursion to see the Indians had been a success. All could say they had seen the notorious captives, and the town now had enough authentic Indian bows and arrows to supply its numerous, growing archery clubs. They hurried back to their houses clutching their souvenirs, filled with stories of their sightings of the famous chief and proud to live in a city that offered them such opportunities for excitement.

The train continued south, passing through a strong windstorm. By 7:00 p.m. it had arrived at Baxter Springs, the southernmost town in Kansas and the end of the rail line.

The Modoc, with whom the Nez Perce were to be settled, had been assigned the task of meeting the train and transporting the newcomers across the border into Indian Territory. They were waiting patiently with their wagons when the train pulled in. But the lateness of the hour and the condition of the people made the journey impossible. They stood by quietly while the Nez Perce climbed down from the train, buried their three dead children in shallow graves, and curled up on the ground to rest. The Modoc then went among them with potatoes, corn, tomatoes, and other foodstuffs. It was the traditional Indian practice to share food with hungry travelers, but the Modoc were trying to learn the ways of the whites. So instead of giving food to the suffering Nez Perce, they sold it to them.

Since their departure from Fort Leavenworth, the Nez Perce had been in the charge of Mr. Hiram Jones, a Quaker agent who had traveled north from Indian Territory several days earlier in order to accompany the exiles on their journey. His presence among them was a result of President Grant's strange, well-intentioned, but utterly disastrous Peace Policy, the same policy that had placed Monteith and Presbyterians in charge of the Lapwai back in Idaho.

At the close of the Civil War, when the nation had resumed its western expansion and faced the great military problem of pacifying the various Indian tribes who stood in the way of settlers streaming west, many argued that the Indians could not simply be defeated, they had to be removed, eradicated, or otherwise made to disappear from the lands they claimed as their own. Several courses of action had been considered. The more draconian of the military leaders and policy makers believed that extermination was the only realistic answer, since the nation, they said, could not afford to house and maintain a perpetual prisoner class. Others called for permanent exile—driving the hostiles into Canada or Mexico where they would be the problems of some other government—or warehousing them all on some undesirable tract of land.

But Grant, under the influence of more humane thinkers, had opted for a third course. Like most Americans, he believed that the march of civilization was an inevitable progression from wandering savagery to settled, Christianized civility and enlightenment. Perhaps there were indeed good people among the lower orders of humans, but they were doomed to extinction by the natural course of history and human affairs. Assisting these unfortunates in their ascent from savagery to civilization was the only policy that a compassionate and enlightened nation should pursue.

So he had instituted his Peace Policy, whereby the military would round up the Indians roaming the West and deliver them to specified sites, called reservations. There the tribes would be placed under the control and guidance of various religious denominations, which would take responsibility for training and educating them in the ways of civilized life.

Ideally, these reservations would be in the home territory of the captured Indians because it was believed that Indians, like animals, had specific habitats to which they were accustomed and in which they were most likely to thrive. But in the event that a tribe could not be kept in its own country, either because there was not sufficient room available after white settlers had arrived or because feelings between settlers and local Indians were too volatile and acrimonious to allow peaceful coexistence, an area called Indian Territory had been set aside in the barren flatlands between Kansas, Arkansas, and Texas. This great expanse was believed to be sufficient to quarter all Indians that might require resettlement, so long as they gave up their wandering ways and turned to the more efficient and productive lives of agriculture and settled living. It was divided up into administrative areas called agencies, and these, like the individual reservations, were assigned to various religious denominations.

The Quapaw Agency, where the Nez Perce were being sent, lay on the very northern edge of Indian Territory and had been placed under the jurisdiction of the Quakers. The agent currently in charge was Hiram Jones.

Jones was a cruel and venal man who flew in the face of every image the public had of Quakers as peaceful, caring people. He was unabashedly corrupt and unapologetically self-serving. Most of the money he received for the Indians he siphoned off into salaries for his family, and he regularly short-weighted rations and withheld food and medicine from the tribes under his care. A nearby neighbor to the Quapaw Agency had referred to him as a “missionary with a cloven foot.”

But he had managed to “civilize” the equally troublesome Modoc who had been exiled to the Quapaw from their original country just south of the Nez Perce homeland in the West, so, from the administrative distance of Washington, D.C., he seemed like a successful agent and an ideal candidate to achieve the same positive results with the renegade Nez Perce. Little notice was paid to the fact that a third of the Modoc had died since they had been entrusted to Jones's enlightened care.

General Sherman, as head of the Department of the Army, was completely indifferent about where the Nez Perce would be taken or to whom they would be assigned. All that mattered to him was that, once they had boarded that train in Fort Leavenworth, they were the responsibility of the Department of the Interior and off his budget. He had determined long ago that sending them back to the Lapwai reservation in their own country was only asking for trouble, despite any promises that had been made by Miles or Howard or anyone else.

Returning them to the Lapwai would likely cause friction with the Indians already living there or, worse yet, foment rebellion among the pacified Nez Perce. It would surely incite violence among the local white settlers, who held all the exiles responsible for the atrocities that had been committed prior to the flight. Quelling any rebellion and keeping the peace would become the problem and expense of his army, and he had no interest in devoting further time or resources to these obstinate, renegade Nez Perce. Besides, sending Joseph and his followers to Indian country would teach them, and all other Indians, a lesson. He had happily sent them off with agent Jones to whatever fate awaited them.

The land of the Quapaw Agency, where the Nez Perce were being sent, was unique in Indian Territory. Most of the vast tract that had been set aside for Indian resettlement was rough, flat country, raked by bitter winds and vicious storms. But the Quapaw lay on a small stretch of beautiful, rolling, oak-studded hills, resplendent with hickory and berry bushes and laced with clear, spring-fed streams. Hay grew abundantly, making it good country for horse and cattle raising.

The quality of the land was the reason Baxter Springs, where the Nez Perce disembarked, had become the first real cow town in Kansas. Its white residents cast covetous eyes on the verdant hardwood and meadow country of the Quapaw, hoping that the government would one day open it to settlement or that they at least could sneak in and cut its fine hardwoods or even build a small cabin and live on it as if it were their own. But it was also land of intense humidity, oppressive heat, violent summer storms, dangerous tornadoes, and unpredictable winter freezes. For all its physical beauty, it was a place of unforgiving climatic brutality. If you lacked adequate preparation and shelter, it was land that could kill.