Lay the Mountains Low (66 page)

In fact, if they were to be sure that relations with the white people of Montana did not disintegrate as they had in Idaho country, Looking Glass and the older men had to be constantly vigilant, assuring that the young men did not ride off and do something stupid to reignite the flames of war. In this case, the chiefs were clearly as anxious as the Bitterroot Shadows to avoid trouble.

Every time one of the white men had appeared with a wagonload of trade goods near the camp as the People slowly migrated up the Bitterroot valley, the older men remained close to the visitor so they could assure that the
young hotbloods fomented no trouble while the women purchased flour and cloth, and even some cartridges for the guns, although a few of the white men charged as high as one dollar a bullet.

But the
Nee-Me-Poo
had money! Lots of it: the Shadows' paper currency, silver and gold coins from Idaho, and sacks of gold dust earned in trade or taken in those first raids. A dollar a cartridge? That was no problem! After all, each of those bullets would kill a buffalo, making meat and providing another winter robe for the women to tan once they reached the land of their friends the
E-sue-gha.

Far up the Bitterroot, where the terrain no longer lay flat, the valley narrowed and the slopes of the Bitterroot and the Sapphires closed in as the village began its ascent toward the nearby passes. But first, the
Nee-Me-Poo
temporarily halted their migration to pay homage at the Medicine Tree,
*
an ancient and hallowed site for them and the area's Flathead. For generations beyond remembrance the Non-Treaty bands had been coming and going by this spot, migrating between their homes and the buffalo country. Even before the arrival of the first pale-skinned Boston men, they had stopped to make offerings and pray at the base of this tree.

More than eight feet off the ground, embedded at the base of a large branch, hung the bleached skull and horns of a mountain sheep—those bony remains more encircled with every season as the ancient yellow ponderosa pine inexorably grew around that timeworn skull.
**

Pausing briefly here in this region cloaked with heavy
mystery and sure signs of the supernatural at work, the women came up, dragging young children they hushed as the People crowded around the tree's enormous base. With murmurs of prayers and praise, men and women alike tied offerings of cloth or ribbon, tobacco or strips of buckskin, even some copper-cased cartridges, to the branches and limbs, each item attendant with a special and heartfelt prayer … for this was known to the
Nee-Me-Poo
as the wishing tree.

Found along many Indian trails, these renowned “wishing” sites offered a traveler the opportunity to make his or her prayers for success in some current undertaking, be it as innocent as a new love affair or a hunting trip or as serious as a deadly foray against a powerful enemy. Far, far back into the days of the ancient ones, the Non-Treaty bands had believed this sacred tree itself would not only grant the wishes of those women who made their prayers at its base but also give their men the power of mastering horses and killing game for the survival of their people. There were powerful forces at work in this place of great mystery. Now that they were closing on the buffalo country, their prayers to such spirits would be vital to the survival of the bands—

”Kapsisniyut!”
Lone Bird exclaimed. “This is a bad and evil thing I see!”

Everyone suddenly turned the man's way as he stumbled in approaching the base of the tree, collapsing to his knees—eyes rolling back in their sockets—a long moment while the crowd grew hushed.

Bird Alighting rushed to the man's elbow, supporting this warrior known as
Peopeo Ipsewahk.
As the frightened women pulled their children against their legs, everyone inching back to give Lone Bird a broad circle, the warrior's eyes slowly focused on the Medicine Tree's highest branches and he began to explain in a trembling voice.

“I have just had a dream given me while I was awake!” he spoke in a loud voice. “A dream of what is to come,” he said a little quieter but even more emphatically. “A great
heartbreak, a terrible tragedy, is about to befall us if we tarry too long in making our way into the land of the buffalo!
Koiimzi
! Hurry! We cannot wait; we cannot linger!”

Never before had Bird Alighting heard the slightest fear enter Lone Bird's voice. An icy-cold fingernail scraped itself down his spine.

All too true: They were moving slowly—taking as much as nine days to march the one hundred Shadow miles it would take to get from the mouth of the Lolo Canyon to reach the Big Hole Prairie.

“We are going, Lone Bird,” consoled Looking Glass as he stepped to the man's side. “We are marching to the land of the
E-sue-gha.”

Lone Bird reached up to grab the front of Looking Glass's shirt as he leaped to his feet again. “No! I feel the breath of
hattia tinukin,
the death wind, on my neck,” he pleaded. “We are taking too long, too long!”

White Bird himself shouldered his way through the fringe of the murmuring crowd and confronted the two men, glaring at Looking Glass with worry graying his wrinkled face. “See, Looking Glass? For the past two days I myself have told you we should leave the lodgepoles behind and hurry, hurry! The women can cut more another place.”

“The war is far behind us!” Looking Glass argued, shrugging, his palms to the sky.

“Dragging our lodgepoles is making us too slow!” White Bird snapped.

“But we have children and women, a big herd of horses,” the head chief explained.

“Yes!” Lone Bird warned, turning from Looking Glass, his frightened eyes searching out others in the front ranks of that hushed crowd shrinking back from his nightmare vision. “My dream showed me how we are moving too slow. Far too slow … on this trail that will bring us death—”

“Just on the other side of these heights is the
Iskumtselakik
,”
*
Looking Glass scoffed. “And Cut-Off Arm is far, far behind us. Besides, the Shadows of Montana have shown themselves to be our friends. They trade with us; they sell us what we need for our travels. We have left the war far behind us—”

“No! Even as we stand here, the death wind is already coming up behind us!” Lone Bird whirled, pointing down the valley in the direction they had come.

Past the little settlement of Corvallis. On past Stevensville and their big earthen fort. Perhaps even past the mouth of Lolo Creek toward the community of Missoula City itself.

“I have seen the face of death,” Lone Bird whispered in the stillness of that hushed assembly, “the death that is already stalking our trail!”

 

*
By now past Sweathouse Creek, farther up the Bitterroot valley.

*
Myron Lockwood later put in a claim for $1,600 for the loss of not only some horses and a few cattle but also a supply of flour, all his busted furniture, some harness chopped up, and three of his favorite shirts.

*
This colossal tree dating back to the 1700s still stands east of U. S. Highway 93 a few miles south of present-day Darby, Montana.

**
For many years the local settlers protected this revered religious icon. Some time after the Nez Perce war, the skull was chopped out of the tree by a local lumberjack, roaring drunk at the time. After hearing that irate locals were planning to lynch him for his desecration of this sacred object, the man fled for safer parts. As the tale is told, he had only meant to adorn the wall of his favorite saloon in nearby Skalkaho (present-day Hamilton, Montana).

*
What the
Nee-Me-Poo
called the Place of the Ground Squirrels, the valley of the Big Hole.

A
UGUST
2–7, 1877

BY TELEGRAPH

—

MONTANA.

—

Progress of the Indian War.

PORTLAND, July 30.—General Howard is at present at Kamia, awaiting the arrival of Major Sanford, and as soon as that officer joins him, Howard will take all the available forces and push vigorously on after Joseph and White Bird, who have already crossed Bitter Root mountains by way of the Lolo trail. He will go to Missoula as rapidly as his command can move. He will have in the neighborhood of five hundred men. Another force, under command of General Wheaton, will leave Fort Lapwai and pass through the Spokane country over into Montana, through Sahon pass. After crossing the mountains the troops will push down to Missoula, where they will join General Howard. It is expected that Howard's and Wheeler's detachments will reach that point simultaneously.

H
E HAD BEEN THE FIRST WHITE MAN TO VIEW THE
stripped, bloated, mutilated bodies of more than 220 dead soldiers offered up on that hot, grassy ridge beside the Little Bighorn River as if in sacrifice to some heathen deity.

First Lieutenant James H. Bradley was his name. Seventh U. S. Infantry; serving under Colonel John Gibbon out of Fort Shaw on the Sun River in north central Montana Territory.

This past May Bradley had celebrated his thirty-third birthday. Uneventful his life had been until April 1861, when seventeen-year-old Jim left his place of birth—Sandusky
County, Ohio—and marched off to war with the Fourteenth Ohio Volunteers. Taken prisoner and held for half a year by the Confederates, he was released in time to serve during the siege of Atlanta. By the time he was discharged at the end of the war he had risen to the rank of sergeant with the Forty-fifth Ohio Volunteers.