Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez Perce (21 page)

Looking Glass made the men go back to the settler's house and leave seven horses in payment for the goods they had stolen and the damage they had done. He even insisted that the men take the settler's branding iron and mark the horses with the settler's brand so there would be no misunderstanding about the purpose and intent of the gift. As long as he was in charge, there would be no harm done to white men, no insult done to white women, and no damage done to white property.

Beyond this incident, there were only a few minor break-ins and thefts by unruly young warriors and a few cattle killed to provide food for the travelers. But for the most part, the passage remained peaceful. This was now no different from any journey to buffalo country except for the great number of travelers.

Several lodges of Nez Perce who lived in the valley even joined up with the procession. Some families from the band of Eagle from the Light, who had left the Clearwater River Valley years before in disgust at the behavior of white miners, decided to travel with the group. Poker Joe, a half-breed buffalo hunter who loved gambling and had a rough command of English, was among them.

Near the little town of Corvallis, the travelers found the townsfolk huddled inside a hastily constructed sod pen. Since many of the Nez Perce knew the settlers from previous travels, they rode up to the edge of the enclosure and shouted for the people to come out and visit. No one would be hurt, they said. The war was finished, the fighting over. The tribe was just passing through on its way to buffalo country.

Cautiously, a few of the settlers came out and were greeted warmly by the Nez Perce. They shared a pleasant meal and sat together around common campfires. Word soon passed that the Nez Perce were traveling peacefully, as they always had done, and before long, wagons with supplies were arriving from nearby communities, and merchants all up and down the Bitterroot Valley were making a tidy profit selling the Nez Perce foodstuffs and camp goods to augment those purchased at Stevensville. There were even reports that some Indians were willing to pay a dollar a shell for replacement ammunition. The reign of terror and bloodshed that the white settlers had been led to expect was nowhere to be found.

While the Nez Perce were moving peacefully down the Bitterroot Valley, lurid newspaper articles and exaggerated military reports were telling a very different story. “Joseph's Indians,” as they were now called, were being accused of every atrocity imaginable. Sutherland was not the only person writing about the Nez Perce journey, though he was the only one on the scene. Most of the small towns in the West had their own papers—little one- and two-person operations that printed whatever information they could glean from local sources. Anyone within a day's ride of the Nez Perce was quick to share stories of close calls with Joseph's dangerous savages, and the newspapers were more than willing to pass along these overblown and incendiary accounts. The
Weekly Missoulian,
hearing of the approach of the Nez Perce on the Lolo Trail, had been so convinced of an impending Indian massacre that it put out a special edition with a banner headline imploring, “Help! Help!… Come Running!” The
Fort Benton Record,
published two hundred miles away in isolated Fort Benton, stated, “all the tribes of Montana are ripe for revolt….” The
Helena Independent
reported that the Indians coming down the Lolo Trail had “stampeded square over Rawn's rifle pits.”

Such hysteria, and the stories that engendered it, quickly assumed the authority of truth. In the wide, lonely spaces of the West, where families might go for weeks without seeing even their nearest neighbor, rumors took on the weight of fact, and the ever-present threat of Indian uprising made the slightest sign of Indian activity a source of fear and anxiety. Stories of even the most dubious veracity were recounted and embellished and conflated and exaggerated, and then, through the miracle of the recently laid telegraph lines, transmitted to an Eastern press that knew little of the realities of life in the West and was hungry to provide its readership with accounts of this distant and exotic area of the country. Joseph's savages were on the loose, and all across the nation people were beginning to watch the chase with breathless interest.

But in the Bitterroot Valley itself, most of the settlers were simply counting their money and breathing a sigh of relief that the Indians had passed. A few men, mostly well fortified with liquor, still made bold talk about pursuing and finishing off the redskins. Many of these were the same men who had been quick to abandon their posts at the Lolo barricade but now were once again proclaiming their desire to eat Indians for breakfast.

Generally speaking, however, the Nez Perce passage had done little more than whet the local residents' appetite for profits. Area settlers knew they could petition the government for compensation for losses of goods and cattle to the renegade Nez Perce, so they were happily fabricating outrageous claims. And there was much talk around kitchen tables about the wealth of weapons and horses and fine clothing the passing Indians had displayed.

Men whose families owned nothing more than crude clothes made of rough cloth spoke covetously of the fine, highly decorated buckskin garments of the Nez Perce men and women. Ranchers with worn and weary horses thought fondly of the beautiful, perfectly formed mounts in the Nez Perce herd. And the high-quality, repeating rifles carried by many of the Nez Perce had not escaped the notice of settlers who seldom could afford anything other than a single-shot weapon and in some cases had nothing more than old ball-and-powder muskets, which had so little accuracy that any shooting became as much an exercise in luck as in skill.

All throughout the valley, in houses, at tables, and around bottles of whiskey, discussions were taking place about how the settlers could get some of these goods for themselves. In their minds, there was nothing unsavory in this. Most of the horses and guns, they believed, had been stolen from settlers and taken from the bodies of soldiers. They would simply be reclaiming ill-gotten gains.

So when a soldier named Gibbon came marching down the valley in pursuit of the Nez Perce, the same men who had accepted the friendship and money of Looking Glass and his people were happy to join up if they could be promised the right to keep the spoils of victory for themselves. Some even had designs on specific shirts and rifles they remembered.

Gibbon, though not excited about increasing his numbers with rash, untrustworthy volunteers, was willing to oblige. He was Rawn's direct superior in charge of the armies in the Montana Territory. After Rawn's failure he had started down from his post at Fort Shaw, a small garrison 150 miles northeast of Rawn's post at Missoula. His orders were to support the laggard General Howard and put an end to this Nez Perce escapade.

Like all frontier armies, his was made up of ragtag, ill-trained, and poorly supplied soldiers, many of whom were immigrants or criminals on the run from the law. Their numbers were so small as to be laughable. In his case, the force he had mustered totaled only 146 fighting men. With numbers like this, he and other beleaguered commanders were expected to keep peace and provide protection in the vast, roadless West.

In reality, their forces were spread so thin that they could offer little protection to anyone other than people in the immediate vicinity of their garrisons, and the second they moved their few men away, the settlers in the area would complain loudly of being abandoned by the military and the government. It was such complaints that had caused Howard to delay his pursuit of the Nez Perce, and now men like Gibbon and Rawn were being asked to pay the price of Howard's well-intentioned efforts at accommodating the outcries of the settlers in his area of jurisdiction.

Gibbon was in charge of the Seventh Infantry. A year earlier, they had arrived at the Little Bighorn a day after the Custer massacre and had been responsible for burying the mutilated, bloated bodies of the dead soldiers of their sister group, the Seventh Cavalry. It was they who had seen the men with their hearts cut out and their heads beaten to bloody pulp by repeated bludgeonings with rocks and rifle butts, they who had been forced to pick up severed arms and legs and try to match them with the torsos scattered around the battlefield. They had a score to settle, but they also had a healthy fear of what they were likely to confront in the event of another Indian engagement. They were more than happy to have their numbers increased by volunteers, no matter how raw and undisciplined.

Gibbon himself was ambivalent about the involvement of the locals. During the Civil War, he had been in charge of a group of volunteers known as “the Iron Brigade,” and they had been the equal of any fighters in the regular army. He still smarted from the criticism he had received for his tardy arrival at the Little Bighorn battlefield and had even endured accusations of cowardice. Though he would have preferred a larger group of regulars, these volunteers did know the country, and they had observed the passing Nez Perce. If he could keep them under control—a dubious proposition at best—their assistance might be enough to allow him to bring this Indian affair, and the questions about his skill and bravery, to an end.

Soon Gibbon was traveling through the Bitterroot Valley with a force of 45 volunteers augmenting his 146 regulars, which included Rawn's men, whom he had picked up back at Fort Missoula. Howard was still working his way over the Lolo pass and had sent word that he would arrive in support as soon as he could make his way through the mud and deadfall. But Gibbon's concern was with catching the fleeing Nez Perce, not with keeping track of the clumsy movements of General Howard. By commandeering wagons at Missoula, Gibbon had been able to move his tired foot soldiers twice as fast as the Indians he was pursuing. He could see the remains of their camps at about twelve- to fifteen-mile intervals. If he traveled twice as far each day, it was only a matter of time until he overtook them.

The Nez Perce, however, were completely unaware of this pursuit. With General Howard and Captain Rawn behind them, the settlers befriending them, and country many of them knew well in front of them, Looking Glass was moving slowly in order to allow the horses and people maximum time for rest and rejuvenation.

Many of the people were happy and relieved at this pace, but some of the chiefs were not. At one point, White Bird sought out Looking Glass and confronted him.

“By the way you're acting, you seem to anticipate no danger,” he said. Looking Glass responded with a shrug. “What are you so worried about?” he countered. “We have traded with the settlers, made peace with the volunteer soldiers, and been allowed to pass unharmed by the government soldiers at the Lolo barricade. This should be enough to calm your fears.”

White Bird, however, was unmoved. “It does us no harm to be prepared,” he said. “We were told in the Bitterroot Valley there were soldiers and volunteers all over the country.”

He pointed out that even though Rawn had allowed them to pass, he had first asked them to turn over their horses and weapons. Simply because he did not mount a vigorous protest when they had refused to comply did not mean that all danger was past.

But Looking Glass was adamant. “War is quit,” he said. “Our fight was with the people in Idaho. We are not fighting the people of this country.” While he was in charge, they would travel at his pace and he would make the decisions.

Joseph remained wistful and quiet. They were almost to the place where the southern Nez Perce trail started up into the mountains to the west. Once they turned east toward the buffalo country, that trail would be in their rear. All hope of return to their homeland would be gone.

W
ITH NO RECOURSE
other than breaking up the tribe, which none wanted to do, White Bird and the others who entertained doubts about Looking Glass's leadership kept their concerns to themselves.

But the fears did not go away. As they moved down the tightening valley and the jagged, gray mountains to the west loomed up as a silent barrier between them and their homeland, an air of foreboding began to overcome the camp. Many of the older people and those with strong medicine power began to sense that something was wrong. Even leaving gifts at the medicine tree where all travelers placed offerings for the spirits did nothing to change their uneasiness. They were now out of their country, and it was as if the land were no longer listening to them.

One morning, when light was just beginning to show over the edge of the eastern hills, the voice of Wahlitits, the young warrior who had started all this, could be heard rising above the lodges.

“My brothers, my sisters,” he shouted, “I am telling you. In a dream last night I saw myself killed…. We are all going to die.”

Lone Bird, another young warrior, also spoke up.

“My heart is shaking,” he said. “Trouble and death will overtake us if we do not hurry through this land.”

These were brave, if impetuous, young men. Since the beginning they had placed their lives in danger to protect the people on their journey. If they had fear, it was not from cowardice.

Everywhere in camp a feeling of foreboding began to afflict the people. They petitioned Looking Glass to speed up their movement so they could escape this land that brought such discomfort to their spirits.

But Looking Glass refused to change his pace. If there was danger, he said, he did not fear it. If there were premonitions, he did not feel them. The people were strong, the horses were gaining health, and all war was far behind them. The buffalo plains, a place he knew so well, beckoned them like a coming sunrise.

For many, the fear subsided somewhat when they finally turned eastward toward the wider, more open area of the Continental Divide. The gray Bitterroots had looked like jagged animal teeth while the mountains in front of them, though high and difficult, were not so forbidding and unwelcoming.

By the time they had moved through the rugged pine hills and arrived at the traditional stopping place called “the place of the ground squirrels,” the feelings of foreboding had almost disappeared. Only the warriors and some of the elders with strong medicine power were still concerned.

This new country—the great, broad expanse known to the whites as the Big Hole—was a grand, high-country prairie rimmed by distant, snow-covered mountain ranges. The people had been stopping here for years on their journeys to buffalo country. Here they could find good grass for grazing, abundant game for hunting, and small, winding fish-filled streams. Like the Wallowa, it was too cold and snowbound in winter to admit of any year-round habitation, so there was no white settlement. But now, during the gentle days of early August, camas flowers carpeted its floor, water flowed gently through its twisting creeks, and birds darted among the willow bushes that grew low along the water's edge. It made a fine resting place for travelers.

The people made camp along a meandering stream several yards wide. They set up crude lodges near its banks, placing them a few feet apart and arranging them in the shape of a
V
aiming north, like the pattern of migrating birds. Then the women set to work digging pits for drying camas and went off to the nearby forested hillsides to gather and peel lodge poles. The men readied themselves for the enjoyable task of hunting the antelope that bounded freely over the wide prairie.

Under Joseph's guidance, the older boys took the horse herd to a broad, sloping hillside on the other side of the creek while the young boys and girls splashed in the shallow stream and played hide-and-seek among the willow bushes. The people would remain in this camp for several days until the new lodge poles had dried. They could hunt, repair their clothing, gather and dry camas, and let the very young and old build their strength for the long eastward journey before them.

The first night was spent under brush shelters, as the freshly cut pine trunks were not yet dry enough to use for lodge poles. But by the second night, teepees had been erected, a tent for the sick had been established, and a special maternity lodge had been set up for the newborns and their mothers. Joseph, who was now firmly in charge of the organization and well-being of the camp, made sure that the horses were well cared for and that all the people were comfortable and safe. At last, they were camped without the shadow of pursuit hovering over them.

But, still, some were uneasy. The young warriors could not forget the feeling of dread that had overtaken them back in the Bitterroot Valley. And Wottolen, one of the men with strongest medicine powers, had continued to see visions of soldiers in his dreams. To put their minds at ease, the warriors decided they should form a party to back-scout the trail across to the Bitterroot Valley. They needed only fresh horses to make the journey possible.

Ten or twelve of the young men approached the chiefs and told them of their plan. Looking Glass became exasperated and told them to give up their thoughts of war and concentrate their efforts instead on helping the people in the things of peace. But the young men were not mollified. They went to old Burning Coals, a wealthy man with a large herd of good horses. If he would loan them several of his racing horses, they could move quickly over the back terrain to see if they were being followed.

Burning Coals, however, felt much like Looking Glass. He liked his horses, he told them, and wanted to give them rest. If the young men wanted to do back scouting, they should use horses of their own. But the young men were not wealthy enough to own extra horses, and their own mounts were too worn-out from the journey. Since good scouting required fast, fresh horses, they abandoned their plan. Instead, they settled down with the rest of the group to spend a relaxed evening of games, footraces, and song.

With the teepees erected and the comforting smell of freshly picked camas roots baking in the fire pits, concerns and premonitions were soon a thing of the past. The young boys played the bone game, and the old men smoked contentedly by the warm glow of campfires, while the rest of the camp laughed and sang and told stories long into the night.

One by one, as exhaustion overcame them, the people went off to their teepees to sleep. Soon silence lay over the entire camp. Only the occasional pop of a coal in a fire and the gentle gurgling of the murmuring creek broke the quiet of the star-drenched night.

But while the people slept, there was movement on the other side of the creek. Gibbon had marched his men hard, keeping track of the Indians' progress. When his advance scouts had returned with a report of this camp in the Big Hole, he'd decided that this was his chance to end the Nez Perce flight once and for all.

Like all seasoned Indian fighters, he knew that surprise was his best ally. Indians did not fight well when they were on the defensive, and there was no better way to put them on the defensive than to surprise them in their sleep. His troops were now sneaking up close and taking positions just across from the camp.

He had equipped each of his men with ninety rounds of ammunition and a day's food rations and sent them forward under the cover of darkness. He instructed them to form a line high above the camp and to advance as close as possible in formation, then to wait until they heard the first shot. Then they were to charge the camp and finish the job that Howard and Rawn had been unable to complete.

By the time the first lines of daylight were limning the distant eastern mountains, Gibbon's soldiers were settled into positions not more than a few hundred yards from the sleeping Indians. They were wet and shivering from crawling through dew-covered grass, but their efforts had brought them into perfect position for a surprise attack on the campsite. Slowly they began their advance across the marshy creekbed, wading chest deep in the frigid, mountain waters toward the eighty-nine lodges of sleeping Nez Perce.

Across in the people's camp, an old man named Natalekin was unable to sleep. He decided to cross over to the hillside to visit his horses. The sky was still dark, and his eyesight was poor, so he depended on his horse to guide him.

As he approached the soldiers, they became convinced they were about to be discovered, so one leveled a shot. Almost instantly three other shots were fired, and Natalekin fell from his horse, mortally wounded.

In their teepees the Nez Perce heard the sound, unsure whether it was a dream or gunfire. Many had been asleep for only a few hours and were still groggy with exhaustion from their late night of games and singing and dancing. But when the few sporadic shots were followed by a fusillade of gunfire, they knew they were under attack.

The men, half awake, groped in the darkness for their clothing and rifles. The young children rolled over and rubbed their eyes, wanting to know what was happening. Infants began squalling, and the camp dogs were thrown into a barking frenzy. Outside, the horses that had been kept in camp began to snort and kick.

Quickly, the women grabbed the children and pulled them by their arms to get them up and out of the teepees. Many of the little ones, slumbering comfortably under the heavy robes in the warmth of the lodges, just rolled over and snuggled deeper into their blankets. Then bullets began ripping through the hides and canvas of the teepees.

The whole camp quickly descended into chaos. The crack of rifles mingled with the shouts of warriors and soldiers. The air filled with the choking smoke of gunpowder, making it impossible to identify the shadowy figures running between the lodges. The heavy-booted footsteps of soldiers could be heard amid the howling of dogs and the frantic shrieks of terrified horses.

The women who could escape ran toward the safety of the creek and the willows, dragging the screaming children behind them. The sick and old, unable to move quickly, tried to find their clothing and make their way into the brush or into some low, hidden spot near the creek bottom. Horses ran through the camp knocking over lodges and trampling cooking gear and clothing.

Suddenly, the sky was alive with flames. The soldiers were lighting the teepees on fire. The camp filled with the acrid smoke of smoldering animal skins and the sickening sweet smell of burning human flesh. The cries and moans of elders and the infants trapped in the burning teepees cut through the dawn.

Many of the Nez Perce warriors were half dressed and without their rifles. They had run out of their lodges and found the soldiers splashing up the creek bank into the camp. They had fought back with their hands, with rocks, with sticks, with war clubs, any way they could. They had jumped on the soldiers' backs, pulled them down, beaten them with stones—anything to protect the women and children.

The soldiers had now overwhelmed the camp and were shooting everywhere, aiming low into the lodges to kill the children and those still sleeping. They fired into the teepee for the infants, the teepee for the sick people. The piercing cries of the newborns could be heard amid the desperate wails of mothers trying to shelter their wounded and dying infants.

From the midst of the chaos, the voice of White Bird rose up. “Since the world was made, brave men fight for their women and children,” he shouted. “Are we going to run to the mountain and let the whites kill our women and children before our eyes? It is better that we should die fighting.” Hearing these words from the mouth of a seventy-year-old man, the men who had panicked at the outset of the fighting turned and headed back into the camp.

Looking Glass shouted out to Wahlitits and the other young men who had started the war with the attacks in the Salmon River, “These men are not asleep as those you murdered in Idaho…. Now is the time to show your courage and fight…. I would rather see you killed than the rest, for you started this war…. Now fight!”

The battle quickly spread throughout the camp. Wahlitits took up a position in a small depression by the edge of the creek, with only a small log for a barrier. He fought like the warrior he had dreamed of being, holding off soldiers who emerged from the creek until they overwhelmed him and killed him. His wife, soon to give birth, then picked up his rifle and continued shooting, until she too was felled by the soldiers' bullets.

Five Wounds, the strong warrior who had joined the travelers earlier on their journey, was killed in the fighting, as were Rainbow, Red Moccasin Tops, and others of the best, most willing warriors.

The carnage was frightful. Small children suffocated or burned to death in their teepees. Women were shot in the back as they tried to run. Potsikonmi, an old woman, was hit by a soldier's bullet as she crawled desperately on her hands and knees in search of a hiding place; Halpawinmi, only eighteen, was shot while trying to dress the wounds of the injured with mud from the creek. Illatsats, a young boy of only seven or eight, was left lying bloody and lifeless on the creek bank. A newborn, shot through the arm, sucked helplessly at its dead mother's breast while its arm hung from its shoulder by a thread of shredded flesh. The daughter of Wottolen, the man of strong medicine powers who had foreseen the coming of soldiers in his dream, lay dead near her lodge.

Everywhere the camp was filled with death and terror. The women huddled in the creek amid the willows, trying to keep the children quiet so they would not be found. When soldiers heard the whimpering and splashed across with their rifles poised, the women held their infants out in front of them, pleading for mercy. The gurgling waters, which only a day before had been so clear that the children could see the stones on the bottom, now ran red with blood.

In the midst of the fighting, a small girl was seen walking resolutely across the ground between the lodges and the creek. She had broken away from her mother and was striding determinedly back to their teepee, stopping every few feet to swat at bees around her head. When she emerged from the teepee carrying the small doll she had gone back to retrieve, she walked confidently back to the creek, where her desperate mother was frantically gesturing for her to get down. She was barely able to get to the safety of the willow bushes before the bullets that she had mistaken for bees began cutting into the branches and snapping the twigs above their heads.