Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez Perce (23 page)

Emotions in the camp were fragile. People were angry and frightened and confused and grief-stricken. Each band wanted to protect its own, and each had different feelings about the journey. Some of the people wanted to trust the chiefs, some wanted to trust the medicine visions. Toohoolhoolzote's and White Bird's men remained belligerent, while Joseph's people, farthest from their homes, were becoming increasingly heartsick. The Palouse, who had joined the Nez Perce bands near Clearwater, turned increasingly toward their faith in the Dreamer way. And through the entire camp, people struggled with the memories of death and suffering and grappled with the hard truth that their medicine powers had not been able to protect them against the guns of the soldiers.

Joseph did his best to keep order while they moved. But Poker Joe's pace was hard on everybody. With each body buried in a shallow grave, with every grandmother or grandfather who had to be left behind, the spirit of the people dimmed. And with each loss, the anger and unruliness of the young warriors grew.

These young warriors now began clamoring for leadership. If this was a war, they were the warriors. It was the peace people, the trusting people, who had gotten them into this situation. They could have ambushed all the soldiers back in the Weippe; they could have attacked and killed soldiers at the mouth of the Lolo. But in each case, their hands had been stayed. Now the people were without food, without shelter, without cooking gear, without clothing. Because of the peace-talking chiefs, the once-proud Nez Perce were running for their lives. Because of the peace-talking chiefs, they were being haunted by the spirits of the dead.

They began going out each morning on raiding parties. There was no fear about expending ammunition now because they had captured thousands of bullets from the soldier supply wagon at the Big Hole. They would get what the people needed by robbing white settlers. If they chose to, they would kill these white settlers or burn their houses and harvests. No supplies would be left behind for any soldiers who might be following.

At one ranch, they killed four white men, then tore up the mattress covers to make fresh bandages for the wounded back in camp. At another, they took more than a hundred head of horses. All this was done in the name of helping the people and stripping the land of anything valuable to soldiers. But it was done with dark anger and cruel hearts. In one case some of the warriors made handprints around a settler's cabin with the murdered man's blood. Other warriors, upset at such barbarities, covered the bodies of the slain with blankets.

All along the route of their flight the warriors broke into the homes and stores of white settlers. It no longer mattered to them that these people were not fighters. The people in the Bitterroot had not acted like fighters, either. All white people were now like snakes, harmless only when dead.

The chiefs tried hard to keep the journey peaceful. They would ride ahead into the small towns and talk to the white settlers, telling them that no trouble would come to them, that the Nez Perce fought only soldiers and that they intended to pass through without incident. But then the young warriors would follow, breaking the trust that the chiefs had established, stealing horses and food, saying they acted for the good of the bands.

Soon word of the Nez Perce depredations began to filter out. From these small, isolated towns, where people locked themselves in courthouses and cabins—in one case, even locking the children in the bank safe—stories of Nez Perce cruelty were carried by courier to nearby towns, then by telegraph to distant places, confirming the worst fears of nervous white settlers. The Nez Perce were on the warpath; they were killing innocent people and destroying whole communities; they were on their way to join with Sitting Bull to start the great Indian war that would leave all the struggling settlers and their families mutilated and dead. Even the
New York Herald,
on the distant eastern seaboard, carried a dispatch stating that unless Joseph could be driven back, “he will be reinforced by sufficient numbers to keep the Northwest in terror for some time.” A general panic began to spread across the West.

Along with this panic came a growing anger at the military. It did not matter that the post–Civil War cutbacks had left Gibbon with fewer than 150 instead of the 600 men he would have had if the Seventh Infantry had been funded to full strength. It did not matter that Howard's men were traveling with two pairs of socks apiece and were living on pork fat and hardtack biscuits, some of which were left over from the Civil War. What mattered was that the Nez Perce were killing white settlers and escaping unpunished. The clamor for retribution was exceeded only by the scorn being heaped upon military leaders who seemed unable to exact it.

As a result, military reports from the field became more and more skewed. Battles became fiercer, the adversary more bloodthirsty and cunning. Victories were overstated, and skirmishes became battles. In his report on the Big Hole fight, Gibbon stated that he had killed eighty-nine Nez Perce. He did not mention that more than fifty of the dead were women and children and that many had been killed in their sleep.

Joseph too was now firmly established in the public mind as the leader of the Nez Perce, and in public depictions he became both fiercer and greater. To those in the West, who saw each confrontation and Indian escape as another bloody step toward their own extinction, he became the embodiment of all that was dark and cunning in the Indian character. For those in the East, who rankled at the cruelty and ineffectiveness of the government's Indian policy and were not in harm's way from Indian actions, he became a heroic symbol of noble resistance—the father figure of a beleaguered band of men, women, and children who were accomplishing a brilliant escape from the relentless pursuit of the bumbling U.S. military.

The man who was spending his days trying to move lodges and herds of horses and his nights worrying over a newborn infant and a wounded wife was being elevated in the public imagination to the status of a red Napoleon or red fiend; and he was becoming the lightning rod for a national debate on the justice and sufficiency of the government's Indian policy.

On the trail, however, the issues were much less abstract and much more dire. The warriors had little fear of pursuing soldiers because they knew that most were on foot and had proven cowardly when forced to fight armed men rather than sleeping women and children. They shared mocking stories of how the soldiers in the grove of trees had cried like babies when they were trapped, and they formed teepee-shaped piles of horse dung on the trail behind as a signal of derision to any troops who might be following.

But the chiefs, trying desperately to protect a dispirited, grieving group of people, sensed a gathering storm. It was true that the warriors' raids were gaining them much-needed provisions and were depriving the pursuing soldiers of forage and fresh mounts, but these endless attacks on innocent settlers were sure to bring the wrath of the whites down upon them. Though the warriors were killing no women or children, the settlers could not know that. All men will fight more fiercely to defend their homes and families than they will when alone in the field. If these settlers formed together or were joined with a strong soldier force, the Nez Perce would be faced with a battle they could not easily win.

In a last effort to gain allies, and perhaps the ear of sympathetic whites, Looking Glass and White Bird led a group of warriors into the small mining town of Junction to talk with Chief Tendoy of the Lemhi Shoshone. Though the Shoshone and Nez Perce had a long history of enmity, it was hoped that their common skin color would elicit sympathy and support. But Tendoy, like Chief Charlot, had chosen the route of conciliation and wanted nothing to do with a tribe that was at war with the U.S. military. He told the Nez Perce that they would get no assistance from him and that they should leave. Reluctantly, they agreed to do so. But their mere presence in the town had so unnerved the white populace, who had taken refuge in a hastily built log stockade, that many were convinced the renegades had come to attack the barricade. It was only through the townsfolk's fortitude and solid preparation, they believed, that the murderous red men had been kept at bay. Soon another story of heroic white resistance to Indian savagery was making its way by courier and telegraph to the outside world.

But not far outside that town, an act of true savagery and terror was taking place. While the Nez Perce families were struggling along in the relentless August heat, a small caravan of freight wagons appeared in the distance. The wagons were making their way through the dust and sagebrush with supplies for the scattered white settlements in the area. The chiefs, hoping to trade, rode up to the wagons and made conversation. The wagoneers were nervous and offered food as a gesture of friendship. Though the goods they were transporting were not theirs to distribute, the frightened freight haulers willingly exchanged bags of flour for Nez Perce gold dust, hoping the trade would mollify the Indians and send them on their way.

While this was going on, some of the young warriors discovered two Chinese miners who were traveling with the wagon train. Full of their newfound power, the warriors made the terrified miners get down on all fours and buck like horses to save their lives. When the warriors tired of this sport, they tried to make the white wagoneers do the same.

But the white men refused to do so. An altercation ensued, and the wagoneers were quickly overwhelmed and murdered. Then the warriors discovered ten barrels and a few random bottles of whiskey on the wagons and proceeded to drink themselves into a stupor. One of the nondrinking warriors, named Ketalkpoosim, became upset and tried to stop them. “If soldiers come,” he said, “you will not be able to fight, not be able to ride.”

The drunken warriors paid him no mind. When he tried to restrain them they took out their guns and shot him. He had been among the bravest fighters at the Big Hole, helping to capture an army cannon and dismantle it and risking his own life to save the lives of the women and children. Now he was mortally wounded at his own brothers' hands.

Looking Glass, White Bird, and Joseph were furious. They made the warriors pour out the remaining whiskey. But the drunken warriors simply got down on all fours and ate the mud.

Everything seemed to be disintegrating. They were in hot, desolate country. Every tribe they had counted on for friendship had turned against them. Internal divisions were surfacing everywhere, and the young warriors were out of control. The hard pace—the pace they knew they needed to keep—was killing the weak and the wounded. It had become a daily occurrence to see families singing death songs while gathered around a dying mother or father or child, then hastily sewing the body and a few precious possessions into a blanket before laying it in a shallow grave scraped from the dry earth by grieving hands and shovel bayonets taken from the ends of dead soldiers' guns. And now, with the death of Ketalkpoosim, they were dying at each other's hands.

Ollokot tried to exert some control over the warriors. Even though he was held in high regard, and all knew he had fought bravely at the Big Hole and had lost a wife in the battle, he could not control men drunk on alcohol, blood, and anger. With each death on the trail they became less willing to listen, more undisciplined while out on their scouting expeditions, and more willing to kill or die.

Meanwhile, Joseph and White Bird struggled to maintain the people's spirits. The land had turned from a broad, rolling prairie to a thirsty sink of sagebrush and sharp rocks. The pace was breaking even the strongest wills. Camp was often nothing more than a blanket draped over a pile of rocks, and food was whatever they could put together out of their dwindling supplies. Their horses were tired and worn down, and their own bodies were chafed and sore. Many of the families had never been to this country, and none knew where they would end up. Not a family among them had been left untouched by death.

Poker Joe and Looking Glass tried to console them with the knowledge that the place of the geysers was not many days ahead, and after that they would be near buffalo country. But each night brought dark memories of the soldier attack and fears that it could happen again. None could escape the horror of knowing that behind them the Bannocks and other soldier Indians were killing the old ones who had been left on the trail; and all knew that the bodies of the dead were being dug up and insulted, with the bones left lying to be dragged away and gnawed upon by coyotes.

There was also concern about troops that might be following. The people had looped far south after the battle, following a path that would keep them near the cover of foothills and out of the vicinity of major white settlements. Any soldiers who might wish to cut them off had only to travel the easy route straight across from the Big Hole to intercept them when they turned back north to pick up the trail. The chiefs knew that Howard's men were slow and had shown no real heart for fight. But they knew also that it was Howard's way to send men ahead to set traps so he could squeeze the people from behind. By taking the easy, straight route, he could easily send soldiers to lie in wait for the families as they moved toward the place of the geysers.

In order to protect against this, scouts always ranged far ahead and behind. This kept the people safe, but it left the young warrior scouts to their own devices. Men like Yellow Wolf, who could smell white men at a long distance and read the flights of birds and the distant shapes of shadows, could be trusted. But men like Otskai, whose mind was known not to work right, could not. There was no certainty that the young warrior scouts would not bring trouble on the people by their rash actions. Many had short vision and often were more concerned with bravery and vengeance than with the overall good of the people.

But there was no time to worry about these difficulties. The people needed to get across the searing heat of this dry sagebrush sink and into the safety of the hills and folds of the place of the geysers. Fearing the soldiers, fearing the settlers, fearing the crazed actions of the young warriors, they moved as fast as they could toward the strange otherworldly landscape of tall-shooting waters that had just been declared America's first national park.