Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez Perce (40 page)

It was a strange, bleak landscape with a very different spirit from the land in which they had been traveling. The rolling hills had flattened out into long, open prairies with thinner light and heavier air. The smell of the wind was different, and the light from the sun seemed weaker and more filtered. There were different birds, different animals. Even the wind had a different sound. This was not country that seemed good for Nez Perce people.

The people traveled for days through this land, settling into an attitude of despair and gloom. The travelers on the boats were able to look up and see platforms with Indian corpses in the trees—a practice they knew from some of the eastern tribes but that seemed harsh and alien to a people who felt that the bodies of the dead should be returned to the bosom of their mother, the earth. Soon Indians appeared on the riverbanks fixing rifles on the passing boats. The boatmen were able to keep the people from harm, but none felt safe in this new country where even the people seemed turned against them.

After a while the telltale smell of a white man's fire cut through the air, and a fort came into sight on the distant bank. It was not the fort where they were to spend the winter but another fort, only partway along on their journey. The boatmen called it Fort Berthold.

About 300 Indians were standing about at water's edge. The people recognized some of the tribes—Arikara, Hidatsa, and Mandan, along with a few Sioux and Cheyenne and Crow people the Nez Perce had known and even dealt with in some of their travels. But something about them had changed. They did not seem like free men and women. They stayed near the fort and behaved like camp dogs, milling around waiting to be fed.

These people had heard about the Nez Perce and how they had fought the soldiers, and they were curious to meet the strangers from far over the mountains. When the overland travelers arrived, Joseph gathered all these strange Indians together in a great circle and stood in the center, telling the story of the journey using the language of the hands. He told them of the war, of how his people had been chased by soldiers from the time of first flowers to the time of first frosts; of how they had fought with the army many times and had lost many of their people. He told of the capture and the promise made by Howard and Miles and the separation of his people. He told of the soldier chiefs and the hard trek they were making.

The white men at the fort stood back, watching him speak in signs to this assembled crowd of hundreds of Indians. They were amazed at his power to communicate without words and the rapt way he held an audience that used its eyes to listen.

The experience was good for Joseph. It allowed him to tell his story to people of his own kind, even if they were strange and listless in their ways. He was gradually becoming aware that the white government looked upon all people with skin the color of his as the same and did not see them as different people with different beliefs and different ways of life and different gifts from the Creator. It was one more insight into the ways of the white men who now held the fate of his people in their hands, one more bit of knowledge he might be able to use to help his people.

While they were camped in this flat land of cold skies and thin light, he had a chance to speak again with the others who had been traveling by boat. They had docked at the fort while the boatmen picked up food and blankets, and they told him something very troubling. There had been a white man at the last fort—a very strange man with long, greasy red hair who spoke in a language the people were able to understand. He had seemed to have a bad spirit and wanted always to be near the Nez Perce women. The soldiers had tried to keep him away, but before they did, he told the people that the soldiers were taking them to a place where a great gun shoots twice, and there they would all be hanged. This had darkened the people's spirits and filled them with a heavy gloom.

Joseph knew nothing about this and was not able to give them any peace beyond what Colonel Miles had told him. He did not know who this white man was or if he had some power of far sight. He could only reassure the people that they would soon move again to a fort down the river where Colonel Miles had promised they would be safe until the snows melted and they could return to their homes. But white man's promises, even those of Colonel Miles, had begun to have a very hollow ring.

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on the boats reached Bismarck before Joseph and the overland travelers, and it was an arrival filled with anguish and terror. As they approached, they heard a cannon shoot twice, as the strange man had predicted. Not only did it bring back all the terror of the great gun on the final battlefield and the memories of the death that had rained from the sky, but they were convinced that it signaled their impending hanging. They fell moaning and screaming into the bottom of the boats, certain that their end was near.

They could not know that this was the white soldiers' way of signaling riverboats to stop at Fort Abraham Lincoln for inspection. To them it was simply a signal of death. And their fear was made greater by the earsplitting screech of a locomotive steam whistle and the heavy, metallic groan of its wheels as it backed down the tracks. Short of thunder and buffalo stampedes and the roaring of the rivers and falls in their own country, these were the greatest sounds any Nez Perce had ever heard, and they seemed to contain everything terrifying about the white world of metal and noise.

Most of them had never seen anything like Bismarck. The three forts where they had previously stopped or camped—Keogh, Buford, and Berthold—were little more than huddled collections of wooden buildings, built in the strange fashion of the white man and standing lonely in the great openness of the empty landscape. The white towns they had known, like Stevensville, were nothing more than a few buildings set on either side of a single street.

But Bismarck was a place of a different order. A strapping young frontier town, it boasted a railroad connection, a telegraph line, blocks of two-story buildings with boardwalks and signage, and streets filled with stagecoaches and men and women in eastern attire. Though to the rest of America it was little more than a scrawny frontier outpost, it was to western settlers the first city of the East, connected by transportation and technology to the larger cities of St. Louis and St. Paul and, by extension, to the growing metropolises of mid-America and the eastern seaboard.

Its rawboned activity and mechanical clamor stunned the Nez Perce. As they moved along the river amid the bustle of the ferries and railroad clamor, the people huddled on the floor of the boats and sang their death songs. The young boys would not even assist the boatmen in bringing the boats to dock.

Eventually, the boats were moored at the landing at Fort Lincoln just downriver from the town, and the people were mustered across a gangplank and up the bank to a field, where they were ordered to set up tents on bottomland at the edge of the river. Two of the wounded had worsened on the journey and were carried by ambulance wagon to the post hospital building.

The overland travelers had not yet arrived. They were a day behind, camped in a thicket called the Painted Woods, preparing to march through Bismarck to their place of encampment at the fort. But the newspaper accounts had preceded the prisoners. Colonel Woods's florid embellishment of Joseph's short surrender message had been communicated as his actual surrender speech, and the chief was in rapid ascent in the public mind. The
Bismarck Tri-Weekly,
in a piece written by a correspondent for the
New York Herald,
described him as having the “figure and mien of as gallant a warrior chieftain as ever confessed himself fairly beaten at the game of war.”

Even Howard himself had been quoted in the Bismarck papers a month before as calling Joseph an “intelligent and very good Indian,” who, he believed, had been inclined to surrender far sooner but had been held back from doing so by other chiefs and warriors.

His people were characterized as uncomplaining, kind, and “far superior” to other Indians; his warriors as the best of any horsemen and marksmen; his war as a masterful retreat. And no reader, especially those in the frontier towns and the land that had been terrorized by Sitting Bull and the Sioux, could fail to appreciate the significance of the fact that Joseph's Indians had done no scalping or mutilation. This exalted reputation, combined with Miles's status as a military hero for his capture of this great warrior and his brilliantly elusive people, made the entry of Joseph and Miles into Bismarck a triumphal moment for the local populace.

The mayor and leading citizens went out to the Painted Woods to meet the noble chief and his captor while the town itself prepared for the entry as if for a great civic event. The band from Fort Abraham Lincoln was positioned along the main street, and the general populace gathered with foodstuffs to offer to the arriving soldiers and captives.

As the line of travelers appeared on the top of the hill, the band broke into the “Star-Spangled Banner.” Women and children pushed through the troops and rushed up to the captives. The sad-eyed, haggard Nez Perce watched with amazement as the townsfolk surged toward them, offering them dishes of hot food.

Joseph rode at the front along with Miles—the two men who were seen as bringing this tragic chapter of American warfare to an honorable close. The cavalry and infantrymen followed behind, sullen and morose. They were tired from the journey and tired of the prevarications and financial evasions by the military. Many had not seen pay for seven months. Some were riding with their pockets turned inside out to underscore their poverty.

But none of this mattered to the townsfolk of Bismarck. They stood on the sides of the streets cheering and waving. This was the greatest event their growing western settlement had ever seen, and they were reveling in their young community's day in the sun.

No one was enjoying it more than the city fathers. The presence of these two great leaders was a coup for the town, and they intended to make the most of it. It was their chance to showcase themselves in the national press and to gain advantage in the struggle among small western settlements to attract residents and businesses.

Right now, Bismarck was bustling because it was the end of the railroad line and the jumping-off point to the frontier West. Everyone disembarked here, purchased goods here, spent money here, and returned here after their forays farther west. But the tracks would soon move past them, and other communities would spring up to compete with them, just as they themselves had sprung up to compete with cities like Jamestown and Fargo farther along the railroad line to the east. The massacre of Custer and the continued threat of Sitting Bull had cast a pall over their prospects, reinforcing their image as a dangerous outpost in unsecured Indian territory.

The presence of Joseph and Miles could change that. They could herald the coming of a new era, a new peace, a new chapter in white-Indian affairs. Most of all, they could be the start of a new civic image. They could provide Bismarck a place at the table of urbane American cities and remove the stigma of being a lawless, rough-and-tumble town born in the grit and greed at the end of a railroad line.

Miles was immediately invited to a banquet at the Sheridan House, a stately three-story hotel that stood by the side of the railroad tracks and dominated the town with its massive, ornamented grandeur. He graciously accepted, expressing all appropriate humility that he should be so honored when he had only been doing his job. But in fact, this was exactly the sort of adulation that he sought from this victory. He had even doctored the surrender message he had sent out from the battlefield, changing it without Howard's knowledge to remove all significant references to meaningful participation by Howard and his soldiers. This had resulted in a firestorm of controversy within the military, but it had served its purpose as cementing Miles's popularity among a public hungry for a genuine military hero.

So that evening, while the Nez Perce sat in the cold confines of their tent camp by the river and his troops bivouacked nearby in their own campgrounds, Miles was feted with a reception, dinner, and celebratory ball at the Sheridan. He used the opportunity to compliment the citizens on their culture and refinement and to praise the Indians now under his stewardship. He recounted many of the abuses that the Nez Perce had suffered at the hands of unscrupulous Indian agents back in their home country, citing the incidents Joseph had told him about while they rode together on the overland journey to Fort Keogh.

He told of how their government agent had taken $200,000 that had been allotted for the people and had provided almost no services in return. He explained how Joseph had not wanted this war and had been forced into it by the unscrupulous behavior of the whites. He praised Joseph's kindness and generosity in dealing with soldiers who had been wounded in battle, pointing out that the wounded were never killed and were even assisted and given succor. He finished by saying that the Nez Perce had conducted one of the most humane military campaigns in the history of the country.

In light of the citizens' all-too-recent experience with the treatment of wounded soldiers at the Little Bighorn by the Sioux and the pitiful condition of the refugees that the people had seen paraded through their streets that morning, these comments from a military hero only deepened their sympathy for the guests who were making their five-year-old city such a center of national attention and excitement.

By the time Miles had finished, the residents of Bismarck were convinced that they had in their midst a completely different order of Indian— one that could help erase the bloody memories of the past and help their fledgling city take its rightful seat at the table of civilization.

That evening, as the city fathers listened to Miles's story, they determined to make an effort to bring this new era to pass. They would provide another banquet for the other great leader of this most noble of Indian wars, Chief Joseph. It would take at least a day to set the planning into motion, but it was worth the cost and effort. After all, what other city had ever had the opportunity, and been so greathearted and broad-minded, as to honor opposing combatants on the same civic stage only days apart?

The following morning, Miles and Joseph met in a formal session, well attended by correspondents and journalists, to discuss the status and disposition of Joseph's people. Joseph expressed himself with an oratorical solemnity befitting the gravity of the occasion. In the course of his travels, he said, he had come to know the heart of the soldier chief Miles, and he now trusted him and believed him to be a good man. They had fought each other like warriors and now stood side by side as friends. His people had been poorly treated back in their homelands, and that had been the cause of the war. The agents assigned were bad men who stole the people's money, once taking $18,000 in a week for fences that had been built only on paper. Now his people were far from their home, and they were tired and sad. They loved their homeland like they loved their mother, and they wanted to go back. This, he believed, the soldier chief Miles would help them to do.

Miles listened approvingly then spoke in response, praising Joseph and his people again for their character and conduct during the war. He too valued his new friend, Joseph, and wished to see his people and the white people of America live in peace.

The conversation went on in this manner, duly observed and noted by the correspondents and reporters issuing dispatches to the newspapers back East. After a break for lunch it resumed in much the same fashion. But in the afternoon session, Miles delivered a surprise announcement. He would be leaving for St. Paul on that evening's train in order to meet with his superiors to give a report on the battle and its aftermath.

Joseph was visibly upset. This was a bad omen. He had handed his rifle to the colonel and had placed himself and his people in his care. At Miles's word he had allowed his people to be brought to this strange and unfamiliar country. He had spoken well of the colonel, praising him as an honorable man, and had given his people assurances that Miles was a man of his word. Now the colonel was leaving.

What was to become of his people when the man in whom they had placed their trust was no longer present? Though the people of Bismarck had been good to them, and their campsite seemed healthy, how could they be sure that the people would treat them so well after Miles left? How could they be sure that after he departed they would not all be hanged?

Miles assured him that there would be no hanging, but he refrained from telling Joseph the truly difficult news that he had learned from Sheridan's headquarters in Chicago: that the Nez Perce, though not to be executed, were also not to be allowed to stay at Bismarck and Fort Abraham Lincoln. In short order they were to be moved by train to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas to await final disposition to a place of the government's choice. The army did not wish to have them in such close proximity to Sitting Bull, and quartering them would be cheaper at Fort Leavenworth. This would also place them close to Indian Territory, where, if they could be so assigned, they would be out of the military's hands and off the military's payroll and thereby become the problem and the expense of the Department of the Interior.

With this unspoken knowledge heavy on Miles's mind, the formalities continued far into the afternoon.

While Joseph and Miles were speaking, and the correspondents and other dignitaries were sitting in rapt attention, many of the other Nez Perce were tentatively venturing up from their campsite into town. Few had ever seen a city of this size. With the exception of Stevensville in the Bitterroots, some had never seen a white city at all. The stores and goods amazed them, and they wandered among them, greeted by the townsfolk and shopkeepers with the same curiosity and good humor that had been exhibited toward them the day before.

Many of the Nez Perce still had money to spend. Some of the women had American currency they had plaited into their hair at the start of the journey, and some of the people still had gold dust they had carried with them from Idaho. The shopkeepers were more than happy to make sales to these exotic visitors. They could charge exorbitant prices and gain the story of a lifetime in the process.