Lay the Mountains Low (48 page)

Sending details out to scare up the Christian Indians in hopes of securing their boats and repairing the ferry cable, the general ordered the rest of the command to withdraw a few hundred yards and go into camp for the night.
*

That night he would begin laying plans on how he could catch those escaping hostiles between two pincers of his command.

 

*
This post, officially established on June 25, 1877, was not named a fort until November of that year.

*
In Flathead, Chariot means “Little Claw of the Grizzly.”

*
At this date, one of Howard's men was officially MIA, eventually raising the number to a total of thirteen dead. Almost twenty years after the battle, settlers in the area discovered the remains of a soldier “back of one of the hills near Stites,” along with four canteens, some army buttons, and a few silver coins. Could this have been that one soldier listed as missing in action?

**
An interesting footnote to this battle's history is the fact that nearly one-half of the casualties, both dead and wounded, were officers, noncoms, and trumpeters—clearly exhibiting the Nez Perce understanding of the army's command structure, which plainly shows they aimed their weapons accordingly.

*
The crossing place used July 13, 1877 was adjacent to the geologic feature and cultural artifact called Heart of the Monster, which figures into
Nee-Me-Poo
origin folklore.

*
The troops encamped where the Kamiah airport is today.

K
HOY
-T
SAHL
, 1877

I
N THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT JOSEPH AND HIS PEOPLE HAD
reached the crossing in darkness, finding that Lawyer's people had hidden the boats traditionally kept at the ferry, along with dismantling the ferry's wire cable. Cruel acts to commit against one's people, but Joseph was beginning to understand how those Christians wanted more than anything to stay out of the war. Perhaps more than everything to be seen as not helping their blood relations the Non-Treaties.

Now with the way the warrior bands had been driven away after two days of fighting on the Clearwater and with Lawyer's people doing what they could to blunt the efforts of the Non-Treaty bands to escape, it was clear the tides were shifting in favor of Cut-Off Arm and his soldiers.

No matter they didn't have those boats. As the five camps came to a halt just above the Kamiah settlement, some fell to the side, intending to get a little sleep while the rest started cutting willow or dragging out what they had left in the way of buffalo lodgeskins. But this was not a camp of mourners resigned to running away from a fight with the army. Instead, Joseph saw around him a people enjoying a rising euphoria. For two days they had held off far greater numbers than they were ever able to put into their fight with Cut-Off Arm. And though they had to retreat, they were not fleeing for their lives.

Here, once again, they had the river between them and Cut-Off Arm.

Before marching away from the crossing, the warriors managed to leave the
suapies
with one final indignity as they popped up from cover and fired into the soldiers. As the white men scrambled off their horses and sprinted into the fields, the
Nee-Me-Poo
fighting men hooted and jeered.

On this north side of the Clearwater, maybe they could even choose a place to turn around on their heels and snap back at the army again—if only to show the general that there was clearly enough fight left in the Non-Treaty bands that he had little choice but to offer them favorable terms for their surrender. But … Joseph was not leading this camp. For more than a moon now the war chiefs had held the highest favor. Still, after those two long days on the Clearwater, the fighting men were clearly fighting among themselves on what to do, which way to go. There was even growling among the fighting chiefs as Looking Glass snapped at
Toohoolhoolzote,
White Bird sniped at
Huishuishkute.

Over the last two days he had proposed a dramatic, if not risky, plan.

“I want to take my followers across the Camas Prairie,” he had told the gathered chiefs. “From there we will cross the Salmon River, where the
Wallamwatkin
can make our final stand in our homeland of the
Wallowa
Valley. In a man's own country should he die defending the bones of his relatives. Only in a man's own country can he die with honor defending home and family.”

But Looking Glass scorned his heartfelt proposal. “You say you are thinking only of the women and children? To march across the naked extent of the Camas Prairie would put them at great peril, Joseph. On one side stands the
suapie
fort at Lapwai, and on the other side stand the Shadow towns. No, you cannot throw those innocent lives against the very real possibility of death!”

“Then what would you have us do now that we are here at Kamiah,” Joseph prodded, “where we get no help from Lawyer's people?”

With a grand smile, Looking Glass told the group, “Because of all those possessions and supplies we had to leave at the Clearwater and because these Kamiah people have run off and won't help us … we have but one choice.”

“What is that?” White Bird demanded.

“We must go across the mountains to trade with the Shadows who have been our friends for many, many summers.” Then he turned his self-assured smirk on Joseph. “Better to go among friends, Joseph—than to risk your people's lives making a suicidal retreat, eh?”

After that rebuke, Joseph thought it best to stay in the background and follow the movements ordered by the others who were swayed by the power of Looking Glass's impassioned oratory. For now—with the army nipping at their heels—he reluctantly decided he could best protect his
Wallamwatkin
band by staying among the other Non-Treaties as they climbed toward the ancient root-digging meadows at
Weippe
Prairie.
*

As he pointed his pony toward the tail end of the retreating families, Joseph longed for an end to this fighting, when he could return to his beloved
Wallowa
valley with his people—there to live out the rest of his days with his wife and newborn daughter. But … would the child ever know anything but fighting and running, running and fighting?

BY TELEGRAPH

—

The Indian War—Reported Defeat of Joseph.

—

Just in Time to Prevent General Howard's Removal.

—

Move Against General Howard.

CHICAGO, July 14.—The Times' Washington special says the cabinet yesterday secretly but seriously considered the propriety of displacing Howard and putting Crook in his place. Howard, who has made such a bad mess of the campaign, was sent to that remote country as a sort of punishment after the failure to convict on the court martial for his share in the freedmen's bureau frauds. It is quite possible that he will be removed today,
as Secretary McCrary, who was absent at yesterday's (Friday's) cabinet meeting returned last night.

“The hostiles aren't moving?” Howard asked James Reuben, one of his most trusted trackers, that evening of the fourteenth.

Howard's command had been resting in their camp beside the Clearwater all day, most of the men taking advantage of the river to bathe and wash their ragged campaign clothing, besides digging some entrenchments in the event the warrior bands revisited the crossing.

The Christian scout shook his head. “Four miles. Maybe five. They stay in camp. No sign they move off.”

For a moment Howard studied the tracker's dark eyes. Over time and many muddy miles across the Salmon, he had come to trust this Christian. Reuben was an educated Nez Perce, schooled here on the reservation. But because he was Indian, he was distrusted by the volunteers and settlers. The fact that Reuben carried a better gun than those the army was providing to the civilian militia was just another reason the scout ofttimes appeared haughty to McConville's volunteers. One more thing to hang their hatred on.

Balling his left hand into a fist as he turned from Reuben, the general told his staff, “Now we'll put in motion my plan to lull the hostiles into making a mistake, to catch them between the arms of two forces, compelling them to surrender, or fight to the death.”

“But as soon as we set off, General,” argued David Perry, “the Nez Perce will just up and run off.”

“Not if they believe I'm headed back to Lapwai.”

He went on to explain how, come the following morning, he would leave the artillery and infantry at the crossing when he departed with the cavalry, marching downriver on the well-traveled road to Fort Lapwai.

“So they'll believe you've headed back to the post!” Captain Marcus Miller exclaimed.

“After we've put enough distance between that cavalry battalion and this crossing, I will abandon the road, ford the
river at a suitable spot James Reuben tells me exists at Dunwell's Ferry,
*
then move into that broken country, where we'll push ahead with our cavalry on the mining road takes us up the Orofino Creek to Pierce. In that way I can take the hostiles in the rear while Colonel Miller crosses here at Kamiah and pursues the camp, herding the unsuspecting hostiles right into the front ranks of my cavalry near the junction of the Orofino and Lolo Trails.”

At six o'clock that rainy morning of the fifteenth Howard rode at the head of four troops—B, F, H, and L—of the First U. S. Cavalry, along with forty volunteers who had arrived the afternoon before under command of Colonel Edward McConville. To disguise his real purpose, the general climbed up the steep Lapwai-Kamiah Trail,
**
as if retreating to the army post to gather more supplies—for the benefit of those spies Joseph was sure to have posted. Once out of sight beyond those heights behind his bivouac, Howard cut back cross-country, striking north. They had some twenty miles to wind along the snaking course of the Clearwater before they would reach Dunwell's Ferry but had covered no more than six when Christian scout James Lawyer came dashing up to the column to report that the fighting bands had broken camp in the hills on the far side of the Clearwater and were this morning climbing to the traditional camping ground at
Weippe
Prairie.

“That's at the western end of the Lolo Trail, General,” Captain James B. Jackson advised.

“Which makes it good news, gentlemen,” Howard enthused. “That means Joseph's warriors are on the way toward us already.”

While his officers were making plans to cross then and there, a second Christian courier rode up with even more astounding news for the general.

“Reports from Joseph!” the breathless James Reuben told him. “He wants to talk to you.”

“J-joseph … wants to parley with me?”

“He sends me to ask what terms for his surrender.”

“S-surrender?” Howard echoed, his voice rising noticeably.

“That's the finest news we've had in weeks!” Captain Joel Trimble roared.

Howard took a step closer to Reuben, almost afraid to hope. “Where does Joseph want to talk to me?”

“Kamiah,” the tracker explained. “At the crossing.”

Without another word to the Indian, the general wheeled on his aides, flush with the excitement of a schoolboy. For a moment his tongue would not work, and he was terrified he would act as if he were a stuttering idiot … stammering, if not utterly speechless, now that he had the end of this war in his grasp. A half-dozen miles back up the Clearwater waited Joseph, the architect of the Non-Treaty resistance, the brilliant tactical mastermind behind their victories at White Bird and Cottonwood, the driving force behind the Nez Perce escape from their battle on the South Fork!

Joseph, the leader of the Dreamer resistance, was asking to come before the one-armed general, hat in hand! What would Sherman and all the rest who had cried for his removal think then!

“This war,” he began, not at all surprised to find a lump of unbridled anticipation clogging his throat, “it's all but over, gentlemen. Let's hurry on our back trail to the crossing so that I can accept Joseph's surrender at the Kamiah agency—just as Grant accepted Lee's at McLean's farmhouse!”

While he and Perry's F Company turned around for the crossing, Howard ordered the rest of the cavalry and civilians to continue downriver under Jackson's command to Dun well's Ferry, where they hoped to get their hands on a boat or two for use in breaching the Clearwater. Although his heart could take wing with hope, his head still told him that he must prepare for the eventuality that this peace overture would dribble through his fingers. As hard as he might pray to the Almighty, Oliver Otis Howard was nonetheless a
practical man who realized the Lord most assuredly helped the man who helped himself.

“His name is Kulkulsuitim”
*
James Reuben announced later at the crossing, when the nervous-eyed messenger brought his pony onto the south bank of the Clearwater beneath that strip of white cloth he had fluttering at the end of a yard-long stick.