Lay the Mountains Low (82 page)

Through the noisy din of battle Young White Bird recognized his uncle's voice, raised loud and strong above the racket of gunfire.

“Why are you young men retreating! Are we going to run to the mountains and let the white men kill our women
and children? It is far better that we should be killed fighting!”

His uncle's words gave him a fierce pride.

A soldier suddenly stood on the bank, then disappeared as quickly. The next few minutes were filled with terrifying screams and the shouts of frightened white men, before a different soldier appeared on the opposite bank, looked across the water at that group huddled beneath the willow. He, too, disappeared without taking any action.

The moment he was gone, a young woman of no more than fifteen winters, naked to the waist, bolted over the edge of the bank at full speed as if she were being pursued. She hit the water flat on her belly with a painful smack, immediately churning her arms like wind-driven limbs on a high-mountain aspen during a strong gale.

Young White Bird and his mother reached out to offer their hands to her, pulling the young woman into their temporary shelter just as another girl about his own age crawled to the edge of the bank on her belly, flopped over the precipice, and landed in the water.

“Get her, Son!”

He swam out to retrieve the girl, dragging her back to rejoin his mother.

“See there, how she was wounded in the arm,” his mother said, holding the young child's upper arm out of the cold water. The girl winced as he peered at the bullet wound. He could see all the way through the ragged bullet hole—

One of the youngest children shrieked in terror the instant a young woman—old enough to marry and have a child of her own—pitched off the bank into the stream but did not move much to save herself from the water.

“Bring that one to us!” his mother commanded.

Her body was limp as he dragged it, bobbing gently on the current, toward their hiding place.

“Help me place her head on the sandbar so she can breathe,” his mother said.

The older girl helped them. She asked, “Will she live?”

Gravely Young White Bird's mother shook her head. “I don't think so. She has a big bullet wound in her chest. But we can help her breathe until she either wakes up or she dies.”

He looked at the young woman as she lay in his mother's arms, finding her very pretty. Young White Bird did not remember ever seeing this unconscious one before. He thought she was one of the prettiest young women he had ever seen. Her blood colored the water around her body.

“Soldiers!” one of the children cried out before an older one could get her hand clamped over the child's mouth.

Young White Bird counted seven of the
suapies
spread out on the far bank, all of them training their rifles at the clump of overhanging willow. Just as he was about to yell in protest—to curse the white men for killing women and children—his mother shoved his head under the water.

Sputtering, he leaped back up for air, finding his mother had stepped from beneath the overhanging branches, both arms raised, waving them from side to side, yelling in the white man's tongue.

“Women! Only women and children here! Do not shoot! Only women and children!”

First one, then two more of the soldiers slowly lowered their rifles, talking among themselves. Finally the rest of them took their rifles from their shoulders and quickly backed away from the creek bank.

“You saved our lives,” the young woman told his mother when the
suapies
were gone.

Young White Bird's mother wagged her head as she lifted the youngest children onto the grass bank opposite the village.

“Saved your lives only for a little while,” she said grimly. “Let's do what we can to save you for good.”

H
E
had to restrain himself to keep from cheering aloud!

Colonel John Gibbon had rarely been this elated before. His men had control of the village about twenty minutes after
those first confusing shots rang out. The Nez Perce were on the run, driven from their lodges. And it appeared some of Catlin's civilians had a good chance to capture the horse herd and get it started on their back trail, depriving the warriors of mobility and escape.

Despite the blunder with those opening shots from the overeager volunteers and despite the momentary delays of some units charging across the creek and into the village … the surprise had nonetheless been sudden and utterly complete.

The only drawbacks were that their twelve-hundred-yard front had not been long enough to completely encompass the southern end of the village. That and the northern end, too—where the attack completely stalled.

Despite all these failures, the Nez Perce had been caught sleeping!

The men, women, and children, too—all came tumbling from their beds partially dressed, if not naked, ill-prepared to mount a momentary defense. Watching from the side of the hill across the creek, he waited until the bulk of his troops were across the slough before he gave his big gray charger the spur and moved toward the seat of the action. Gibbon hadn't been in the village very long when the first report arrived, accounting the high rate of casualties among his officers.

Lieutenant Bradley was dead almost from those first shots. Captain Logan had also fallen among his men, shot by a woman.

“A woman?” Gibbon had asked for clarification.

“Yes,” replied Lieutenant Charles Woodruff, his aide-decamp, who rode back and forth carrying messages in that first desperate hour. “Seems the women and young boys are fighting as hard as their men, General.”

“It's difficult to tell the fighters from the innocents in this melee, Mr. Woodruff,” he told the soldier. “Some accidents are unavoidable.”

“The women—they're fighting like she-cats on the other end of the village, General.”

That caused him to look at the far northern flank of their line, off to the left side of the assault. There on the hillside above Bradley's initial position he had hoped to find the Nez Perce herd under control of Catlin's civilians, perhaps even started away on their back trail already. Instead, some of the volunteers were trading shots with more than a dozen of the half-naked warriors crouched on the fringes of the herd while nervous ponies reared and jostled one another.

He had to find a way to drive off that small band of warriors and seize their herd. Those horses must not fall into the hands of the enemy, now that it was painfully clear his men had failed to seal the trap around the village.

W
HEN
Yellow Wolf saw his chief, Joseph of the
Wallowa,
for the first time that terrible morning, the leader was crossing the creek bare-legged with No Heart—both of them barefoot. Joseph had a shirt on, and breechclout, too, but instead of leggings Joseph wore half a blanket belted around his waist as he clambered out of the water, onto the bank, and lunged up the slope toward the horse herd. At first Yellow Wolf thought it might be
Ollokot
—the two looked so similar in many ways—but after a moment he was sure it was Joseph.

After all, going for the horse herd was something a camp chief was sure to do, while staying in the village to fight the soldiers was what a war chief would do. Joseph had gone to secure the herd so the People could make good their escape on this awful morning.

Before everything had come undone in a noisy instant, Yellow Wolf recalled awakening to the sound of a horse crossing the stream. After a long night of singing and dancing, he had gone to sleep in his parents' lodge erected right against the creek bank. At the time he heard the hoofbeats, Yellow Wolf wondered if the man was crossing to his horses on the west side. But later he came to think it must have been one of the white spies: riding his horse close to the sleeping village before the attack was ordered.

At the first shots he had bolted out of his blankets there in his parents' unfinished lodge. They hadn't put up the heavy lodge cover. Instead, they had roped together the cone of freshly peeled poles, then draped part of some old hides over the lower part of the framework to give them a little privacy when they all trudged off to bed after a late night of celebrating their escape from the war in Idaho country.

Sleeping in his parents' dwelling meant Yellow Wolf was caught away from his rifle, too. When the fight started, he had nothing more than a war club handy. Grabbing the
kopluts,
Yellow Wolf dashed into the fray.

A woman stood near the edge of the village, scolding in a shrill voice, “Why aren't you men ready to fight? You sing and dance all night—so you are slow to fight these attackers! Get up and do not run away from this battle!”

Her stinging words made a lot of sense as so many of the young men stumbled from the lodges, rubbing the sleep from their bleary eyes, shaking their groggy heads, ill-prepared to turn away this challenge from the soldiers.

“Ukeize!”
a woman cursed at Yellow Wolf, reaching out to grab his arm and stop his dash. “Rainbow is dead! Rainbow is dead!”

This is unbelievable,
his mind raced. The
Nee Me-Poo
had three great warriors:
Ollokot,
Rainbow, and Five Wounds. Now one of the bravest was killed!

Sprinting as fast as he could through the first bullets, Yellow Wolf started for the far northern end of camp where Joseph's lodge was standing. Near the middle of camp he encountered
Jeekunkun,
called Dog. This older man was bleeding badly from his head and stumbling along, plainly unable to use the rifle he dragged along the ground.

“Give me your gun!” Yellow Wolf demanded. “You have plenty of bullets on your belt and I have nothing but this
kopluts
.
Trade me now so you can get away from danger and see to your wounds!”

“No!” Dog growled angrily, clumsily swinging the rifle's muzzle at Yellow Wolf, forcing the young warrior to back away. “I must keep my gun. I don't want to die with no way to fight back!”

Yellow Wolf pushed on. Close by he came across a younger warrior, this one wounded more severely than Dog. “Red Heart,” he called out to
Temme Ilppilp.
“Trade me your carbine so I can fight the soldiers who have hurt you!”

But Red Heart would not let go of his gun even though he had a very serious stomach wound and could not straighten up, as he walked bent over in a crouch.

Of a sudden Yellow Wolf heard some Shadow cursing. A grin began to grow on his face. Creeping around the side of a lodge, he spotted a soldier crawling on his hands and knees, wobbling side to side like a man with too much whiskey in his belly, as he dragged a rifle along. The white man did not hear Yellow Wolf approaching until the last minute, when the soldier looked over his shoulder, eyes growing big as brass
conchos
to find the
kopluts
swinging down at his head. The white man's teeth loosened in his mouth as he fell.

Bending over the dead man, who had blood seeping from both his ear and the splintered bone on the side of his head, a curious Yellow Wolf pushed on the loose teeth with two fingers. All the teeth moved together. He pulled on them, finally freeing those at the upper part of the mouth, then those from the bottom. Now the white man had no teeth and Yellow Wolf had an extra set!

A bullet whined past his head. He scolded himself for being so heedless in his curiosity. Tossing the false teeth into the brush, he swept up the dead man's rifle.

Yellow Wolf now had a soldier gun and a cartridge belt, nearly every one of its loops filled with shiny bullets. He immediately turned to go in search of
Ollokot.

With bitterness he recalled how the head chiefs had given orders to the bands not to harm any Shadows in Montana as they started away from the Idaho country.

“No white man must be bothered on the other side of the Lolo!” Looking Glass had commanded.

“We will only fight the enemies here in our old homeland,” White Bird had emphasized. “Trouble no white people after passing over the mountains. Montana people are not our enemies. Only the Idaho people.”

“Do not kill any cattle across the mountains,” Looking Glass had warned. “Only if our women and children grow hungry will we take cattle or any food we need to feed our people.”

Those were strong laws made by their leaders—laws that must not be broken for the sake of all the
Nee-Me-Poo,
since they were leaving the war behind by crossing the mountains.

Now it was clear the Montana whites did not think the same way as Yellow Wolf's people.

Even though the warriors had taken precautions not to injure any of the soldiers and Shadows at the log barricades, even though the People had been scrupulous in their dealings with the Bitterroot settlers … the
Nee-Me-Poo
had been betrayed. At first the angry warriors were confused, baffled how Cut-Off Arm could have gotten his slow-moving soldiers up the trail so fast as to catch them here at the Place of the Ground Squirrels.

Then
Ollokot
startled them all with his assertion right in the midst of the fighting.

“These are not Cut-Off Arm's Idaho soldiers!” the war chief declared. “They are Montana soldiers!”

“The
suapies
who tried to stop us with their log fort on the Lolo?” Yellow Wolf asked as he chambered another round into his soldier gun.

“Yes, those soldiers and settlers, too,”
Ollokot
answered angrily as he shook his rifle in the air, leading his band of young men southward toward the brush where they would
pitch themselves into a close, hot fight with the double-talking white men.

“And many, many more who have come from far away to catch us sleeping here,”
Ollokot
explained. “These soldiers and settlers of Montana betray the trust we put in the people on this side of the mountains!”

 

*
Under tribal practice, he would not actually receive this name until he had reached manhood, at which time he began to tell his remembrances of this Big Hole fight. I was unable to locate any reference to what this child's name was
at the time
of the Nez Perce War.