Kate and Sue McBeth, Missionary Teachers to the Nez Perce

War Comes to the Non-Treaties

1887 Department of Columbia Nez Perce Campaign 1877

Harper's Weekly Illustration and selected text

(Selected War of 1877 Annotated Bibliography)

On June 14-15, the second group of raiding Nez Perces continued the work of the first, killing or wounding more than a dozen other whites along the Salmon River with whom they had scores to settle. . . . Sure that the long-expected uprising by the non-treaties was underway, the whites barricaded themselves in an improvised stockade at Slate Creek on the Salmon or fled to Mount Idaho, the nearest large settlement on the Camas Prairie, and sent messengers to Fort Lapwai for help.

Joseph and Ollokot, meanwhile, had returned to Tepahlewam to learn with horror what had happened and to see all the people, save their own, dispersing for safety. Christian and reservation Nez Perces, who had been visiting friends and relatives among the non-treaties, hastened back to the reservation to proclaim their disapproval of the violence. Some members of the band of Looking Glass, known to the Nez Perces as Al-La-Lim-Ya-Ta-Ka-Nin, who had been outspokenly against opposing Howard, hurried to join their chief at a root-gathering camp at Clear Creek on the Middle Fork of the Clearwater, . . . where they hoped to avoid the trouble that was sure to come. The rest, including the bands of White Bird and Toohoolhoolzote, moved across the Camas Prairie to a large cavern named Sapachesap (Drive-In) on Cottonwood Creek. . . .

Only the Wallowa band remained at Tepahlewam. For a while, Joseph, Ollokot, and others thought that if they could meet with Howard they could convince the general not to punish all the people for the hot-headed actions of a few young men. . . That night, however, shots fired at their tipis convinced them that the whites were too inflamed to listen to them, and in the morning they decided, for the safety of their women, children, and old men, to join the other non-treaties. Enduring injustice, persecution, and provocations, Joseph and Ollokot had done all they could to stay at peace. . . . Meanwhile, Joseph and his people set off for Cottonwood Creek, determined to stay with the other non-treaty bands in their hour of peril. Soon after they reached Sapachesap, all the bands headed for greater security to Lamotta, White Bird's campsite . . . close to the present-day town of White Bird. The site was protected by a series of ridges and hills across the long, open descending plains of White Bird Canyon, and was backed by the Salmon, across which the bands could withdraw if necessary.

. . . By the time the bands reached White Bird, terror had spread across the Camas Prairie. War parties of Nez Perces, guarding the movements of the bands, had attacked white teamsters, messengers, and fleeing families . . . Some warriors had become drunk on liquor they had seized in their raids and had committed atrocities that had raised the whites' anti-Indian feelings to a fevered pitch. A group of volunteers, led by Arthur "Ad" Chapman, a Salmon River settler married to a Umatilla Indian, had been organized at Mount Idaho, and in the frenzied skirmishing on the Prairie, a number of whites and one Indian had been killed.

General Howard had returned to Fort Lapwai on June 14 from the lower Columbia and was certain that within a day or so the non-treaties would arrive peaceably on the reservation. Word of the depredations came as a shock, not only to him, but to the whites around Lewiston and the various elements of the reservation Nez Perces, many of whom crowded into the agency, fearing that the non-treaties were about to attack the reservation. . . . [Howard] was quick to ascribe the outburst to deliberate treachery by his principal, and best-known, opponent, Joseph, and was determined to nip the trouble before it spread to all disaffected Indians throughout the Northwest.

Moving quickly on the evening of June 15, he dispatched Capt. David Perry from Fort Lapwai with two troops of the First U.S. Cavalry, F and H companies, totaling 103 enlisted men. . . . With Perry went a mule train, an interpreter, and 11 unarmed reservation Nez Perces, who were to act as intermediaries to help convince the non-treaties to stop fighting. At the same time . . . he called in a cavalry unit that he had previously stationed in the Wallowa and sent to Walla Walla and Portland for reinforcements. . . .

Perry hurried his column through the night and the next day to Grangeville on the Camas Prairie and rested there a few hours. Then, goaded by the frightened settlers, . . . Perry started out in search of the non-treaties, who he was told were now at White Bird and should be attacked and defeated before they could escape into the mountains on the opposite side of the Salmon River. Accompanied by Chapman and ten citizen volunteers, the weary troops reached the summit of White Bird Hill about midnight and stopped once more, intending to attack down the slope at dawn. As the troopers settled down . . . they heard the howl of a coyote; . . . the troopers guessed rightly that it was a signal cry from a Nez Perce lookout who had seen them.

. . . Soon after the coyote signal sounded, a Nez Perce sentinel raced into camp with word that the soldiers were coming. The chiefs realized that the future of their people was at stake and apparently all agreed with Joseph that an attempt should be made to parley peaceably with the troops. . . . If that failed then the Indians would stand and defend their people.

The total manpower of the combined bands was about 135, but many warriors were lying helplessly drunk from whisky they had seized and would still not be able to fight at dawn. Others had no weapons. Altogether, not more than 60 or 70 Indians possessed arms, mostly bows and arrows and antiquated shotguns and muzzle-leading fur trade muskets. . . .

At 4 a.m. on June 17, Perry's command commenced its long descent of the slope, with Lt. Edward Theller leading an advance guard of eight cavalrymen, trumpeter John Jones, several treaty Nez Perces, and volunteer Arthur Chapman. According to Yellow Wolf and others, the Nez Perce truce team, backed by other warriors, had ridden out to meet them and were eventually seen by Theller’s group when it topped a ridge about two-thirds down the slope. Instead of honoring the white flag, the Indians said, Chapman immediately raised his rifle and fired twice at the truce team, missing both times. As the Nez Perces quickly withdrew to cover, Theller ordered his trumpeter to sound the battle call, but before Jones could do so, he was killed by a shot. . . .

As Perry saw his advance guard come under fire, he ordered his men into line to begin a charge. . . . Both of his other two trumpeters had lost their instruments, and Perry had difficulty communicating his orders. He got F Company to the crest of a ridge . . . [and] as H Company moved up to occupy the right side of the ridge, both sides of Perry’s line were struck by the Nez Perces who had been hiding behind hills on the flanks. . . . With Indians all about them, the troopers were soon pushed backward. Though the cavalrymen fought bravely, the continued Nez Perce pressure forced a general retreat, which gradually became a rout. . . . The units broke into fragments, some of the men on foot , others on horseback, and all of them trying to get back up the long slope or climb the bluffs along the steep western wall of the canyon. . . .

As the command disintegrated, the Indians chased the fleeing troopers all the way up the canyon and to within six kilometers (four miles) of Mount Idaho, where they finally abandoned the battle and returned to their camp. . . . The beaten troops and volunteers meanwhile, withdrew to Grangeville, and Perry sent a messenger to Lapwai with news of his disastrous defeat. On the battlefield lay Theller and 33 enlisted men, dead, a third of his command. . . . The Indians had only three men wounded, one cut by a rock during a fall, and none killed. At the same time, the Nez Perces retrieved from the battlefield 63 army rifles and a large number of pistols.

The news of what was immediately called another Indian "massacre," . . . stunned Howard and roused the nation with a demand that he do something about it. Though the non-treaty Nez Perces had wanted to make peace and be left alone, the whites viewed them as hostiles who had deliberately started a new war. Their ignominious drubbing of the army made front-page headlines, and the Nez Perce tribe and its presumed "renegade" war leader, Chief Joseph (who had fought, but not led, at White Bird), were suddenly household names. War correspondents and magazine illustrators flocked to Idaho to cover the pursuit of the non-treaties, whom Howard promised would soon be captured and punished.

. . . On the Nez Perce reservation, fear and excitement were heightened by constant alarms that Joseph and the hostiles were about to attack the reservation and the Lewiston area. . . . Amid the tension, white anger and prejudice increased against the reservation Nez Perces, and those Indians argued among themselves over the degree of their loyalty. Many Nez Perce families were truly torn, for they had relatives and friends among the warring bands. Even the Christian Indian leaders like the heads of the Reuben and Lawyer families who helped Howard felt sorry for the non-treaties. Some did little to hide their sympathies, and in time a few joined them. But most Protestant Nez Perces did everything possible to display their loyalty to the Americans, and some even charged Catholic Nez Perces with secretly favoring, or helping, the non-treaties.

It took time for Howard to assemble and field a new army, but on June 22 he finally left Fort Lapwai with a punitive force of 227 regulars . . . together with packers, guides, two Gatling guns, a mountain howitzer, and a company of 20 civilian volunteers from Fort Walla Walla. Meanwhile the non-treaties were joined at White Bird Creek by a group of Nez Perces. . . who had been buffalo hunting in Montana. Knowing that Howard’s soldiers would again come looking for them, . . . the bands moved up the Salmon to Horseshoe Bend, crossed the river on June 19, and climbed to the high country between the Salmon and the Snake. Howard lingered on the White Bird battlefield to bury the dead cavalrymen and did not reach the Salmon crossing until June 27. That day, he received reinforcements of 175 regulars and, soon afterward, a group of volunteers from Dayton, Washington, who relived the Walla Walla unit.

. . . On June 29, [Howard] had received reports that Looking Glass’s reservation band at Clear Creek on the Middle Fork of the Clearwater, far to his rear, was recruiting warriors for Joseph and showing signs of joining the non-treaties. The reports had been false and seem to have originated among the Mount Idaho settlers, but, on their strength, Howard sent Capt. Stephen Whipple and two companies of cavalry to arrest Looking Glass and end the supposed threat. Whipple had picked up some trigger-happy volunteers at Mount Idaho, and on the morning of July 1 charged savagely into Looking Glass’s unsuspecting village, killing and wounding a few people and scattering the rest into hiding. They looted and destroyed the village, made off with many Indian horses, but failed to arrest Looking Glass. Up to then, both Looking Glass and his anti-treaty reservation neighbor, Koolkool Snehee (Red Owl), had genuinely counseled peace. Now both of them, infuriated by the Americans’ treachery, threw in with the warring bands, adding some 40 fighting men. Moreover, they now constituted a second force, threatening the Camas Prairie to Howard’s rear.

. . . Despite their large number of non-combatants and the big herds of cattle and horses that they drove along with them, the non-treaties whom Howard was pursuing stayed so far ahead of him that on July 2, the day his troops completed their crossing of the Salmon, the Indians recrossed it far to the north, at Craig Billy Crossing, . . . getting between Howard and Lewiston and increasing the threat to the Camas Prairie. It took Howard and his column, floundering along the high mountainous trail with their guns and supply train, three more days to reach Craig Billy Crossing, and then they could not get across the turbulent river. Desperate, Howard led his army all the way back to the White Bird Crossing. It was July 8 before his downhearted troops reappeared at their starting point, Grangeville.

The general was greeted with scorn for having let the Indians escape, though he partly offset criticism by lauding what he thought were the brilliant military tactics by Joseph. It was the beginning of a legend that would ultimately characterize the Wallowa chieftain as an "Indian Napoleon." Throughout the hostilities, the whites had no way of knowing that the non-treaty bands were led by their own chiefs and that group councils of the chiefs and war leaders devised common strategy as they went along. As the leader of the Wallowa band, Joseph participated in those councils, but he had no more voice than the others and was sometimes outvoted. . . . But Joseph's stature as a non-treaty spokesman and diplomat had loomed so large before the war that Howard and the newspaper writers with him readily assumed that he was leading the non-treaties and was responsible for such shrewd tactics as those that had just led the army on a difficult and fruitless chase. . . .

The Indians, meanwhile, reappeared on the Camas Prairie. On July 3, . . . two citizen scouts came on their advance elements at Craig's Mountain. The Indians unhorsed and killed one of the whites. But the other one raced back to Whipple's command. . . . Whipple at once dispatched Lt. Sevier M. Rains with ten cavalrymen and two citizen guides to ascertain the Indians' strength. The detachment was ambushed by a party of warriors, including Rainbow, Five Wounds, and Two Moons, and after a desperate firefight, was entirely wiped out. Shortly afterward, Whipple, at the head of his whole command, reconnoitered the area, sighting so many Nez Perces on the mountain that he dared not risk a battle; . . . he sent messengers to Howard and withdrew to his rifle pits and defenses at Cottonwood.

That night a messenger arrived with word that Perry's pack train was on its way there from Lapwai. Fearing that Perry's group would be attacked, Whipple . . . escorted the train to Cottonwood, where Perry, as senior officer, took command. . . .

The next day, the non-treaty bands began to move eastward across the prairie toward the South Fork of the Clearwater River, passing between Grangeville and the troops at Cottonwood. To shield the non-combatants and livestock as they hurried across the exposed country, the chiefs sent out an advance group of warriors . . . Seventeen citizen volunteers under D. B. Randall . . . saw the Indians drawn up across their route and tried to charge directly through them and gallop to Cottonwood. The Indians veered aside to let them through, then closed in on them . . . The Indians kept them pinned down until mid-afternoon, killing Randall and another volunteer, wounding three others, one mortally, and suffering two wounded of their own, one of whom died that evening.

Watching from Cottonwood, about 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) away, Perry at first refused to risk another White Bird disaster and endanger the supplies he was bringing to Howard by going to the rescue of the beleaguered volunteers. Finally, after the firing slackened, . . . Perry sent Whipple and some of his troopers to bring in the volunteers. By then, the non-treaty bands had safely crossed that section of the prairie, and the warriors withdrew. . . . For his delay in rescuing the volunteers, who were soon known as the Brave Seventeen, Perry earned the contempt of the citizens of Camas Prairie, but he was exonerated by a military Court of Inquiry, which found that he had acted correctly in safeguarding the supplies for Howard.

By the time Howard returned to Grangeville on July 8, the volunteers were embarked on another engagement. . . . [Edward] McConville formed a "regiment" of 43 members of all the different volunteer units and, disgusted with Howard's slowness and ineptitude, started off after the non-treaty bands. The discovered the Nez Perces camped on the South Fork of the Clearwater at the mouth of Cottonwood Creek, but, recognizing that they were not strong enough to attack the Indians, sent a message to Howard to come quickly.

The non-treaties, meanwhile, had been joined by the bands of Looking Glass, Husis Kute, and Hahtalekin, the last two including non-treaty Palouses and Nez Perces from the lower Snake River. The non-treaties now had about 550 women, children, and old men and more than 200 fighting men. They were now within the reservation's eastern boundary, and in the absence of Howard's troops they visited relatives and friends in Kamiah and other reservation villages, luring a few to join them, losing some who were weary of running and fighting, and arguing with Christian and treaty Nez Perces who accused them of bringing trouble to everyone. On one occasion, some non-treaties forced a group of Christian Indians to ferry them across the Clearwater to a shaman-conducted ceremony. As they returned from that meeting, the non-treaties discovered McConville's volunteers hiding near the Indians camp. . . .

Driven from their concealment, the volunteers moved farther north along the South Fork and dug in atop a hill, where Nez Perce snipers pinned them down. For most of a day and night, the Indians harassed them, driving off most of their horses and keeping them so on edge with a fear of being overrun that they called the hill Mount Misery. On the second day, another group of volunteers sent by Howard broke through the Indians to join them, and soon afterward, the Nez Perces abandoned the fight. After waiting another day for Howard's army to appear, the volunteers left the hill on July 11 and retreated to Mount Idaho.

Their stand, however, had helped to throw the non-treaties off guard. The Indians thought that if Howard and his soldiers showed up again, it would be to help the volunteers, and when that did not occur, they imagined that Howard must be far off. Howard, in fact, was already close to them. As soon as the general head learned from McConville that the volunteers had located the non-treaties' camp, he had left Grangeville. Instead of marching to relieve McConville's volunteers, however, he had taken a more southerly route, reaching the South Fork of the Clearwater well above the Nez Perce camp. . . On July 10, he was joined by Perry and Whipple from Cottonwood. Howard now had a force of some 440 regulars and more than 100 civilian scouts, packers, and volunteers.

He began his march the next morning, moving north along a high, pine-covered plateau on the east side of the South Fork. . . . A little after noon, . . . the troops sighted the non-treaties' camp strung along the lower ground beneath the bluffs of the plateau and across the river to the left of the army's line of march. Ordering his long column to halt, Howard brought his howitzer and Gatling guns to the rim of the bluff and opened fire. The shots fell harmlessly but galvanized the Indians to action. Seizing rifles and cartridge belts and mounting their horses, warriors streamed across the river and up wooded ravines leading to the plateau. At the same time, the troops who had been marching at some distance to the right of the bluffs' edge, turned left and started for the crest, preparatory to a charge down the steep slope. A group of warriors, led by Toohoolhoolzote, were too quick for them. Gaining the high ground, they dismounted and . . . got between the troops and the crest, halting the soldiers' advance.

Up ahead, other Nez Perces, including Ollokot, Rainbow, and Five Wounds, scrambled to the high ground and struck Howard's pack train, killing two packers and, for a moment, almost capturing the train. Farther south, still other warriors appeared, threatening Howard's rear elements. The ferocity of the Indians' attack forced Howard to pull his units together on a small, open tableland. . . . The battle raged throughout the day, with neither side able to dislodge the other. . . . Howard tried several times to launch attacks, and with the help of his howitzer succeeded temporarily in driving Nez Perces from small sections of their siege line. But each time the warriors came back. . . .

It was a broiling hot day, and the soldiers suffered from thirst. They located one spring but could not get to it until after dark. They worried whether they were to share Custer’s fate. . . . In the morning, the Nez Perces were still there. Howard marveled at what he thought was more evidence of Joseph’s skillful generalship. The troops had taken the Indian village by surprise, but were now almost surrounded and fighting for their lives. Rarely in Indian warfare, moreover, had warriors displayed the leadership or patience to maintain such a determined siege.

. . . During the night, many warriors had returned to camp to oversee the welfare of the people and had argued over whether to flee or continue to fight. The arguing became more serious the next morning. An increasing number of warriors questioned the chiefs, insisting that they should protect the people, get them away without losses, and then withdraw from the fight before more lives were sacrificed. Gradually, individuals and groups began to desert the battlefield and ride back to the village.

Howard, meanwhile, was planning a new attempt to break out. He noticed the Indians’ fire decreasing but thought little of it, and by 2:30 p.m. he was ready to launch his attack. The arrival of a supply train, escorted by reinforcements and 20 treaty Nez Perce scouts, held him up, but only momentarily. He sent one unit to bring in the newcomers. On its way back, the unit, by prearranged plan, charged suddenly at the Indians’ right flank. The Nez Perces fought back but were outflanked. At the same time, Howard ordered a general attack all along the line. To the soldiers’ surprise, the weakened Indian forces, after a brief resistance, broke and ran, fleeing down the slope to the village. The exultant troops fired after the retreating Indians, then moved down the ravines to the river. By the time they reached the non-treaty camp, the last of the Indians were disappearing. Sensing that the defections would mean the end of the battle, the chiefs had earlier sent Joseph down the hill to help get the people safely away. . . .

Though Howard had had thirteen men killed and twenty-seven wounded, two of them fatally, while the Nez Perces lost only four dead and six wounded, the general thought that he had scored a decisive victory at what became known as the Battle of the Clearwater. But he now committed a grave error. Instead of ordering an immediate pursuit of the non-treaties and ending the war there and then, he postponed the chase until the next day. . . .

In the intervening time, the non-treaties, viewing their escape as a victory but shaken by their close call and the loss of almost everything they owned, made their way down the Clearwater and gathered near Kamiah. The next morning they made bullboats and crossed the river to the east bank, swimming across the 2,000 to 3,000 horses they still possessed. Heading toward the Weippe prairie, their main body disappeared in the hills just as Howard’s advance cavalry reached the place where they had crossed. . . .

Howard dallied at the crossing for another full day, planning his next move. His treaty Nez Perce scouts, including old Captain John and James Reuben, suggested a way by which Howard could intercept the non-treaties by taking a shortcut to Weippe, but the plan miscarried and cost Howard still another day’s delay. The non-treaties, meanwhile, reached the Weippe camas-gathering grounds. On July 15, in a council that seems to have been marked by dissension between Joseph and Looking Glass and mediated by White Bird, the Indians agreed to Looking Glass’s proposal that they cross the Lolo Trail and seek sanctuary on the plains with his buffalo-hunting friends, the Crows. There is evidence that Joseph at first opposed traveling away from their homeland and even argued that they go, instead, to the Flatheads. It is also known that the Wallowa leader and members of his band disliked Looking Glass’s officious manner. . . .

At any rate, Looking Glass, who was familiar with Montana and told the other chiefs that the whites there would have no reason to fight them, was made war leader and guide for all the bands. And on July 16 the non-treaties began their trek across the Bitterroots. . . . As the non-treaty families and their large horse herd continued their difficult way across the windfall-choked and little used mountain trail, the War Department figured out what to do next. Though the Indians were leaving the military district of Howard’s Department of the Columbia, he was ordered to continue the pursuit. At the same time, troops in Montana were alerted to try to halt the Nez Perces when they appeared at the eastern end of the Lolo Trail.

It took Howard almost two weeks to resume his pursuit. After reorganizing and resupplying his command, . . . he started for the Lolo Trail on July 30 with 700 men. . . . Aided by a company of axmen from Lewiston who cleared the route, Howard took nine days to cross the mountains. By then he was far behind the Nez Perces, who had started their descent of the eastern slope on July 25. The War Department’s word of their movements had preceded them, and a detachment of 35 regulars under Capt. Charles C. Rawn from Missoula, joined by some Bitterroot Valley settlers and a small group of Flathead Indians, had erected a log barricade across the eastern end of the trail. After a series of councils with Rawn and the settlers, the chiefs avoided bloodshed by simply leading the bands up to higher ground and around the barricade, which was thereafter know as Fort Fizzle.

In the Bitterroot Valley, the non-treaties turned south and, without serious opposition from the settlers . . . traveled to its head and then over a pass to the Big Hole Valley. Though some people were uneasy, Looking Glass persuaded them that they could take time to rest and cut new lodge poles, and they stopped at an old campsite . . . at the junction of Trail and Ruby creeks, just below the wooded mountain they had crossed.

It was August 7. Unknown to the Nez Perces, 163 regulars of the 7th Infantry commanded by Col. John Gibbon had reached Missoula from a number of different posts in Montana and were now close by. Joined by 34 area volunteers, Gibbon ascended the mountains, located the Nez Perce camp below him in the Big Hole Valley, and prepared to attack it. At dawn on August 9, while most of the Indians were deep in sleep after a night of singing and dancing, Gibbon’s men came out of the woods in a skirmish line, shot an elderly Indian who was checking the horse herd, and charged across the stream and into the camp.

In the first confused fighting, many Indians were killed. People awoke with a start and were shot, clubbed, and cut down as they tried to flee. Others managed to grab weapons and fight back, sometimes hand-to-hand. As the women and children raced to get away, groups of warriors finally stalled the attack. On the left and in the center, savage fighting swirled among the tipis. On the right, Gibbon’s principal junior officer was killed, and the leaderless regulars and volunteers faltered. The swift Indian recovery slowly pushed the troops toward the center, where some of the soldiers were trying to set fire to the tipi covers. . . .

Amid the tumult, the chiefs urged on the warriors to drive the soldiers from the camp. Indians who had run from the village during the first attack began to move back, picking off individual soldiers from their places of concealment. Others joined groups at each end of the camp and caught the troops in a crossfire. Gibbon was hit in the thigh, and several of his officers went down, killed or wounded. The troops gradually lost all sense of order. Fearing an Indian counterattack that would overwhelm them, Gibbon ordered a withdrawal to an elevated bench among the trees at the base of the mountain. . . . As the Nez Perces swarmed after them, the battle suddenly reversed itself. The warriors quickly built up a firing line around the troops and another siege began.

The village, meanwhile, was the scene of anguish. Numerous women, children, old people, and warriors, including Rainbow, Wahlitits, and the Palouse leader, Hahtalekin, lay slain, and many more were seriously wounded, including the wives of Joseph and Ollokot. There was little time to grieve, however. Once more, while the warriors kept the troops surrounded, the people had to get away. With Joseph supervising their preparations, the women and some men hastily scooped burial places for the dead, placed the badly wounded on travois, and struck the camp. At noon Joseph and White Bird hurried the column of mourning families and the horse herd off toward the south.

On the wooded hill, the warriors maintained their siege throughout the day. Both sides suffered casualties. Among the Indian losses were Five Wounds and Sarpis Il-hihlp. At one point, a number of warriors rode up the mountain trail to intercept a howitzer train and ammunition mule, which Gibbon had ordered to join him after his dawn attack. The Indians killed one member of the detail, wounded another, chased the rest away, and captured the train. They dismantled the howitzer and distributed the ammunition to the Nez Perces at the siege line.

At nightfall, many of the Indians broke off the siege and hurried after the families. Ollokot and a dozen of the younger men remained behind, keeping the troops pinned down. . . . At daybreak, the Indians departed. Gibbon was in no condition to follow them. Twenty-nine soldiers and volunteers were dead and forty were wounded, two of them mortally. The next day Howard and some of his troops reached the scene, having finally crossed the Lolo Trail and come up the Bitterroot Valley. Howard again took command of the pursuit and . . . set out again after the Nez Perces.

Though the non-treaties had once more escaped, the surprise attack at the Big Hole had dealt them a serious blow. Between 60 and 90 of their people, including many women and children and 12 of their best warriors, had been killed. . . . They were angry with Looking Glass, who had promised them safety in Montana and had lulled them into believing that there was no danger in resting at the Big Hole, but they were more bitter at the whites who had wantonly killed their women, children, and old people. Though Joseph and the other chiefs advised against blind hate, they had trouble thereafter controlling the angry younger men, who decided that they would now treat all whites, civilians as well as soldiers, as enemies.

Disillusioned by Looking Glass, the chiefs selected a new guide, a halfblood Nez Perce named Wa-wook-ke-ya Was Sauw (Lean Elk). He had spent much of his time in Montana, where many of the whites knew him as Poker Joe, and was familiar with the route to the Crows. Starting off again, the non-treaties then crossed Horse Prairie and Bannock Pass and, reentering Idaho, turned east toward the newly created (in 1872) Yellowstone National Park. Along the way, many of their wounded died and were buried, and some young warriors ignored the chief’s attempts to restrain them and raided ranches, drove off horses, and killed a number of whites. Coming on after them, Howard found the whole countryside alarmed and taking to stockades. . . . On August 20, at Camas Meadows just west of the park, he was set back, however, when a party of warriors, led by Ollokot, Looking Glass, and Toohoolhoolzote, ran off his mule herd during the night, immobilizing his train of supplies and ammunition. He sent mounted troops in pursuit, but after a sharp fight, the Indians got away with most of the mules. Once more Howard fell behind.

On August 21, the Indians entered the park at present-day West Yellowstone and, moving up the Madison and Firehole rivers and present-day Nez Perce Creek, crossed the high, wooded central plateau to Hayden Valley. The chase through the park made sensational headlines throughout the nation. Lean Elk was not sure of the route to Hayden Valley, and the bands captured a prospector who agreed to guide them. Soon afterward, Yellow Wolf and several other Indians scooped up a party of nine tourists. Fearing that they would tell Howard of their whereabouts, the bands carried the frightened tourists along with them. After several escaped and two were wounded and abandoned, the others were set free near Hayden Valley. The bands then ascended Pelican Creek and . . . threaded through the high Absaroka Range to the Clarks Fork River that ran down to the Yellowstone River on the plains. As a rearguard, they left behind three small parties of warriors, who ran into more tourists, killed and wounded several of them, burned a ranch, and captured some horses before riding to join the bands.

Though Howard, with a reequipped column, was far behind, other forces had been hurried to the northern and eastern sides of the park to try to trap the Indians. . . . Col. Samuel D. Sturgis, with six companies of Custer’s old command, the Seventh Cavalry, went to block the Clarks Fork River exit. Five companies of the 5th Cavalry and 100 scouts were stationed at the Shoshone River exit, near present-day Cody, Wyoming, in case the Nez Perces used that route. Despite the trap, the non-treaties got through. . . . Howard, still pursuing the Indians, had also started down the Clarks Fork. . . .

Sturgis caught up with Howard on the lower part of the river, and the chagrined officers, now 80 kilometers (50 miles) behind the Indians, sent couriers to Col. Nelson A. Miles at Fort Keogh near present-day Miles City urging him to cut northwestwardly across Montana with his troops and intercept the Nez Perces. Meanwhile, Sturgis, with more than 400 cavalrymen, took out ahead of Howard to continue the pursuit. On September 13, he overtook the Nez Perces at Canyon Creek, . . . west of present-day Billings. While the bands hurried northward toward the safety of a narrow canyon, the warriors fired from behind rocks and the cover of washes to hold off the troops. Their success finally induced Sturgis to order his men to dismount and advance on foot in a skirmish line. It was an error that let the bands reach the canyon and disappear from sight. Slowly, the warriors withdrew, but their fire from the rims of the canyon continued to harass the troopers until dusk, when Sturgis called of the pursuit until the next day. In the skirmishing, he had three men killed and eleven wounded, while the Nez Perces suffered three wounded.

The non-treaties had escaped again, but as they hastened north . . . they were harried, unexpectedly, by a new enemy. Bannock Indian scouts from Idaho, who had been with Howard, had combined with a unit of Crow scouts, accompanying Sturgis, and they now overtook the Nez Perces, darting at the rear and flanks of the moving column, killing stragglers, stealing horses, and engaging in brief, running skirmishes with Nez Perce warriors. The non-treaties finally drove them away, but the hostility of the Crows, who they had once thought would welcome and help them, was another disillusionment. Now the chiefs, recognizing the growing weariness of the people after all their suffering and trials, decided that their only salvation lay in reaching the Canadian border and joining Sitting Bull, whose Hunkpapa Sioux had been interred but given safety in Canada after the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

Crossing the Musselshell River, they passed through the Judith Basin, and on September 23 reached the Missouri River opposite a steamboat freight depot at Cow Island Landing. After a brief skirmish with some soldiers and civilians guarding the depot, the Indians helped themselves to some much-needed food and supplies among the freight and continued on toward Canada. . . . On September 29, after passing the main range of the Bear Paw Mountains, they reached Snake Creek that ran north to the Milk River. They were less than 65 kilometers (40 miles) from the Canadian border.

. . . The people were tired, hungry, and cold, and Looking Glass, who had again assumed leadership, persuaded the other chiefs to let the bands rest until the next morning. A camp was established in the shelter of a crescent-shaped depression along the creek. . . . Hunters brought in some buffalo meat, and the different bands built buffalo-chip fires in the coulees and settled down to eat and sleep.

It was to be their last camp. On September 18, Miles had left Fort Keogh with 383 men of the 2nd and 7th Cavalry and the 5th Infantry, a company of Cheyenne and Sioux scouts, a Hotchkiss gun, and a Napoleon cannon, and had hurried across the Missouri River toward the Bear Paw Mountains. . . . At 6 in the morning of September 30, his Cheyenne scouts discovered the Nez Perce camp, and two hours later Miles's cavalry attacked.

The bands had received just enough warning from their own sentries to prepare for the onslaught. . . . They waited until the cavalrymen were 180 meters (200 yards) away, then opened fire, shattering the troopers' ranks. As the charge collapsed, the Indians and cavalrymen, many of them unhorsed and wounded, fought briefly at close quarters. The dazed troopers finally turned and raced from the Indians' fire, leaving 16 men dead. In all, 53 officers and enlisted men were killed or wounded. One wing, however, had success. Swinging left, it circled to the rear of the camp and crashed into the Indians' pony herd, scattering the Indians there and driving off most of the Nez Perces' mounts. Many of the Indians fled across the country, and members of the unit went on and captured those whom they overtook.

Miles followed his first charge with a second and then a third. Both were thrown back with heavy casualties, though the last one carried some of the troopers over the rim and into the camp of Joseph's band, where the soldiers fought hand-to-hand with the Wallowa chief and his people before they were forced out again. Even Miles's Hotchkiss gun, which had been rushed to a ridge northwest of the village, was temporarily abandoned when its detail was sent running by Nez Perce sharpshooters.

In the face of fierce Indian resistance, Miles finally called off the costly attacks and established a siege line around the camp. . . . Within the hollow, the people scooped out shelter holes in the walls of the coulees and ravines and took stock of their losses. Among the day's dead—22 men, women, and children—were Ollokot, Toohoolhoolzote, and Lean Elk. In the darkness, a heavy snow began to fall, but there could be no fires. The children cried in the cold.

The siege went on in the bitter weather for five more days, with people dying on both sides and the Indians' suffering growing more intense. In the fighting of the first day, a number of Nez Perces had managed to escape the cavalry, and during the following nights more got away safely. Some eventually reached Canada and Sitting Bull's camp, but many died of exposure or hunger or were rounded up by troops or murdered by Indians of other tribes. Those in the camp were unaware of their fate, but they hoped that they had reached Sitting Bull and would persuade him to come to their help. Miles, too, was aware of that threat. But he also wanted to end the battle before Howard arrived to take from him the credit for the non-treaties' surrender. He made several anxious efforts to parley with Joseph, and at length, under a white flag, succeeded in arranging a meeting at which he promised the Wallowa chief that if the Nez Perces surrendered, they would be detained at Fort Keogh only during the winter and could then return to their own country. When Joseph declined the offer, Miles held him for a while as a prisoner, then exchanged him for an officer whom the Nez Perces had captured.

Meanwhile Howard, accompanied only by two aides, Ad Chapman, two treaty Nez Perces and a detachment of 17 men, had pushed on ahead . . . and on October 4 arrived at the battlefield. He reassured Miles that the younger man could accept the Indians' surrender and agreed with him that the Indians could be told that they would be returned to their homes. The next morning, they sent the two treaty Nez Perces into the non-treaties' camp to try to persuade them to surrender. The negotiators failed, . . . but in the hollow a council followed among the remaining chiefs and leading warriors, during which Joseph argued for surrender to spare the people further suffering. The two other surviving chiefs, White Bird and Looking Glass, were adamantly opposed to giving up, however, claiming that they would be hanged like the chiefs whom Wright had hanged in the 1850s. Both of them finally told Joseph that he could do what he wished, but that they intended to try to steal off with their people and reach Sitting Bull.

Shortly afterward, someone called that a mounted Indian was approaching from the north. . . . [T]hinking it was a messenger from Sitting Bull, Looking Glass sprang up to see for himself and was instantly killed. . . .

That afternoon, Joseph surrendered. There are various versions of how he did it. . . . According to the better-known account, Joseph rode up from his camp in the coulees . . . about 4 p.m., dismounted, and offered his rifle to Howard. Howard motioned him to give it to Miles, who was to accept the surrender. Then, to Ad Chapman, Howard's interpreter, and with Howard's aide, Lt. C.E.S. Wood, taking down the translated sentences, Joseph spoke his words of surrender:

"Tell General Howard I know his heart. What he told me before, I have it in my heart. I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed. Looking Glass is dead. Toohoolhoolzote is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say, yes or no. He who led the young men [Ollokot] is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are—perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever."

It was over. But the heroic, fighting retreat of more than 2,415 kilometers (1,500 miles) by the non-treaty bands was already viewed by the military and the public as an epic of Indian warfare. Some 750 Nez Perces, including women, children, and sick and old people, had stood off a total of more than 2,000 regulars and volunteers of many different army and civilian units, together with their Indian auxiliaries of different tribes, in eighteen engagements, including four major battles and at least four fiercely fought skirmishes. They had lost approximately 65 men and 55 women and children, and had killed approximately 180 whites and wounded 150. For weeks their courage, tenacity, and skill at evading capture had had many of the American people and much of the press sympathizing with their plight and rooting for them. . . .

During the night after the surrender, White Bird and most of his people, tougher with groups from other bands, stole out of the ravines and started north for Sitting Bull's camp. . . . [M]any made it successfully and found shelter among the Sioux, who claimed that they had been preparing to go to the rescue of the Nez Perces. The remaining non-treaties, 87 men, 184 women, and 147 children, were taken to Fort Keogh, then, despite the promises made to Joseph by Miles and Howard, were dispatched to a camp near Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where they were held as prisoners of war. The area was a malarial pesthole, and during their confinement most of them became sick, and more than 21 died. In July 1878 they were moved again, this time by train . . . and then by wagons under Indian Bureau jurisdiction to a tract of sand and sagebrush in the northeastern corner of the Indian Territory. There, in a barren and unhealthy country . . . close to the Missouri border, which they called Eeikish Pah (The Hot Place), longing for their homeland and still dying from bad sanitation and lack of medicines, they began a period of exile, further punishment for having resisted eviction from lands they had never sold. (pp. 123-152)