Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez Perce (14 page)

Surely Howard had seen that White Bird's band had not even been able to arrive at the council at the appointed time, and this while traveling without household goods or animals or the sick and elderly. The journey Joseph's people would have to undertake was even more perilous. They would have to gather their stock, prepare the sick and crippled and elderly for travel, navigate the slippery, slushy mountain trails from the Wallowa, and cross rivers swollen by winter runoff. Even if they abandoned all their goods, their chances of success were slim.

Joseph confronted Howard with this. Even if his people agreed to move, he said, what Howard was demanding was impossible. He pointed out that the U.S. soldiers, packing lightly and traveling without women and children, took days to cross even the smallest rivers. Why should his people be subject to such impossible demands if Howard's own men were unable to comply with similar conditions?

But Howard no longer had patience for such arguments. Be on the reservation in thirty days, he said, or be prepared to be moved there by military force. Once again, he was brandishing the rifle in a council that was supposed to be a meeting in search of peace.

Eventually the council broke up with Howard's having given no quarter. He fancied that he had carried the day with his “fearless sternness.” He even convinced White Bird, Looking Glass, and Joseph to accompany him on a long ride through the proposed reservation area to look for suitable areas of residence. Though Joseph indicated that he did not wish to displace whites who had already established homesteads there, Howard felt the journey was a great success. He paid little note to White Bird's measuring the speed of their best horses by challenging Captain Wilkinson to a race or to White Bird's punctual arrival at the parade field every morning to sit silently on his horse watching the fort's soldiers drill.

I
N EARLY JUNE 1877,
three weeks after the conclusion of Howard's council at the Lapwai, Joseph's people rode solemnly down the narrow trail from the Wallowa toward the turbulent Snake River. It was a steep, vertical descent of almost a mile on narrow winding paths. The footing was still treacherous from the winter snows, and it got only worse as the heavy hooves of the cattle and horses churned the earth into a viscous, slippery mud.

Howard's heartless timetable, which required them to be on the reservation by June 14, had made it impossible for them to gather all their stock from the wide prairies and hills. It had also assured that the newly born calves and colts would have little chance of surviving the journey. Even if they made it down the slippery, perilous trails, they would surely drown as they tried to cross the half-mile-wide Snake River, which was roaring with its winter runoff.

Joseph had made the hard decision. He had chosen to abandon the land that held the bones of his father and mother in order to save the lives of the people who had been entrusted to his care. The violation of his oath to his father weighed heavily upon him, but it was to the living that he knew he must be responsible. To do otherwise was to violate the sacred trust of leadership.

Though the people were long practiced in making bull boats by building frames of willow and covering them with buffalo hide, these small, bowl-like boats were good only for carrying people and a few household goods. They would be of no service in getting the cattle and horses across. The only hope was the people's knowledge of the currents and water patterns. By entering the river at the right point, they could literally allow themselves to be carried across to the other side by the eddies and current. But once outside these hidden passageways, any boat or animal would be swept to its destruction in fast-moving turbulence. Even with the young boys leading the horses across with ropes, many would be carried away to be crushed against the rocks. And the cattle had almost no chance. They were poor swimmers and panicked easily. Only by sheer luck would any of them survive.

As to the people, most would make it to safety. But it was cruel to see the blind being led by ropes down the trails and the infirm elderly trying to hobble with the aid of sticks and tree branches.

Goods that could not be carried had been cached in holes and hollows and covered with earth and furs. But all knew that the whites were watching and would steal everything as soon as the Indians had crossed the river, just as they had stolen the people's horses and cattle when they found that the Nez Perce were being forced to leave.

The sad truth was that the people were leaving their homeland for the last time, and all felt it in their hearts.

The bands had decided to meet one final time in the broad Camas Prairie far across the Snake and the Salmon, near the place where the new reservation began. There they could hold one final gathering in the old way, with dancing and feasting and the harvesting and drying of camas roots. It would show the children how the old ways had been and allow the elders to experience the good days one last time.

The people's spirits were heavy and filled with doubt. Had the Creator abandoned them? The treaty bands were prospering; they had experienced no dark punishment for gouging the earth's skin and cutting her hair. Was it possible that theirs was the way by which the Creator wanted all people to live?

Still, none wanted to abandon the teachings of the ancestors. Perhaps it would be possible to live with their Christian brothers and sisters but keep to the old ways in those things that mattered.

Even so, there would have to be changes. The reservation that had been set aside was too small to allow all the bands' horses and cattle to graze freely. And the treaty bands would surely be more favored by the white government and given more privileges and authority. Still, this could be tolerated if the people were allowed to keep to the old ways—hunting and fishing in the old places, going across to buffalo country if they so wished, making their seasonal journeys to the harvesting grounds of the kouse and the camas at the time appointed by the Creator.

What was most troubling was the betrayal of their land. None could say if the land, angry at its abandonment, might not visit harm upon them. Would the spirits of their ancestors be angered at having their bones abandoned to the white man's picks and plows? Would their
wayakin
spirit guides abandon them in return? Did they simply lack the courage to fight for the mother who had given them birth? Should they have stayed and resisted rather than turning the land over to the false ways of the whites?

With such questions in their minds and hearts, the people made their way across the turbulent Snake, over the rugged mountain paths, across the raging Salmon, and up from the river to the blue-flowered Camas Prairie for this final gathering of freedom.

Most of the cattle had been lost at the Snake crossing. By the time they reached the Salmon, it was clear that the remainder would drown in another river crossing, so they were left behind to be slaughtered by the men during the time of the great gathering. That at least would provide the people with food for some of the winter while the stock was replenished and some means of subsistence established.

This was especially important to Joseph. His responsibilities were complex. Though he had been forced to betray his promise to his father to protect the land with his life, he did not wish to ignore his father's admonition to take no gifts from the white man lest you be said to have made promises and trades that bound your people to things to which you did not agree. He wanted his families to enter the reservation with their own food, their own shelter, their own camp goods, their own lives. They might have given up their land, but they would not give up the ways of their ancestors. With the help of the beef from the cattle, perhaps they could make it to spring without relying on the dangerous practice of accepting food and supplies from the white agents and government.

His wife, Springtime, was due to give birth in a few days. She and the others like her, as well as the elderly, needed nourishment after this hard journey. And he needed to show respect for the old ways and old promises. One of the elderly men of the tribe had bequeathed him the beef from some of his cattle before his death, and Joseph needed to honor that bequest by securing that beef rather than letting the cattle drown wantonly in the raging current of the Salmon.

So after he had seen his people comfortably settled in the wide beauty of the Camas Prairie, he went back to the Salmon with some of the others to slaughter such beef as they could, both in memory of the old man and for the future nourishment of the people.

It was as he was returning from the slaughter that he first realized something must have gone wrong at the camp. Two Moons was riding toward him in an agitated manner.

There have been killings, Two Moons explained. Some of the young men have ridden off. Others have followed. They say many white people have lost their lives.

It was everything Joseph had feared. When he had left the camp, there had been thousands of horses grazing contentedly in a purple sea of camas flowers amid hundreds of teepees with thin ribbons of smoke curling into the blue cloudless sky. The old women had been laying out the bulbs on blankets to dry, and the old men had been gathered in circles, smoking their pipes and playing at dice and cards. The camp was alive with children's laughter. It was as he had wanted it to be, as it should be.

But now something had changed.

The scene that greeted him as he rode back into the prairie was dark and chaotic. People were running everywhere. The camp was half dismantled; many of the bands had already left. Children were crying, and women rushed about trying to gather such goods as they could in preparation for departure. The remnants of the other camps littered the ground. A sense of panic filled the air.

Joseph tried to piece together what had happened. It had begun with Wahlitits, the young man of White Bird's band whose father, Eagle Robe, had been killed by the squatter who had built fences across the old man's property.

As the old man had lain in his bed dying a slow and painful death, he had exacted a promise from his son that there would be no acts of retribution or vengeance. “Do not bother the white man for what he has done to me,” he said. “Let him live his life.” And Wahlitits, being a good son, had agreed to abide by his father's wishes.

But it had been hard. Wahlitits was a child of the old ways. He was known as one of the best of White Bird's young men—strong and forthright, a protector of the weak and defender of all in need. It was said he could climb a cliff straight up and that no man had ever beaten him in a footrace. He swam the icy waters of the Salmon every day of the year to toughen his body and was legendary for tying two wild horses to ropes around his waist and standing fast while they tried to escape. His father's demand had flown in the face of all he had been raised to believe about a worthy manhood and a warrior's sense of honor. But he had swallowed his pride in order to respect the wishes of the man who had given him life.

Apparently, during an evening parade through the camp—something the young men liked to do to impress the women and to show themselves as warriors—Wahlitit's horse had stepped on a blanket where Yellow Grizzly Bear's wife had been drying kouse roots. Yellow Grizzly had chided Wahlitits, telling him that if he were so brave, he should avenge his father's death rather than staging mock war parades and spoiling the hard work of old women, who at least were doing something of value for the people.

The criticism had stung Wahlitits deeply. After a night of tearful indecision, caught between his promise to his father and the insulting challenge of Yellow Grizzly, he had gathered his two cousins and ridden off in the direction of the cabin where the man who had killed his father lived.

Now the whole valley was choking in blood.

There was talk that alcohol had been involved. Joseph knew well what alcohol did to his people, especially when it freed a deep rage that they were keeping inside. But even if there had been no alcohol, Joseph could sympathize with Wahlitits. He knew the difficulties of keeping a promise to a father in the face of mounting insults and indignities. And he understood the young men's rage at being stopped from acting as warriors and meeting the insults in the ways of the ancestors. But the stories of murders—if they were true—had set the bands on a course of bloodshed that no quest for honor could justify.

“We must remain here,” he told his people. “If we leave, it will look like we were part of the killings. We must wait until we see what the soldiers will do. Perhaps we can explain to them.”

But the people were frightened. White law never listened to an Indian. When one committed a crime, all were guilty. Worst of all, one of the young men who had followed Wahlitits had been from their band. To remain in this place was to choose to join the camp of the dead.

Joseph managed to calm them enough to stay the night. But in the darkness, a bullet from an unseen gun ripped through one of the Nez Perce lodges. This was message enough. The time had come to follow the other bands to safer ground.

Howard stood in stunned disbelief as he read the note that had just been passed to him. He read the words slowly, deliberately, first to himself, then to his assembled officers. “The people of Cottonwood undertook to come here during the night… all wounded or killed… we have reports that some whites were killed yesterday on the Salmon River… fear that the people are all killed….” The whole dispatch was a confused litany of secondhand information and desperate hearsay. But the words in the center of the communiqué could not be ignored: “One thing is certain; we are in the midst of an Indian war.”

Howard was at a loss. He had thought matters were under control. Joseph and the other bands had agreed to enter the reservation and, as far as anyone knew, had been gathering peacefully in the broad Camas Prairie in preparation for doing just that. But this communiqué from the small settlement at Mount Idaho on the edge of the prairie told otherwise.

Shortly after reading this message, he was handed a second dispatch. Unlike the first, it had specifics. “…the wounded have come in. Mr. Day mortally; Mrs. Norton with both legs broken; Moore shot through the hip; Norton killed and left in the road.” He tried hard to keep a cool demeanor. He felt it essential that a commander of men always present a poised and self-possessed front to those around him. But this spoke of the Indian outbreak so many had predicted and all had feared.

He contemplated what had gone wrong. He had heard all the rumors— that the Nez Perce were paying exorbitant prices for gunpowder and trying to trade horses for guns; that women were curing more jerky than usual in preparation for a long siege against the whites. He had listened patiently to breathless stories of runners being dispatched to the Coeur d'Alenes and Spokans telling them to prepare for war and to all the hearsay about the war parades taking place on Camas Prairie.

But he had taken none of this seriously. Rumors were always rife when great groups of Indians gathered together, and the gathering on the Camas Prairie probably numbered close to eight hundred. To white settlers, ever nervous about Indian motives and activities, the horse races and war games and painted faces naturally might have seemed to be a prelude to battle. But Howard understood Indian ways. The presence of the women and children were a sure indication that this was not a gathering dedicated to war. By every indication this had been just one final bittersweet celebration before the remnant bands made their way onto the reservation. And why should he have assumed otherwise? After all, Joseph and the other chiefs had given him their word at the Lapwai council. In fact, during the ride through the reservation country in search of places to settle, they had seemed almost positively disposed toward the move.