Lay the Mountains Low (35 page)

“Mr. Wilmot!” the general shouted, red-faced. “It makes my blood boil to hear a civilian blaspheme an officer!”

Struggling between the two large men who imprisoned him, Wilmot said, “Not half as much as it makes my blood boil for this coward to tell me right to my face that I lied!”

The general took a deep breath, staring at the graying sky for a long moment as if attempting to regain his composure.
“Why don't you calm yourself, and we'll put this entire affair behind us. I would rather you serve as a guide for us, to show my column where that Indian camp is, instead of placing you under arrest.”

Wilmot stared hard at Perry, then turned his withering gaze on Howard. “No, because you're both cut of the same cloth. I ain't gonna guide for either one of you. Hell, I prefer fighting alongside the Indians now to fighting for your officers!”

Howard jutted his bearded chin angrily. “Take this civilian to the officer of the day and tell him I've placed him under arrest.”

“What for?” Wilmot snarled as the guards uprooted him off his feet once more.

“I don't have to have a reason right now, Mr. Wilmot,” Howard said. Then, looking at one of the guards, he added, “Have the officer of the day put him in shackles until tomorrow when we're ready to march. That should give you enough time to cool down and reconsider your contempt for the officers who are here prosecuting this campaign … so you civilians can live in peace on what was once Nez Perce land.”

“Is that it, General?” Wilmot shouted over his shoulder. “You and your soldiers don't wanna fight no war to protect your own goddamned citizens?”

Howard took two steps following the guards who had a firm grip on their prisoner and said, “Sometimes, Mr. Wilmot, in this dirty little war, I wonder who really needs protecting from whom. If it isn't the Nez Perce who need our protection from the likes of you!”

 

*
Just outside the present-day community of Harpster, Idaho.

J
ULY
11, 1877

BY TELEGRAPH

—

More of the Mexican Border
Troubles.

—

The Administration Strongly
Favoring Invasion.

—

No Satisfactory News From
General Howard.

—

OREGON.

—

Latest from the Indian War.

SAN FRANCISCO, July 9.—A press dispatch from Portland has the following from Lewiston, under date of the 6th, via Walla Walla, 9th: Left Horse-shoe bend and came down Salmon river near its junction with the Snake, leaving Howard in force up the river. A courier express is just in from Colonel Perry who was en route for Howard with a pack train, and an escort of thirty men, says he was attacked on the 4th and ten soldiers and two citizens killed. Captain Whipple, in command at Cottonwood, came to the rescue and repulsed the Indians. The latter are in force around Colonel Perry and Captain Whipple who have only force enough for defence. The route is unsafe to Cottonwood. It is a bold stroke of Joseph and his band, and it is reported by signal to the Indians north and east, and stirs them up to the offensive … The Indians have destroyed some fields and gardens and rifled some dwellings. News here this morning indicates a purpose to meet or act with those on
the Spokane and such a move will imperil all the upper settlements on the Palouse. It is evident that a volunteer cavalry in large force ought to be put in the field to reinforce General Howard and stop this uprising before it assumes larger and more definite proportions.

H
IS CHRISTIAN NAME WAS JOE ALBERT
.

Painful as it was for his traditional parents, in recent years young Joe had moved his own family onto the reservation and become one of the peaceful Treaty Indians who lived and farmed near Lapwai.

When trouble broke out with the Non-Treaty bands of White Bird,
Toohoolhoolzote
, and Joseph's
Wallowa
, Joe Albert answered the one-armed soldier chief's call for scouts to lead the
suapies
to find those bad warriors who had murdered many Shadow settlers and burned their farms. Joe led the soldiers into the valley of
Lahmotta
,
where a few of
Ollokof's
warriors turned the frightened, spooked soldiers around and sent them fleeing.

Rather than kill them—as they had done with any
suapie
they found alive on the battlefield—
Ollokof's
warriors captured three of those Christian trackers scouting for the army. Although many of the young men had screamed for their blood and the women heaped scorn upon the trio, the chiefs decided they would release the three, once the prisoners had vowed to never again raise arms against the Non-Treaty bands or help the soldiers in what everyone believed would be a quick little war.

“If we catch you again, then we will whip you with hazel switches.”

Which was a punishment much worse than death itself.

After Robinson Minthon declared he wanted to stay with the White Bird band, the other two vowed they would return home to wives and children, even though both had relations among the Non-Treaties. And since the pair had their soldier horses taken from them, the young warrior Yellow Wolf gave
Yuwishakaikt
a pony to ride, while a kind woman took pity upon Joe Albert. She gave him one of her old travois horses for his ride north.

Still nursing the invisible wounds his pride had suffered by the time he reached Lapwai, Albert eagerly enlisted to work for Cut-Off Arm when he went to punish the warring
Nee-Me-Poo
—despite his promise to the Non-Treaty chiefs … even though the white men were often slow on the back trail and sometimes, to Joe's way of thinking, might even be a little frightened of confronting the warriors again. Yet he stayed with the
suapies
, even when they were turned back by the river and forced to return to the mouth of White Bird Creek.

As they plodded slowly up the steep canyon, it was immediately apparent how the heavy rains had been suffered upon the land while Cut-Off Arm's soldiers were on the west side of the Salmon: washing away what skimpy soil the soldiers had scraped over the battle dead. But Cut-Off Arm did not stop to rebury his dead. It was nearing sundown
and they still had many miles to go before the advance soldiers reached the settlement called Grangeville. The first of the officers and soldiers did not drop from their horses until the great darkness at the middle of night.

Then Gut-Off Arm had them on the march again at dawn … halting and going into camp after crossing the old mining bridge that spanned the South Fork of the Clearwater. From the many charred and splintered timbers it was plain the warrior bands had attempted—but failed—to destroy the bridge. To Joe, it was a sure sign the Non-Treaties were planning to stay in this part of the country.

The soldiers had lain in camp through the next day,
^*
waiting for more troops, which did not reach them until late in the afternoon. At long last, in this camp scattered below the bluffs on the east side of the South Fork, Cut-Off Arm now had all his
suapies
ready to go in search of battle.

Joe Albert had been ready for some time. Now, after so long a wait, the soldiers would strike the offending warriors, punish them and their women, too; then everything would return to normal once more. When that end to the troubles came, Joe could again visit his father and mother—both Dreamers—without being shamed by so many in the Non-Treaty camp that he had chosen to become a Christian. It should not take long—just one good fight.

After all, Cut-Off Arm had enough soldiers now. One of the scouts who talked the Shadow tongue made marks on the ground for those scouts who did not know the white man's talk. Each mark counted for ten
suapies
, mule packers, or the civilians who traipsed along with the soldiers. One mark after another, after another, until there were fifty scratches on the ground to signify all the white men who would attack the warrior bands. White Bird,
Toohoolhoolzote
, Joseph, and even Looking Glass did not stand any chance of getting away now.

They would hang in the white man way of retribution for having a hand in killing all those Shadow women and children.
War was not supposed to be fought against the wives and little ones. But the bad warriors had mixed whiskey and gunpowder, then done very, very bad things, sometimes terrible things, to the women and children. As it was explained in the white man's Book of Heaven, the time had come that these evil ones should pay for their sins.

At dawn the following morning, Cut-Off Arm started north along the South Fork, his long, long column strung out on the broken pine-dotted ridge that rose more than eight hundred feet above the river below. Many steep ravines and coulees made it impossible for the column to travel anywhere near the edge of the bluff. Instead, the soldiers had to make ever-widening detours to skirt around the heads of the deep ravines. The sun rose high and hot that morning as the
Nee-Me-Poo
scouts made fewer and fewer trips to the very edge of the ridge to look down at the river searching for the Non-Treaty village.

Since no one among the Shadows knew for sure where the camp lay, Cut-Off Arm was depending upon his trackers to find it for him while the bluffs rose higher and higher on that east side of the river, eventually more than a thousand feet above the South Fork. And the ravines grew steeper, deeper, and darker too, each one requiring a longer detour for the grumbling soldiers. The sun was nearing its zenith, burning in the sky after so many, many days of cold, rainy weather. Joe was sweating heavily in his wool soldier jacket and broad-brimmed black cavalry hat. He wondered when Cut-Off Arm would allow the column a midday halt to rest the horses and catch a nap under a little shade—

Suddenly the white men were shouting, cheering, excitedly forming up, shuffling this way and that. So much noise—

“They found the camp!” came the cry in the middle of all that pandemonium. One of the other two Treaty scouts was shouting as the pair came galloping back from the front of the march.

“Narrow-Eye Chapman found the camp!” announced the other, shaking his soldier rifle in the air. “It is back upstream
a ways! Just above the mouth of the Cottonwood!”