Lay the Mountains Low (68 page)

“How far ahead of us do you think Joseph's village is now?” Howard once asked Ad Chapman near the end of a day's march.

The civilian had shrugged, clearly unsure of how to answer. “Far enough I fear we won't catch 'em less'n they stay put for a time, General. No man can get so much out of a horse as an Indian can.”

Almost from the first day they began to come upon remnants of the Indians' passage: horses abandoned with serious wounds and broken limbs, other ponies already dead and stiffening upon the trail. At many of the tightest switchbacks and where the Nez Perce had forced themselves through tight stands of trees, the soldiers found streaks of blood and bits of horsehide still clinging from the busted branches.

Just behind the Bannock scouts, who ranged far in the lead, a unit of fifty skilled civilian “pioneers” hired by Jack Carleton, a Lewiston timberman, all of whom served under Captain William F. Spurgin of the Twenty-first Infantry, labored day after day after day with their axes and two-man crosscuts to chop down and saw their way through that knotty maze of timber slowing the army's progress. When there was time, Spurgin's “skillets,” as they were affectionately called by the soldiers, built bridges across rocky chasms and improved portions of the dangerous trail by corduroying with timber or shoring up muddy walls with fragments of rock.

Up every morning with reveille at four. Breakfast by five. On the march no later than six. One long, arduous afternoon as they plodded toward the pass, correspondent Thomas Sutherland reined to the side of the trail to let others pass by while he let his horse catch its breath.

He called out, “General!”

“Yes, Mr. Sutherland?” Howard asked as his horse slowly carried him past the newsman.

“I was wondering if you intended to kill all your men by these hard marches, rather than waiting for them to have the chance to kill Joseph!”

It rained every afternoon, long enough to soak through their woolen garments and make the trail a slippery, mucky, sticky obstacle to be endured. Many evenings when they finally limped into bivouac after 6:00
P.M.
, the men were mud-caked from chin to toe. But a cheery fire and a little sunshine as that bright orb fell from the undergut of those dark clouds to the west did much to raise any flagging spirits, despite a monotonous diet of salt pork, hardbread, an occasional dollop of potatoes while they lasted, and plenty of coffee to wash it down.

The column ended up losing a little of its crackers and some of its bacon the fourth day out, abandoned along the way with the injured and broken-down mules carrying those packs up the torturous loops of the Lolo Trail.

Not only did the unbelievably rugged terrain hamper the speed of the march, but so did the fact that the men could water only a few of their horses and mules at a time when they ran across those infrequent springs and freshets on their climb toward the Continental Divide. In addition, at one stop after another, the soldiers failed to find enough forage to fill their weakening stock. The Nez Perce herd had grazed nearly all of the coarse, non-nutritious wire grass down to its roots.

That, and the cocky defiance of the hostiles, infuriated Howard to no end. On the fourth day, the Bannocks located a beautifully executed carving of an Indian bow, whittled out of the bark of a dark pine tree growing alongside the trail. The bow and its arrow were pointed to the rear—clearly meant to strike Howard and those soldiers who were following.

That same afternoon the general's advance heard the dim rattle of gunfire up the trail. He and others hurried ahead, fearing the Bannock had been ambushed by a rear guard, but found instead his trackers, scouts, and some of Spurgin's pioneers standing knee-deep in the headwaters of a gushing creek, shooting salmon with their carbines. That night, most of the column had a brief change in diet.

Then on 4 August as the head of the column entered a
pretty mountain glade dotted with swampy ponds and the lushest green grass, disappointing news arrived with James Cearly and Joseph Baker, those two Mount Idaho couriers he had sent south over the Old Nez Perce Trail with dispatches for Captain Rawn. They rode up to Howard that Saturday afternoon, accompanied by Wesley Little, who had run across the couriers on the Elk City Road and ended up accompanying the pair all the way to Missoula City.

Rawn, he learned, along with his small force of soldiers and a large contingent of civilian volunteers, had somehow allowed the Nez Perce to get around them and exit the canyon into the Bitterroot valley. In fact, they were reportedly camped near the small community of Corvallis and were likely to move toward Big Hole Prairie on the Elk City Trail. And according to the dispatch brought him from Captain Charles Rawn, Colonel John Gibbon was momentarily expected from Fort Shaw, along with a small force of his Seventh U. S. Infantry.

The captain addressed his note to Howard:

Start tomorrow to try to delay them, as per your letter and Gen'l. Gibbon's order. Will get volunteers if I can. Have sent word to Gov. Potts, that it appears from information gained from men who know the country, that the Indians intend to go through Big Hole or Elk City trail. By sending his 300 Militia ordered mustered in, direct from Deer Lodge to Big Hole Prairie, can head them off.

The only bright spot these revelations brought Howard was that, at the very least, now he no longer had to fear that Joseph's warriors would lay an ambush for his column somewhere along the Lolo Trail or fear that the village would double around and sneak back to the Camas Prairie, where they would recommence their deviltry, destruction, and murderous rampage.

Dropped right in his lap at that moment was the justification for splitting his force and attempting a junction with Gibbon. Hope rekindled, the glimmer of victory sprang
eternal in his breast. Howard was about to put the frustratingly slow pace of the climb up the west side of the pass behind him.

On the following morning of 5 August, after they had awakened to ice in their water buckets, the general impatiently pushed ahead with his staff, the “skillets,” and part of his pack train. Riding out at dawn with them and seventeen of the trackers were Major George B. Sanford's cavalry and Captain Marcus P. Miller's artillery battalion—who were serving as mounted infantrymen—leaving the foot soldiers and most of the pack train to follow behind at its slower pace. With this detached advance of some 192 cavalrymen, thirteen officers, and twenty of the Bannock scouts, in addition to one officer and fifteen artillerymen given charge of both mountain howitzers and that Coehorn mortar, Howard hurried for the summit of the pass, hoping to reach the Bitterroot valley in time to form a junction with Gibbon's undermanned infantry as quickly as possible.

While Joe Baker would continue as a guide for Howard, the general sent Cearly and Little on west to Lapwai, carrying messages for McDowell and Sherman.

The following day, 6 August, this fast-moving advance nooned at Summit Prairie,
*
where they finally gazed down into Montana Territory. They had crossed from McDowell's Division of the Pacific and entered General Alfred H. Terry's Department of Dakota, part of Philip Sheridan's Division of the Missouri. From here on out Howard was acting upon the direct orders of the commander of the army himself, William Tecumseh Sherman, ordered to forsake all administrative boundaries in running down the Nez Perce to their surrender or to the death.

From there Howard pressed on until they reached the lush meadows that surrounded the numerous hot springs. It was this afternoon of the sixth that Joe Pardee, one of Gibbon's civilian couriers, reached the Idaho column, explaining that the colonel's men had struck south from Missoula
City two days before, pressing up the Bitterroot with all possible dispatch. Gibbon was requesting a hundred of Howard's cavalry. That electrifying news, and this beautiful spot with its magically recuperative powers, went far to lifting the spirits of every officer and enlisted man, newly cheered to learn they were closing on the Nez Perce.

That following morning, the general composed a message for Gibbon that he himself was hurrying ahead with 200 horsemen:

I shall join you in the shortest possible time. I would not advise you to wait for me before you get to the Indians, then if you can create delay by skirmishing, by parleying, or maneuvering in any way, so that they shall not get away from you, do so by all means if you think best till I can give you the necessary reinforcements. I think however that the Indians are very short of ammunition, and that you can smash them in pieces if you can get an engagement out of them. Your judgment on the spot will be better than mine. I will push forward with all my might.

This same morning he would send his quartermaster, First Lieutenant Robert H. Fletcher, ahead to the Missoula post with frontiersman Pardee, asking that rations and forage for his stock be waiting for him at the mouth of Lolo Creek.

If he hadn't felt McDowell's spur before, General Oliver Otis Howard sensed it cruelly raking his ribs at this moment. He found himself in another commander's department.

Joseph's hostiles were almost within reach.

Now the race was on.

 

*
Historians have concluded that Colonel Gibbon was incorrect when he listed seventy-six soldiers on his duty roster for that day.

*
Wolf Mountain Moon,
vol. 12, and
Ashes of Heaven,
vol. 13, the
Plainsmen
series.

**
A small bronze, twenty-four-pounder, Model 1841, used primarily as a seige or garrison mortar, mounted on a sturdy wooden bed. With a maximum range of 1,200 yards, this fieldpiece, including its bed, weighed about 296 pounds, and was easily transported by a mule. This particular gun had not been used in the Battle of the Clearwater, so I have to presume it arrived with the fresh batteries of the Fourth Artillery from San Francisco.

*
Present-day Packer Meadows.

A
UGUST
4–7, 1877

BY TELEGRAPH

—

News from the Indian War.

—

WASHINGTON.

—

General Sherman's Report: Pittsburgh
Wants a Garrison.

WASHINGTON, August 4.—General Sherman, in a letter to the secretary of war, says: “With the new post at the fork of Big and Little Horn rivers and that at the mouth of the Tongue river, occupied by enterprising garrisons, the Sioux Indians can never regain that country, and they can be forced to remain at their agency or take refuge in the British possessions. The country west of the new post has good country and will rapidly fill up with emigrants, who will, in the next ten years, build up a country as strong and as capable of self defense as Colorado. The weather has been as intensely hot as is Texas. I am favorably impressed with the balance of this country on the upper Yellowstone …

“I
F YOU CAN DO WITHOUT THE SLEEP, SERGEANT,” THE GEN
eral said as he peered up at the veteran noncommissioned officer, “it will be a feather in your cap to reach General Gibbon that much earlier.”

First Sergeant Oliver Sutherland saluted, his backbone snapping rigid there in the saddle as he gazed down at General O. O. Howard. “Sir, I'll do my damnedest to stay bolted to this saddle until I have delivered your dispatch to General Gibbon “

Howard took two steps back, joining the ranks of his headquarters staff and a gaggle of more than a hundred curious soldiers and civilians as Sutherland jabbed the heels of his cavalry boots behind the ribs of that well-fed and -watered cavalry mount he would ride on down Lolo Creek, reaching the Bitterroot valley, where he was to chase after the rear of Colonel John Gibbon's pursuit of the fleeing Nez Perce camp.

The general and his advance had been the first to reach the hot springs on the downhill side of the pass, with the rest of the command not trudging in till late that afternoon. Sutherland was amazed at just how fast the men could get shed off their clothing, flinging off their boots and stripping out of greasy sweat-caked trousers to ease themselves down into the steamy pools. After that initial plunge, the soldiers dragged their clothing into the steamy water with them as the sun sank behind the Bitterroot Mountains, doing what they could to scrub weeks of campaigning from their shirts, stockings, and britches, not to mention the frayed and graying underwear. Soon it had all the makings of a laundresses' camp, what with all the wet clothing airing on every bush, hanging from every limb.

It was as Sutherland was dragging his limp, but renewed, body out of the sulphurous waters that a civilian and a Flathead warrior rode into camp. The tall, lanky frontiersman dropped to the ground, announcing that he was carrying a message from Gibbon for the general.

“The Seventh Infantry departed Missoula City on the fourth,” Howard told those hundreds who crowded around the two riders from the valley. “He's requested one hundred men to overtake his column before he pitches into the hostiles. I believe I alone can drive my troops more miles in a day than an officer less spurred by a sense of responsibility than myself. Therefore, I resolve to start in the morning with this advance force intact, marching as fast as possible with those two hundred men in hopes of reaching Gibbon before he reaches Joseph's camp.”