Lay the Mountains Low

by Terry C. Johnston

  Marching across the northeastern corner of the Camas Prairie, the column passed by McConville’s now-abandoned Misery Hill. By midafternoon they had covered nine miles on the trail to the subagency at Kamiah, located on the north bank of the Middle Fork of the Clearwater. At 3:30 P.M. atop a low rise on the south bank of the river, the general’s staff halted to pass around two pair of field glasses, gazing at the well-manicured gardens and the cultivated fields. What drew their attention even more magnetically some three miles away was that sight of the last of the Non-Treaty bands fording the river in their crude buffalohide boats shaped like overturned china teacups.*

  While he had been congratulating himself for more than a day on the success of the battle, Howard wondered how he was going to follow Joseph and that village across the Clearwater.

  When the Kamiah Christians under the leadership of James Lawyer, son of the noted Treaty chief, learned the warrior camp was coming their way, they had the foresight to remove their boats normally kept at the crossing. In addition, they had disabled the cable ferry used with those boats at this crossing. With those actions taken, most of the Lawyer Indians retreated into the hills, unwilling to openly oppose the Non-Treaties. Denied those boats, the warrior bands had resorted to the ancient bullboat, using what few buffalo hides they had managed to take with them in their precipitous retreat from the Clearwater encampment.

  Just beyond those last stragglers clambering onto the north bank stood the subagency’s buildings, surrounded for the moment by the massive horse herd. A little farther up the hill many of the warriors were already busy erecting some crude breastworks of stone and downed timber.

  Howard’s belly burned in frustration. Barely late again! One step behind. Always one step behind Joseph!

  “Get Colonel Perry up here on the double!” he ordered C. E. S. Wood, then watched the lieutenant salute and rein about.

  In moments, Perry’s horse was sliding to a halt before the general.

  “Bring Whipple’s company and take your cavalry battalion on the double to the right. Stop those Indians from getting away!” the general ordered grimly. “I’ll send Wilkinson with a Gatling and limber to support you, then lead the rest myself.”

  He did not wait for Perry to get his battalion pulled out of column and on its way, content to watch those distant figures finish their crossing, slowly winding away from the east side of the Clearwater. Instead, the general ordered Jackson’s B Troop, in the vanguard, to advance on the river crossing as they bore left of Perry’s and Whipple’s men. Behind Jackson came Miles with his infantry battalion, then Miller’s artillery, followed by the rest of the cavalry and pack train. Trimble’s H Troop served as rear guard while the column began its descent to the ford.

  At the moment Perry’s battalion reached the river and wheeled left to return to the main column-—which was no more than four hundred yards away—the Nez Perce opened a brisk and concentrated fire on his troopers. It appeared his cavalry had walked right into a well-conceived ambush.

  “Order the gallop!” Perry shouted, waving an arm and whipping his horse around as the mounted men began to shoot past him.

  But as the bullets sailed around them in the confusion and panic, some of the horses became unmanageable, even wild—rearing and wheeling. Three of the men in the captain’s company flung themselves out of their saddles and abandoned their horses, while others dismounted and hung onto their frightened horses, all of them sprinting through a grainfield to the left of their formation, racing back for the main column.

  By the time Perry’s entire battalion reached Wilkinson’s artillerymen at the ford, they had withdrawn from the effective range of those enemy carbines. Already the Gatling guns had been wheeled into position and set up their first distinctive chatter.

  “General, sir,” said Major Edwin C. Mason as he came to a stop at Howard’s elbow, “if I may be so bold as to express my disgust at the lack of … of courage shown by Colonel Perry and his cavalry.”

  “Colonel Mason?” Howard said, his eyebrows narrowing at his newly appointed chief of staff. “What’s your complaint?”

  “It’s clear the Nez Perce hold the colonel’s cavalry in profound contempt after the White Bird fiasco. Which is as it should be, General,” Mason continued, warmed to his criticism. “The truth is, the First Cavalry is almost useless to you. They cannot fight on horseback, and they will not fight on foot!”

  Howard seethed, wanting to rebuke Perry then and there for the embarrassing display—but held his tongue, for they had a hot skirmish just getting under way. He had to admit: He was growing disgusted with the captain who had failed him not only at White Bird but again at Cottonwood Station, too, then only the day before when he failed to follow up the fleeing warriors once his men were across the Clearwater.

  For some time the warriors kept up their brisk fire, pinning down the soldiers and returning the long-range Gatling and rifle fire from the Springfields. When the noise began to taper off, Howard finally figured out that the warriors were only covering the escape of their families while the Nez Perce streamed out of sight and into the timbered hills, climbing north-northeast.

  “Report on casualties, Lieutenant,” the general ordered his aide, C. E. S. Wood.

  In a matter of minutes, as Howard sat impatient in the saddle, Wood was back.

  “No dead. Two men wounded. One in bad shape with a head wound, sir.”

  Just down the slope from him, Wilkinson’s artillery continued to pound those slopes across the river without any effect. After an hour, a disappointed Howard ordered the shelling stopped. With the warriors and their families retreating, it was time for him to begin a crossing. But to do that would require the nonexistent boats of the Lawyer Indians. Complicating matters, the heavy wire cable had been freed from one end of the crossing.

  As he was forced to watch the dark figures disappear among the green hillsides, Howard continued to seethe with the failure of his troops. It felt as if he was foiled at every step, kept no more than a narrow river from catching his quarry.

  Sending details out to scare up the Christian Indians in hopes of securing their boats and repairing the ferry cable, the general ordered the rest of the command to withdraw a few hundred yards and go into camp for the night.*

  That night he would begin laying plans on how he could catch those escaping hostiles between two pincers of his command.

  *This post, officially established on June 25, 1877, was not named a fort until November of that year.

  *In Flathead, Chariot means “Little Claw of the Grizzly.”

  *At this date, one of Howard’s men was officially MIA, eventually raising the number to a total of thirteen dead. Almost twenty years after the battle, settlers in the area discovered the remains of a soldier “back of one of the hills near Stites,” along with four canteens, some army buttons, and a few silver coins. Could this have been that one soldier listed as missing in action?

  **An interesting footnote to this battle’s history is the fact that nearly one-half of the casualties, both dead and wounded, were officers, noncoms, and trumpeters—clearly exhibiting the Nez Perce understanding of the army’s command structure, which plainly shows they aimed their weapons accordingly.

  *The crossing place used July 13, 1877 was adjacent to the geologic feature and cultural artifact called Heart of the Monster, which figures into Nee-Me-Poo origin folklore.

  *The troops encamped where the Kamiah airport is today.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  KHOY-TSAHL, 1877

  IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT JOSEPH AND HIS PEOPLE HAD reached the crossing in darkness, finding that Lawyer’s people had hidden the boats traditionally kept at the ferry, along with dismantling the ferry’s wire cable. Cruel acts to commit against one’s people, but Joseph was beginning to understand how those Christians wanted more than anything to stay out of the war. Perhaps more than everything to be seen as not helping their blood relations the Non-Treaties.

  Now with the wa
y the warrior bands had been driven away after two days of fighting on the Clearwater and with Lawyer’s people doing what they could to blunt the efforts of the Non-Treaty bands to escape, it was clear the tides were shifting in favor of Cut-Off Arm and his soldiers.

  No matter they didn’t have those boats. As the five camps came to a halt just above the Kamiah settlement, some fell to the side, intending to get a little sleep while the rest started cutting willow or dragging out what they had left in the way of buffalo lodgeskins. But this was not a camp of mourners resigned to running away from a fight with the army. Instead, Joseph saw around him a people enjoying a rising euphoria. For two days they had held off far greater numbers than they were ever able to put into their fight with Cut-Off Arm. And though they had to retreat, they were not fleeing for their lives.

  Here, once again, they had the river between them and Cut-Off Arm.

  Before marching away from the crossing, the warriors managed to leave the suapies with one final indignity as they popped up from cover and fired into the soldiers. As the white men scrambled off their horses and sprinted into the fields, the Nee-Me-Poo fighting men hooted and jeered.

  On this north side of the Clearwater, maybe they could even choose a place to turn around on their heels and snap back at the army again—if only to show the general that there was clearly enough fight left in the Non-Treaty bands that he had little choice but to offer them favorable terms for their surrender. But … Joseph was not leading this camp. For more than a moon now the war chiefs had held the highest favor. Still, after those two long days on the Clearwater, the fighting men were clearly fighting among themselves on what to do, which way to go. There was even growling among the fighting chiefs as Looking Glass snapped at Toohoolhoolzote, White Bird sniped at Huishuishkute.

  Over the last two days he had proposed a dramatic, if not risky, plan.

  “I want to take my followers across the Camas Prairie,” he had told the gathered chiefs. “From there we will cross the Salmon River, where the Wallamwatkin can make our final stand in our homeland of the Wallowa Valley. In a man’s own country should he die defending the bones of his relatives. Only in a man’s own country can he die with honor defending home and family.”

  But Looking Glass scorned his heartfelt proposal. “You say you are thinking only of the women and children? To march across the naked extent of the Camas Prairie would put them at great peril, Joseph. On one side stands the suapie fort at Lapwai, and on the other side stand the Shadow towns. No, you cannot throw those innocent lives against the very real possibility of death!”

  “Then what would you have us do now that we are here at Kamiah,” Joseph prodded, “where we get no help from Lawyer’s people?”

  With a grand smile, Looking Glass told the group, “Because of all those possessions and supplies we had to leave at the Clearwater and because these Kamiah people have run off and won’t help us … we have but one choice.”

  “What is that?” White Bird demanded.

  “We must go across the mountains to trade with the Shadows who have been our friends for many, many summers.” Then he turned his self-assured smirk on Joseph. “Better to go among friends, Joseph—than to risk your people’s lives making a suicidal retreat, eh?”

  After that rebuke, Joseph thought it best to stay in the background and follow the movements ordered by the others who were swayed by the power of Looking Glass’s impassioned oratory. For now—with the army nipping at their heels—he reluctantly decided he could best protect his Wallamwatkin band by staying among the other Non-Treaties as they climbed toward the ancient root-digging meadows at Weippe Prairie.*

  As he pointed his pony toward the tail end of the retreating families, Joseph longed for an end to this fighting, when he could return to his beloved Wallowa valley with his people—there to live out the rest of his days with his wife and newborn daughter. But … would the child ever know anything but fighting and running, running and fighting?

  BY TELEGRAPH

  —

  The Indian War—Reported Defeat of Joseph.

  —

  Just in Time to Prevent General Howard’s Removal.

  —

  Move Against General Howard.

  CHICAGO, July 14.—The Times’ Washington special says the cabinet yesterday secretly but seriously considered the propriety of displacing Howard and putting Crook in his place. Howard, who has made such a bad mess of the campaign, was sent to that remote country as a sort of punishment after the failure to convict on the court martial for his share in the freedmen’s bureau frauds. It is quite possible that he will be removed today, as Secretary McCrary, who was absent at yesterday’s (Friday’s) cabinet meeting returned last night.

  “The hostiles aren’t moving?” Howard asked James Reuben, one of his most trusted trackers, that evening of the fourteenth.

  Howard’s command had been resting in their camp beside the Clearwater all day, most of the men taking advantage of the river to bathe and wash their ragged campaign clothing, besides digging some entrenchments in the event the warrior bands revisited the crossing.

  The Christian scout shook his head. “Four miles. Maybe five. They stay in camp. No sign they move off.”

  For a moment Howard studied the tracker’s dark eyes. Over time and many muddy miles across the Salmon, he had come to trust this Christian. Reuben was an educated Nez Perce, schooled here on the reservation. But because he was Indian, he was distrusted by the volunteers and settlers. The fact that Reuben carried a better gun than those the army was providing to the civilian militia was just another reason the scout ofttimes appeared haughty to McConville’s volunteers. One more thing to hang their hatred on.

  Balling his left hand into a fist as he turned from Reuben, the general told his staff, “Now we’ll put in motion my plan to lull the hostiles into making a mistake, to catch them between the arms of two forces, compelling them to surrender, or fight to the death.”

  “But as soon as we set off, General,” argued David Perry, “the Nez Perce will just up and run off.”

  “Not if they believe I’m headed back to Lapwai.”

  He went on to explain how, come the following morning, he would leave the artillery and infantry at the crossing when he departed with the cavalry, marching downriver on the well-traveled road to Fort Lapwai.

  “So they’ll believe you’ve headed back to the post!” Captain Marcus Miller exclaimed.

  “After we’ve put enough distance between that cavalry battalion and this crossing, I will abandon the road, ford the river at a suitable spot James Reuben tells me exists at Dunwell’s Ferry,* then move into that broken country, where we’ll push ahead with our cavalry on the mining road takes us up the Orofino Creek to Pierce. In that way I can take the hostiles in the rear while Colonel Miller crosses here at Kamiah and pursues the camp, herding the unsuspecting hostiles right into the front ranks of my cavalry near the junction of the Orofino and Lolo Trails.”

  At six o’clock that rainy morning of the fifteenth Howard rode at the head of four troops—B, F, H, and L—of the First U. S. Cavalry, along with forty volunteers who had arrived the afternoon before under command of Colonel Edward McConville. To disguise his real purpose, the general climbed up the steep Lapwai-Kamiah Trail,** as if retreating to the army post to gather more supplies—for the benefit of those spies Joseph was sure to have posted. Once out of sight beyond those heights behind his bivouac, Howard cut back cross-country, striking north. They had some twenty miles to wind along the snaking course of the Clearwater before they would reach Dunwell’s Ferry but had covered no more than six when Christian scout James Lawyer came dashing up to the column to report that the fighting bands had broken camp in the hills on the far side of the Clearwater and were this morning climbing to the traditional camping ground at Weippe Prairie.

  “That’s at the western end of the Lolo Trail, General,” Captain James B. Jackson advised.

  “Which makes it good news, gentlemen,” Howa
rd enthused. “That means Joseph’s warriors are on the way toward us already.”

  While his officers were making plans to cross then and there, a second Christian courier rode up with even more astounding news for the general.

  “Reports from Joseph!” the breathless James Reuben told him. “He wants to talk to you.”

  “J-joseph … wants to parley with me?”

  “He sends me to ask what terms for his surrender.”

  “S-surrender?” Howard echoed, his voice rising noticeably.

  “That’s the finest news we’ve had in weeks!” Captain Joel Trimble roared.

  Howard took a step closer to Reuben, almost afraid to hope. “Where does Joseph want to talk to me?”

  “Kamiah,” the tracker explained. “At the crossing.”

  Without another word to the Indian, the general wheeled on his aides, flush with the excitement of a schoolboy. For a moment his tongue would not work, and he was terrified he would act as if he were a stuttering idiot … stammering, if not utterly speechless, now that he had the end of this war in his grasp. A half-dozen miles back up the Clearwater waited Joseph, the architect of the Non-Treaty resistance, the brilliant tactical mastermind behind their victories at White Bird and Cottonwood, the driving force behind the Nez Perce escape from their battle on the South Fork!

  Joseph, the leader of the Dreamer resistance, was asking to come before the one-armed general, hat in hand! What would Sherman and all the rest who had cried for his removal think then!

  “This war,” he began, not at all surprised to find a lump of unbridled anticipation clogging his throat, “it’s all but over, gentlemen. Let’s hurry on our back trail to the crossing so that I can accept Joseph’s surrender at the Kamiah agency—just as Grant accepted Lee’s at McLean’s farmhouse!”