Lay the Mountains Low

by Terry C. Johnston

  While he and Perry’s F Company turned around for the crossing, Howard ordered the rest of the cavalry and civilians to continue downriver under Jackson’s command to Dun well’s Ferry, where they hoped to get their hands on a boat or two for use in breaching the Clearwater. Although his heart could take wing with hope, his head still told him that he must prepare for the eventuality that this peace overture would dribble through his fingers. As hard as he might pray to the Almighty, Oliver Otis Howard was nonetheless a practical man who realized the Lord most assuredly helped the man who helped himself.

  “His name is Kulkulsuitim”* James Reuben announced later at the crossing, when the nervous-eyed messenger brought his pony onto the south bank of the Clearwater beneath that strip of white cloth he had fluttering at the end of a yard-long stick.

  The Indian turned his eyes this way and that as the general gestured Major Edwin C. Mason forward with him and Reuben, signaling the rest of his aides to remain behind at a distance that would not intimidate this nervous courier.

  “Be watchful of any false moves on his part, sir,” Mason warned as the trio walked on foot to the crossing. “There may be sharpshooters on the far bank waiting for a signal from that Indian soon as he finds out it’s you.”

  “The path to peace is never an easy one, Colonel.”

  Even before the general, Mason, and their Christian translator came to a halt several yards away, the horseman began talking.

  “Says he knows who you are,” James Reuben explained, pointing to the general’s empty sleeve. “They all know you’re the one they call the Cut-Off Arm chief. So he wants to tell you the camps have two white men, captives. Caught them going to Lewiston on business with horses.”**

  “Forget them for the moment!” Howard snapped, impatient now that the moment was at hand. “This messenger knows why I’m here. When will Joseph come in to talk to me himself?”

  “Young Joseph wants to surrender, all right,” Reuben said after some brief conversation with Kulkulsuitim.

  With a quick glance at the heights across the river, the general said, “I suppose the bands are camped somewhere nearby in the hills, but not close enough to make it down here before it grows dark. So, tell this messenger that Joseph can come in with his people tomorrow morning to surrender.”

  After a moment of translation, Reuben said, “Joseph will try hard to break away from White Bird and Looking Glass. His people have little ammunition and food now. They left much upriver when they made a two-day fight on your soldiers. Says Joseph wanted to surrender to you on last two days, but he was always forced to move with the others.”

  “Tell him to remind Joseph that I never lied to him. I always spoke the truth.”

  Then Reuben translated, “How hard will you be?”

  “Do you mean what terms I am giving Joseph and his men?” Howard corrected. “Tell him there are no conditions. Explain that to him—unconditional surrender. They give up their weapons and their ponies to me.”

  “Then what? What of the chiefs?” the translator posed. “What of the fighting men who made war against your soldiers?”

  “The war chiefs are the ones I will arrest,” Howard said. “Explain that to him. The bad leaders I want—not the warriors who took their bad advice. Once they have surrendered, I will appoint a court of officers who will try them according to military law—”

  From across the Clearwater rang the report of a rifle, its sound magnified as it reverberated from the hills hemming in this gentle crossing. The bullet itself whined past and struck a nearby boulder with a splatter of lead and fractured rock chips.*

  “What the devil!” Howard growled, his heart racing.

  As he lunged forward, Mason ordered, “Hold that Injun!”

  Although the messenger hadn’t attempted to flee, Reuben seized the warrior’s reins and held the frightened horse. The courier’s eyes darted anxiously over those soldiers scurrying about, up and down the bank, responding to that single gunshot. He was jabbering at the translator in a high-pitched voice.

  “Says Joseph want to surrender now!” Reuben cried in an excited tone as he tried to keep the horse and rider between himself and that other side of the river, where at least one sniper was hidden. “His people are getting so hungry. Had to leave so much at the Clearwater. The only thing for them to do is to take the women to Weippe—”

  “They’re already on their way to Weippe?” Howard shrieked in dismay.

  “Yes,” Reuben confirmed, “where they wanted to dig some camas to feed the hungry people before they surrender. But even though they are going to Weippe, White Bird, Toohoolhoolzote, and Looking Glass will not allow him to surrender. They want to make for the buffalo country and do not like Joseph talking peace with you.”

  “Tell him to remind Joseph that I will be here tomorrow morning to receive him,” Howard repeated nervously, “right here in the morning—waiting for him to come down out of the hills. He has my word that he will not be harmed. Have him tell Joseph he will have a fair trial, an army trial. A white man’s trial.”

  As soon as Reuben finished his translation, the messenger turned without another word, tearing his rein from Reuben’s grip, and splashed into the river. Howard watched the water flow over the man’s thighs, on over the pony’s back, and up to the courier’s waist as the animal struggled against the current that carried it downstream a quarter of a mile before they clambered onto the north bank, where the man pulled aside his breechclout and slapped a buttock before kicking his animal in its flanks. They quickly disappeared into the timbered hillside.

  Choosing not to incite himself with that parting vulgarity on the part of the young messenger, Howard turned on his heel, his insides a jumble of excitement and apprehension mixed, troubled by a hint of skepticism. From the bank he hollered up to those officers arrayed on the side of the knoll.

  “Colonel Miller! We need to send a courier downriver to Captain Jackson,” Howard bellowed. He was clearly fearful of losing the momentum he had just won at the Clearwater with a resounding defeat at Weippe Prairie. “The hostiles are marching into the hills for Weippe, which will put them in position to wipe out our cavalry battalion. We must recall Jackson before he makes contact.”

  “I’ll start a courier immediately!” Miller shouted as he started to turn away, but was stopped with Howard’s next announcement.

  Ever the optimist, Howard said, “Colonel, once that rider is on his way to Jackson’s battalion I want you to prepare your men to receive the surrender of Joseph and his Nez Perce when they reach us at dawn!”

  THAT morning the Non-Treaty bands had awakened in their last camp before reaching the camas grounds of Weippe Prairie, a beautiful, extensive meadow where the blue camas flowers extended for as far as the eye could see with a color so vivid it made Yellow Wolf believe he was seeing the sky itself reflected in huge ponds of trapped rainwater. On nearly all sides they were surrounded by timber-blanketed hills, those hills themselves surmounted on the east by snow-mantled mountain peaks.

  In the first misty light of dawn Yellow Wolf had watched the older woman lead a pony out of the camp circle. There the mother of Wayakat climbed on the animal’s back before the woman noticed that he was watching from his mother’s blanket shelter:

  “Yellow Wolf,” she whispered as he approached, his moccasins growing soaked with the heavy dew.

  “Where are you going so early?” he asked, looking up at her red, bloodshot, and puffy eyes.

  “Now that the suapies have left the battlefield on the plateau, I am going to claim the body of my son.”

  “He was a brave fighter,” Yellow Wolf said with admiration. “Your son fell too close to the soldier lines for any of us to get his body for you.”

  “I do not hold bad feelings for any of you fighting men because my son was left behind when we fled our camp,” Going Across explained as she reached down and touched the back of his hand. “But, I need to go bury him now.”

  “When will you return?” />
  “By nightfall if I can,” she said. “If not, and the camp moves on up the trail to Weippe—I will find you.”

  “Yes,” Yellow Wolf said quietly as he took a step back and held his arm up in parting. “I am sure you can find your way.”

  Late that afternoon just after the Non-Treaties reached the extensive camas digging grounds, a small band of people emerged from the trees at the end of the trail over those mountains. Even from a distance it was easy for Yellow Wolf to recognize that they were Nee-Me-Poo—their horse trappings, dressed as they were. Five-times-ten of them, women and children traveling with seventeen warriors under their leader, Temme Ilppilp, called Red Heart.

  “You have just come from the buffalo country?” asked Looking Glass as the hundreds crowded around the new arrivals, tongues trilling in welcome.

  Red Heart’s eyes and smile grew big with this unexpected reception here in the meadows of Weippe. He gestured toward their numerous travois pulled by trail-weary packhorses. “We have many buffalo robes, yes.”

  “See?” Looking Glass roared at the crowd pressing in on the newcomers. “What did I tell you? All things are good in the buffalo country!”

  Red Heart took the older man’s elbow in his hand and said, “Over there in the valley of the Bitterroot River, we have heard talk of your struggles against the army. But—looking at you now—I don’t see a people who are at war!”

  Looking Glass let his head fall back as he laughed loudly before saying, “We are at war. The suapies just can’t keep up with our village of women and children!”

  But the laughter quickly died as those close around the chiefs realized that Red Heart was not laughing. Yellow Wolf shouldered his way closer to hear all the words.

  “The army is chasing you now?” Red Heart asked, his tone heavy with concern.

  “Yes!” Looking Glass answered enthusiastically. “But they will never catch us now.”

  “Then it is as the Shadows in the Bitterroot were saying,” Red Heart explained. “They were afraid of us when we marched past their homes and stores this time. Never before were they afraid of Nee-Me-Poo, but now these people did not want us to stay long in their country.”

  “Those settlers in the Bitterroot have nothing to worry about,” White Bird vowed.

  Red Heart asked the older chief, “If the army is chasing you, where will you go?”

  “I told them we should go to the buffalo country, where the animals are fat and we will camp next to our friends, the E-sue-ghar!” Looking Glass cheered. “Come back with us on the trail over the mountains. It is no longer safe here in the Idaho country for our people.”

  As he stared at the ground a long moment, it appeared Red Heart already had his mind made up. When he looked at White Bird and the other leaders, he said, “We have already decided: If what we were told was true, we will not join in your fighting. We want to be left alone.”

  “The soldiers will not leave you alone!” Looking Glass roared angrily.

  “Then we will surrender to them and give them our guns,” Red Heart countered. “That way they will know we are not part of this war.”

  “G-give them your guns?” White Bird blustered.

  Red Heart wheeled on the old war bird. “Better that than to give them the lives of all these women and children!”

  “You are not a man!” Looking Glass bawled with fury. “A man would fight and die for his women and children—”

  “I will go surrender with you, Red Heart,” a voice suddenly interrupted Looking Glass’s tirade.

  Yellow Wolf and the rest of the crowd watched a minor leader in the Non-Treaty bands step forward.

  “You will abandon this fight?” Looking Glass demanded.

  “Yes,” Three Feathers answered.

  “Don’t you remember what Wright did to the Yakima and Cayuse leaders when they surrendered after making a war with the army?”* Looking Glass scoffed.

  “Yes,” Three Feathers sighed. “Those chiefs were hanged.”

  “Do you want the same to happen to you?” White Bird chided.

  It took a moment before Three Feathers answered, “It is one thing to go east and hunt the buffalo in the land of the E-sue-gha. It is another thing entirely to leave our fair land behind for all time.”

  Toohoolhoolzote asked, “You are not afraid of the white man’s ropes?”

  “Yes, I am afraid of hanging,” Three Feathers replied, “but I will go with Red Heart and surrender my guns so that my families don’t have to run anymore. And if I have to die … then I prefer to die in my own country. Not in a faraway land of strangers.”

  *Where the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery first came across the people they called the Choppunish.

  *Near present-day Greer, Idaho.

  **Today’s Idaho State Highway 62.

  *Even the identity of this messenger is in dispute among the records of that day. Some scholars claim it was a man named Tamirn Tsiya, while still more say it was definitely a young warrior named No Heart, called Zya Timenna.

  **William Silverthorne and half-breed Peter Matte, who would claim they were captured on their way to Lewiston to buy horses. Within a week, they would escape and carry some vital news to the soldiers who will be waiting at the eastern end of the Lolo Trail.

  *There is even some broad disagreement on which side of the river this shot was fired and who might have fired it—the Nez Perce on the north side of the Clearwater or one of McConville’s citizens on the south side (just as they had started the fight at Looking Glass’s camp).

  *Thirty Nez Perce scouts had served with Wright’s campaign in 1858 and witnessed the hangings of those Indian leaders. Later, in 1873, Captain Jack and other Modoc leaders had suffered the same fate at the hand of a vengeful government.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  JULY 15–16, 1877

  Fort Lapwai

  July 15, 1877

  Dearest Mamma,

  This is such a bright Sunday morning. The children look so nicely in their best blue stockings and little brown linens, and they are playing on the porch. This is the first day this summer I have felt like fixing them up from top to toe. Even now I am afraid we will hear something horrible before the day is over and spoil all my pleasant feelings. The Indians (friendly ones) who were in that last fight say that one officer had his leg cut off by the officers in the field, and they describe it so plainly, it must be so. Then from the fact that General Howard named the Camp “Williams,” we fear poor Mr. Williams has lost his leg. He is only a young fellow and very fine one … Dispatches came in from General Howard yesterday saying the Indians had recrossed the Clearwater River and were making for the mountains with the troops in pursuit. The trail over the mountains, which the Indians are supposed to be making for, leads over into Montana into what they talk about here as the buffalo country, but from a great many things, nearly everybody thinks Joseph doesn’t want to get out of the country around here, but is only withdrawing in that direction to prepare for another fight. You never heard of such daring Indians in your life. In this last fight, they charged to within ten feet of the soldiers, and charged up to the artillery and tried to take the guns from the men…

  My head is full of Indians. It was very warm yesterday, and I baked a cake and churned my butter on a table on my back porch, and I kept one eye and one ear up the ravine watching for Indians all the time. It is a horrible feeling …

  Everybody here seems to feel a little more cheerful since the last fight … It is like the old cry of “Wolf! Wolf!” and when we don’t look for it, the wolf comes.

  We all join in love and hope to hear soon.

  Your affectionate daughter,

  Emily FitzGerald

  BY TELEGRAPH

  —

  A Run on the Savings Banks of St. Louis.

  —

  WASHINGTON.

  —

  Dismissal from the Indian Bureau

  WASHINGTON, July 14.—L. S. Hayden clerk in the Indian bureau, was to
-day dismissed by the secretary of the interior as the first public result of the pending investigation of the allegation of irregularities and fraudulent practices in the Indian service … Hayden, according to his own evidence, has accepted money and other things of value from contractors …

  —

  Better News.

  WALLA WALLA, July 14.—To Gen. McDowell, San Francisco: Have been with Gen. Howard in the battle of to-day, which he reports in detail. I consider this the most important success. Joseph is in full flight westward. Nothing can surpass the vigor of Gen. Howard’s movements.

  (Signed) KEELER, A.D.C.

  Gen. McDowell says that he thinks this defeat will tend to cause the other Indians to remain peaceable, and may make it unnecessary to act under the president’s authority to call out volunteers for temporary service. He will at least defer action till he gets Howard’s report.

  LATE LAST NIGHT AFTER AGENT JOHN MONTEITH AND INDIAN inspector Erwin C. Watkins arrived from Lapwai, General Oliver Otis Howard dashed off a short dispatch to be wired to his commander, McDowell, in San Francisco:

  CLEARWATER, July 15th

  Joseph may make a complete surrender to-morrow morning. My troops will meet him at the ferry. He and his people will be treated with justice. Their conduct to be completely investigated by a court composed of nine of my army, selected by myself. Col. Miller is designated to receive Joseph and his arms.

  [signed] O. O. Howard

  Brig. Gen. U. S. A.

  The following morning, a Monday, the general was up before dawn, composing the congratulatory address one of his aides would read before his troops following their battle oil the South Fork of the Clearwater River:

  Headquarters Department of the

  Columbia,

  In the Field, Camp McBeth,

  Kamiah, IT., July 16, 1877.

  GENERAL FIELD ORDERS NO. 2

  The General Commanding has not had time since the battle of the 11th and 12th instants, on the South Fork of the Clearwater, on account of the constancy of the pursuit, to express to the troops engaged his entire satisfaction with the tireless energy of officers and men, that enabled them to concentrate at the right time and place with the promptitude of the first assault; the following up of the first advantage for a mile and a half with inconceivable speed; with the quickness to obey orders; sometimes to anticipate them, which prevented the first flanking charge of the Indians from being successful; then with the persistency of uncovering their barricades and other obstacles, and clearing ravines, both by open charge and gradual approaches under constant fire, thereby making an engagement of unusual obstinacy of seven hours hard fighting; also his satisfaction with the remaining in difficult position and entrenching a long line at night while fatigued, and almost without food and water, till the afternoon of the second day, when the Infantry and Cavalry of the command cheerfully thinned out their lines so as to cover two miles and a half of extent, and to allow the Artillery battalion to turn the enemy’s right and enable an approaching train with its escort to come in with safety; then turning briskly upon the foe, the Artillery battalion, by a vigorous assault, sent him in confusion from his works, and commenced the pursuit in which all the troops, including the new arrivals, immediately engaged—through the ravines and rocks and down the most impassible [sic] mountain side to the river; after this crossing, the taking possession of the Indian camp, abandoned and filled with their supplies, and surrounded by their “caches,” causing the Indians to fly over the hills in great disorder.