During the intermission on Saturday the nontreaties held a council among themselves. The treaty Indians showed evidence of fear as young braves made boastful, warlike speeches about the encampment. This gossip was circulated by the women, who retailed it to the servants of the officers as threats made by Chief White Bird. For their part the soldiers, too, were fearful, and distrusted the nontreaty Nez Perces because the Modoc massacre was still fresh in their memory.
On Sunday, Joseph and a number of his followers held their Dreamer rites, accompanied by loud drumming. The rest of the nontreaties attended the Christian services in the agency chapel. Their cheerful attitude reassured the reservation Indians and the whites of the Lapwai garrison.
When the council reopened on Monday, May 7, however, some of the nontreaties came armed. Hush-hush-cute and Looking Glass are mentioned in the official reports for the first time, although it is likely that Looking Glass had been present at the Friday meeting. Monteith told the Indians that he had forgotten to tell them one thing: the government would not interfere in their religious beliefs, except when the medicine men disturbed the peace. The nontreaties had evidently heard rumors that their Dreamer rites were to be prohibited, which put them in rather an ugly mood.
In his own story Joseph says he rose to speak at this time and thus addressed the assemblage:
I am ready to talk to-day. I have been in a great many councils, but I am no wiser. We are all sprung from a woman, although we are unlike in many things. We can not be made over again. You are as you were made, and as you were made you can remain. We are just as we were made by the Great Spirit, and you can not change us; then why should children of one mother and one father quarrel—why should one try to cheat the other? I do not believe that the Great Spirit Chief gave one kind of men the right to tell another kind of men what they must do.10
According to Joseph, Howard replied, “You deny my authority, do you? You want to dictate to me, do you?”11
Again Tuhulhutsut voiced the arguments of the chiefs, repeating the Dreamer beliefs in a loud, harsh tone. His speech as reported by Joseph is: “The Great Spirit Chief made the world as it is, and as he wanted it, and he made a part of it for us to live upon. I do not see where you get your authority to say that we shall not live where he placed us.”12
The general warned Tuhulhutsut that his words were inciting the Indians, and threatened to have him placed in the guardhouse if he persisted in so speaking. To this the old man retorted:
Who are you that you ask us to talk, and then tell me I shan’t talk? Are you the Great Spirit? Did you make the world? Did you make the sun? Did you make the rivers to run for us to drink? Did you make the grass to grow? Did you make all these things, that you talk to us as though we were boys? If you did, then you have the right to talk as you do.13
The agent explained in a conciliatory tone that the law, made in Washington, required the Indians to live upon the reservation. Howard added that the reserve was created to protect and to give prosperity to the Nez Perces.
Unconvinced, Tuhulhutsut continued his inflammatory oration, and then finally concluded, “What person pretended to divide the land, and put me on it?”14
Howard, thinking that boldness would carry the day, emphatically replied: “I am the man. I stand here for the President, and there is no spirit, good or bad, that will hinder me. My orders are plain, and will be executed. I hoped the Indians had good sense enough to make me their friend, and not their enemy.”15
This heated argument inflamed the Indians and they stirred uneasily. The general asked for the views of Looking Glass and White Bird, but he received no assurance from either. Looking Glass replied evasively, and White Bird quietly endorsed the spokesman. Joseph remained silent. Howard grasped the import of the situation—a display of weakness might precipitate another Modoc massacre.
He turned again to the surly chief and asked, “Our old friend does not seem to understand that the question is, will the Indians come peaceably on the reservation, or do they want me to put them there by force?”16
In a vehement tone Tuhulhutsut denied the authority of the government to take away his land, and asseverated, “The Indians can do what they like, but I am NOT going on the reservation.”17
The general rebuked him, and then addressed the other chiefs, “Will Joseph and White Bird and Looking Glass go with me to look after the land? The old man shall not go; he must stay with Captain Perry.”18
Tuhulhutsut muttered, “Do you want to scare me with reference to my body?”19
“I will leave your body with Captain Perry,” Howard answered.20
Unable to conciliate Tuhulhutsut, the general had determined to remove him by force from the council. His aide being absent at the moment, Howard, with Perry’s assistance, took the unresisting arm of the old Dreamer and started to lead him from the tent.
Before he was taken out, the old chief voiced his feelings: “Is that your order? I do not care. I have expressed my heart to you. I have nothing to take back. I have spoken for my country. You can arrest me, but you can not change me or make me take back what I have said.”21
The general then placed Tuhulhutsut in the guardhouse, with orders for him to be confined there until the council was concluded.
In defending this unfortunate act, Howard explained:
My conduct was summary, it is true, but I knew it was hopeless to get the Indians to agree to anything so long as they could keep this old Dreamer on the lead, and defy the agents of the government; and I believed that the Modoc massacre would very soon be repeated, if I gave time for concert of action.22
The arrest of the Indians’ speaker did have a temporary restraining effect, but in the long run the action caused serious trouble. Within thirty-five days the reckless young bloods were to use this incident as an excuse to incite the older men to war.
Angered by the general’s peremptory act, the Indians covertly fingered the knives hidden beneath their blankets. Joseph reports:
My men whispered among themselves, whether they should let this thing be done. I counseled them to submit. I knew if we resisted that all the white men present, including General Howard would be killed in a moment, and we [the chiefs] would be blamed. If I had said nothing, General Howard would never have given another unjust order against my men. I saw the danger, and, while they dragged Too-hool-hool-suit to prison, I arose and said: “I am going to talk now. I don’t care whether you arrest me or not.” I turned to my people and said: “The arrest of Too-hool-hool-suit was wrong, but we will not resent the insult. We were invited to this council to express our hearts, and we have done so.”23
The Indians now realized that they would either have to move to the reservation or fight. Again the chiefs, obedient to Joseph’s wishes, decided in favor of peace and manifested an air of friendliness, but rancor blazed in their hearts.
Before the council adjourned, Joseph, Looking Glass, and White Bird expressed to Howard their willingness to ride to Kamiah for the purpose of looking over the land they wanted for their farms when they moved to the Lapwai Reservation.
In the early hours of May 8 rain delayed the start of the party, composed of Chiefs Joseph, White Bird, and Looking Glass, and General Howard, his aide, Lieutenant Wilkinson, Joe Roboses, interpreter, and Jonah, a subchief and treaty Nez Perce. After ten o’clock, though, the sky cleared and they started on a reconnaissance of the reservation. The chiefs were dressed in their best clothes, and had their faces painted “with a line of red running back along the parting of the hair over the head.” They were all well mounted on good-sized horses with gay blankets “dropped from the shoulders to the saddle. . . . They appeared hearty and cheerful,” Howard wrote, “chatting with us and with each other as we rode along.”24 White Bird, on a compact roan, even challenged Lieutenant Wilkinson to a race!
The group rode up the valley of Lapwai toward the mouth of Sweetwater Creek and on past the agency farm. High, steep-sided hills with rounded summits, practically barren of
trees, flanked the valley. Looking Glass pleaded with the general to release Tuhulhutsut, and promised he and White Bird would be responsible to Howard with their lives for the Dreamer’s good behavior. But the general told them the old man would be confined to the guardhouse until the land matters were settled. Joseph reports:
As we rode along, we came to some good land that was already occupied by Indians and white people. General Howard, pointing to this land, said: “If you will come on to the reservation, I will give you these lands and move these people off.”
I replied: “No. It would be wrong to disturb these people. I have no right to take their homes. I have never taken what did not belong to me. I will not now.”25
The party was passing the well-cultivated farms of two white settlers, Finney and Caldwell. The ordered neatness of the places seemed to impress the Indians. Howard told Joseph he understood that the chief “preferred a canvas house.”
To which Joseph answered, “When I come on the reservation I want a good frame house.”26
Howard continues in his report to the Secretary of War: “He [Joseph] looked through Mr. Caldwell’s house with great interest when we stopped there, and were kindly received by the ladies of Mr. Caldwell’s family.”27
During the afternoon they inspected the grazing lands past the “extensive upland agency farm,” and then returned to Fort Lapwai for the night.
On the ride the chiefs again begged the general to free their chosen leader from the guardhouse. Howard permitted them to have an interview with Tuhulhutsut, but still refused to order his release as yet.
Agent Monteith, Captain Perry, and six cavalrymen joined the escort the next day. A bright, cloudless morning greeted them for an early start. Red men and white were in good spirits as they rode through lush grass and past the fresh green of trees along the stream courses. Joseph soon decided on land in the Lapwai Valley near the agency. However, his choice did not altogether please him, since it was the location of the farms of Finney and Caldwell.
The party rode over the foothills to Craig Mountain and Kamiah, and across extensive prairie lands to the Clearwater Valley, covering between sixty and seventy miles. Alokut, who had joined his brother, thoroughly enjoyed the trip and proved an amusing companion to the officers.
During the day Joseph asked Howard, “If we come and live here, what will you give us . . . schools, teachers, houses, churches, and gardens?”
“Yes,” agreed the general.
“Well, those are just the things we do not want. The Earth is our Mother, and do you think we want to dig and break it? No, indeed! We want to hunt buffalo and fish for salmon, not plow and use the hoe. We do not plant; we harvest only the grain and berries that Mother Earth willingly gives us.”
“Yours is a strange answer,” the general remarked.28
That night the group stopped at Mr. Fee’s boarding school at the subagency. The next day, May 10, the party recrossed the Clearwater and rode eighteen miles farther into the mountainous country of that region. In the vicinity of Kamiah, White Bird selected land which he felt would make a good home for his people. Looking Glass chose to live farther down the Clearwater Valley.
On Friday, May 11, the party started back to Fort Lapwai. The Indians rode alone as Howard wished to see Finney and Caldwell about the purchase of their holdings in the area preferred by Joseph. That evening the two groups reunited at a prearranged campsite. The combined party returned to Fort Lapwai on Saturday evening, May 12.
There they met Captain Trimble, who had arrived at the post from Fort Walla Walla with his troop of the First Cavalry. Howard received a dispatch notifying him that Captains Whipple and Winters had entered the Grande Ronde Valley with their cavalry companies.
Early Sunday morning Joseph received the same intelligence by runner that these troops had reached the vicinity of Wallowa Valley. The chief thought the military had been sent to “drive us out upon our return home.” He hurried to the tent of Lieutenant Wilkinson and asked that his village be protected against the soldiers. The officer reassured Joseph as to the peaceful intentions of the troops.
Howard had received orders from the War Department advising him: “You are to occupy Wallowa Valley in the interest of peace. You are to comply with the request of the Department of the Interior as set forth in the papers sent you, to the extent only of merely protecting and aiding them [Joseph’s band] in the execution of their instructions.”29
On May 15 a final meeting was held at which Agent Monteith explained where each band was to locate. According to Howard, when Joseph was offered his protection paper, “he said that he had decided to go above Kamiah, on the Clearwater, for he wished to be with his friends.”30
After a few moments of consultation, the agent and the general agreed to the change, for it relieved them of any arbitrary decision regarding the titles to the farms of Finney and Caldwell.
White Bird received his paper bearing Howard’s signature as department commander. It read:
White Bird to-day has agreed to come on the Nez Perces reservation, and I believe he means to keep his word, and do right; do the best he can for himself and his people. Wherever he appears with proper pass from the agent of the reservation and with good behavior he should be treated with kindness.31
The chief accepted this paper with the understanding that he had thirty days to collect his stock and come onto the reservation. Since the settlers had protested against the wild and reckless young men of his band, he explained to Howard that when Indians or whites drank whiskey they both “acted with folly.” He counseled his people against using liquor, but he found it difficult to control some of them, and he might not be able “to make them come to Kamiah.” The general advised him to call on Captain Perry “when he had done his best.”32
Howard granted the Indians only thirty days to move onto the reserve.33 Joseph, whose band lived farther away than the others, had protested the shortness of the time and declared that it would be impossible to round up all the stock and swim them across the turbulent Snake River, swollen as it was with the spring rains. The general refused to extend the period, as he believed any further delay would aggravate the hostility between the settlers and the Nez Perces in the Wallowa Valley. The Indians grumbled, but realized they could do nothing about it. As it turned out, Howard’s command proved too severe, for the presence of the military in the valley served to antagonize the Nez Perces, in addition to the general’s threat to drive them onto the reservation by force if necessary.
Howard did not trust Hush-hush-cute, and so withheld his protection paper, leaving it with Monteith to keep until the chief complied with the terms of the agreement.
Before leaving for Portland on May 19, the general ordered the release of Tuhulhutsut from the guardhouse. Instead of causing repentance, the chief’s short imprisonment inflamed his heart to be revenged on the whites.
Upon hearing the outcome of the council, one Columbia River renegade Indian left his wife and lodge, threatened Howard’s life, and roamed over the country, vowing that no man could force him to live on a reservation. His act symbolized the spirit of rebellion that began to seethe in the hearts of the Nez Perces, and white settlers in Idaho would have done well to heed this omen.
10
Chief White Bird’s Murders
The Nez Perce chiefs returned to their respective bands after the council at Fort Lapwai to carry out the government’s orders. It has been charged that the chiefs agreed to obey Howard’s command only in order to give them time to prepare for war. That may have been true in Tuhulhutsut’s and White Bird’s case, but the subsequent actions of Joseph, Hush-hush-cute, and Looking Glass indisputably disprove such a charge against them, as will be shown. Joseph says:
When I returned to Wallowa, I found my people very much excited upon discovering that the soldiers were already in the Wallowa Valley. We held a council, and decided to move immediately, to avoid bloodshed.
Too-hool-hool-suit, who felt outraged by his imprisonm
ent, talked for war, and made many of my young men willing to fight rather than be driven like dogs from the land where they were born. He declared that blood alone would wash out the disgrace General Howard had put upon him. It required a strong heart to stand up against such talk, but I urged my people to be quiet, and not to begin a war.
I said in my heart that, rather than have war, I would give up my country. I would give up my father’s grave. I would give up everything rather than have the blood of white men upon the hands of my people.1
Joseph ordered preparations made for an immediate exodus to avert trouble. Herdsmen went out to round up the horses and cattle that had wandered into the hills. The ill feeling among his people became so great that a few of the young men flatly refused to leave the valley of winding waters. At this defiance of his authority, Joseph—armed with pistols, it is asserted2—rode through the village and threatened to shoot the first person who disobeyed the government’s command to move.
With grieving hearts the Wal-lam-wat-kin band began their trek—a trek that was to take them many weary, bloody miles, and would become a famous epoch in the annals of American Indian history. As Joseph rode away from his beloved valley of winding waters, did he feel in his heart that it would be the last time but one his eyes would ever gaze upon Wallowa, and those scenes familiar to him since babyhood?
When the band reached the Snake River, the women and children and the family possessions were ferried on buffalo-hide rafts to the Idaho shore. Mounted by warriors, four ponies, one to each corner of the raft, swam the people across the quarter mile of treacherous whirlpools in the swift-flowing current.
With the old and the young safely on the other side, the herdsmen drove part of the stock into the swirling waters. A sudden and fierce cloudburst beat down on the river. The maelstrom of waters swept an alarming number of ponies and cattle to a quick death.3 Fearful that hundreds more would be drowned, Joseph advised his men to keep part of the herd on the Oregon side until the river had subsided. While they were doing so, a party of white men attacked the guards and ran off the cattle.4
Saga of Chief Joseph Page 12
