Although Joseph’s order was in contravention of Howard’s instructions, the chief felt that the general would realize the need for the delay when apprised of the circumstances. The government required the Indians to move, but it did not require them to lose their only source of wealth in doing so.
Joseph’s band crossed another ford upon arrival at the Salmon River, a tributary of the Snake, but they effected this without loss. A few miles from there they joined the camp of White Bird’s band in Rocky Canyon. This defile was one of the eastern branches of the Salmon River Canyon, lying eight miles west of Grangeville. Eleven days remained before their time limit was up, but the bands were near the southwest boundary of the Lapwai Reservation. Tuhulhutsut’s people had already encamped with those of White Bird and Joseph. So the Indians killed their beef cattle, jerked the meat, and cached their food supplies in a cave. They were evidently preparing for trouble.
Here, in Rocky Canyon, the Indians held a ten-day grand council in which everyone who had a grievance against the white race told of the wrongs he had suffered. Many of them demanded vengeance. Tuhulhutsut inflamed the hearts of the young men with his oratorical appeals for bloodshed to wipe out the stigma of his arrest. Youth, stung with personal and tribal resentment and visualizing only the supposed glories of battle, clamored for war. These hotheaded young men were blind to the disastrous consequences of war, to the women and children who would be widowed and orphaned, and to the useless destruction of property. While the conclave was being held, sentinels warned those assembled in secret conference of the approach of any white settlers who came to visit the encampment.
Joseph had steadfastly maintained an almost inhuman self-control in the face of repeated acts of aggression by white men in Wallowa. Now, against the inflamed feelings of his own people, he once more pleaded for peace and pointed out the folly of taking the warpath. Looking Glass concurred with his sentiments. But the powerful Dreamer medicine men taunted Joseph with accusations of cowardice. Reciting the horde of injustices and insults heaped for years upon the peace-loving Nez Perces by the white race, the tewats made impassioned orations for war. This martial spirit was heartily echoed by Tuhulhutsut and doubtless, too, by White Bird. Stout of heart, Joseph was not swayed by natural anger and steadfastly refused to yield to the almost unanimous desire to fight.
Some of the Indians frankly expected trouble with the military if they did not hurry onto the reservation. Others suggested to the council that settlers be warned by their Nez Perce friends they would not be harmed if they remained neutral during hostilities. But the chiefs voted down that suggestion.
On the tenth day of the meetings one young man, Walaitits, left the council in disgust after boldly threatening to take revenge on the whites. His father had been murdered by a settler in an unprovoked quarrel over land. This settler was Larry Ott, who had killed an Indian on March 1, 1875.5 As in the case of We-lot-yah, the white man was not punished for his crime.
Joseph spoke at great length in answer to the youth’s demand for blood. Apparently convinced, then, that he had won over the conclave to his viewpoint, the chief left the conference to butcher his cattle for his family. Especially in need of beef at this time was one of his wives who soon expected to become a mother. Joseph did not know then that many of the young men were obtaining whiskey from settlers, the fiery effect of which on their brains would drive them to acts of madness.6 If the chief had anticipated any trouble at this time, as has often been charged against him, he would have followed the Indian custom of sending the women and children to a place of safety, instead of exposing them.
The young brave who had quitted the council secured his share of the dangerous firewater and rode through the camp, shouting defiance of white men. According to the Indian testimony, an old man ridiculed him, saying, “If you are so brave, why do you not avenge the murder of your father by killing the man who did it?”7 Goaded by the taunt, the youth’s anger flared into action.
Two other intoxicated young men, Isapsis-ilpilp (Red Moccasin-top) and Um-til-ilp-cown, joined Walaitits, a cousin of the former, and the three started for Slate Creek, their blood ignited with a burning lust to kill. It is significant that all were members of White Bird’s band, and must have felt sure of their warlike chief’s moral support for whatever acts they might commit. Red Moccasin-top was the son of Yellow Bull, a subchief of the same band. The latter pursued his boy and tried to persuade the youth to return to the village with him. But Isapsis-ilpilp refused to heed his father’s advice and rode along with the others.
McWhorter gives a somewhat different version, stating the young men, Wahlitits (Walaitits) included, were staging a war parade through the camp when his horse stepped “on a spread canvas covered with kouse roots drying in the sun.” Thereupon Heyoom Moxmox (Yellow Grizzly Bear) chided Wahlitits for spoiling his wife’s “hardworked food” and taunted him for “playing brave,” but failing to avenge his father’s murder. After brooding over the matter overnight, Wahlitits determined to seek revenge, and took along his cousin Red Moccasin-top and his seventeen-year-old nephew Swan Necklace (Um-til-ilp-cown) as horse holder. None of the young warriors was intoxicated at this time, according to McWhorter’s Indian sources.8
Slate Creek was a tributary of the Salmon River, about one hundred miles, Howard estimated, from Fort Lapwai. Here, on the afternoon of June 13, the three young Indians failed to find Larry Ott, who had fled to the Florence mines and disguised himself as a Chinaman. Instead they murdered Richard Divine, an old, retired English sailor who lived alone, but who, Yellow Wolf declares, “had badly treated the Indians.” Early the next day they killed Robert Bland, Henry Elfers, a member of the council of arbitration,9 and Henry Beckroge, taking the settlers’ guns and ammunition. The youths then mounted the horses of the murdered men and rode down the Salmon River. Soon they met and fired upon Samuel Benedict, painfully wounding him. He had killed a drunken Indian in 1875, and was accused of having sold liquor to the Nez Perces. Benedict managed to escape to his cabin.
Exulting in their sanguinary deeds, the young braves rode back to White Bird’s camp on the morning of June 14. Aflame with reckless courage, they exhibited the horses and guns they had taken from the murdered whites.
Big Dawn, a brother of Yellow Bull and the uncle of Red Moccasin-top, leaped on one of the captured horses and rode through the village, shouting, “Now you will have to go to war! See! Walaitits has killed men and stolen horses! Now the soldiers will be after us! Prepare for war! Prepare for war!”10
At Big Dawn’s words a near panic seized the camp. For a time shock paralyzed everyone, and then all the pent-up emotions of the last few years burst forth like the fury of lions at the kill. Here, as elsewhere, the Indian testimony is contradictory. McWhorter’s informants declared Two Moons rode through the camp urging further forays. But Two Moons himself did not mention it in giving his own story to McWhorter. On the contrary, Two Moons declared he left camp in the morning upon arising to seek Joseph and inform him of the killings. Curtis’ Nez Perce sources, though, state that White Bird, who had been favoring war for years, mounted his horse and rode around the village, calling for all warriors to join the killers. The young men and the tewats, in hearty accord, cheered him on.
These revengeful acts, perpetrated by reckless youths, would precipitate the bloody, costly, and tragic Nez Perce War. While the Indians affirmed that it was the settlers who brought on the conflict by their numerous acts of injustice and aggression, many other causes were responsible, and the settlers’ acts furnished a contributory factor. As already shown, the roots of other causes of the war reached back into the years. One remote cause was found in Dr. Elijah White’s proposal of 1842 that the Nez Perce nation elect a head chief over all the bands. Again, Stevens’ arbitrary recognition of Lawyer as head chief at the council of 1855 first strained the relationship between the United States government and the Indians, and hostility was increased by the Nez Perces’ dissatisfaction with the treaty of that
year. Then the government’s dilatory action in not ratifying either the Treaty of 1855 or the one of 1863 for four years after signing intensified the disaffection among the chiefs. The government’s failure to keep faith with the Nez Perces by violating treaty obligations further aggravated them. Finally, the action taken by the commission of 1863 in holding all bands of the Nez Perces bound to a rule by majority became an inciting cause, when the government accepted Lawyer’s sale of the Wallowa Valley as binding and legal.
Immediate causes of the war included the white settlers’ unlawful preemption of Indian lands, and their mistreatment of the Nez Perces; the favoritism shown white men in the frontier courts; the decision of the committee of 1876 to accept Governor Grover’s declaration that Joseph’s band had no legal right to Wallowa after 1863; and the government’s command to the Wal-lam-wat-kins to quit the valley of winding waters—a land made sacred to Joseph’s people by their Dreamer religious beliefs. All these were inciting causes of the conflict, touched off by the bloodthirsty acts of the three young braves.
Tuhulhutsut, boiling with mortification over his imprisonment, is said to have organized another raiding party of seventeen warriors. They, along with Yellow Bull, joined the three murderers and rode back to the valleys and steep slopes of the Salmon River mountains to spread the carnage. The war party hunted down the wounded Benedict and killed him as he tried to escape.
Unsuspecting whites found themselves in the midst of the frontier’s worst scourge—an Indian war. James Baker and a Frenchman, August Bacon, were the next victims of the raiders, who then ransacked and burned their cabins to the ground and drove off the cattle. The postmaster of White Bird, John J. Manuel, and his little daughter, Maggie, although both badly wounded, managed to escape with their lives into the brush.
Meanwhile, the more conservative element in the Indian village took down their lodges and moved to Cottonwood Creek, leaving at the old site one double and one single tepee. Apart from the others stood the confinement lodge where Joseph’s wife was giving birth to a baby girl. A number of treaty Indians fled to the Lapwai Reservation.
The nontreaties from Tuhulhutsut’s and White Bird’s bands joined Looking Glass, who was encamped on Cottonwood Creek. But this chief, not wishing to be involved in the trouble, promptly packed up and hurried to his own territory on the Clearwater. Hush-hush-cute did the same, but set up his new village above Stites and also on the Clearwater. Many of Joseph’s band likewise took the hint to depart from the troubled zone.
When the three young murderers had returned to camp, Two Moons rode out on the morning of June 14 to inform Joseph of what had happened. He met the chief, Alokut, Half Moon, John Wilson, Three Eagles, Welweyas (described by Alokut’s wife as “a half-man-and-half-woman, who dressed like a woman”), Joseph’s daughter Sound of Running Feet, and Alokut’s wife Wetatonmi all coming home to Joseph’s lodge after butchering the cattle. Just at this time, according to Three Eagles, Big Dawn was riding around the village, inciting the people to fight. While he was talking, the Indians caught up their ponies and began to move away.
Two Moons relates that Joseph and Alokut made no reply to his news of the killings, but rode silently and swiftly to camp, leaving the women to bring on the twelve packhorses loaded with beef. The brothers found most of the lodges already down. They tried to halt the panicked exodus to Cottonwood but failed. Wetatonmi recounts how Joseph and Alokut rode among the people, exhorting them, “Let us stay here till the army comes! We will then make some kind of peace with them.”11
But the rest hurried after their families, leaving five men in the two lodges. However, Yellow Wolf declared, “All left but Joseph and his band and about thirty-five other men. These stayed to guard against any enemy surprise, but some were afraid Joseph and Ollokot [Alokut] might desert the other Indians.”12 Alokut’s wife confirmed this latter point to McWhorter, but stated only the brothers’ tepees remained and “three men were with them.” If fighting started, apparently Joseph’s fifty-five warriors would be badly needed and the hostiles would tolerate no defection by their Wallowa brethren.
Three Eagles relates:
Joseph’s brother-in-law told him: “We must go back to Lapwai. There is no reason why we should have trouble. We were not here when the white men were killed, and we need not go with them.”13
Three Eagles agreed to this, but Joseph, who apparently had second thoughts, answered:
“I can hardly go back. The white people will blame me, telling me that my young men have killed the white men, and the blame will come on me.” Alokut said nothing. The young men who had killed the white men did not belong to Joseph’s band, but to the Lamtama [White Bird’s band]. . . . So we packed up [June 15] and moved to the camp at Sapatsash [Cottonwood Creek].14
The next day (June 16) all of the Indians went on to White Bird Canyon.
Analyzing the situation later, Joseph said:
I was deeply grieved. . . . I knew that their acts would involve all my people. I saw that the war could not then be prevented. The time had passed. I counseled peace from the beginning. I knew that we were too weak to fight the United States. We had many grievances, but I knew that war would bring more. . . . I would have given my own life if I could have undone the killing of white men by my people.
I know that my young men did a great wrong, but I ask, Who was first to blame? They had been insulted a thousand times; their fathers and brothers had been killed; their mothers and wives had been disgraced; they had been driven to madness by the whisky sold to them by white men; they had been told by General Howard that all their horses and cattle which they had been unable to drive out of Wallowa were to fall into the hands of white men; and, added to all this, they were homeless and desperate.
I blame my young men and I blame the white men. I blame General Howard for not giving my people time to get their stock away from Wallowa. I do not acknowledge that he had the right to order me to leave Wallowa at any time. I deny that either my father or myself ever sold that land. . . . It may never again be our home, but my father sleeps there, and I love it as I love my mother. I left there, hoping to avoid bloodshed.15
When Joseph learned the young men had been secretly buying large quantities of ammunition and food in the neighboring towns, he realized that all his hopes and efforts for peace were futile. His somber thoughts must then have turned to his wife and the new baby—born at Tepahlewam, near Tolo Lake, the place called Rocky Canyon by the whites. They, together with the other women and children, would suffer most from war. Yet, as chief of his people, his first duty was to look after their welfare and safety.
“I knew I must lead them in fight,” said the chief, “for the whites would not believe my story.”16
Ever since the war of 1877 there had been a controversy as to whether the nontreaties had a war chief during the retreat, and whether Joseph or Looking Glass was entitled to that honor. Most documentary evidence available when the author and her assistant, Dan McGrath, did their original research in 1933–34 indicated there was, in truth, a war chief, and Joseph was the most likely candidate. All the army officers—Perry, Parnell, C. E. S. Wood, Whipple, and Forse; and Generals Sherman, Howard, Gibbon, Sturgis, and Miles—credited Joseph with the real leadership, as did Commissioner of Indian Affairs Hayt. George W. Fuller, former librarian of the Spokane Public Library and historian of repute, also corroborated the premise that Joseph was the war chief. Fuller’s History of the Pacific Northwest was one of the most scholarly works on the history of that region written to 1934.
Indian sources contacted by Howard and McGrath also supported the foregoing thesis. Samuel Tilden, former member of the Flathead Indian Reservation police, and one of the few Nez Perce survivors of the war, declared Joseph to be the real leader. This was likewise the understanding of Joseph Blackeagle, grand-nephew of the chief, who, as a boy, often heard the older members of his tribe discuss the Nez Perce War.
In addition, settlers in the region of hostilities believed Jo
seph to be the war chieftain. Dan McGrath’s mother, living in Missoula at the time, vividly remembered seeking refuge at the Higgins and Worden store. Her mother, Mrs. Peter Deery, was nursing Captain Rawn’s wife during the summer, and knew Joseph personally. Mrs. McGrath spoke the Nez Perce tongue and often played with the Indian children. The Nez Perces frequently camped near her father’s homestead while on their way to and from the buffalo hunt and visited with the family. Both Mrs. McGrath and her mother stated that Chief Joseph led the fighting forces, while Looking Glass acted the part of diplomat. This statement was based on conversations with the old men and women who were captured in the Bitterroot Valley. They received medical treatment from Mrs. Deery, and for hours would sit in the farmhouse telling her their story of woes and injustice. All protested that the white men had driven them into war—also they declared Joseph to be the war chief. None of the Nez Perces, they averred, had any intentions of harming the people of Montana, for they considered them their friends.
An early dissenter to this viewpoint was Duncan MacDonald, half Scot and half Nez Perce, and a relative of White Bird. He interviewed that chief in 1877–78 during his exile in Canada, and published the Nez Perce account of the war in the New Northwest of Deer Lodge during 1878–79. MacDonald stated that White Bird called Looking Glass the war chief. Judge William I. Lippincott, of Butte, made a special trip to the Flathead Indian Reservation at Arlee in 1934 to inquire about this and other information for Howard and McGrath, but Duncan MacDonald was unable to enlighten the judge about the matter. No doubt, the element of time had caused MacDonald to forget many details at this late date.
Also Will Cave, historian of Missoula, Montana, and volunteer in the Nez Perce War, supported MacDonald’s claim. However, Cave’s contention that everyone in Missoula spoke only of Looking Glass is disproved by quotations from letters written at the time and reprinted in Chapter 16 of this volume. Looking Glass, however, was better known in Missoula than Joseph, and had, in fact, passed through the town shortly before the Lapwai council in May.
Saga of Chief Joseph Page 13
