Cries from the Earth: The Outbreak Of the Nez Perce War and the Battle of White Bird Canyon June 17, 1877 (The Plainsmen Series)

by Terry C. Johnston

  Do you know the army will have no pay for practically six months? We heard from some army friends in Portland and they say army people are very blue there.

  Major Boyle’s family arrived last week and they are nearly fixed. Mrs. Boyle is a very pretty woman and pleasant. They have children, for which I am very glad. They are much older than mine, but it is pleasant to see the young people about this quiet post. They have a pretty girl about twelve, a boy about ten, and a grownup son.

  Our Indian troubles ended in a sort of compromise with the dissatisfied Nez Perce understanding they must come in and be good. They are the ones who always make for the trouble. I wish they would kill them all.

  Doctor and I went to some of the councils, but did not stay more than an hour. The Indian smell was awful. This chief of theirs, Joseph, will admit no boundary to his lands but those he chooses to make himself. I wish somebody would kill him before he kills any of us. The last day of the council Agent Monteith leaned over and asked me if my hair felt on tight. It doesn’t feel very tightly on when I think of these horrible devils around us.

  Mrs. Perry was confident the Indians wouldn’t come to terms and that we would have a war this spring but it appears General Howard has been able to settle matters so we will have no more Indian scares.

  There was an Indian funeral in sight the other day, and the brave was tied onto his horse and taken that way to the burying ground, his arms, head, and legs hanging over the sides of his horse.

  On Sunday mornings we see dozens and dozens of the Treaty Indians, dressed in the brightest combinations of colors, going down to church. The women nearly all have babies strapped to their backs in those funny things, one of which I sent you.

  During church a few Sundays ago, an Indian came in, and as he came up to his seat, he stood something tied in a pillow case, up in a corner. Mrs. McF. says she thought he had brought a present of a ham to the Agent, but after church he produced a little dead baby out of the pillow case and wanted it buried.

  Enough about the Indians at last. I must finish our letter as our first mail for this week is being gathered up. With much love,

  Your affectionate daughter,

  Emily F.

  Chapter 7

  Season of Hillal

  1877

  BY TELEGRAPH

  All England Waiting to Welcome General Grant.

  Account of the Late Indian Fight Up North.

  DAKOTA.

  Lame Deer’s Dear Defeat.

  CHICAGO, May 30.—General Sheridan has dispatches confirming the following account of a battle with the Indians on the 7th: General Miles, with companies F, H, I and G, of the 2d cavalry, and twenty-five mounted men of the 5th infantry, attacked an Indian village on little Muddy creek, ninety miles from the mouth of the Tongue river, surprising and routing them. They pursued the redskins five miles over a rough country on foot. Fourteen dead Indians were counted upon the field, and many others are known to have been killed and wounded. Some 450 ponies and horses and fifty-four lodges, with their entire contents were taken. The cavalry found many new agency goods, together with the saddles, guns, officers’ clothing, etc., taken from the cavalry in the Custer fight. The band were Minnecongous, led by Lame Deer.… General Miles had a narrow escape from being shot by two Indians, who, under cover of friendly greeting, came near shooting him just before the engagement.

  “Where are you going so late in the morning?” his wife asked Shore Crossing as he flung aside the lodge door and stood in the muted light of that overcast sky.

  He turned to look at her with disdain, finding the woman on her knees, bent over the roots she had scattered across a piece of canvas spread upon the ground still damp from last night’s rain. The leaden drops had hammered against the lodge skins as he quickly fell asleep near the snoring Red Moccasin Tops.

  Shore Crossing squinted at her, his head throbbing with a sharp pain as he heard his cousin follow him from the lodge. Struggling with what to say to her because the Nee-Me-Poo language had no profanity, he eventually explained, “We are going off to make these many fools sorry for their sharp words to me.”

  She stood, her hands balled on her hips accusingly. “I am afraid you will be the fool if you go.”

  “Leave me be of your words, woman.” Shore Crossing turned away from his wife, releasing the knot in the long lead rope that tied his old pony to a lodge peg. “Perhaps you will be singing a different song when I return.”

  At the lodge of Red Moccasin Tops they stopped to collect a blanket they threw over the sodden back of the pony; then Shore Crossing’s cousin collected one of his family’s poor travois horses to ride.

  Instead of immediately leaping onto the back of his pony, Shore Crossing stood a moment, thoughtfully gazing up at Red Moccasin Tops. “We need a horse holder.”

  “Who should we bring?” Red Moccasin Tops asked.

  “We’ll go get my nephew.”

  Wetyetmas Wahyakt, Swan Necklace, was sitting alone beneath a tree, watching some young girls assist their mothers and grandmothers drying out rain-soaked bedding, when Shore Crossing and Red Moccasin Tops rode up. He was a little younger than them both, no more than twenty summers.

  “Come with us, Nephew.”

  Swan Necklace stood, dusting his hands off on the front of his leggings, looking one last time at the nearby girls who giggled behind their hands, playing coy with him. “Where are we going?”

  “To kill a white man.” Shore Crossing held down his hand.

  Swan Necklace gazed longingly at the girls, then looked up at his uncle again and shrugged. “All right,” he answered. “I will go.” He reached out and grabbed his uncle’s wrist, swinging himself up behind the warrior.

  They turned their ponies away from that camp at Tepahlewam and started down the breaks on the north side of White Bird Hill, following the creek of that name west as it descended the slopes for its rendezvous with the Salmon.1

  As the trio turned upriver that afternoon, Shore Crossing realized his head no longer hurt as much as it had, the hangover having put him in such a foul humor. Nonetheless, he remained steadfast that those who had ridiculed him would be made the fools by the time he returned to camp bearing the Shadow’s scalp. He would find that settler named Larry Ott and, in those moments before he killed the Shadow, remind the white man of what he had done to his father—then take the hair, some horses, and any firearms they could find at the place.

  The scalp and all of that plunder would make for a grand entrance into the camp upon their return. No one would laugh behind their hands at Shore Crossing ever again!

  He was as handsome as any man, trim and athletic, with a reputation as the unsurpassed long-distance runner and wrestler among the Non-Treaty bands. Shore Crossing had honed his strength by clambering up the Wallowa country’s sheer mountain escarpments and swimming the fierce currents of the Snake, the Salmon, and the Imnaha. It was reported his strength could well be that of two men, because he roped and broke young, fiery colts. Some claimed Shore Crossing’s chief amusement was to disrobe and sprint after a band of green, half-wild horses, driving them right into the river, where he would plunge after them—mounting the most spirited of the herd—and swim the pony to the far shore despite its frenzied attempts to throw him off.

  It was Shore Crossing who would be the fuse that ignited the powder keg Cut-Off Arm had shoved under Toohoolhoolzote and all those young warriors who had been clamoring for war.

  Not all that far down White Bird Creek the trio came upon the homestead of John J. Manuel, who served as postmaster at the tiny settlement of White Bird. The Shadow stood back in the doorway of his store there at the mouth of Chapman Creek as the three reined up in the yard and made signs that they wanted to use the white man’s grinding stone for their knives.

  Manuel looked them over. Finding they carried no firearms, he pointed them in the direction of the foot-treadle grindstone he had sitting beneath a shady tree where he sharpened plow and hoe blades for nearby sett
lers. Smiling in a most friendly manner, the three young men nodded and turned away to begin work on their knives.

  When they were finished, the trio remounted, waved to Manuel, and left, continuing on down White Bird Creek. After a short distance they came to a store owned by Harry Mason, which stood less than two miles from the Salmon.

  “Before the weather grew warm this spring,” Shore Crossing explained to the other two as he brought his horse to a halt outside the log building, “this Shadow whipped two of Toohoolhoolzote’s men because he thought they were cheating him in a trade.”

  “Are you wanting to kill him too?” asked Red Moccasin Tops from the other horse.

  “No,” and Shore Crossing shook his head. “But maybe we can trade him for a weapon.”

  Inside, the trio offered the store man one of their ponies for a rifle and some bullets. None of the three could speak any of the white man’s tongue, so they had to make do with pantomime, struggling to make the stern-eyed Shadow understand.

  Throughout the short-lived dickering, Mason remained planted in one spot behind his counter, his suspicious eyes flicking back and forth over his three visitors. Time and again he refused their trade, ordering them to leave. On their way out the door, Shore Crossing asked about the price of a few other items and signed to explain that they might be back later with some money.

  Harry Mason did not take his sweaty, trembling hand off the revolver he clutched under the counter until the trio had remounted and were on their way down the creekside trail.

  At the mouth of the White Bird the three warriors crossed to the west bank of the Salmon, where they stopped again and dismounted long enough to smear on a little grease and paint Shore Crossing had brought along in a pouch he wore over his shoulder. It wasn’t until they stopped at this place that Swan Necklace truly believed that the other two fully intended to kill the man who had murdered Shore Crossing’s father.

  Wide-eyed and subdued, the youngest quickly painted himself, squatting on the damp ground with the older men. That finished, they turned upriver. The Ott homestead was no more than three of the white man’s winding miles away now.

  Halting on the hillside overlooking the settler’s place, the three gazed down upon the buildings the murdering Shadow had raised on this stolen ground, looking with contempt upon the fences that thieving Shadow had erected across Eagle Robe’s garden. For a long moment Shore Crossing stared at that unmarked spot near the smaller of the log houses where he had found his father propped against the fence post, breathing his last.

  “Come,” he finally said to Red Moccasin Tops as he started his own pony down the hill. “Let’s go get this killing started.”

  Larry Ott was not in the smaller building. Nor did they find him working in the larger. After returning to the smaller log house and pilfering through the Shadow’s belongings for firearms or anything of value, Shore Crossing stomped outside.

  The other two followed him into the yard, where they stood for a moment until Shore Crossing finally admitted, “He isn’t here.”

  “S-so we go back to camp now?” Swan Necklace asked, his voice quaking a bit in relief.

  Shore Crossing shook his head. “There is another.”

  “Who?” asked Red Moccasin Tops, a grin appearing.

  “The one called Devine.”

  “I know of him. He murdered a crippled Palouse woman last autumn.”

  “Yes, Devine murdered old Dakoopin,” Shore Crossing said, turning to Swan Necklace.

  “What did the old woman do that he would kill her?” the youngest asked.

  With a shrug, Shore Crossing said, “Dakoopin chased the man’s horse out of her garden—and for that she lost her life.”

  “Devine has bad dogs, dogs he sets on Indians,” Red Moccasin Tops explained. Grinning wickedly, he headed for his pony and said, “Let’s go find him instead.”

  After re-crossing the Salmon they struck the main north-south trail that ran along the river’s east bank and continued up the valley. Covering another four of the white man’s miles, the trio reached the mouth of Slate Creek, a tributary of the Salmon. By this time the three young men were growing hungry, so they stopped to buy some food from Charles P. Cone, a settler who had always been on good terms with the Nee-Me-Poo because he had actually purchased his land from Chief Whistle Knocker back in 1863.

  After trading off Swan Necklace’s knife for a bit of food, Shore Crossing next offered to trade something else for a handful of bullets. Cone looked the three over suspiciously. When he saw they had no weapon, he refused to trade.2

  Another four miles up the Salmon brought them to the ranch of Jurden Henry Elfers on the north bank of John Day Creek. Elfers and his two hired hands were in the barn milking cows when the trio appeared out of the growing gloom of twilight. From where she sat on the front porch, Catherine Elfers thought the horsemen were travelers in need of a bed in their wayside inn, so she disappeared into the house as her husband came out to talk to the three young men in their Nez Perce tongue.

  “We are looking for some horses that strayed from our camp on Camas Prairie,” Shore Crossing explained, his eyes glancing at the fine horses this Shadow kept in the corral against the barn.

  Elfers eyed the poor condition of the two animals the trio were riding. “How many?”

  Holding up his hands, Red Moccasin Tops showed all fingers.

  With a wary shake of his head, Elfers said, “No loose horses around here. Sorry.”

  Shore Crossing shrugged and turned his horse away, followed by Red Moccasin Tops on the second pony. Elfers watched them move slowly away into the nearly consuming darkness of that summer night.

  The stars were out and the moon had nearly risen to mid-sky by the time the trio worked their way on up the east bank of the Salmon. Near the mouth of Carver Creek, they halted the two horses back in the trees and the shadows looming at the edge of the clearing where a small cabin stood, its black windows like the eye sockets of a grinning buffalo skull.

  “Get down,” Shore Crossing ordered.

  Swan Necklace gulped apprehensively and obediently slipped off the back of the pony. Shore Crossing hit the ground at the same time Red Moccasin Tops dismounted.

  “Here,” and Shore Crossing dropped the weary pony’s reins into his nephew’s hand.

  Swan Necklace took the rope to the second pony, too.

  The leader instructed, “You stay here until we return.”

  “Y-you going in there?” the youth asked, his eyes flicking back to the log house.

  Shore Crossing turned to stare at the cabin, too. He nodded, then turned to Red Moccasin Tops. “Elfers had some good horses, didn’t he, brother?”

  “Fine horses, yes.”

  “Are y-you thinking of going back to steal some horses f-from Elfers?” Swan Necklace stammered.

  “When we finish here,” Shore Crossing declared in a raspy whisper, “in that cabin is a man who needs killing. And I want his gun.”

  Red Moccasin Tops turned to Swan Necklace, using that expression harkening back to those early days of first contact between the tribe and white traders: “This Boston Man, he came here from far away across the big ocean. Ever since he arrived, he has been very cruel to our people. I am going to help Shore Crossing kill this Shadow tonight.”

  After creeping stealthily to the door, Shore Crossing had no trouble finding the latchstring. He pulled it slowly. When Red Moccasin Tops nodded that he was ready, they threw their weight against the planks, bursting into the moonlit interior. Across that darkened room Richard Devine kicked savagely at his blankets, half-rising from his bed as he lunged for a rifle standing against a wall. The three of them reached the carbine at the same time, but the old sailor was no match for the two youngsters.

  Wrestling the repeater from the Shadow’s hands, Shore Crossing leaped back, worked the lever, and growled a warning to his cousin.

  In that breathless heartbeat as Red Moccasin Tops released the white man, Devine spun around in the da
rk to stare boldly into Shore Crossing’s eyes. Cursing his attackers, the Shadow was leaping for the rifle holder when the bullet from his own weapon caught him squarely in the face.

  Standing there in those moments that followed, Shore Crossing waited while the echo of the gun’s blast faded from his ears, until he felt his eyes grow accustomed to the darkness after the blinding muzzle-flash. Listening, watching for some movement from the white man sprawled on the floor, he finally spoke to his cousin.

  “Look for a belt gun. And bullets, too. Anything good we can trade.”

  They ransacked the tiny cabin, stuffing a few poor items into a carpet satchel; then Shore Crossing knelt over the dead man.

  “I like his shirt,” he said, rolling the red felt between a thumb and forefinger.

  But he did not steal it to wear. Instead, they cut long strips from the shirt and used the red flannel to wrap up their braids.

  “It is the color of the blood,” Shore Crossing exulted, holding one of his braids out before his eyes to admire what he had done. “The first blood we’ve taken from the Shadows!”

  They crossed the starlit yard to reach the frightened Swan Necklace.

  “Is … is he…”

  “Dead?” Shore Crossing finished the question. “Yes. I killed him. With his own gun.” And he held it up for the youth’s inspection.

  Red Moccasin Tops clambered atop his pony, clutching the carpet satchel. “That Boston Man Elfers talks very funny, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes, he does,” Shore Crossing replied. “And he has those fine horses I would like to take back to camp with me.”

  The younger cousin smiled as Shore Crossing climbed atop his pony and pulled Swan Necklace up behind him. Then Red Moccasin Tops said, “We are going past his place on our way back to Tepahlewam, you know.”