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

Watson had explained to the menfolk who were coming in from up and down the Salmon that they should fell logs from the edge of the nearby timber not only for use as their pickets but by cutting down the trees at the fringe of the settlement they would give themselves a far better field of fire in the event of attack. So while men like Hiram Titman, E. R. Sherwin, and Mr. Van Sickle joined Watson’s miners, the women followed along behind the trenching crews, filling in the cracks between the upright timbers with smaller logs and saplings so that no stray bullet could find its way into the compound.

  Helen Walsh and Elizabeth Osborn, along with their children, all lent their help as soon as Watson and the miners from Florence brought them into that sanctuary of Slate Creek. The Missouri emigrant took no small pride in getting the women and their young’uns safely back to this rendezvous for area settlers. Shame was—he was struck now as he looked around at the bustle of the construction—nearly every woman here was a widow, most every child already an orphan.

  Oh, the children, he brooded that cloudy evening of June 15. How brave they had been so far, staying so quiet without so much as a whimper or a sob … as long as no one mentioned Indians or Nez Perce or their fathers. The slightest slip of the tongue like that and the little ones began to scream in unholy terror—reliving what they had been forced to witness over the past day or so.

  Despite what those three warriors told Charles F. Cone less than two days back—saying they wouldn’t harm him and suggesting that he should go tell others that they were going on a rampage—most of the men flocking here to Slate Creek weren’t anywhere near as optimistic as Charley. Chances were damned good the war parties would get liquored up, work their blood into a boil, and then it wouldn’t matter what white man they ran across.

  “Goddamn the red bastards,” Watson grumbled as he turned aside with the small keg of powder he was lugging down into the stone cellar of Charley Cone’s house. War’s a madness meant only for men, he brooded as he descended into the lamp-lit darkness. God knows it should never be visited upon women and children.

  He set the keg down at the center of the bare room, there beneath the cellar’s only furniture—a small, simple wood table—then made his way outside to retrieve the third of the five kegs of black powder. When he was finished hauling the last of them into the damp cellar this experienced artillery veteran planned to join all five with a running fuse that could be lit with one match at the cellar entrance, then drape a bedsheet over the table to hide his hidden cache of death. If the Indians attacked their fortifications, Watson and the other thirty men would do their damnedest to defend the forty women and children they would send down into this stone cellar below the fortified house.

  Should all appear lost at the palisades, with the red bastards breaching the stockade and flooding into the compound, Watson had chosen a half-dozen miners who each swore they would light the fuse before their dying breath. So with seven of them vowing to make that final retreat to these stone steps, William was sure one of their number would still be alive to reach the cellar door in those last moments of their unsuccessful defense.

  Stopping to wipe his forehead with a greasy bandanna, he watched Helen Walsh as she shoveled dirt back into the trench beside Mrs. Catherine Elfers at the wall. Then Watson noticed a similar gravely lined face worn by Elizabeth Osborn. Neither of the women had said anything of the cruelty they had suffered at the hands of the drunken warriors. They didn’t have to. What depravity they had endured was plainly written in their eyes.

  Once again this war veteran realized why it would be better to blow up the stone house, killing every woman and child huddled inside, than allow any of them to ever again fall into the hands of the Nez Perce sonsabitches.

  He went through these preparations with his cache of gunpowder because William Watson realized the men might not be capable of holding back an all-out assault, especially because of that nearby bluff overlooking the Cone house on the east. It continued to nag at him so much that Watson finally ordered a handful of the men up that slope to solve this tactical problem by digging a rifle pit at the crown of the bluff where he would post a round-the-clock rotation of two-man watches.

  “From here,” Watson explained to the thirty miners, settlers, and store men whom he had gathered with him at the just-completed hollow scraped out of the rocky ground, “our pickets can watch over a good piece of the country here ’bouts: up and down the river, and the hills back of us too. They’ll signal the rest of us early if they spot any war parties coming our way.”

  “That’s right,” agreed E. R. Sherwin. “Look down there. No matter if them Injuns come along the road hugging the side of the Salmon or they stick to the high trail up along the canyon wall—we’ll still see ’em coming afore they’re on us.”

  “What about that bridge down there?” asked Hiram Titman as he pointed down at the span crossing Slate Creek to the north.

  “Awful close,” Charley Cone added. “Come night, the Injuns could slip across the bridge and get right up to the walls afore we’ll see ’em.”

  “Maybeso we’ll make it hard as we can for the bastards to get across,” Watson said. “At sundown every night, I’ll send out a detail to pry up the cross-planks on that bridge and bring ’em into our stockade for the night.”

  “Damn fine idea,” Harry Cone complimented Watson, slapping him on the back of the shoulders. “High as Slate Creek’s running now, them Injuns won’t be swimming cross it to get to us.”

  “That’s right,” Watson said as he surveyed east, south, then west. “I figger they’ll rush us from another direction.”

  When he started down with the rest of them as it was growing dark, William Watson realized that all his people had to do now was wait.

  Watch … and wait.

  Chapter 27

  June 15, 1877

  “How soon can you be ready to depart, Colonel?” When General Howard asked David Perry that question late of the afternoon, the captain gazed squarely at his superior and, without the slightest hesitation, responded, “We will leave at first light, sir. Everything is in place, except for some additional transportation I’ll call down from Lewiston.”

  With those civilian messengers and their Nez Perce counterparts all racing in here to Fort Lapwai with their discouraging reports, it was clear that the army needed to move and be about its business without the slightest delay. For too long, so it seemed, they had dawdled in their dealings with the Non-Treaty bands, and now Oliver Otis Howard could see just what his liberality and evenhandedness had gotten him. Dead citizens and a territory just now being ravaged by the first flames of an Indian war.

  That afternoon Howard had penned a message to be carried back to Loyal P. Brown in Mount Idaho, hoping to reassure those panic-stricken civilians that the army had received the two dispatches and that help was indeed on its way:

  … [I am sending] two companies of cavalry to your relief … Other help will be en route as soon as it can be brought up. I am glad you are so cool and ready. Cheer the people. Help shall be prompt and complete. Lewiston has been notified.

  Yours truly,

  O. O. Howard

  Next he dispatched his aide-de-camp, First Lieutenant Melville C. Wilkinson, off to the nearest telegraph at Fort Walla Walla to wire his orders for additional troops he wanted brought in from around his department, as well as his request to engage twenty-five Indian scouts. First Lieutenant Peter Bomus would take Wilkinson in a buggy to Lewiston, where the quartermaster had Howard’s order to hire, for fifty dollars in coin from a local stage company, a buckboard and team that Wilkinson would drive on to Walla Walla.

  Because Captain Perry had only two companies of cavalry at Lapwai—no more than a hundred men at most—the general summoned two more cavalry companies under Captain Stephen G. Whipple to hurry over from that reconnaissance he had sent them on in the Wallowa Valley, in addition to calling up a large complement of foot soldiers stationed at Walla Walla, southwest of Lewiston, to come as quickly as possible by
steamer, along with three months’ supplies and rations.

  Finally, the last item of business before taking his supper was to have Perry’s quartermaster, Lieutenant Bomus, contract for the services of a string of pack mules and their handlers from the Lewiston freighting company of Grostein & Binnard for the coming campaign.

  After bolting down his supper with a few of the unmarried officers, since his wife was already on her way to visit family in The Dalles, David Perry huddled with Howard to plan their strategies for the next few days. Both believed that it should take no more than a week to bring the murderers, outlaws, and renegades to bay and force the rest onto the reservation. With the guilty warriors tried and quickly hung, life would return to normal at Lapwai and Howard could start back to Portland.

  The captain expressed how relieved he was that his wife wasn’t there that day when all hell was breaking loose. She was a high-strung woman as it was, Perry explained to the general, and easily given to theatrics. Had she been there to watch him preparing his troops to take off in pursuit of the murderers who already had innocent blood on their hands, he told Howard, she would have been inconsolable at best, maddeningly hysterical at worst.

  “Despite my optimism on just how quickly we can wrap up this action against the Non-Treaty bands,” Howard turned the subject away from such raw, personal issues, “it might take longer than my assessment.”

  “I choose to share your optimism, General.”

  “I’m still not comfortable in sending you out with so few men, Colonel.”

  “Permission to speak freely, sir?”

  “By all means.”

  Perry tugged at his tight collar as if chafing at the symbolic restrictions of their officer corps. “As you stated the case: We could wait, sir. Yes. Until the other troops arrive, then march after the warrior bands as quickly as possible. With reinforcements, I could be assured of a decisive victory, once I get the bands to stop, hold, and engage my large force. Or…”

  “Or what?” Howard asked when Perry turned aside and grew thoughtful.

  “Or I can take what cavalry we have here now and go in pursuit of those warriors who surely can’t number many more fighting men than I will have along under my command.”

  “I’m not so positive of your assessment of their numbers, Colonel. I think with the news we’ve been getting from the civilians that it’s certain none of the Non-Treaty groups are coming onto the reservation as they promised,” Howard reasoned.

  After all, this was the very day those bands were to have reported to the Lapwai agent.

  The general continued, “Which means that we must prudently take into account Monteith’s estimate that the chiefs have as many as two hundred fighting men available to throw against what troops you’ll lead against them.”

  “You’re having second thoughts on me getting under way as soon as possible, sir?”

  Howard scratched his chin whiskers, deliberating. “No,” he finally declared. “Brown over in Mount Idaho is clearly in dire straits.”

  “My mission, General?”

  “Yes—well, I don’t want you concerned with treating with the chiefs and their warriors, Colonel,” Howard advised. “No reason to waste your time convincing the chiefs to turn over the murderers to us for trial.”

  “They wouldn’t give the guilty parties over to a white man’s justice anyway, would they, sir?”

  “Certainly not. Despite the protests of those leaders of the Treaty bands like Jonah Hayes and James Reuben, who tried to convince me this afternoon that the murderers are few in number and beyond their chiefs’ control. And they most certainly won’t turn over the murderers, since they have no faith in the white man’s justice system after seeing our justice system fail them so many times in the past.”

  “So my objective, General?”

  “Put an immediate halt to the depredations, Colonel Perry. If you can do that and that alone until reinforcements arrive and I can lead them to rendezvous with you … the rest of this campaign will be nothing more than mopping things up.”

  Perry’s chest swelled with the pride he felt at leading this spearhead against the enemy. “I concur completely, General: we must crush this rebellion quickly, with all force necessary. Even if my two companies encounter all two hundred warriors you and the agent fear might be arrayed against us, each of my men is the equal of at least ten of those Nez Perce. Besides, I can’t imagine those warriors standing and giving us their best, sir. I don’t see it in their nature.”

  “It is true the Nez Perce have never raised arms against the white men or our government.” Howard measured the officer before him a moment, then asked, “You’re very optimistic that you’ll have this war over and done with before I get the reinforcements in here, aren’t you, Colonel?”

  Perry nodded and smiled. “I believe we’ll have the Non-Treaty bands on the run the moment they sight my cavalry, and from there on it will be no more than a chase where we have to follow their fleeing backsides, General.”

  * * *

  After his conference with General Howard, Perry watched the sun fall and the stars wink into view across the deepening indigo sky, growing more anxious as the hours passed. Then at dusk the post bugler stepped out to the center of the parade and blew “retreat.” Pacing the long porch that extended across the front of the duplex he and his wife shared with surgeon FitzGerald’s family, the captain grew all the more convinced that he could wait no longer for Lieutenant Bomus to bring that string of pack mules over from Lewiston.

  David Perry had come to a decision.

  “General,” he said breathlessly as he stepped inside the parlor of his residence, where Howard was engrossed in his reports at a small table by lamplight.

  “Colonel Perry—”

  “Sir, I request permission to depart tonight.”

  Howard straightened. “Tonight?”

  “As soon as I can put my companies into light marching order, sir.”

  Howard stared at the floor, scratching his beard thoughtfully. “Tonight.”

  “Time is critical in a situation such as this,” Perry argued. “The murderers have already had two full days to plunder and rape and kill, General. Putting some cavalry in the field as quickly as possible—tonight, in fact—no matter that it would be only these two companies, is better than making no show of force at all.”

  Howard looked up and seemed to study the captain’s face a long, anxious moment. “You won’t wait for the mules to get here?”

  “I’ll take the five mules we have here, sir. We’ll pack what rations and ammunition we’ll need until you rush the mule train to catch up to our rear.”

  Howard finally nodded. “Very well, Colonel. Get your column under way.”

  He had turned on his heel and was back out the open door before he realized he was on the long front porch, searching the parade in the last dim light of dusk. There—he spotted the man.

  “Major Trimble!” Perry suddenly called out to the commander of H Company, First Cavalry, using the officer’s brevet rank as the captain was crossing the corner of the parade, making for the cavalry barracks.

  Of late H Company had been reassigned from Fort Walla Walla. Their march here to Lapwai, in addition to some six weeks of field duty in recent months, made Trimble’s men more fit for the campaign trail than was Perry’s own F Company.

  Joel Graham Trimble came to a stop at the bottom of the steps, placed one foot up, and greeted the post commander by his brevet rank. “Colonel?”

  “How soon can you have H Troop ready to ride?”

  Instantly yanking his foot off the step, the forty-four-year-old straightened, the slight off-cast in the one eye that had suffered a serious wound at Gettysburg twitching noticeably. “Within the hour. Do you plan to embark without our supply train?”

  Perry’s voice was confident as he gazed into that one eye Trimble had pinned on him, “Each company will take along two pack mules that will have to do until the train catch up. I’ll leave word for
them to come on with all possible speed once the train arrives here. I trust that it won’t take them long to join us if they follow along with dispatch. Meanwhile, we can leave this evening in light marching order with those two pack mules for each company.”

  “Very good, Colonel. You’ll be leading F Company?”

  “Yes. Be sure the men carry three days’ cooked rations. An additional five days’ rations uncooked with each company’s supplies. Report to the quartermaster’s depot and draw forty rounds for each carbine, twenty-four loads for their side arms. An additional hundred rounds per man on the pack animals. Light marching order. Ready within the hour, Major Trimble?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Perry watched this older officer turn and start away for the barracks before he hollered into the twilight, “Mr. Theller!”

  “Yes, Colonel?” This junior officer, a first lieutenant with the Twenty-first Infantry assigned to Fort Lapwai, was already approaching the porch, having grown aware of the hubbub of sudden activity at Perry’s residence.

  Of the men he was taking with him, Theller had the least experience in battle. “You heard, Lieutenant?”

  “Yessir.”

  “I need a junior officer to ride in command of F Company.” He looked steadily at the infantry officer.

  “Cavalry, sir?”

  “Exactly. Are you the man to command my men, Lieutenant?”

  “By all means, Colonel!”

  Perry nodded with gratification at the junior officer. “See that Sergeant Baird alerts our troop and they are prepared to march inside of an hour. You understood my ration and ammunition orders to Captain Trimble?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Very good, Mr. Theller,” Perry replied. “Draw your rations and distribute the ammunition. We’re going to stamp out this brushfire and stamp it out quick.”

  Like many of the officers in the frontier army, David Perry had learned to soldier during the War of Rebellion against the secessionist states of the South. Early in ’62 he had earned a commission as a second lieutenant in the First Cavalry, and by that July he had earned his promotion to first lieutenant for action in battle. By November of ’64 Perry had advanced to his captaincy, the rank he now held as commanding officer at Fort Lapwai. As the Civil War was gasping its last in the spring of 1865, Perry won his first brevet for gallant service in the Battle of Five Forks on 1 April. The next day Jefferson Davis evacuated Richmond and the fighting was all but over.