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

  For a long moment, Perry studied the faces of his officers for some clue as to their mood; then he quickly glanced over his two companies and their limited supplies. He sighed, turning back to the civilians.

  “Gentlemen, do you have any guess how many warriors we would confront?”

  With a shrug, Chapman’s big horseshoe of a mustache twitched as he spoke, “Don’t matter how many warriors they got along, Captain. I’ve lived with and around these Injuns since I was a tad. If anybody knows the Nepercy, it’s me. I speak their talk good as any Nepercy buck. Ain’t that right, fellas?”

  The other civilians either nodded or grunted their agreement.

  Then Chapman continued, “So you mark my words when I tell you that these bastards are yellow-backboned scoundrels. Cowards of the first stripe, Captain. It don’t matter how many men they got against your soldiers, ’cause they ain’t gonna put up much of a fight once you tear into ’em.”

  “These red niggers showed how they’re better at ganging up on two or three white men at a time,” George Shearer snarled. “They ain’t fighters. The sonsabitches is nothing more’n thieves, rapers, and back-shooting murderers.”

  “They won’t stand and fight you, Captain,” Chapman assured.

  Perry was brooding as the militia leader went on with his explanation, for he was worrying. Should he allow the warrior bands to escape across the Salmon with all their plunder, without making any effort on his part to prevent it, then he knew he would be open to censure …

  “Why, Colonel … if I had the hunnert men you got with you here and now, don’t you know I could whip them Nepercy myself. If’n I only had your rifles—”

  “You’ll have that chance if you want it, Mr. Chapman,” Perry offered by way of interruption, measuring the civilian.

  “Meaning you want us to come along with your soldiers?” asked Chapman.

  “Subject to military orders, of course.”

  His brown teeth gleaming beneath that bristly black mustache, Chapman grinned wolfishly at Perry, saying, “Captain, I wouldn’t miss this fight for all the gold in Elk City.”

  * * *

  Oliver Otis Howard came awake with a start.

  Not long after sunset he had gone to bed in the Perry residence. As dark as it was outside now, it had to be close to midnight … or later.

  Stepping into his britches and pulling a tunic over his sleeping gown, the general shuffled past the table bearing those reports he was writing and immediately flung open the door. A commotion was growing outside on the darkened parade. Loud voices, and the most shrill, urgent one among them all was a woman’s. A knot of people and horses was moving his way.

  “What’s all this, Captain?” the general demanded as he stopped at the edge of the porch.

  William H. Boyle, presently in command of the post, stepped over, dragging a large Nez Perce woman by the arm. In turn, she was yanking on the reins to a jaded pony. Boyle saluted and said, “General, this here’s the wife of Jonah Hayes.”

  He studied her face in the dark a moment. A robust, fleshy woman. “Yes, I thought I recognized her. He’s the acting chief of the Treaty bands.”

  For the first time Howard noticed another Indian woman, younger, who had inched her pony up behind Hayes’s squaw. She hadn’t dismounted in the starshine.

  Then the big woman was talking loud again, nonstop. Yet it was her manner that most alarmed the general. A tiny warning bell clanged in the back of his mind. “What’s the problem?”

  “I have an interpreter on his way, sir,” Boyle apologized. “Can’t understand a thing she’s saying.” Then he turned at the sound of footsteps. “Here he comes.”

  Even before Alpowa Jim came to a halt among them, Howard was wringing his hands with anxiety and instructing him, “Find out what she’s got to say.”

  The two of them spoke for a few moments—she in her loud, passionate voice and he in hushed tones. Then the half-breed blinked like Gatling gunfire when he turned to Howard.

  “General, this Hayes woman, wife of the—”

  “I know who she is,” Howard interrupted, made short-tempered by the woman’s agitation. “Just say why she’s here and what she’s so all-fired excited to tell us!”

  With a gulp, the interpreter explained, “Hayes woman says the Nez Perce—them Non-Treaty bands—they fixed up a trap for your soldiers gone from here last night. Them soldiers you sent away run right into their trap. And … and—”

  “And what, my good man?”

  Alpowa Jim’s eyes were blinking like volley fire again. “And … they all been … been wiped out!”

  Chapter 31

  June 16–17, 1877

  Not long after he finished listening to all the stories, fears, and charges of those citizens huddling in Grangeville, Captain David Perry assembled that trio of his commissioned officers. Back on the road he had made sure the three were in on all that Chapman and the other civilians had to say about the strength and lack of fighting resolve in the Nez Perce warriors. Trimble, Theller, and Parnell deserved to have some voice in the steps he was about to take.

  “If we allow the Non-Treaties to escape across the Salmon without making a wholesale effort to catch and punish them,” Perry summed up his feelings for the others, “then I’m assured the citizens of this territory will hold the four of us, if not the army in general, in great contempt, gentlemen.”

  “These folks have been through hell,” Edward Russell Theller observed, his eyes glancing at an open patch of ground where some women and children were gathered. “They deserve our protection, Colonel.”

  Perry nodded. “Many of their complaints have to do with the Nez Perce stealing stock from the local ranches—so these people are anxious to get back what belongs to them and see the thieves get punished to the fullest extent of the law.”

  “We ain’t constables, Colonel,” Parnell grumbled, his brogue still thick with the peat of his birthland. “All due respect, sir … we’re soldiers, so we do a soldier’s job. Not no sheriff’s duty to chase after horse thieves.”

  “Lieutenant, I was given General Howard’s orders to come down here to determine how best to put this outbreak to rest and capture the guilty parties,” Perry explained, looking into the faces of the three. “But lately, I’ve been considering more and more about how and why the general didn’t box me in with orders that were unnecessarily restrictive.”

  “Please explain, Colonel?” Trimble asked.

  “It’s my belief that General Howard gave me enough freedom to handle the situation as I see fit, since I would be on the ground. Back at Fort Lapwai, none of us had enough information for him to give us restrictive orders when he dispatched us on this mission.”

  “So you’re saying we’re going after the Injuns?” Parnell asked, a measure of cheer returning to his voice.

  “Gentlemen, I do not believe I am overstepping my authority in the slightest if we give chase to that village we know is hiding the murderers and giving comfort to the guilty parties.”

  “But our men have been in the saddle for the better part of the last twenty-four hours, sir,” Theller argued. “Which means they haven’t had any decent sleep in more than thirty-six hours.”

  “And the horses are weary too,” Perry agreed. “Nonetheless, I am prepared to march this command after the Non-Treaty village so we can prevent its escape across the Salmon. We must put ourselves into attack position around their camp before first light and engage the warriors at dawn.”

  After waiting a moment while he studied their faces for any more misgivings, Perry continued. “I brought you here to ask for your opinions. I know it is unusual for a commanding officer to do so—but I feel as if we are confronted by unusual circumstances and I would like to proceed only if we’re all riding forward together.”

  Parnell glanced at Captain Trimble quickly, then spoke up. “Sir, I’m all in favor of attacking that village before it can escape.”

  “The same goes for me, Colonel,” Trimble agr
eed.

  Then the three of them turned to gaze at the last man, Edward Russell Theller.

  The lieutenant cleared his throat and told Perry, “All right. It’s unanimous. So we should get this battalion moving, sir.”

  Perry felt the surge of that old excitement electrify his very sinew. “Damn right, gentlemen. Inform your commands we are moving out in thirty minutes.”

  After leaving three men from among both companies to stay behind, posted to guard the battalion’s excess equipage, Perry sent his Nez Perce trackers forward, threw out both skirmishers and flankers, then started those one-hundred-some cavalrymen for the canyon of White Bird Creek.

  When it came time to march against the enemy, the two dozen or more civilians Ad Chapman boasted would be coming along failed to show up. The citizen militia numbered no more than eleven, including Chapman, when they loped up to join the column setting out to prevent the Indian village from crossing the Salmon.

  It was 9:30 P.M., Saturday, the sixteenth of June.

  * * *

  Those ninety-nine weary enlisted men, four officers, and their dozen Nez Perce trackers had climbed out of their saddles upon reaching Grangeville at sunset. They found fewer than forty men, women, and children huddled behind an upright stockade they had erected around Grange Hall.

  Minutes later First Sergeant Michael McCarthy watched about half of the fifty-two men from his H Company straggle back from the tall grass where they had picketed their horses as the shadows grew long. The rest had already kindled fires and put beans on to boil.

  “Get them white dodgers cooking, boys,” he ordered them as he moved among the dozen or so fires the hungry troopers surrounded. “You’ll damn well want something in your bellies afore the cap’n comes whistling up his night guard.”

  “So we gonna bunk in here for the night, Sarge?” asked Corporal Roman D. Lee.

  “You better pray we do, Cawpril,” McCarthy said, his voice still laden with much of that Newfoundland Irish heritage of his. “We been in the saddle for something shy of twenty-four hours now, so if you boys don’t need a rest, then those poor mother-loving horses you rode here sure do.”

  The beans smelled bloody good. Their fragrance was suddenly reminding his stomach of just how long it had been since last he had swallowed anything of substance.

  McCarthy had wandered south from Canada as soon as he was old enough to leave home. After a short time in Vermont he had ended up migrating to Boston—good Irish town that it was. There he had knocked around until he landed something solid as a printer’s devil. Seeing how he was only fifteen when the Civil War broke out, the most an eager young lad like himself could do was follow the war with every edition and extra of the newspaper.

  By the time the Southern states had been defeated and brought back into the fold, McCarthy had tired of the smell of printer’s ink and signed up for a five-year enlistment in the army. Sent west to Jefferson Barracks near St. Louis, where the army trained him to be a horseman, McCarthy was promptly shipped off to a First Cavalry outfit to fight Apaches down near the Mexican border. Wasn’t long before they moved McCarthy, now wearing corporal’s stripes, and some of his mates north to Oregon country, where they ended up chasing half a hundred poor Modocs around the Lava Beds for the better part of a year.

  In fact, he had been in on the chase and capture of Captain Jack himself. A downright sad thing that was, McCarthy often thought, how the chief’s friends and headmen had turned on him. Sad that most of those traitors went free and Jack hung at the end of a rope.

  McCarthy pushed an unruly lock of his auburn hair out of his eyes in that glow of the firelight and continued oiling his Colt’s .45-caliber service revolver. He knew that should he ever pick up four out of every five of this company’s carbines, he would find them rusty, fouled, and unfit for service in an Indian fight. Joseph and Mary, he’d tried! At least he’d keep his own weapons ready, waiting for those beans to boil, when the trumpet suddenly blared—

  “Joseph and Mary!” he grumbled, completely caught by surprise when Trumpeter Frank A. Marshall blew the stirring notes to “Boots and Saddles” as the last shreds of twilight faded and night was dripping down around them. It was nudging nine o’clock.

  Lumbering to his feet, McCarthy poked the oiling rag into the back pocket of his light-blue wool britches, then stuffed the cuffs with their wide yellow outer stripe into the tops of his dusty, scuffed black boots. A few of the closest horses whinnied, as if the beasts had already learned some of the goddamned bugle calls themselves.

  Of a sudden, the bivouac came alive. Sergeant Isador Schneider came trotting up. The man skidded to a halt, slapped heels together, and saluted, “First Sergeant! Compliments of the major—prepare to march!”

  Goddammit, he liked this German, he did. No matter that it was hard for McCarthy to understand him at times, Schneider always managed to say enough, always spoke most of it clear enough that McCarthy understood the transfer of orders from that fleshy Irishman Lieutenant Parnell, or this command come directly from Captain Trimble.

  “Cawprils!” McCarthy bawled like a wounded calf. “You heard our orders!”

  “But, Sarge!” whined Farrier John Drugan with a hint of Boston Irish in his voice. “We ain’t got our supper boiled!”

  “Eat them god-blessed beans if you want,” McCarthy growled, waving off the complaint. “Or dump ’em when you put out your fires. Just make sure you’re in the saddle when that trumpet blows. This army’s going on the march!”

  The corporals had half the grumbling men moving away into the dark, carrying the throat latches they would use to bring in the horses by rotation as the men began to throw the still-damp saddle blankets across the broad backs and cinch down those god-awful, ass-numbing McClellan saddles. In a matter of minutes their camp was alive with the bustle of soldiers given very little time to move out. Some of H Company chose to drag their kettles off the flames, where they started scooping the half-cooked white beans into their mouths, while others were content to soak their hard bread in the hot bean water or in their coffee before chewing it down. But the first sergeant got every man jack of them off his arse and moving when his horse was brought into bivouac.

  If Michael McCarthy had anything to say about it, H Company was not going to be bringing up the rear on tonight’s march because his men were the last who were ready to ride. No, sir—when Colonel Perry gave the order to “march,” H Company, First U.S. Cav, was gonna be there right at the front of the column, leading the way. If they were going to be fighting Injuns by sunup, then First Sergeant McCarthy was damn well gonna see that his men wouldn’t have to eat any other company’s dust on their ride into that battle.

  Joseph and Mary, but these weeds were no get-up-and-move-out bunch of soldiers! A matter of months ago many of McCarthy’s men had been signed up during recruiting sweeps through cities back east. Since shipping out from Jefferson Barracks, these “Custer’s Avengers” hadn’t drilled enough to make them marksmen with their carbines or confident in the saddle. But Sergeant McCarthy’s headaches weren’t limited to his green-broke shavetails. Even those soldiers who had been on duty for some time out here in Nez Perce country ended up spending most of their days acting as clerks, blacksmiths, carpenters, and tinkers. A few served their officers as dog-robbers.

  Even if the troops had been given ample time for target practice, a penny-pinching army never provided enough expendable ammunition. And if the troops were kept too busy with other mundane duties, it meant their horses suffered a lack of training, most tending to shy at the unexpected and loud noises that would come with battle.

  “Get up, god-blame-it!” McCarthy growled as he plodded around the fires, intimidating his men away from those kettles of half-hard beans and barely boiled coffee. “That gun cleaned?”

  “Y-yessirsergeant!”

  “Where’s your blanket?” he shouted to another, then kept on stomping through the bivouac, goading each reluctant, weary soldier into action.

&nbs
p; “Got your extra cawtridges?” McCarthy demanded of another who clumsily kicked over a kettle of half-cooked supper when he stood to salute too suddenly. “You’ll be begging for want of bullets ’stead of beans by morning, soldier!”

  McCarthy brushed the droopy ends of his shaggy reddish-brown mustache away from the corners of his lips while he kept probing through H Company’s bivouac—prodding, cajoling, wheedling, jabbing men into motion as Perry’s battalion prepared to march away into who the hell knew what.

  Even a few bloody rumors were flying faster than any of these men were moving, goddammit. Word from those civilians cozied up with Colonel Perry said that the soldiers could creep right up on that Injun village while it was still dark … and wait for first light to sink their teeth into the camp.

  Joseph and Mary! If that tale be true … then these poor mothers’ sons would be crying for a shitload of bullets by morning, and all the beans in Idaho be damned!

  * * *

  By gor, if these men of his Company H weren’t about as frayed as an old rope!

  Lieutenant William Russell Parnell couldn’t blame any of them for drifting off to sleep, even though they’d been ordered to stay awake now that Colonel Perry had called a halt for the battalion, here at 1:00 A.M. among the skimpy timber at the head of the canyon, after marching some ten miles from Mount Idaho in the dark. The slopes below them descended some twenty-six-hundred feet in a precipitous three-mile drop to White Bird Creek itself. Somewhere between there and the Salmon River a few miles farther down the valley was where Perry figured they would find the village.

  For the last three hours the column had stumbled through the dark, groping its way past the lake where the Nez Perce had been camped until a day or so ago, if for no other reason than to make sure the village had abandoned the area.

  Parnell wasn’t totally sure, but as he peered at the face of his pocket watch in the dim starshine it appeared to be just before two o’clock in the wee hours. An ungodly time for man or beast to be up and about—unless that man was with a beast of a woman!