The Commanders

by Robert M. Utley

  When the chiefs made ready to move, Joseph lost stock in the arduous crossing of the swollen Snake River. The rest of the people, almost all nontreaty Indians, gathered at a lake on the Camas Prairie to talk over Howard’s order. A spirit of resistance began to rise. They were in a receptive frame of mind, therefore, when three young men, full of whiskey, embarked on a revenge expedition on June 13, 1877. Strengthened by other warriors, the raiders left in their trail through June 14 and 15 more than a score of dead farmers and raped women as well as great destruction.

  General Howard had returned to Fort Lapwai from his Portland headquarters to witness the gathering of the Nez Perces. Alerted to the killings, he dispersed what few units he had to protect the settlers, but he now faced the major Indian war against which his superiors had warned him. He himself was partly to blame for bringing it on.

  Howard dispatched two troops of cavalry under Captain David Perry to ride to the relief of settlers on the Salmon River and Camas Prairie. At dawn on June 17, strengthened by eleven volunteers, Perry led his one hundred troopers down White Bird Canyon in an effort to cut off Joseph and his people before they could cross the Salmon River. The Nez Perces waited at the foot of the canyon. Springing the trap, they drove the troops back up the canyon with the loss of one officer and thirty-three men killed.

  A triumph for the Nez Perces, the Battle of White Bird Canyon was a disaster for the army and for General Howard, who now called for more troops from his department and from other departments. When he had his pursuing force assembled, it numbered more than four hundred infantry and cavalry, together with large units of civilian volunteers. He intended to take the field himself.

  For the first week of July Howard’s column maneuvered through the tortuous mountains trying to run down the agile Nez Perces, who easily eluded him. Detachments fanned out in Howard’s front, encountering stiff resistance from the Nez Perces who were shielding the northward movement of their village. In one clash a lieutenant and ten men were wiped out by the Nez Perce rearguard. Finally, on July 11, Howard freed the pursuing column from the mountains and overtook the Nez Perces. Solidly established on a plateau overlooking the Clearwater River and the Nez Perce village, the troops fended off assault parties working their way up the ravines draining the plateau. The battle continued for two days, with both sides fighting hard and valorously. At length a strong military advance forced the Nez Perces from their refuges and won the Battle of the Clearwater. Howard tarried for a day, however, which allowed his Indian quarry to escape.

  The Battle of the Clearwater came at an opportune time for Howard. Alarmed at the murderous excesses of the Nez Perces, President Rutherford B. Hayes questioned Howard’s military competence and discussed with his cabinet whether to replace him with his own protégé, General George Crook. But for the signal victory at the Clearwater, Howard undoubtedly would have been relieved.

  Howard confronted a formidable array of Nez Perces: about three hundred warriors with five hundred women and children. A bloc of strong chiefs led the people, including Looking Glass, White Bird, Toohoolhoolzote, Joseph, and Ollokot. Looking Glass was deemed the most experienced war leader and functioned in that role. In issues of war Joseph remained in the background.

  On July 13, 1877, Howard took up the march and caught up with the Nez Perces as they were crossing the Clearwater River. An exchange of fire followed, but the troops did not press the issue. In fact, the larger issue was already apparent. The chiefs had decided to lead their people across the rugged Bitterroot Mountains by way of the Lolo Trail. The Nez Perces had used this route for generations to reach the buffalo plains of Montana and their friends the Crow Indians. They hoped now to seek refuge with the Crows or even go on to Canada and join with Sitting Bull’s exiled Lakotas.

  As the Nez Perces began their trek up the Lolo Trail, Howard tended to think that they were about to become someone else’s problem, for they would leave the Department of the Columbia and enter the Department of Dakota. But General Sherman made it clear that Howard was to ignore department boundaries and continue the pursuit. Thus Howard started his march on July 30, his command now consisting of more than 700 troops and 74 civilian volunteers with 70 mule packers. Another force of nearly 500 men under Colonel Frank Wheaton, en route from Georgia, would strike in a circular route to the north and join Howard in Montana. A third force of nearly 300 men would remain behind to protect the settlers. Howard’s delay afforded the Nez Perces a two-week start. His own formidable command, including artillery, faced stiff logistical challenges in surmounting the Lolo Trail, which was narrow, obstructed by heavy timber, sliced by numerous deep ravines, and covered with slippery mud.

  When the Nez Perces approached the eastern end of the trail, a small command of soldiers and volunteers from Montana confronted them. A parley with the Nez Perce chiefs on July 27 ended indecisively. That night, as the blocking riflemen dug in to defend themselves, the entire body of Nez Perces slipped around the position and left it behind.

  As the Nez Perces turned south up the Bitterroot Valley, Howard and the main force were just starting up the Lolo Trail a hundred miles to the west. The effort had indeed fallen to the Department of the Dakota, specifically to Colonel John Gibbon and his infantrymen at Fort Shaw, Montana.

  With 15 officers and 146 enlisted men, Colonel Gibbon got on the Indian trail in the Bitterroot Valley. He dispatched a courier to General Howard asking that cavalry be rushed up the Lolo Trail to his aid. Ahead, Looking Glass had determined that the women and children needed rest and decreed that camp be made on Big Hole Prairie. At dawn on August 9, 1877, Gibbon’s infantry burst from hiding, splashed across the Big Hole River, and swept the lodges at the edge of the Nez Perce village with rifle fire. The Nez Perce men gathered their families and fled into the hills. Gibbon’s men took possession of the village and began to burn the lodges and their contents. In the meantime the Nez Perce warriors rallied and counterattacked with such vigor that they drove the infantrymen out of the village and laid siege to them beyond it. All day and night the warriors kept the troops pinned down under incessant fire. By morning they were withdrawing and packing up their village to move on south.

  Rifle fire killed nearly 100 Nez Perces, many women and children, but the warriors had won the battle, driving off the soldiers, capturing and drawing off their howitzer, and inflicting severe casualties. Gibbon lost 2 officers, 21 enlisted men, and 6 civilians killed and 5 officers, 31 enlisted men, and 4 citizens wounded. Rarely in the Indian Wars did a military contingent sustain such casualties.

  On August 11, as Gibbon’s men buried their dead, General Howard rode up with an advance guard of his command. The remainder arrived two days later. The Nez Perce War again reverted to Howard’s responsibility, and he reluctantly took up the pursuit.

  Howard, his troops, and his animals were all exhausted after the Lolo Trail and the Bitterroot Valley. Moreover, the general’s heart was not in a further exhausting pursuit, especially since the Nez Perces appeared to be headed into either General Alfred Terry’s Department of Dakota or General Crook’s Department of the Platte. But Howard continued on the trail, which shifted back and forth across the continental divide between Montana and Idaho. Growing evidence indicated that the Indians were killing settlers, stealing horses, and burning buildings.

  Alerted by his guide that the Nez Perces would turn east toward Yellowstone Park, Howard took a shortcut to try to catch up. He managed to reach a Nez Perce campsite on Camas Meadow, south of Henry’s Lake, abandoned only that morning. On the night of August 19 the troops bivouacked on the Indian campsite, intending to follow the next morning. Before dawn, however, rifle fire roused the sleeping soldiers and volunteers from their tents. During the night 200 Nez Perce warriors had doubled back on their trail and dashed in among the mule herd. They tried to run off both horses and mules, but the horses had been hobbled. The Nez Perces got away with 150 mules.

  At daybreak Major George B. Sanford and four cavalry troops rode out t
o try to overtake the Nez Perces and regain the stolen stock. They succeeded but encountered a line of well-posted warriors directing a heavy fire against them. The cavalry dismounted, with every fourth man holding the horses, and fired back. The two sides maneuvered and fought for about an hour until Sanford ordered a withdrawal. On the way back the cavalry met Howard with a relief column. The battle had cost Sanford one enlisted man killed and one officer and six enlisted men wounded.

  Howard had almost been relieved of his command before the Battle of the Clearwater. He had endured constant newspaper criticism, and he and his men were so fatigued that he thought it pointless to go on. As he paused at Camas Meadows to refit, he rode to Virginia City, Montana, for provisions. From there on August 24 he telegraphed General Sherman, who was not in Washington but had been touring Yellowstone National Park and was now in Helena. If troops from either of the departments that he was approaching could head off the Nez Perces, Howard wired: “I think I may stop where I am, and in a few days work my way back to Fort Boise slowly.” Sherman fired back at once: “That force of yours should pursue the Nez Perces to the death,” he commanded. “If you are tired, give the command to some young energetic officer.” Stung by Sherman’s words as well as similar scolding from General McDowell, Howard protested: “I never flag. Neither you nor General McDowell can doubt my pluck or energy.”10

  Of course, doubting Howard’s pluck and energy was exactly what both generals had done and in fact what Howard himself had confessed. He was tired, and his command was broken down. But he summoned the will to resume the march on August 28. At that very time, unknown to Howard, Sherman had already ordered another commander into the field to supplant Howard and free him to return to Oregon. The two officers never made contact, however, and Howard continued the pursuit.

  As Howard led his column on the Nez Perce trail through Yellowstone National Park, he came on four haggard men who had escaped from a party of tourists captured by the Nez Perces, the first of several indications that tourist groups were being attacked. Later he discovered a place where the Nez Perces had seized an entire tourist group and ended by having a fatal gun battle with them.

  Troops hastened from the east to block the passages from Yellowstone National Park. Colonel Nelson A. Miles dispatched six troops of cavalry from Fort Keogh, on the Yellowstone River in the Department of Dakota, and Colonel Wesley Merritt led a cavalry force northwest from the Department of the Platte. The Nez Perces, however, outwitted the blocking units and emerged from the park onto the plains by way of Clark’s Fork of the Yellowstone. Embarrassed, Colonel Samuel D. Sturgis, now under Miles’s command, raced to overtake the quarry. He caught up on the north side of the Yellowstone, where on September 13 the Nez Perces defeated him in the Battle of Canyon Creek. The Nez Perces had now discovered that the Crows could provide no refuge because they were allied with the white soldiers in fighting the Sioux. The only alternative seemed to be Sitting Bull in Canada. They moved northward.

  Howard and his men labored behind, and at the Yellowstone River the general dispatched a courier to Fort Keogh explaining to Colonel Miles how the Nez Perces had eluded Sturgis and asking him to try to intercept them before they could reach Canada. By the next morning Miles had moved his command of infantry and cavalry across the Yellowstone and headed northwest. Augmented by other units en route, Miles’s command numbered about 450 men.

  On October 4 General Howard and an escort arrived at the battlefield of Bear Paw Mountains, forty miles short of the international boundary. Colonel Miles had struck the Nez Perce camp five days earlier, on September 30, and encountered a firestorm of opposition. In the day’s sharp fighting, he sustained losses of 2 officers killed and 4 wounded and 22 enlisted men killed and 38 wounded. He decided on a siege, which was the situation when Howard reached the field four days later. The intensely ambitious Miles feared that Howard would take command and rob him of his rightful credit. But Howard assured Miles that until after the surrender the field was his. On October 5 Chief Joseph came out to make the memorable statement that he would fight no more forever.

  As each chief emerged to hand over his rifle, Howard pointed to Miles, who received the surrender. Typically, Miles’s dispatch to Terry boasted of his victory at Bear Paw Mountains while mentioning Howard almost as an afterthought. The newspapers, which had faulted Howard throughout the pursuit, omitted his name altogether. Nelson A. Miles emerged as the hero of Bear Paw Mountain and by inference of the Nez Perce War. Deeply offended by his friend’s betrayal, Howard fired back, setting off a public feud that lasted until June 1878, despite reprimands from Sherman and Sheridan. The quarrel led to a complete break in relations. Miles had been an aide to Howard for a time during the Civil War and had even held up his arm while the surgeon sawed it off. Ever since they had been close friends. No more.

  Nor were the Nez Perces treated humanely. Exiled to the Indian Territory for several years, they were eventually allowed to return to the Pacific Northwest but not to their homeland. Joseph died on the Colville Reservation in eastern Washington in 1904.

  To the army and to the public at large, Howard’s conduct during the Nez Perce War was the most conspicuous episode of his service in the Pacific Northwest. It dimmed his image both with the public and in the officer corps. The exchange of telegrams between Howard and his superiors became part of the public record, so all knew that he had wanted to call off the chase and leave the Nez Perces to other officers. In fact, despite several serious errors, he had done as well as almost any other general could have done, perhaps better. Yet the Nez Perce stigma clung to his record, like Chancellorsville and Gettysburg.

  The more difficult Indian war that General Howard oversaw in the summer of 1878 was a different situation. The same congeries of tribes that General George Crook had conquered in 1866–68 once more rose against encroaching white settlers: Bannocks, Paiutes, Shoshones, Umatillas, and Sheepeaters. Throughout the summer of 1878, the campaign ranged across southern Idaho and eastern Oregon and Washington, featuring three decisive battles. The country was even more difficult than in the Nez Perce operation and the various enemy bands harder to separate and pin down. But Howard skillfully maneuvered his subordinate units to overcome the adversaries and compel their surrender. As he concluded: “The campaign has been a hard, long, and expensive one. Many of the troops have marched greater distances than during the Nez Perce war, and in all the services I have been called upon to render the government I have never known officers and soldiers to encounter and overcome greater obstacles.”11

  DEPARTMENT OF WEST POINT

  Once again General Howard’s pious, humanitarian reputation played a part in his next assignment. As he contended with the Nez Perces in the summer of 1877, the army experimented with further integration of black soldiers into the ranks. Two cavalry and two infantry regiments already consisted of black enlisted men and white officers. In 1870 West Point Military Academy admitted its first black cadet. Not until 1877, however, did one graduate. Henry Flipper had been ostracized and discriminated against by white cadets for four years. Earlier black cadets had encountered the same environment. All failed.

  In April 1880 a scandal erupted that gained national attention and confronted authorities with a dilemma. Cadet Johnson C. Whittaker was found tied to his bed, cut up, bruised, and unconscious. He claimed that white cadets had been guilty of the attack. No one believed him, and he was accused of mutilating himself. The academy’s superintendent, Major General John M. Schofield, claimed a sterling war record but badly mishandled the Whittaker case. He immediately judged Whittaker guilty and declared his belief that West Point should be closed to black cadets. Whittaker requested a court of inquiry, which made headlines throughout the country. The court upheld Schofield’s decision. Adverse publicity, however, prompted him to ask for another command, which was hastily granted. In December 1880 President Rutherford B. Hayes summoned General Howard to Washington. Without even consulting General Sherman, he named Howard to the West P
oint superintendency.

  As the motive for the change of command, the Whittaker case received no publicity. As General Sherman wrote to Howard, however, “I believe if you go to West Point, the inference will be that it has reference to this case, and to the race question, but I do not believe that West Point is the place to try the experiment of social equality.”12

  Howard took command on January 21, 1881, and quickly ordered a court-martial to determine the truth of Whittaker’s claim. Brigadier General Nelson A. Miles sat as president when the court opened in June 1881. Again the verdict was guilty, but Secretary of War Robert T. Lincoln declared the proceedings invalid on a technicality, a decision ratified by President Chester Arthur. Nonetheless, on March 22, 1882, Lincoln ordered Whittaker dismissed for failing an examination.

  Throughout the Whittaker ordeal, General Howard seems to have concerned himself with academy matters rather than with the court-martial. His tenure was limited to two years, the same period during which the Whittaker issue played out. On September 1, 1882, he turned over the superintendency of West Point to Colonel Wesley Merritt.13

  Generals Schofield and Howard both served as superintendents of the military academy and as commanders of the Department of West Point. This afforded a billet for generals, but it proved unsatisfactory. The appointment of Colonel Merritt at West Point marked the close of this system, the academy’s return to field-grade officers, and the abolition of the Department of West Point.

  DEPARTMENT OF THE PLATTE

  Howard’s next assignment was to replace General George Crook in command of the Department of the Platte when Crook returned once again to the Department of Arizona to contend with the Apaches. In September 1882 Howard moved his family to Omaha, Nebraska, to take command of the Department of the Platte, a part of the Military Division of the Missouri. For the first time, he fell under the command of Lieutenant General Philip H. Sheridan.