Song Of The Warrior

by Georgina Gentry

Puzzled by this deceit, Joseph and the survivors with him were sent first to Fort Keogh, then south to Fort Leavenworth. They were moved several times more, finally ending up near the present town of Tonkawa in the Indian Territory that they called Eeikish Pah (the Hot Place), where disease and the warm climate took its toil on these mountain dwellers of the cool Northwest.

  Some of those who escaped to Canada later recrossed the border, were captured and sent south. Only White Bird and a few of his followers never returned; preferring to stay forever in the wild free land to the north.

  In 1879, Chief Joseph made a speech in Lincoln Hall in Washington, D.C., and lobbied unceasingly to get his people returned to their own country. Even the widow of President Garfield tried to aid Joseph with petition drives. It was all in vain. The settlers who now owned the Nez Perce land did not want them returned. Finally, a furor of indignation across the country at the injustice caused the Nez Perce to be offered a chance to return to the Northwest, but not to their own beloved land.

  When the Nez Perce had begun their 113-day flight, they numbered about 750 people, many of them old people, women, and children. They had fought their way across 1,500 miles against more than 2,000 regular and volunteer troops, and Indian scouts of several tribes. The poorly armed Nez Perce had fought eighteen engagements, including four major battles and at least four skirmishes. The government had spent more than a million dollars on this war.

  By best estimates, 65 men, 55 women and children of the nontreaty Nez Perce had been killed. But this brave, ragged little group had killed probably 180 whites and wounded another 150. No one is certain how many Nez Perce had escaped to Canada, possibly several hundred. The army gathered up all that was left at the Bear Paw Mountains, 87 men, 184 women, and 147 children, and put them on that long road to imprisonment in Indian Territory.

  Eight years passed and a few babies were born, but Chief Joseph’s people sickened and died in the hot climate. At least a hundred of these now sleep forever in the alien soil of Oklahoma.

  Finally, on May 22, 1885, 268 people, all that was left of the captured Nez Perce, were loaded on a train to be sent back to the Northwest. In their seven years of bondage, fully 40 percent of those captured had died.

  However, Joseph was never to live again in his beloved Wallowa Valley. The returning group was divided; some sent to Lapwai, Joseph and others sent to the Colville Reservation in Washington state. For 27 long years, he struggled without success to get his people returned to Nez Perce traditional land. This then was the way his people were repaid for befriending Lewis and Clark, and for peacefully aiding the whites for three-quarters of a century.

  On September 21, 1904, as he sat before his tipi fire at Colville, he pitched forward dead. The doctor who examined the body said Chief Joseph died of a broken heart.

  TO MY READERS

  How much of the story you have just read is true? Sadly, too much of it. My main characters are fiction, Willow, Bear, Raven, little Hemene (Cub), the Indian woman, Rainbow, the Reverend Harlow, Deek Tanner, Lieutenant Billy Warton, and Two Arrows. You may recognize Tanner and Warton from my last novel: Cheyenne Splendor, and Reverend Harlow and Two Arrows originally appeared in my first Zebra novel, Cheyenne Captive. Many of the others and the details I told you about came straight from the pages of history, including the old woman, Intetah, and her young granddaughter, Atsipeeten, killed by a cannon at the final Bear Paw battle.

  The ritual of the warrior’s song is also true. Bill Gulick’s excellent book, Chief Joseph Country, Land of the Nez Perce (Caxton Press), told of Marcus Ware, a Lewiston, Idaho, attorney, witnessing an ancient warrior returning to the Big Hole battlefield fifty years after the fight. The old man had come to sing his friend’s warrior song because he feared his friend had not finished singing it before he was killed there. By the way, there has been a fascinating and enlightening archeological dig at the Big Hole battlefield in 1991, generously financed by country-western singing star, Hank Williams, Jr.

  I have walked the Bear Paw battleground with my fellow members of the Order of the Indian Wars. There’s not much to see; several monuments and a rolling, windswept desolate area, just south of the friendly town of Chinook, Montana. The soldiers who were buried there were later moved to a military graveyard, but the Nez Perce who died there still rest in unmarked graves known only to their descendants.

  I also journeyed to the museum in the town of Fort Benton, Montana, where the rifle Chief Joseph surrendered to Colonel Miles is on display.

  The heart of the old Nez Perce country is about where the states of Idaho, Oregon, and Washington meet. Near East Kamiah is the volcanic outcrop known as the Heart of the Monster, which is part of that tribe’s legend of creation. In fact, there is a National Park Service route you can take to visit many of the historic Nez Perce sites.

  The Appaloosa horse has long been connected with Nez Perce history, although it did not originate with them as many people think. Evidence of this ancient breed has been found on prehistoric European cave walls and in China. The national headquarters for the breed is at Moscow, Idaho.

  If you would like to read more about the Nez Perce, I recommend a fine story that is on the Western Writers of America’s Best Western Novels list: From Where the Sun Now Stands, by Will Henry. There is also an excellent movie by the same name starring James Whitmore.

  Although I read some twenty-five nonfiction books to write this novel, as always, I will mention only a few. Besides Bill Gulick, another author you might enjoy is David Lavender’s Let Me Be Free, The Nez Perce Tragedy (HarperCollins Publishers), and for detailed information on the actual battles, the ultimate book is: The Flight of the Nez Perce, by Mark H. Brown (G.P. Putnam’s Sons Publishers).

  Did Chief Joseph actually make the famous speech about “from where the sun now stands”? Well, more or less. Lieutenant Wood wrote it down and it is suspected that he embellished it and the circumstances for more drama.

  I will always try to tell you some of the interesting bits of history that you won’t find in high-school history books, such as the fact that William Clark of the famous Lewis and Clark expedition sired a half-breed son by a Nez Perce woman. My fellow member of Western Writers of America, Bill Gulick, also did an article called: “Indian Love Child of William Clark,” in True West magazine, February 1984. Yes, that elderly son, Tzi-kal-tza, also spelled Tsa-ya-hah, was along on that flight toward Canada. It appears he was one of those who died during the long confinement in either Kansas or the Indian Territory, and is probably buried at the Nez Perce cemetery in Tonkawa, Oklahoma, along with Chief Joseph’s baby daughter.

  An amusing true incident was the “mooning” of the soldiers by a defiant young brave named Zya Timenna, who slapped his bare rear in insult and galloped away with the irate soldiers shooting at him.

  As far as the burial place of old Joseph that his son had tried so hard to protect, white men later desecrated and robbed the grave. Horrifying as it seems, the old chief’s skull was dug up and used to decorate a dentist’s office in the little town of Baker, Oregon, for many years before more sensitive whites reburied it.

  Was Chief Joseph the “Indian Napoleon” he has been pictured? Joseph would have preferred to live in peace if he and his people could have been treated honorably. Here in my home state of Oklahoma, there is a National Indian Hall of Fame in the town of Anadarko. Chief Joseph was inducted into that in 1960, the second Indian to be so honored. However, most sources think Looking Glass and Joseph’s younger brother, Ollokot, were the real war leaders.

  It is perhaps ironic that Indian tribes often helped scout for the army against other tribes. The Flatheads, who refused to help the Nez Perce, hoping for peace with the whites, soon had their own land stolen and the Bannocks would go on the war path for the same reason in 1878.

  After the Nez Perce were surrounded and cut off at the Bear Paw Mountains, they actually held out for five days, hoping the Sioux would come to help them. Individuals and small groups escaped all
during that time. White Bird led the largest group out in the darkness that final night before Chief Joseph surrendered. Although I had the surrender taking place at dawn for dramatic effect, it actually occurred about four o’clock in the afternoon. Unfortunately, many of those who escaped from the Bear Paw site were later killed by enemy tribes or captured before they could cross into Canada. Only a few reached their destination.

  Why didn’t Sitting Bull come to the Nez Perces’ rescue? No one knows for sure. Some say Sitting Bull started toward the Bear Paw Mountains, realized he was too late and turned back. Others say that when the messengers arrived asking for help, he misunderstood where the Nez Perce were located. Others say the Canadian Mounties warned the Lakota not to get involved in the Nez Perce fight.

  The very last warrior left alive who had fought in the Nez Perce campaign was Yellow Wolf, Chief Joseph’s nephew, who lived until 1934. You might enjoy a book called Yellow Wolf, His Own Story, by Lucullus V McWhorter (Caxton Press). The very last survivor of the Nez Perce flight was Josiah Red Wolf, who had been a small child at that time. Red Wolf lived to be 99 years old, dying in 1971. You may visit his grave at Spalding, Idaho.

  General Howard, the religious one-armed general, also founded Howard University, the famous school for educating blacks, and was the head of West Point for some years. Also instructing at West Point in later years was Captain Edward S. Godfrey, who would win a Medal of Honor and be wounded in the Nez Perce campaign when the 7th Cavalry was called in. Captain Godfrey had survived the Little Big Horn disaster as part of Reno’s forces.

  Colonel Nelson “Bear Coat” Miles’s ambitions were eventually realized when he became a general and won a Congressional Medal of Honor. He was involved in many historic Indian battles as you’ll remember from some of my earlier novels.

  Fort Keogh, Miles’s starting point, was named for the dashing Captain Keogh, who died with Custer at the Little Big Horn. Ironically, the handsome Irish officer is usually remembered because Keogh’s bay horse, Comanche, was the famous supposedly “only survivor” of Custer’s Last Stand. Comanche lived to a ripe old age, and a taxidermist’s skill preserves him today standing in a glass case at the University of Kansas in Lawrence.

  I have several friends who are treasure hunters and they first acquainted me with the legend of the missing Nez Perce gold. No one is really sure if it ever existed, but people still look for it. Texas author, Charles Garrett, the manufacturer of the famous Garrett metal detectors used by many treasure seekers, tells me he suspects the Nez Perce cache of gold coins is hidden somewhere in Rocky Canyon, near Tolo Lake, which is on private property. Expert Michael Paul Henson, well-known author, who is a regular columnist for Lost Treasure magazine, sent me a December 1977 issue with an article by Jeff Ferguson called “Lost Gold Mines of the Nez Perce,” suggesting the Nez Perce treasure is a forgotten Montana gold mine.

  I am always delighted to hear comments from my readers. If you would like to have a newsletter and an autographed book mark, write me c/o Zebra Books, 850 Third Avenue, 16th Floor, New York, NY 10022, and send me a self-addressed, stamped business-size envelope. Canadian and foreign readers need to buy postal vouchers that I can trade for proper postage. The U.S. Post Office will not allow me to use your foreign stamps.

  If Song of the Warrior is the first book of mine you have read, it is #13 of my very long, continuing series called Panorama of the Old West. The books are written out of sequence and meant to stand alone so you don’t have to read them in the order written. Many of the earlier ones are still in print and you may order directly from Zebra, or inquire at your local bookstore.

  My fourteenth novel, tentatively titled, Timeless Warrior, will be an Indian time travel-ghost story about the Pawnee Indian scout, War Cry, who first appeared as a minor character in my earlier novel, Sioux Slave. This novel will be based on an unusual painting here in the state of Oklahoma. The painting has a ghost in it.

  Yes, you can see this painting on display at the old Pawnee Bill Ranch, a tourist attraction in the little town of Pawnee, Oklahoma, up near Tulsa. Pawnee Bill was a friend and one-time partner of the famous Buffalo Bill Cody. Cody, and famous Oklahomans such as Will Rogers, often were guests at the ranch. If you go there, tell them where you heard about the ghost painting, ask someone to point it out and where to stand so that you, too, can see the ghost. This shadowy specter is only visible if you look at it at a certain angle from the top of the stairs. There are many stories about this painting and its ghost, but I’m going to tell you my version.

  Now just suppose a present-day lady tourist who fantasizes about being carried off by an Indian brave, got sucked into that painting and returns to the old West of more than a hundred years ago? Since she knows the future, she will be tempted to try to change it. If you could change history, would you dare? And given the choice, would you return to the present or stay behind with a handsome Pawnee brave called War Cry? Join me for my first Indian time-travel-ghost story, tentatively set for the spring of 1996.

  One final note about the Nez Perce; some of you will want to know about the pipe ceremony that I mentioned in the dedication of Song of the Warrior. The Nez Perce delegation had already smoked the pipe at three of the battle sites where their ancestors were killed in the 1877 war, White Bird Canyon, Big Hole, and the Bear Paw Mountains.

  The ceremony was one of the most moving, emotional events I have ever witnessed. Several of the Oklahoma tribes had sent pipe men to share in the ceremonial smoking. No one is certain just how many Nez Perce are buried here or even their names; the graves are not individually marked. The modern-day Nez Perce brought soil from their ancestral land to scatter on the site. One man’s grandfather had been killed at the final Bear Paw battle; one woman was a descendant of Chief Looking Glass.

  A few photos taken later are all I have to commemorate this momentous occasion because it was a sacred ceremony, which meant photographs, taping or video cameras were forbidden. Yet I need none of these; I have indelible memories. A tribal representative placed a small Nez Perce flag before the desolate cemetery’s granite monument. As the ceremony ended and we walked away, returning that place once more to the ghosts and wild creatures of the prairie, I looked back. I will always remember that small square of scarlet flapping bravely in our Oklahoma wind, mute testimony to those who had died so long ago and those who cared enough to come to this isolated spot on a warm May morning in 1994.

  I thought at that moment of one of Chief Joseph’s speeches: “... whenever the white man treats the Indian as they treat each other, then we shall have no more wars. We shall be all alike—brothers of one father and one mother, with one sky above us and one country around us, and one government for all. Then the Great Spirit Chief who rules above will smile upon this land, and send rain to wash out the bloody spots made by brothers’ hands from the face of the earth. For this time, the Indian race is waiting and praying . . .”

  In too many cases, more than a century later, our Native Americans are still waiting . . .

  Kuse Timine,

  Georgina Gentry

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  Copyright © 1995 by Lynne Murphy

  ISBN: 978-0-8217-4962-3

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