Lay the Mountains Low

by Terry C. Johnston

  CHAPTER NINE

  KHOY-TSAHL, 1877

  BY TELEGRAPH

  —

  The President Once More in

  Washington.

  —

  Harvard Wins the Boat Race.

  —

  Latest From the Idaho Indian War.

  —

  OREGON.

  —

  Latest from the Scene of Indian Hostilities.

  SAN FRANCISCO, June 30.—A Portland press dispatch gives the latest reports from the scene of the Indian outbreak … It is reported that the Clear Water Indians, under Looking-glass, had turned loose and plundered George Dempster’s place, between the middle and south forks of the Clear Water, and driven off all the stock of the settlers between these forks, and had it at their camp about six miles above Kamiah. They confirm Jim Sawyer’s statement made in the Indian council yesterday at Lapwai as to the purposes of Looking-glass and his forty men. These Indians told two Chinamen on Clear Water that they had declared war against the whites, and would commence their raids upon the inhabitants within ten days. When this news reached Mount Idaho a force of twenty volunteers started immediately for Clear Water, but no news has come from them yet. General Howard was notified and said that he would send a detachment of regulars to scour the country in that direction this morning. The volunteers who were in the fight on White Bird saw the Indian who went out as one of the friendly Indians with Col. Perry from Lapwai beckon the hostiles forward to the fight, and saw other movements of some friendly Indians evincing their privity with the hostiles. During the fight a report, which lacks confirmation, was received that General Howard had attacked Joseph and dislodged him from Horse Shoe Ridge …

  BIRD ALIGHTING, CALLED PEOPEO THOLEKT BY HIS PEOPLE, sucked on the stringy beef Looking Glass’s sister had boiled her brother for an early breakfast that morning. In a matter of days the women would have more of the camas roots and kouse dried so that they could cook those roots in the boiling pots, along with the beef and what game the men brought back to their people at this traditional camp they called Kamnaha* on the east bank of Clear Creek.** It wasn’t a large camp, this village of Looking Glass.

  After about a dozen young hot-bloods rode away to join the war against the wishes of their chief, the only men left numbered no more than four-times-ten. The women and children counted up to three times that. They were a small, yet prosperous, band.

  Even though their traditional camping grounds lay within the boundaries of the shrunken reservation the Shadows had marked off for his Nee-Me-Poo people, these Alpowai had refused to sign what they called the Thieves’ Treaty of 1855 and agreed to the subsequent land steal of 1863. Unlike the Christians who lived close to the whites up at Lapwai with Lawyer’s many friends, Looking Glass’s people were traditional. They were Dreamers, not Christians. Since this was the white man’s special religious day, many of Looking Glass’s Dreamers were away from camp, having gone downriver to Kamiah to attend a traditional Dreamer service. Which meant that no more than half of their men, only two-times-ten, remained in camp this quiet morning.

  One big difference between those Lawyer Christians and the Looking Glass Dreamers—the traditional people felt compelled by their ancestors to hold onto what had never been theirs to give away, much less theirs to sell.

  This was their land. And they meant no white man any harm as they went about living their lives in the old way.

  Eh-heh there was no question that some of the younger men had slipped away despite Looking Glass’s scolding of those war-making chiefs at Tepahlewam, despite his repeated warnings not to foment trouble for the camp in those first heady days after killing so many soldiers at Lahmotta.*

  Bird Alighting, like Looking Glass and other leaders, knew that some of their young men had raided one, perhaps two, of the Shadow homesteads in the valley of the Clearwater. But the warriors claimed no Shadows were harmed in their fun. Truth was, no white people were still around. They had already fled south to Mount Idaho or Kamiah to the north or farther still—running all the way to Fort Lapwai or Lewiston.

  No white men hurt in that first frantic burst of young men raids. Only houses and barns burned. Horses and cattle stolen, then driven back to this camp on Clear Creek. When matters had quieted down, Looking Glass and men like Bird Alighting vowed they would return what cattle and horses they could to their rightful, white owners. Until then, the Nee-Me-Poo would graze the animals and care for them. They had every reason to believe that by the middle of the summer moon all things would have returned to normal. Chances were good the Salmon River murderers would be caught and punished by the Shadows and Looking Glass’s people would go back to living their lives in the same old way.

  Which meant going to the Moosmoos Illahe—the buffalo country—every year or so to visit their friends the E-sue-gha.* Some of the Nee-Me-Poo referred to that tribe by the name of Tsaplishtake, or “Pasted On” people, because of their practice of making their hair longer by gluing on longer strands. Perhaps that meant they would help these friends fight the bellicose Lakota again, as they had in summers past, returning home to Idaho with their horses and travois sway-backed under the weight of buffalo hides scraped for lodge covers or tanned into hair-on robes for winter sleeping.

  Looking Glass had become a hero in the faraway buffalo country. Once he had helped his old allies the E-sue-gha in a fight against the Lakota. That was a good country, Bird Alighting thought. That E-sue-gha land was good country. At the least a good second choice to this one. If the Nee-Me-Poo had to journey another place to find the buffalo, then that country beyond the high mountains was a good one—

  “Soldiers are here!”

  At that warning cry ringing outside the lodge, Bird Alighting spit out the long piece of meat he was chewing and bolted to his feet beside Looking Glass. They both shot out the doorway to stand among the many frightened people come to hear this news.

  “Where?” someone shouted to those women on the creek bank who had given the warning and were pointing.

  “Across!” a woman yelled, motioning to the far side of Clear Creek.

  Bird Alighting saw them creeping down the steep hillside, sure enough. Perhaps ten times all his fingers. Not every one of them dressed in soldier clothes, so some of these Shadows—the white men who had no soul—were settlers, wagon men, or miners who scratched in the ground for the yellow rocks. Come to help the suapies or merely come to watch—either way … the arrival of all these white men bode no good for Looking Glass’s peaceful camp. But Peopeo Tholekt tried to squeeze that fear out of his mind. After all, Looking Glass was known to those Mount Idaho Shadows—for just last year before he left for the buffalo country, the chief had delivered a speech in which he pledged friendship to the whites.

  Seizing his friend by the shoulder, Looking Glass suddenly spun Bird Alighting aside. Leaning his face close, the chief instructed, “Go to these suapies. Find the soldier chief and say to him, ‘Leave us alone. We are living here peacefully and want no trouble.’ Tell him my hands are clean of white man’s blood and I want him to know they will remain clean. The other chiefs have acted like fools in murdering white men. Tell him I will have no part in such things and I will have nothing to do with such chiefs.’ ”

  Bird Alighting nodded, saying, “I’ll go fetch my horse, Looking Glass.”

  The chief wagged his head adamantly, squeezing Bird Alighting’s arm. “No time! Take mine,” and he bent to untie the long lead rope attached to his prize horse picketed to one of the lodge stakes.

  “I will go tell them to leave us be.”

  Bird Alighting felt his stomach flutter and his heart pound mightily beneath his breastbone as he eased Looking Glass’s horse across the creek and onto the grassy bank on the far side, continuing to the slope of the hill where the soldiers and Shadows waited. Which one was leader—

  One of the soldiers immediately urged his horse forward. Three more of the suapies joined him, as well as two of the plain-dressed Shado
ws. Settlement or wagon men, for sure, Bird Alighting thought.

  To his surprise, one of those wagon men spoke the Nee-Me-Poo tongue reasonably well. “Hello!” he called in a friendly tone that belied the misgivings Peopeo Tholekt felt to his marrow.

  Bird Alighting turned to that left end of the small group where the two settlement men sat astride their horses. He began telling the Shadow what his chief wanted him to say: “Leave us alone. We are living here peacefully and want no trouble—”

  He was interrupted as the second wagon man suddenly raised his rifle and shoved its muzzle right into Bird Alighting’s ribs, pressed just below his left nipple so hard that it made the warrior wince.

  At the same time, the Shadow angrily growled something Bird Alighting did not understand, but it nonetheless looked and sounded like a squint-eyed demand. Still, he did not know exactly what this man wanted. Maybe nothing more than to pull the trigger on his gun and blow a hole through Bird Alighting’s heart—and he was afraid because he smelled the heavy stench of the white man’s whiskey on the Shadow’s every word.

  Before Bird Alighting could protest or twist himself away from the gun’s muzzle and the strong whiskey breath, that first settler—the Nee-Me-Poo talker—shoved the barrel downward, shouting at the bad-talker in some Shadow words Bird Alighting did not completely understand.

  “This is not Looking Glass. Only a messenger, goddammit.”

  That’s when the soldier chief asked something and the Nee-Me-Poo talker explained to Bird Alighting, “Go back to your camp and tell Looking Glass we want to talk to him. Talk only to him. Not a messenger like you. Talk to Looking Glass.”

  By the time Bird Alighting had turned Looking Glass’s horse around and it was scrambling back up the east bank of Clear Creek, he could see how excited the men and women in the village had become. They had witnessed how the gun was shoved into his ribs. Maybe even heard the bad, loud talk from the Shadow. If they could not understand the words, then it wasn’t at all difficult to understand the meaning—from both the tone and the strident volume of such angry talk.

  As he reined the war pony among those eleven lodges, Bird Alighting saw that one of the older men was propping a new lodgepole against Looking Glass’s lodge. But this pole had a big white cloth attached to it: well known as the Shadow signal for making peace, for talking truce—a signal for not making a fight.

  “Peopeo Tholekt!” Looking Glass shouted, shuffling forward on foot. He held his bare hands aloft, imploring his friend, “Why aren’t they leaving our country? Why are the suapies still here?”

  “The soldier chief wants to speak only to you.”

  Looking Glass’s face instantly went gray with worry. “This cannot be good. Go back now, and tell them my words again. Maybe they did not understand you good enough. Tell them once more that I want no trouble and to go away. We hurt no one, and want no one to bother us.”

  Back across the creek among the five Shadows, Bird Alighting was desperate for his words to take effect this time. “Looking Glass is my chief. I bring you his words. He does not want a war! He came back here to our country to get away from the other chiefs who would do wrong, come back here to escape war. He says: Do not cross to our side of the little river. We do not want any trouble with you! So go and leave us live in peace.”

  Grown even more red-faced than before, the angry civilian jabbed his rifle muzzle all the harder into Bird Alighting’s ribs this second time. And once more that mean-eyed Shadow growled foul-sounding words the messenger could not understand. Again the friendly talker interceded, shoving the loud-talker’s rifle aside, urging his horse forward, putting himself between the bad-talker and Bird Alighting for some modest protection. While Bird Alighting kept his eyes on the bad-talker, the good Shadow spoke in their foreign tongue to the soldier chief.

  Finally, the Indian talker said in Nee-Me-Poo, “The rest of the soldiers will come with us when we come across the little river to speak—”

  “No, Looking Glass says for the soldiers to stay on this side. Do not come across. Leave us alone—”

  “The soldier chief wants to talk with Looking Glass,” he interrupted sharply, as if losing patience. “If it makes it better, you tell him just the five of us will come across to talk. No more.”

  “All right,” Bird Alighting replied with a little relief, turning the chief’s horse around for the swollen creek.

  He looked over his shoulder as the angry Shadow started to harangue all the others left behind on the bank. More loud voices joined his, primarily those of the other wagon and settlement men. None of the soldiers joined in the red-faced yelling. The next time Bird Alighting glanced over his shoulder, the angry one was shaking his rifle at the soldier chief and Shadows in the creek—but especially he shook it menacingly at Bird Alighting.

  It took only minutes for them to cross, and their horses were scrambling onto the bank, dripping as they carried their riders into the village. Warriors and women and many, many curious, frightened children appeared among the few lodges. Ruff-necked, several dogs slinked close to growl at these strange-smelling horses and men—

  A single gunshot rang out.

  Bird Alighting whirled about on the bare back of that war-horse. In that instant he could not find the warrior who had fired the shot. Nor could he see a one of the soldiers or that Shadow-talker as they fell from their horses.

  Then he turned the Looking Glass pony some more and peered across the little river in horror, shocked to find the rest of the Shadows and soldiers speeding their horses down to the water. A gray tendril of gunsmoke was still curling away from the barrel of that bad-talker’s rifle!

  *A Nez Perce term that cannot be translated.

  **Approximately six miles above present-day Kooskia, Idaho.

  *A Nez Perce term for White Bird Canyon.

  *The Crow, or Absaroka, tribe of Montana.

  CHAPTER TEN

  JULY 1, 1877

  CAPTAIN STEPHEN G. WHIPPLE JERKED AROUND IN HIS SADdle at the loud boom of the gun, watching as that red-faced, loudmouthed civilian named Washington “Dutch” Holmes entered the stream and slowly lowered the needle-gun from his shoulder, gray smoke snaking from its muzzle.

  How in Jupiter had things gotten so out of hand?

  For starters, Whipple’s detail hadn’t been where he had hoped they could be at first light. Because of both the rugged terrain and the miscalculations of Randall’s volunteers, the Looking Glass village turned out to be more than ten miles farther than they had assumed when they first embarked from Mount Idaho. After riding through the dark, in broken country, they had ended up on the hillside opposite the village close to 7:00 A.M., well after daybreak.

  By then it had become clear some of Randall’s men had kept themselves warm, or worked up some bravado, by sipping at a little of the whiskey they passed around in some pewter flasks. Just before Whipple had started into the stream, prepared to parley with Looking Glass, Dutch Holmes’s companion Dave Ousterholt had hollered out with a slur, “Tell that red son of a bitch we’ll move ’im to Mount Idaho by bullets or bayonets—don’t make us no mind!”

  The whiskey in their bellies was doing all the talking now, and … Katy bar the door!

  Just as suddenly as he had jerked around in the saddle to peer at the cursing civilians—Ousterholt and Holmes—the captain now whipped back around to look at the village where most of the Nez Perce stood frozen in place, stunned. Except for that one hapless warrior who had been standing closest on the creek bank. He was clutching both hands around one of his thighs, a dark ooze seeping between his fingers.

  Right on the heels of that breathless moment when everything around him seemed to be suspended in time … the Indians let out a concerted yell: men with their angry war cries, women with their anguished wails of disbelief, and the children with their fearful, bewildered sobbing. Of a sudden everything was in motion once more, but in a blur now. Women scooped up their children as they dashed behind lodges, seeking safety. Old m
en stood haranguing the men of fighting age. Warriors sprinted here and there in the bedlam, dashing into their lodges for weapons, reemerging with bows or a few old rifles in hand. Even some young boys leaped bareback atop those horses kept in the village—shrieking as they raced for the herd on the outskirts of camp.

  There could be no delay now!

  “Retreat!” the captain called to his three fellow soldiers and that single civilian interpreter whom he had brought with him across the creek. “Pull back! Pull back!”

  As one the four of them wheeled their horses about, kicking the animals savagely as they leaped off the grassy bank, landing with a spray in the creek running at its full strength with mountain snowmelt. All five riders leaned low across their horses’ withers as they raced for the opposite bank where the rest of Whipple’s detachment were milling about as they came out of the creek. The first arrows were reaching the far side by the time he and the four were scrambling up the bank to join those two companies of soldiers scattering without orders, seeking cover of any sort.

  And in the midst of it all sat those two damned civilians!

  “Just what in the name of Jupiter did you think you were doing?” Whipple shouted at the man as he reined up between Dutch Holmes and the rifleman.

  “They wasn’t gonna do what you wanted ’em to do anyway, Captain,” snorted the red-faced, whiskeyed-up Dave Ousterholt. “Lot of useless talk while that Looking Glass and his red bastards have time to get ready to fight.”

  In fury, Whipple snapped, “We didn’t come here to fight!”

  The volunteer sneered as he said, “Blood. That’s all the red-bellies understand, Captain. Time we give back what they give our friends on the Salmon. For what they done out on the Camas Prairie, too!”

  “Damn you! There was no call—”

  “You’re already in the soup now, Captain,” interrupted Dutch Holmes.