Cries from the Earth

by Terry C. Johnston

  If he were given the chance to sue for peace, Joseph vowed to do what he could on behalf of all the Nee-Me-Poo. Somehow he would have to convince Cut-Off Arm and Agent Monteith that even though ten, perhaps fifteen, white lives had been taken already, those lives had been sacrificed only after the young men had soaked their hearts with Shadow whiskey. Besides, Joseph would argue, that slaughter of a few whites along the Salmon and up on the Camas Prairie had to be weighed against twenty-four long winters as the Boston Men raped Nee-Me-Poo women, stole Nee-Me-Poo horses, cattle, and land … twenty-four long winters as the miners, cattlemen, and settlers wantonly murdered Joseph’s people.

  Here on the hillside where he could look down on Lahmotta, into that bottomground along White Bird Creek, Joseph recognized how this traditional campsite had been chosen for defense generations ago. Backed by the Salmon River to the west, they were flanked on both sides by high ridges and deep ravines. Atop nearby buttes the chiefs could post sentries to watch for the approach of any soldier column. The scarcity of level terrain at this traditional camping ground would serve the bands well should the white men choose to attack. Here a few warriors could hold off more than twice as many as their number.

  Turning his pony about, Joseph hurried back along the column to reach his wife’s travois. There he leaned over and held down his hand, smiling. But when she raised her hand to touch his, she seized it, squeezing fiercely.

  “Stay close, Joseph. I am so afraid for your daughter.”

  Tears stung his eyes. “Do not fear, woman. Our daughter has been born in freedom.”

  He stayed with the travois on their way down the long slope toward the great encampment where the other bands had already erected a forest of lodgepole cones, spreading their smoke-blackened buffalo-hide covers over them. Somewhere near the creek he would help his eldest daughter erect their lodge.

  Then he would wait.

  Joseph knew he could do little else but wait and brood that Cut-Off Arm held the power now. The Nee-Me-Poo could only wait.

  Would the soldier chief come to punish his people with a harsh and unjust peace?

  Or would he send his soldiers?

  Chapter 30

  June 16, 1877

  He was a mishmash of contradictions, this Arthur Chapman.

  At thirty-six, he stood tall, spare, and every bit as lean as a buggy whip. He still had plenty of his hair: black as the bottom of a tar spring did it spill across his shoulders. Born in Iowa, Chapman was no more than seven years old when his family moved to Oregon during that monumental western migration upon the Emigrant Road. His father soon became one of the founders of Portland.

  This inland Northwest was a country rife with possibilities for a likely lad. Seeking his own brand of adventure at the ripe old age of nine, young Arthur carried dispatches for the army between The Dalles and Fort Walla Walla during the Rogue River Indian War. By the time he turned fifteen, Chapman had settled on a piece of ground beside White Bird Creek, near the mouth of a stream that would soon bear his name. It was there he began raising cattle and breeding horses, as well as operating a ferry across the Salmon River at the mouth of the White Bird. Because of his daring bravado and his uncanny ability to navigate his ferry across the swollen, raging river, even during the most tumultuous spring flooding, folks in the area began calling him Admiral, or simply “Ad” for short.

  Ad Chapman it was, and always would be.

  In ’74 he sold his ranch to John J. Manuel and moved north to a new homestead he built on Cottonwood Creek some eight miles from Mount Idaho out on the Camas Prairie, where he continued to breed horses. Around the time the Nez Perce started kicking up a fuss, Chapman boasted owning some four hundred head of prime stock that grazed in his pastures in the shadow of Cottonwood Butte.

  Oh, not that there wasn’t a ticklish rumor about Ad and his horse-trading practices that cropped up every now and then: a story that claimed he had sold a horse to a warrior named White Eagle, then later taken the horse back by force. But that wasn’t really anything more than talk. Not that Chapman hadn’t tried to get the horse back, mind you—when Ad found out how the red bastard had cheated him by trading him three old horses, all soon to come down with the colic. Truth was, Ad was plagued by a short-fused temper, and when he went off looking to even the score with White Eagle, Chapman only got himself whipped pretty good by some of that Indian’s friends.

  Such affairs as that didn’t do much good to endear the Nez Perce to Ad Chapman, even though he had married an Umatilla squaw a few years back, even though he spoke real good Nez Perce too. The couple had a young boy, and now his wife was expecting another child come early fall.

  Hard as he tried, Ad couldn’t seem to win with either side—not with most of the Nez Perce, who distrusted him to one degree or another, and not with some of the whites who considered him a traitor because he had married an Indian woman and fathered a half-breed child. Truth was, Chapman didn’t endear himself to some folks simply because he called it as he saw it. If an Indian acted bad, he was due a thrubbing, Ad believed. And if a man stole a horse, he was due a hanging.

  That’s how Chapman came to be the leader of the bunch who caught a warrior named Wolf Head who was accused of stealing a settler’s horse and some cows. Once the white posse got their hands on the Nez Perce warrior, they hanged him from the closest tree and left the body twisting in the wind for the better part of a week simply to scare hell out of the other bucks who might feel frisky enough to purloin some white man’s horses or some beef on the hoof.

  On top of all that, there was a story going the rounds that the Non-Treaty bands didn’t trust him any farther than they could throw him because they claimed he had stolen some of their cows and sold them off to Chinese miners up at Florence and Elk City in the mountains. Hell, if those Indians didn’t take better care of their stock than to leave their cattle run through Chapman’s upper pasture, they deserved to be missing a few cows!

  Such was the delicate line he walked between the white world and red in these parts. For good or bad, there honestly wasn’t a man who possessed more experience dealing with the Non-Treaty bands than Arthur Chapman. In fact, over the years, he had forged quite a bond with chief Looking Glass and a few of his headmen. Ad figured when you got right down to it, that steadfast friendship had to go a long way to proving he wasn’t so bad a fella to the Nez Perce.

  But that friendship with Looking Glass and his bunch might have been reason enough some of the citizens who had flocked into Mount Idaho and Grangeville at the first whisper of trouble resented it when Chapman was elected to captain the volunteer company formed to defend the communities against the uprising. It made no never mind to Ad Chapman—there were more important things to concern him now than a few ruffled feathers of those shopkeepers and gentleman farmers. This was war.

  He recognized this situation for what it was, right off. Back on Thursday afternoon, two of his Nez Perce friends—Looking Glass and Yellow Bear—rode over from the big gathering they were having at the head of Rocky Canyon on Camas Prairie to let Chapman know that some of the young bucks had gone on the warpath and had already killed seven white men by that time. A damn honorable thing of those two old friends to come warn him at a time like that, even going so far as to suggest that he clear out till things quieted down. No sooner had he gotten his wife and son started away, his two hired men coming along with Ad’s three prized breeding stallions, than they spotted a war party headed for his ranch.

  Chapman figured he might well owe Looking Glass his life for that warning, because it had been a horse race all the way to the outskirts of Mount Idaho.

  Sprinting into the tiny settlement barely ahead of those warriors screaming for his blood, Ad dropped out of the saddle in front of Loyal P. Brown’s hotel and began spreading the alarm, shocking one and all with the news of the Salmon River murders. By nightfall the folks flooding into town had formed their own militia company and elected Chapman as its captain. As soon as he had mounted pic
kets to watch all the approaches to town, Chapman asked for volunteers to carry word to Fort Lapwai.

  That’s when Lew Day had stepped up. Within minutes, the courier was on his way to Cottonwood House.

  In the predawn darkness of the following morning, June 15, Chapman had slipped out of town and back to his ranch to keep a planned rendezvous with Looking Glass and Yellow Bear. Just before five o’clock, as the sky was graying, he rode up to his friends, a bit surprised to find them accompanied by two other warriors. The four grimly related the names of the settlers who had been killed up to that point in time, including some white folks on the Camas Prairie. It shook Chapman to his boots when Lew Day was reported as being among the dead.

  That’s when Ad knew he couldn’t stand back and ask for any more Mount Idaho volunteers to make that deadly journey. So then and there he asked Looking Glass’s brother if he would ride from Mount Idaho to Fort Lapwai. Without hesitation the warrior agreed to carry word to the soldier post.

  A half-breed named West took off about seven that Friday morning, carrying a letter from saloon-keeper Brown. About an hour later, Tucallasasena, the chief’s brother, set off with a second note from Brown to the post commander at Lapwai. Ad figured one of them would get through and bring the soldiers running.

  Once those couriers departed, the men of Chapman’s militia went out to gather up their dead, along with what survivors they managed to find. One small band of volunteers ran across Hill Norton, scared out of his wits, near the edge of town. And a little while later some other men managed to coax a hysterical Lynn Bowers to accompany them to Brown’s hotel, where Loyal P. and his wife, Sarah, were nursing the wounded and feeding everyone for free out of their stores. By afternoon more than 250 souls had converged on the mountainside village.

  Chapman figured if there were any others who hadn’t made it into town by sundown that Friday … they weren’t coming. Likely dead by now.

  Knowing the pitiful story of Mrs. Chamberlin and her daughters, the rest of the women murmured softly among themselves on what fate awaited them and their children if the warriors attacked the town in strength. Chapman, Brown, Rowton, and a few others kept every able-bodied man at the barricades they had thrown up at both ends of the street and tallied their firearms. There weren’t enough rifles to go around so when a new watch arrived to assume their rotation on the picket line, those going off-duty handed over their weapons to the fresh guards. Ad never told another soul just how pessimistic he felt about having enough firepower to hold back all those warriors Looking Glass had warned him were busting loose from the encampment at Rocky Canyon.

  But there were some peaceful, idyllic moments nonetheless as twilight came down that Friday night, the fifteenth. Most of the mothers were having a dickens of a time getting their frightened children to lie down and drift off to sleep, so the town’s finest voices agreed to sing some lullabies for the wee ones. James Adkison sang “Nearer, My God, to Thee” and “Onward Christian Soldiers”; then John Rowton climbed a tall pine tree standing inside their makeshift stockade and with his melodious baritone sang a heart-wrenching rendition of “I’ll Remember You, Love, in My Prayers.”

  As it grew dark that evening, Chapman listened all the more intently to every sound drifting in from the night, brooding on those women and children gathered in this tiny settlement, each of them so scared they could hardly close their eyes and sleep. For now it didn’t make any difference that a few folks here in Mount Idaho had done their level best to cheat or steal from the Nez Perce. No matter that most of the citizens were guiltless in every way.

  In a dirty little war like this, Chapman realized, travail and gnashing of teeth always visited itself upon the guilty and the innocent alike.

  Having been awake most of the night, Ad was aware when the overcast sky turned gray. Plain that the sun would refuse to shine this Saturday morning, the sixteenth. The blackening horizon promised a day of rain. All they could do now was wait, and wonder if the couriers got through to Lapwai.

  Then wait some more.

  By midafternoon, Ad Chapman grew tired of waiting. He asked for volunteers to join him on a scout up the road to Cottonwood House. Eighteen men mounted up, heavily armed, and followed him out of Mount Idaho for Grangeville. They found that settlement battened down and prepared for the siege those townsfolk expected at any moment; then Chapman’s militia pushed north onto the Camas Prairie.

  Just past four o’clock Ad figured they had to be getting close to Norton’s place, what with Cottonwood Butte looming on the left. Up ahead at the bottom of a swale lay the spot where Wilmot and Ready had abandoned their wagons with all that liquor aboard—

  Suddenly, no more than a mile away up the road, he spotted horsemen, a damn lot of horsemen, coming on at a good clip, a double handful of Indians out front.

  But just as the other civilians were about ready to piss in their britches, Chapman saw those telltale guidons snapping in the cold breeze.

  “Hold on, there—that’s cavalry, fellas!” Chapman announced, hearing the audible sigh shudder through the eighteen men around him. “If I know anything, it’s horse soldiers.”

  The others were starting to whoop and holler as Ad Chapman put heels to his horse. He didn’t know who had gotten through to Lapwai—the half-breed or Looking Glass’s brother—and it really didn’t matter much right then.

  All that was important now was that the army had come and they were about to give back hurt for hurt and put down this short-lived uprising. If nothing else, it was time to teach them murdering bucks a lesson, but good.

  * * *

  “Any of you in command here?” Captain David Perry asked the twenty-some civilians who had halted in the middle of the rain-soaked road, squarely in front of his cavalry, no more than a handful of miles north of Grangeville.

  After that three-hour stop to eat breakfast and recoup their horses, Perry had gotten them under way again by noon. They hadn’t come all that far from Norton’s place when the soldiers started running across dead horses on the road, an abandoned wagon here and there, and the tall, wispy columns of smoke in the distance that signaled another ranch had been put to the torch.

  By midafternoon they ran onto the two wagons positioned across the road, hundreds of cigars littering the ground, other trade goods strewn everywhere. Near the wheel of one wagon lay an empty whiskey keg. Perry’s column had just left the scene of that rampage behind when the skirmishers up front announced the approach of horsemen. The strangers turned out to be a band of white men.

  “The men elected me their captain,” replied a lanky sort who urged his horse away from the group and stopped by Perry.

  The officer studied the age beginning to show on the younger man’s weathered face: those chiseled features, that huge, unkempt walrus mustache, but mostly those dark eyes rimmed with fatigue where a strange light nonetheless glimmered. Something in those eyes instantly made him wary as he shook hands with the rawboned civilian.

  “Ad Chapman’s the name.”

  Perry introduced his officers, then asked, “What’s the situation at Grangeville and Mount Idaho?”

  He was relieved when Chapman declared neither of the communities had been attacked. As more of the civilians moseyed up to get in on that conversation held at the middle of the road, it became apparent there were roaming bands of bandits, looters, and murderers who dared not attempt the strength of the towns where the settlers had gathered as the alarm spread.

  “The Injuns crossed the Camas about noon today, Captain,” Chapman explained.

  “What direction?”

  “Toward the Salmon River.” Chapman pointed to the White Bird Divide, then crossed his wrists atop his saddle horn.

  Perry wagged his head, feeling the deep fatigue in his bones. Sixty miles, in just shy of a twenty-four-hour march. “My men have been on the march since last night.”

  “It’s for damn sure them Nepercy know all about your bunch of soldiers,” Frank Fenn spoke up.

&nbs
p; “Yep,” George Shearer said with a hint of a Southern drawl as he shifted a carbine across the crook of his left arm. “That’s why they’re skeedaddling to the Salmon now, Cap’n.”

  Chapman said, “They get across that river with all them horses and cattle they stole—”

  “All their goddamned plunder too,” Shearer growled.

  Ad Chapman nodded and went on. “Them Nepercy manage to get all that across the Salmon, why … I don’t think you or nobody’s cavalry gonna ever catch ’em in the mountains.”

  Alarmed for the first time that his quarry might well slip from his grasp if he did not act, Perry asked, “How soon do you suppose till they make their crossing?”

  The leader of the volunteers peered at the sky. Then Chapman ventured, “Sun be going down soon. I’ll lay they won’t cross till sunup tomorrow, so they’ll have ’nough time to get all the women and animals across in daylight.”

  “Tomorrow morning,” Perry repeated, deep in thought.

  “Once they’re on the other side of the Salmon,” Shearer warned, “they’re in their mountains … and you’ll never catch ’em.”

  “Even with a month of Sundays, your cavalry won’t never catch Nepercy once they get into those mountains across the river,” Chapman repeated ominously.

  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.