Cries from the Earth

by Terry C. Johnston

  Throughout that night and into the next day, the Irish miner brooded on what was to become of all this, just what was to happen now to the mines and to the farms, what was to become of these tiny settlements under seige now that the Indians had gone wild and back to the blanket. And he feared most for the old man.

  But by the next afternoon Popham finally emerged from the timber at the edge of the settlement and hailed the citizens who stood watch at the Mount Idaho barricades.

  “I gave you up for dead, old man!” Brice hollered above the pandemonium that erupted now, just as it had each time someone who had been assumed a casualty walked in big as life.

  “Never thought I’d see you alive neither!” Popham cheered as they hammered each other on the back, both men reveling in their desperate relief and this joyous reunion.

  “I brought Maggie in yestiddy,” Patrick confided.

  The old man’s eyes grew moist; then he asked, “Jennet and the baby—they was already here when you come in?”

  Brice’s heart went cold behind his breastbone. “Maggie … why, she told me the Injuns kill’t her mamma and li’l brother.”

  “Naw,” Popham replied gruffly, sawing his head back and forth the way a man would who refused to believe some shocking news just told him. “They cain’t be dead. I know for my own self she got out alive—”

  “Maggie said she saw ’em both,” Brice explained gently as he looped an arm over the grieving father’s shoulder and led him away from the crowd celebrating Popham’s arrival. “Saw ’em after—”

  “Maggie saw ’em … dead?”

  Brice nodded, sensing the muscles tense across the old man’s shoulders. “Maggie hid outside when the Injuns come back around, but told me she watched Joseph hisself kill her mamma. Later on when the Injuns was gone, Maggie went back in the house, to where the bastards left the bodies … where she watched ’em kill your daughter and grandson. But Maggie said she didn’t find the … didn’t find neither of your kin.”

  Popham dragged a grimy hand across the lower half of his face, rustling the heavy stubble of a graying beard, snorting back the dribble at the end of his nose. “Then I gotta figger there’s still a chance Jennet’s alive, the baby too.”

  “George,” Patrick cautioned, “maybe it ain’t such a good notion to count on that—”

  Fiercely grabbing Brice’s shirt, Popham growled, “Maggie said herself she didn’t see no sign of ’em when she went back inside. You told me that. So their bodies wasn’t in the house when the red bastards burned it to the ground.”

  “B-burned the house?”

  “Yeah. The Nez Perce torched it, every last stick of lumber.”

  Bewildered, Brice declared, “B-but the house was still standing when I left with Maggie.”

  “Must’ve happened after you took off with her,” Popham admitted. “I stayed till there was nothing left but cinders and smoke. When you and me got separated, I vowed to stay in one place. Figured I was safer that way, rather’n moving around and getting caught. But once John and Jennet’s house went up in flame, I figgered there was no reason left for me to hang around—since them sonsabitches had took everything they wanted and burned down the rest. It was likely safe for me to slip away.”

  “I never saw no trace of Mrs. Manuel or the baby,” Brice confessed with a wag of his head. “Not no sign when we started for here.”

  “Neither did I,” Popham said grimly. “That’s why I’m gonna figure Maggie got it wrong—the little dear. That’s why I’m gonna believe that Jennet and the boy are still alive … out there somewhere.”

  “We’ll go look—you, me, and some others too—soon as we get some more soldiers brave enough to ride back over to the White Bird,” Brice vowed.

  Laying his big, dirt-crusted hand on the Irishman’s bony shoulder, Popham declared, “They’re alive, son. I know in my gut Jennet and her boy are still alive.”

  Epilogue

  Fort Lapwai

  June 19, 1877

  Dear Mamma,

  We have lived through so much since I wrote last time that it seems months. It has all been so horrible, I should like to tell you about it and not write. Doctor has not come back yet, but probably will on Thursday. You know how I mourned over his having to go, and he did not want to go at all, and now I am so thankful, I don’t know what to do. He, of course, would have left here with Colonel Perry’s command, had he been home on Friday night, and that poor little band we will never see alive again. I can’t write you how everything is going on here. I only hope, if we all live through it, sometime to tell you, but this Indian War is many times a more extensive affair than any one imagined.

  The Non-Treaty Nez Perces, to a man, joined Joseph’s forces, and he is being constantly reinforced by bands from other tribes that are encouraged by the success he has already met with. Colonel Perry went to Mount Idaho to reach those settlers. More than thirty had been murdered before he started, including quite a number of children and women. When Colonel Perry’s troops (not a hundred men and two officers—all that could be possibly found in reach) got there, the Indians were gone and were supposed to be retreating towards the buffalo country by a certain pass. Colonel Perry hoped to catch them while they were crossing a river. They were supposed to be about eighty under Joseph and White Bird. On Sunday, by forced marches, they came up with what they thought was a detachment of Indians, and the fight began. It was such a hot day, and we waited here for the news with heartaches. It is only about fifty miles from us. Yesterday morning, at daybreak, the news came. More than half the command is dead and missing. Poor Mr. Theller is dead. The wounded were left on the field. Colonel Perry with twenty men had gotten back to Mount Idaho.

  The poor little laundress, who has also lost her husband, has been staying in our house ever since her husband left, as she was afraid in her own quarters outside the garrison. Can you imagine how terrible it is for us women at Lapwai with all this horrible Indian war around us, and with these two women, who have lost their husbands, constantly before our eyes, and we not knowing who will be the next sufferer. They are the first, but they will not be the last.

  I hope and pray my dear, old John will be spared to me and not sacrificed to those red devils for a country that isn’t worth it.

  Your loving daughter,

  Emily F.

  Notes

  Prologue

  1. Although this tribal name appears in different spellings throughout the many sources on the Nez Perce, I have chosen to use the spelling subscribed to by the Nez Perce National Historic Trail Advisory Council.

  2. The Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery

  Chapter Four

  1. The name of the warrior later called Yellow Bull, Chuslum Moxmox—which is the name used for this character in most of the historical literature concerning this 1877 conflict

  2. Canada

  3. Red Echo

  Chapter Five

  1. The August moon

  2. The 10,000-year old Tolo Lake near present-day Grangeville, Idaho, the sole natural lake on Camas Prairie

  3. Wright’s Campaign of 1858

  4. May 31, 1877

  5. At least half a mile

  6. An area about six miles west of Grangeville

  7. Around June 3, 1877

  8. Today’s Tolo Lake

  Chapter Seven

  1. Sometime around midday Wednesday—June 13, 1877

  2. This Shadow was well aware of the large encampment at Split Rock, so he would later remark that he thought it strange that the three young men were traveling upriver away from Rocky Canyon so late in the day. Even more memorable were the three because they were riding two poor horses, when the Nez Perce always rode their finest and strongest animals if they had a long journey to make. And now the sun was rapidly falling.

  Chapter Eight

  1. Scum of the earth!

  Chapter Ten

  1. Charles P. Cone

  2. Samuel Benedict

  Chapter Thirteen
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  1. Also rendered in the historical literature as Sapachesap, a cave close to the traditional home of Looking Glass’s people on the South Fork of the Clearwater River

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  1. Tulekats Chickchamit, sometimes rendered in the Nez Perce language as Tula

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  1. Devil’s Backbone—vol. 5, The Plainsmen Series

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  1. Charles Horton

  2. This cave was reportedly situated just west of the present-day community of Stites, Idaho.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  1. Nez Perce accounts state that there were fifty-five warriors among Joseph’s Wallowa, fifty in White Bird’s Lamtama, and no more than thirty warriors in Toohoolhoolzote’s Pikunan.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  1. Corporal Roman D. Lee, H Company, First U.S. Cavalry

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  1. William Coram

  2. Private John Schorr, F Company, First U.S. Cavalry

  Chapter Forty

  1. Abraham Brooks

  Chapter Forty-One

  1. Today’s Magpie Gulch

  Chapter Forty-Four

  1. Historical accounts never recorded the name of this fourth casualty.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  1. This great council deciding the life or death of the prisoners, and what course to take next, was held just inside the north boundary of the present-day township of White Bird, Idaho, on the west side of “old” U.S. Highway 95, toward the battlefield itself.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  1. Sometimes rendered in the Nez Perce language as Tula

  2. A fictitious name I have arbitrarily given this actual historical character whose name has not been recorded for posterity; although there is no record of this warrior’s name, this incident nonetheless did occur as I have written it.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  1. Reputed to be something on the order of 2,500 to 3,500 head of horses

  Afterword

  1. Michael McCarthy Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

  2. The Medal of Honor of the United States Army (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1948), p. 230

  Afterword

  What a treacherous and thorny road I’ve chosen to walk by attempting to write my usual historical afterword to a story that is far from over!

  I hope those of you who have written me over the years wondering when I was going to get around to including a book on the Nez Perce War in this Plainsmen Series are not dismayed that this book ended right after the first battle. You’re going to get not only one, but three volumes!

  The story is simply too complicated, the characters far too numerous, the locales too distant for me to cover in one book. For years now I had counted on doing this story in two novels. The first would take us from the murders and White Bird Canyon through the Battle of the Big Hole in Montana Territory. Then the second book would carry us from that point through to the eventual surrender at the Bear’s Paw and exile to the hot country of Indian Territory.

  But a funny thing happened on the way. History and historical characters have a compelling means of making themselves known to me, and hence to you. Yes, I could have written one big academic text as others have done, complete with the cultural and historical background on the tribe. But I chose to do what I do best: tell this story by dropping us right down into the middle of the frying pan when things were coming to a boil.

  I’ll trust that in the end my factual telling of this all too human a story will prove to be more compelling than all those academic textbooks put together!

  Before I go any further, there are a few people I want to thank for their generous and unselfish help in seeing me down the road with this first of three volumes about the Nez Perce War.

  At the outset, I should express my gratitude to my long time friend and National Park Service historian, Jerome A. Greene. A couple years back Jerry helped open the door for me at the Spalding site. In a conversation on another matter regarding Nelson Miles’s Yellowstone campaigns, I found out Jerry was working on a long-term, exhaustive study of the Nez Perce War. We kept in touch from time to time, often discussing my perceptions of that war’s historical characters. He was a tremendous resource to me in that regard.

  Last spring it came time for me to visit the sites where the story took place one last time. And on this trip I wanted to get my hands on Jerry’s materials being guarded in the basement at the Spalding Nez Perce site.

  Robert Chenowith, curator at the site, graciously welcomed me into their archives (even though he admitted he doesn’t read historical fiction!). Bob introduced me to Linda Paisano, a wonderful Indian lady who serves as the museum technician, as well as Rob Applegate, who was experiencing his first day on the job as the site librarian.

  Rob and Linda got me set up in a quiet room just off the locked archives vault, where I could come and go with the huge boxes of Jerry’s research. I was like a kid in a candy store. While I was digging through the boxes, Bob Chenowith came in with his personal copy of the uncorrected proofs to Jerry’s newest book, his forthcoming volume on the Nez Perce War, to be published in the spring of 1999 through a joint effort by the National Park Service and the Montana Historical Society.

  Before I go any further with this historical wrap-up, I want to remind you of the proper pronunciation of Nez Perce. Although that name was given to the Nee-Me-Poo people by the obscure French voyageurs working for the British fur trading companies (just as the French designated the Lakota people by the foreign word Sioux), it should not be pronounced with some Americanized “French” twist to the words: “Nay Per-say.”

  Nor should it be spoken as “Nez Per-say,” even though in some academic volumes you will often come across Perce written with a diacritical accent mark over the last e in the word. And some folks make the mistake of pronouncing the first word correctly—“Nez”—then mispronounce the second word by giving it its English translation: “Pierce.” Also incorrect.

  Instead, the common usage among both those Nee-Me-Poo I have met in my travels and those whites who live in Nez Perce country gives us the following proper pronunciation:

  “Nez Purse.”

  Let me push on by agreeing with Jerry Green in saying this is a story of friendship forgotten and trust betrayed. I will take a leap further by saying that the forgotten friendship and betrayed trust occurred on both sides. While the wave of political correctness sweeping our country would emphasize broken treaties and betrayal on a grander, more global, scale … I focus in on the dissolution of longtime friendships and the destruction of trust happening on a more personal level—between individuals on both sides in those final months before the outbreak of hostilities.

  Simply put, the Nez Perce bands saw their trust in the white man shattered, and many of the white settlers along the Salmon and across Camas Prairie saw their relationship with the Nez Perce brutally crushed right before their eyes.

  Beyond the fact that there was treachery and deceit on both sides—enough to ignite one of the most tragic conflicts in our country’s history—I believe any more of an attempt to place blame on one group or another is nothing more than an attempt by the historians to split very fine hairs.

  It is quite amazing to me that so many historians state that there is no accounting for what happened with those first bloody murders of innocent whites at the hands of a few drunk warriors.

  I think I understand perfectly.

  Across some twenty years, more and more white men flooded into Nez Perce country until there were three or four whites to every Indian. While a majority of the newcomers did not seize the land for themselves or mine gold on Nez Perce ground or steal horses or cattle from the tribe … while most of those who simply crowded in where they didn’t belong weren’t the sort to rape the Nez Perce women, weren’t the kind who would beat or even murder a Nez Perce man … there nonetheless were the greedy few who found a land of opportu
nity where little restraint had to be exercised in dealing with the Nez Perce. After all, the Indians were an inferior subclass, a heathen populace who weren’t using the earth, making it fruitful, as our Christian God had commanded of us many thousands of years before.

  Against this backdrop of deceit, greed, and downright evil, it was only natural that resentments grew, tallies of wrongs were kept, and strong emotions simmered just below the surface. So you want to tell me that there’s no accounting for what happened in June of 1877?

  It was payback time, in a big way. The tragedy of it was that when it came time to pay the piper, most of those killed, raped, or robbed were innocent of having done anything against their murderers in specific, much less against the Nez Perce tribe as a whole.

  I’ll wager that most of you folks who have some speaking acquaintance with this war didn’t know about those first murders the three young men committed or about the fourteen other murders and rapes committed by Sun Necklace’s second revenge raid. Truth is, most people have never really cared to learn anything about the complexity of what happened between the settlers and the war parties bent on spilling white blood. Instead, too many folk have chosen to believe that the army came to attack the Indians at White Bird Canyon because those Indians had refused to go onto the reservation after the Nez Perce had guaranteed they would.

  So it has been that the majority of people, even those with some knowledge of the Nez Perce War, are convinced the story is entirely one of black and white, a classic tale where the soldiers repeatedly harassed, attacked, and killed the Nez Perce at White Bird, again on the Cottonwood, then on the Clearwater, and finally traipsed after them into Montana to surprise the tribe at the Big Hole, Camas Meadows, and Canyon Creek, then ultimately brought the war to an end at the Bear’s Paw Mountains—a few miles short of sanctuary in Canada.

  While this concept of how the war began and was prosecuted may be currently in vogue, and most certainly what we would call politically correct, it is wrong. Ignorance of the real story does neither side any justice in this tragedy, much less serve the historical record.