Cries from the Earth

by Terry C. Johnston

  For me the rape of these two women brings up the nagging question that appears to be all too easy for others to dismiss but difficult for me to fathom: why did the warriors on both raids murder some of those they caught, while letting others go without harm? What accounts for this most curious and unexplainable fact?

  At their core, the raids along the Salmon were clearly reprisals against only a few of those whites who had settled along a part of the river where the land was ill-suited to much of anything. Remember, this was a valley without attraction except for its wild and seductive beauty: there was no gold in the gravel bars along the Salmon as there was in the nearby mountains; the steep hills rising abruptly from the river’s edge did not lend themselves to agriculture in any shape or form. So except for the storekeepers, why did these settlers put down roots there?

  In his The Flight of the Nez Perce, author Mark H. Brown posits a claim that the hollows of the Salmon near the mouth of White Bird Creek became a “Hole-in-the-Wall” country for those hard-core “undesireables” banished from Lewiston, as well as Florence and other mining camps (as we already pointed out in the case of what led Larry Ott to be in the valley). Evidence for this is that they attempted to grow a few crops on some poor ground instead of prospecting in the mountains. Such “banished” characters couldn’t simply leave Idaho and go to Montana, where a decade before vigilantes had already proved very ably that they were not about to put up with ruffians and scofflaws in their mining camps. So Brown goes on to declare that this area of the Salmon was home to “far more than a normal proportion of tough characters.”

  Pardon me? Are we really to believe that these family men—Samuel Benedict, Jurden Henry Elfers, Harry Mason, Benjamin Norton, John Chamberlin, and others—were outcasts banished from the roughest element of frontier society? Can you actually picture any of these citizens as historian Brown depicts them? Could he seriously believe that these were such hardened characters that they were unable to live in the crudest of wild societies operating in those mining camps?

  Bullshit. What kind of politically correct claptrap is that, to declare that the men who were murdered had it coming because they were the outcasts, the dregs, of even the worst of frontier society?

  If these few settlers and “store men” were guilty of anything, it was nothing more than being guilty of greed, along with a healthy dose of stupidity. What do I mean by that? you might ask. Guilty of greed for selling or trading whiskey to the Nez Perce and guilty of utter stupidity for not realizing that the sale of that whiskey could come back around to bite them in the ass at some future point in time. After all, an undisputed fact of life for these folk who carved out a place for themselves on the western frontier was that, as author Brown states, “drunken Indians have always been known to be noisy and ugly.”

  Standing on the heights and gazing down at the valley of the White Bird Canyon, I was immediately struck with how the Nez Perce managed to cram their herds of some twenty-five to thirty-five hundred (or more!) horses in so confining a place. It boggles my mind when I look down upon the village site from the new Highway 95 or from White Bird Hill or even from Perry’s “command post” itself! Yet the Non-Treaty bands would wrangle those horses across rivers, over mountain chains, driving the herds through more than a thousand miles of wilderness in the flight to come. In crossing and re-crossing the ground where this war started I grow all the more awestruck at this monumental feat.

  Many of the accounts vary on just what happened in those moments while Ollokot and Two Moons waited with their warriors as the six peace delegates made their way under a flag of truce toward the first, small group of soldiers. Civilian Ad Chapman—who had a cold, then hot, relationship with the Nez Perce—fired those first two shots without any provocation. Why? Especially when most every source, except Chapman, of course, stated the peace party was carrying a white flag?

  Did Chapman actually feel such hatred for the tribe that he decided to start the battle single-handedly? In his own heart did he fear that Perry’s soldiers and the Indians would end up talking peace and there would be no fight? Was he really afraid the warriors would flee back to the camp and the entire village would escape across the Salmon just as he and the other civilians had warned Captain Perry? Or, in the end, was Chapman just so arrogant that he thought he was only doing what was needed to open the fight?

  What’s surprising is that no one, not even Perry himself, ever confronted Chapman on that score, even though some thirty-three dead men lay abandoned back in White Bird Canyon because of what Chapman had started. No one ever called the civilian to task for the fact that what he did meant there would be no turning back. Not for many months, not for many, many miles of drama, tragedy, and heroism.

  In growing acquainted with every facet of this short battle I was fascinated with the legend of the “Red Coats.” Why did those three young warriors wear those blankets? Was it to conspicuously show the other men or perhaps the young women that the three of them were that much braver than all the other warriors? Or was it a visible appeal to their wyakin, their own personal spirit helpers, to watch over them in the coming fight? One thing was certain in this story: what soldiers survived to make it out of that valley did indeed remember those “red coats” and the damage they inflicted.

  So why did Perry’s soldiers lose this fight—without making an attempt to regroup, to enjoin and hold against the enemy, much less countercharge the warriors? Most historians agree that those two companies of the First U.S. Cavalry suffered from mediocre leadership, despite the fact that they outnumbered Ollokot’s and Two Moons’s fighting men. Compounding this lack of decisive commanders, the loss of one or both trumpeters only exacerbated the officers’ inability to direct and control their men.

  Much of the blame must be laid at the feet of David Perry. Unlike some Indian Wars officers who chose to ignore the intelligence brought them by their civilian or Indian scouts, Perry considered what the Mount Idaho citizens had to warn him about … then chose to believe that the Nez Perce would indeed attempt to escape across the Salmon River. This meant he reasoned that he could believe the assessment of those civilians like Ad Chapman who had a long history of contact with the tribe when they claimed that the warriors would turn tail and run if confronted by the soldiers.

  Would you have done any differently? If you had been in Perry’s boots, dismounting on that ground at sunset outside Grangeville, listening to the opinions of those citizens who had daily contact with the Nez Perce … would you have decided to take a different approach?

  With history as hindsight, we can now state that Perry might have chosen to send some of his Treaty scouts to the White Bird village to request a parley with the chiefs, a council during which he could demand to have the murderers turned over to him while he escorted the rest of the bands onto the reservation. But … he did not.

  Perry was swayed by the “volunteers” who had his ear at that moment, volunteers who said they knew the true heart of the Nez Perce. The very same volunteers who would abandon his battalion almost from the first shot.

  The debate has raged for years: centering on Perry’s abilities or lack thereof; on the necessity of sacrificing one-fourth of your command when you send horse-holders to the rear; on the truth or fallacy in the actual number of warriors Ollokot led into battle; on the fact that many of the soldiers were raw recruits; on the dearth of training for both the soldiers and their horses; on the poor condition of their weapons … and on and on.

  It’s much the same debate that has raged over other battles when the army was found wanting and got itself whipped. There will always be those who step forward attempting to find some reason for a stunning defeat other than the fact that the army was simply beaten.

  At White Bird, Ollokot’s outnumbered warriors pressed their advantage and succeeded in frightening both the civilians and soldiers into turning tail on their weary horses. So let me quiet much of the debate, point by point:

  1.) Perry’s leadership in the
fight would be assailed in the months to come—so much so that the captain requested, and was given, a court of inquiry to answer charges brought against him by Captain Trimble and others. After several days of hearings and testimony critical of Perry from Sergeant Michael McCarthy and very few others, the court did not find against him in his execution of the battle or the retreat. My belief remains that Trimble began the groundswell of sentiment against Perry when he realized just how culpable he would himself be for his own precipitous flight from the valley. Trimble was, after all, the first to the top of the ridge—and the first to finish the race to Grangeville! Trimble escaped, fled, ran … leaving far better men to close the file and cover the rear of his retreat. Trimble abandoned thirty-three far, far better soldiers in the valley of the White Bird that Sunday morning.

  2.) Even after Perry’s company commanders, Theller and Trimble, sent their horse-holders to the rear, it’s an undeniable fact that the soldiers still outnumbered the Nez Perce.

  3.) After more than a hundred years, there is no longer any dispute about the number of warriors who made it into that fight with the soldiers. Most of the “fighting men” were either too hungover or passed out and in no way capable of defending the village when Theller’s detail appeared on the slopes of White Bird Hill. So, I want you to consider just what might have happened to those who did survive the Battle of White Bird if there hadn’t been so much of the white man’s whiskey in that camp. There is no doubt in my mind that had there been less whiskey, or none at all, more warriors would have been able to mount their ponies and ride into the fray, meaning more of Perry’s command would have been killed. In fact, there is enough evidence to believe that Perry’s cavalry might well have been annihilated to the last man.

  4.) Despite all the apologists wanting to make hay over the fact that an appreciable number of Perry’s men were untested recruits, you must remember one undeniable fact: for the most part, the majority of Ollokot’s and Two Moons’s warriors were even more untried in battle than those green recruits!

  5.) Not long after the fight, Sergeant McCarthy wrote: “Many of the guns choked with broken shells, the guns being rusty and foul.” Sounds all too familiar after reading about the fatal experiences of those five doomed companies who followed George Armstrong Custer into the valley of the Little Bighorn, doesn’t it? I might be able to believe that the raw recruits, not given much of an opportunity to practice with their weapons, left their carbines to grow rusty, to become fouled and unusable … were it not for the fact that in both the case of Ouster’s defeat and the debacle at White Bird Canyon those guns were retrieved from the battlefield and put to good service that very day as well as in the months to come by the victorious Indian warriors!

  Make no mistake that I take my stand on just what happened to Perry’s command that Sunday morning. It was a simple case of a combination of small, otherwise insignificant, factors that when brought together overwhelmed the abilities of the army commanders.

  Under any circumstances, the loss of not only one, but both, of Perry’s trumpets made it virtually impossible for the captain to issue orders under battlefield conditions.

  In the days and weeks to come, the Mount Idaho volunteers would suffer severe criticism for abandoning their position at the far end of the left flank—almost from the first shots! In fact, the first volunteers to flee the fight reached Mount Idaho by 9:00 A.M.! That’s when Loyal P. Brown began writing his first dispatch to General Howard.

  When those volunteers abandoned the fight, this exposed Theller’s left to a brisk fire. At first it took only two or three of Theller’s men to waver, turn, and leave the line—following the retreating civilians. And once the first few soldiers turned to flee the fight, once enough soldiers refused to heed the orders of their noncoms or their mediocre commanding officers … the trickle became a tidal wave.

  In his recollections, that courageous, if not impetuous, Sergeant McCarthy went on to summarize the shortcomings of the command:

  We were in no fit condition to go to White Bird on the night of the 16th. We had been in the saddle nearly 24 hours and men and horses were tired and in bad shape for a fight. To cap the matter, we were marched into a deep canyon and to a country strange to us, and familiar to the enemy. If there was any plan of attack, I never heard of it. The troops were formed in line and about a third advanced in squads and the remainder very soon afterwards retreated in column up a ridge and out of the canyon. The detached advance squads, each acting independently and extended over considerable ground, were attacked in detail and scattered and scarcely any escaped out of the canyon … Many of these men could have been saved if the retreat of the main column had not been so rapid.

  I don’t think any of you will argue with me that Ollokot’s fifty or sixty Nez Perce horsemen, outnumbered even as they left their village behind, acquitted themselves most admirably in that first battle ever fought between their people and the U.S. Army.

  Now if any of you have an opinion on the mystery of how Jonah Hayes’s wife knew of this fight even before it began, if you have some idea how she knew of the “massacre” the night before Perry led his men into White Bird Canyon and why she would describe a “trap” being laid for the soldiers before the fact … I’d sure like to hear from you! Very simply, for me this is one of the two most enduring mysteries of this entire outbreak of hostilities.

  And while we’re on the subject of these Nez Perce women, consider for a moment the courage, what was nothing less than unvarnished heroism, it took for the older woman named Tulekats Chickchamit to leave the emotion-charged gathering at the traditional campsite of Tepahlewam and make a long, looping ride south over the divide, down the White Bird, reaching the Salmon River settlement of Slate Creek, where she reported those first murders that had occurred along White Bird Creek itself. Many of the refugees huddled among the few buildings at Slate Creek realized the miners in the nearby hills should be warned of the outbreak and the appeal should be made for those miners to come over to the Salmon, where they could help reinforce the community’s defenses.

  But when the white men looked sheepishly at one another, not one of them would volunteer for that twenty-six-mile wilderness ride to Florence. Eventually, the defenders agreed to offer five dollars apiece to the Indian woman, who was a noted gambler, if she would carry their message to the miners.

  She completed that difficult ride to the white stronghold of Florence … and that’s where a colorful bit of folklore was given birth. Like Portugee Phillips more than ten years before her, arriving at Fort Laramie in the midst of a winter blizzard, when Tulekats dismounted among a gathering of curious miners her horse collapsed beside her, dead of exhaustion.

  If you include Larry Ott in their number, seventeen white miners crossed over the divide on what was called the Nut Basin Road to reach the tiny settlement of Slate Creek, led by Tulekats. And when not one but two small bands of warriors showed up at the Slate Creek stockade under a white flag to settle their accounts with trader John Wood before they departed for the buffalo country, Tulekats made her way to the walls, where she berated the men of her tribe for killing her friends—saving her harshest scorn for when she chastised them for murdering white women and children.

  I’m saddened, but not surprised, to report that neither the settlers nor the Florence miners ever paid Tulekats what they had promised her for that daring ride. Eventually, however, this brave woman was rewarded for her courage in the face of her people’s fury when her name—once it had been corrupted to Tolo over time—was given to that forty-acre lake six miles southwest of Grangeville, the lake on Tepahlewam where her people had traditionally gathered for generations. Upon her death, Tolo was buried nearby in Rocky Canyon. It was there that the American Legion Auxiliary erected a memorial to her in 1939.

  In years after the Nez Perce conflict, First Sergeant Michael McCarthy became quite vocal in what complaints he had to lodge against Captain David Perry. McCarthy had kept a diary on the campaign,1 a record
of his escape from the battlefield, which he expanded upon years later. In reading his critical testimony against Perry, along with his unflinching support of Captain Joel G. Trimble, I pause to wonder if McCarthy’s memory isn’t tinged with rancor at Perry for ever leading the command into the canyon in the first place.

  It took two decades after his miraculous escape, but in 1897 the courageous Michael McCarthy finally received the Medal of Honor for his bravery in the face of enemy fire at White Bird Canyon. The citation—though marred with minor errors—reads:

  Was detailed with six men to hold a commanding position, and held it with great gallantry until the troops fell back. He then fought his way through the Indians, rejoined a portion of his command, and continued to fight in retreat. He had two horses shot [out from] under him, and was captured, but escaped and reported for duty after 3 days’ hiding and wandering in the mountains.

  Second Lieutenant William Russell Parnell also received a Medal of Honor for his courage in combat at White Bird Canyon.2 In addition, he was awarded a brevet of colonel for his distinguished gallantry in action.

  Lew Day, the courier who started from Mount Idaho for Fort Lapwai with news of the first attacks but didn’t get very far beyond Cottonwood House when he was jumped, and Joe Moore, the Nortons’ hired man, together held back the Nez Perce, preventing them from rushing in to finish the last of those survivors huddled under the wagons or behind the carcasses of their dead horses. Day lingered with his wounds until the morning following their rescue (although Mark Brown says he lived six days). And Joe Moore tenaciously clung to life an agonizing six weeks before he died (Brown claims Moore lasted three months).