Saga of Chief Joseph

by Helen Addison Howard

  12

  The Battle of White Bird Canyon

  At first there were only about thirty lodges in the camp of the hostiles on Cottonwood Creek. Most of the people were members of Tuhulhutsut’s band, with some of Joseph’s and White Bird’s. Tuhulhutsut anticipated an attack by the soldiers, and the next day (June 15) he urged his tribesmen to move their village into the timber where they would find better protection. The Indians took his advice, and so he led them westward to a hill on the eastern side of the Salmon River.

  The following day scouts kept the Nez Perces warned of the approach of Perry’s force. To gain a more strategic location, the hostiles moved their camp to White Bird Creek, pitching their lodges in a small valley at the mouth of the stream where it debouched from the gorge. Behind the village lay the Salmon River. The rough, rocky, and precipitous slopes of White Bird Canyon concealed the encampment from Perry’s sight.

  Each hour of the day and night brought fresh news to the village. Lone horsemen posted on ridges and knolls secretly watched the roads leading from Fort Lapwai and Mount Idaho. Sentinels fired strawstacks on abandoned ranches, and the columns of smoke revealed to the Nez Perces the movements of the enemy.1 Then the unnatural coyote call warned scouts posted on ridges above the village that the army was on the plateau and approaching the camp that night.

  In a lodge apart from the village, Joseph’s wife lay resting after giving birth to a baby girl. Yellow Wolf 2 recalled that the event took place before the move to White Bird Canyon. The chief, anticipating battle at dawn, must have thought often of his wife and newborn daughter. Perhaps dark thoughts of death for himself on this new day dwelled in his mind. He could do nothing but wait—wait and hope and pray to the Spirit Chief to protect his life for the sake of the woman and helpless infant who needed him.

  Joseph now knew nothing could prevent the inevitable conflict. Probably he discussed plans for the expected attack with the other chiefs, his brother Alokut, White Bird, and Tuhulhutsut.

  On the morning of June 17, the brothers—Joseph and Alokut—watched from behind a pile of boulders that flanked the village the coming of dawn as it shed increasing light between shadowed canyon walls. Every able-bodied man, young and old, the Indians declared, who had not imbibed too freely of firewater the night before and so still lay in drunken stupor in the camp, was concealed by rock ridges or brush behind buttes near the base of the hillslopes. Soon scouts alerted the warriors with cries of “Soldiers coming! Soldiers coming this way!”

  According to the Indian testimony the chiefs still hoped to avert trouble. The Nez Perces sent out a peace commission, some say of six, others two, carrying a white flag to meet the advancing soldiers, among whom were Arthur Chapman, Jonah Hayes, and his treaty Indians. Alokut had advised the warriors not to fire the first shot if fighting should ensue. He and the ruling chiefs wanted to learn the troops’ intentions. All Indian sources interviewed by McWhorter state that Chapman, interpreter for Perry, fired at the truce party. An answering shot came from a Nez Perce warrior.

  Meanwhile, before hostilities began, according to General Howard’s statement, Joseph had sent Alokut to borrow the spyglass from the Indian herder, Old Blackfoot.

  Three Eagles, who was present, gives the following version of events:

  In the morning the Indians heard the bugle and Joseph said, “Maybe there are some Nez Perces with them, and they will tell us if the soldiers are coming with good hearts.” Alokut looked through field-glasses to see if there were any Indians with the soldiers, and then passed the glasses to Joseph. Two of our men started riding up the hill. We saw a man [Chapman] shoot at them. Then the two Nez Perces shot. Jonah Hayes was with the soldiers, and came with the intention of talking to Joseph to see if he could not bring him back in peace. If Chapman had not fired, Jonah Hayes would have come and talked with Joseph, and the whole war would have been avoided.3

  This account by Three Eagles is not mentioned by Howard or Perry or Joseph, but it is corroborated by other Nez Perce sources, notably Yellow Wolf, who states that five Indians under John Boyd constituted the truce party. It also indicates that Joseph hoped to the last to avert war.

  Perry’s men filed over the crest of the first slope of the canyon and started down into the shadows of the ravine. Mox Mox and another Indian dashed from their outpost near the plateau a mile away to confirm the report of the presence of troops to Joseph. Everyone in the village had been aroused from sleep. Most of the lodges had been taken down and loaded on ponies. Joseph ordered the women, under Mox Mox, to take charge of the spare horse herd and drive them down the river behind the bluffs.

  The warriors divided into two main groups. Some went to line the buttes commanding the valley where White Bird Canyon debouched into the flat ground. Another squad of braves took cover behind a ridge to the left of the camp. Nez Perce testimony disagrees as to the activities of the chiefs. According to Three Eagles,4 Joseph took “charge at one end of the line and Alokut at the other,” the brothers commanding the center and right flanks, respectively. But Yellow Bull states: “In the fighting that followed, Joseph and Tuhulhutsut fought just like any other warriors, while the active arrangement of forces was made by . . . [Pile-Of-Clouds] of Hasotoin. . . . Three Nez Perces were wounded, but none killed.” John Miles, another Indian, declares that none of the chiefs, “Joseph, White Bird, or Toohoolhoolzote [Tuhulhutsut], were in the charging fight [when the Indians charged the soldiers’ left flank]. Joseph did some fighting but he was not with either bunch of the charging warriors. He did no leading.”

  Three Eagles states that only fifty men had guns at the beginning of the fight, the others being armed only with bows and arrows.

  While camp was breaking up, women and children shouted and screamed in the excitement. Mox Mox placed the pony herd in a safe position behind a protecting butte, from where the women were prepared to bring fresh mounts to the warriors. The braves and their war ponies hurried to their positions in the line of battle, where the animals patiently stood beside their riders with ropes dragging on the ground. After the first flurries of excitement, everything became hushed. The warriors, completely hidden behind the rocks and knolls, quietly awaited the coming of the long knives. It was to be the first battle ever fought by the Nez Perces against the whites.

  For four miles the trail of the cavalry wound down into the bottom of the narrow ravine, “now and again crossing a dry creek bed with here and there a heavy growth of willows and underbrush,” Lieutenant Parnell writes. When the canyon widened farther on, the column changed from single file to four abreast again. Down the steep incline the horses slid and skirted boulders and willow brush.

  The troops were now following a defile flanked by two ridges, and at a lower elevation rounded knolls appeared on their left. White Bird Creek lay over the more distant butte and emptied into the Salmon beyond the mouth of the canyon. A high ridge paralleled the trail on the right, lifting a sheer barrier. Still farther down, the canyon swung around to the east and opened into a valley four or five hundred yards wide between high bluffs.

  As the cavalry in column of fours, with carbines ready, approached the buttes that concealed the Indian camp, Lieutenant Theller and eight men rode a hundred yards in advance of the main force. They had been ordered by Perry to act as advance guard. Next came Captain Perry and his Troop F with the citizen volunteers. Trimble’s company brought up the rear, the ranks being separated by an interval of forty or fifty yards. Theller had been instructed to deploy and halt as soon as he saw the Indians, and to relay the information to his commanding officer.

  Perry, having discovered the stir at the Indian camp, thought the Nez Perces were hurrying to cross the Salmon.

  Lieutenant Theller, on the farther ridge to the left in the direction of White Bird Creek, perhaps still a hundred yards ahead of the other troops, halted and deployed his advance guard as rifle bullets began whizzing about him. Rushing word back to Perry, “The Indians are in sight!” he opened fire.


  Indeed, the warriors had appeared suddenly in skirmish order, “stretched out in an irregular line.” Their heads were bobbing from behind boulders, out of gulches and ravines, and from behind the brush. Two Moons’ flanking party of sixteen mounted braves was galloping well to the left, in the two-hundred-yard space between the butte and the creek. They charged toward the approaching column, yelling and firing. Three young men wearing “full length red blanket coats,” Two Moons recalls, and two mounted on gray horses, rode side by side leading the Indian ranks. Two of them, Walaitits and Red Moccasin-top, were the reckless hotbloods who started hostilities. Strong Eagle was the third warrior. This trio afterwards became known as the “Three Red Coats.”

  Perry directed the nine civilians to hold the knoll on the left, and with Troop F charged to the front at a trot to support Theller. Trimble with Company H, fifty yards in Perry’s rear, advanced to the right of the captain—a tactical error, as no reserves were left to protect the charging cavalry in event of a retreat. Nor did the men dismount, and so present a smaller target to the enemy. The volunteers, under Shearer, took their position on the rocky knolls to the left, which commanded all approaches from that direction.

  Joseph and Alokut, on the center and right of the Indian lines, blocked the advance of the troops. But Theller’s men, fighting grimly, checked the Nez Perces also, while the soldiers retreated to Perry who had halted on a ridge. On this elevated position the captain had dismounted, deployed his men, and sent his horses into the valley behind the lines. Perry had discovered that the level ground in front of him and behind the buttes was filled with Indians, and so he had prudently halted his charge.

  The canyon soon filled with smoke. The shouts of soldiers and the war whoops of braves rang out above the din of rifles cracking. Both sides made thrusts to gain advantageous positions on higher ground to the right of the whole line.

  Trimble’s men were forced to dismount hurriedly, for their horses, unused to such tumult, became unmanageable. A few of the troopers had already been shot from their saddles. The animals’ frantic attempts to break free and stampede required the attention of numerous horse holders. This unavoidable splitting of men weakened the force engaged on the firing line.

  Two Moons’ warriors soon reached their position around the two knolls and charged the citizens on the left one. Under the deadly fire of the Indian marksmen using Winchester magazine rifles, two whites fell wounded, and the remaining seven volunteers broke and fled. With hoarse shouts of victory the Indians swept over the knoll and immediately opened a cross fire on Perry’s troops below. This strategy proved the turning point of the battle.

  Trimble, unaware of the disaster to the volunteers’ left line, repulsed Alokut’s flanking movement to the right. Here the ground lifted gently upward from the canyon for perhaps two hundred yards, and then reared steeply to a plateau.

  The Indians, concealing “some sixty or seventy warriors” among a large herd of loose ponies, drove them through the soldiers’ lines. The braves opened fire from the rear, demoralizing the already confused troops, many of whom were recruits. Lieutenant Parnell’s account is the only one that tells of this stratagem. Since he was the only officer to retreat directly up the canyon, he was the only one who could have observed this incident.5

  Perry had lost his trumpet and so was unable to sound orders in the noise and confusion of battle. He started toward Captain Trimble. “When about three-fourths of the way to Trimble’s position,” he wrote, “I became aware of something wrong, and saw that the citizens had been driven off the knoll and were in full retreat and that the Indians were occupying their places, thus enabling them to enfilade my line and control the first ridge. The line of the left was already giving away under the galling fire.”6

  Although Perry was too far away to retake the hill by a charge, he realized his only alternative “was to fall back to the second ridge.” Unable to blow recall without a bugle, he rode at a run to his center line and shouted at his men, directing them to pass his orders along to the command to fall back on the first ridge in their rear. As the men began obeying, he spurred again to Trimble and found that officer had lost his trumpet, also. Trimble occupied a high point on the right of the ridge. For the moment, his position was more tenable than Perry’s.

  Perry now noticed a commotion among his led horses, and saw that the left of his line had broken, and the men were “in a mad scramble for their horses.” Realizing that many of the recruits were under fire for the first time and could not be depended upon in the stress of battle, Perry just had time to order Trimble to retreat toward higher and more defensible ground if he could not hold his position. The captain then dashed for the left to head off the men who had got mounted, and to attempt the formation of a new line.

  The Indians sensed victory and charged up the hillside to cut off Trimble’s men. Theller’s troops, seeing the volunteers fleeing on the left and Trimble’s force retreating on the right, became seized with the general panic and broke ranks, too. “Then the whole right of the line,” Perry writes, “seeing the mad rush for horses on the left, also gave way and the panic became general.”7

  The officers—Perry, Trimble, Parnell, and Theller—each ordered, and then desperately pleaded with, their recruits to reform and retreat in a semblance of order, but even Trimble’s veteran Company H, seeing the fear-crazed men below, lost all sense of organization and raced for the plateau above. Perry and Trimble, bearing to the left, again and again managed to halt briefly first one squad and then another, “facing them about and holding the position until flanked out. In this way,” Perry writes, “we retreated up the low ground to the right of the road,”8 and thence up the canyon.

  The captain then saw a trail to his rear leading up a bluff across the road. On the summit a group of soldiers were making a stand. Perry thought he could successfully defend the point for a time and turned his horse up the trail. But the leg-weary animal would not respond. Jumping off, the captain asked one of his men to carry him behind the saddle, which the trooper did. Perry directed a sergeant of Company H to hold a point nearby with his squad, until he could place more men on the trail “to command there our position.”

  Fired upon from front and rear, though, the main body of soldiers broke their partially formed ranks again and fled, heedless of the officer’s entreaties to form squads and protect their flight.

  Lieutenant Parnell, with exceptional coolness and bravery, collected thirteen or fourteen mounted men and retreated up the main canyon in the direction from which the troops had come. For two hours this group doggedly fought and retreated from knoll to knoll before the Indians, who were swarming and firing from the hillsides and ravine. The soldiers paused to tighten up their saddle girths, and then continued to repulse attack after attack as braves finally charged within pistol range. Even after Parnell discharged his last cartridge, the bullet hitting one warrior in the thigh, his squad with admirable courage refused to be routed as they battled their way for four miles to the plateau.

  Lieutenant Theller and eighteen men, acting as a rear guard, sought escape up one of the lateral ravines, hoping to overtake Perry’s main force. Too late they discovered they had dashed into a cul-de-sac and were cut off from their comrades, now in mad flight to the highest ridges. With Indians on all sides and facing a blind canyon wall, Theller and his men gave shot for shot until the last soldier fell dead, surrounded by a pile of empty cartridges.

  Perry’s fourteen men and Trimble’s squad made their way up the ridge, “keeping under cover as much as possible. . . . The Indians were all the time pressing us hard, but were a little more wary,” Perry relates, “as our ascending position gave us a little better command of the lower position. . . . I saw Trimble some distance away, too far to make myself heard, but motioned him toward the road which we went down, and up which I believed Parnell and Theller to be working their way, but evidently was misunderstood. I then turned to the right (late left) with the few men I had, and made my way to the h
ead of the cañon just as Parnell emerged with about a dozen men.”9

  Captains Perry and Trimble met Parnell’s squad as the latter reached the plain. The two captains’ forces had fallen back in a line nearly parallel to Parnell’s and on the ridge above him.

  Perry caught a loose horse and, mounted again, ordered the united command and the citizens to continue their fighting retreat toward Mount Idaho, eighteen miles away. The officers, with the greatest difficulty, saved the men this time from utter rout.

  Directly to their rear was a deep ravine which had to be crossed. Parnell, at Perry’s request, fought off repeated Indian sallies from the ridge while the captain crossed the gulch. He, in turn, was to cover the lieutenant’s retreat. But on gaining the opposite ridge the frightened troops broke from Perry and scampered off. Parnell’s cavalry made the other side, though, at a mad gallop. Again he halted his men to fire at the warriors. Then began a running battle until they reached Johnson’s abandoned ranch, two or three miles away. Time and again the command halted until the stragglers caught up with the main force.

  At the ranch the cavalrymen dismounted, tied their horses to a rail fence, and took cover among the rocks. The house and barn appeared a short distance to their left with a small creek between. Of a sudden, bullets came whizzing from the front and right flank over their heads. The warriors had taken possession of higher ground among the rocks, and so commanded the troops’ position.

  Parnell then discovered Indians sneaking along the fence “that ran from the house up the hill perpendicular to our front,” with intent to disable the horses. He reported this move to Perry, who realized their only hope of safety lay in reaching the town. The captain upon first reaching the ranch had decided to hold the place until dark and then fall back.