Saga of Chief Joseph

by Helen Addison Howard

  General Scott further states that this change of direction put the Indians “more than a day’s march nearer” Miles, thus losing them several days of valuable time and making it possible for Miles to overtake and defeat them. McWhorter’s Indian informants deny Scott’s theory, declaring their route had been selected long before the brush with Scott’s detail.15 In addition McWhorter points out: “Unfortunately for this theory, the Nez Perces had crossed the Yellowstone and made their way up Pelican Creek no later than August 26, a week before Scott’s little clash with isolated raiders on September 2.”16

  No supporting evidence has been found in the reports or later writings of the other military commanders to corroborate General Scott’s claims. It must be remembered that Poker Joe (Lean Elk) was the Nez Perces’ camp leader and guide at this time, and that he, being thoroughly familiar with the country, was doubtless well aware of the settlements along the Yellowstone in Montana, and of the existence of an army post (Fort Ellis) near Bozeman. Besides, Looking Glass, it will be recalled, was most desirous of reaching the Crow Indians’ territory to the southeast. Thus, it would appear illogical for the tribal leaders to guide their people northward through a settled region. Nor is it reasonable, because, as McWhorter states, the clash between Scott’s party and the Indian raiders took place a week after the five bands had left the park. On the other hand, it is entirely possible the Yellowstone route had been discussed in a chiefs’ council and rejected as unfeasible upon learning of the presence of other troops in the field besides those of Doane’s detail and of Sturgis’ and Howard’s commands. They may well have secured such information from Irwin, the discharged soldier they captured in the park.

  At any rate, while war parties attacked all tourists and prospectors whom they found in the park, the main body of Nez Perces pushed on across the Yellowstone River, passed around the north shore of the lake, and then took off along a tributary stream called Pelican Creek in the direction of the Stinking Water (Shoshone), a wilderness area.

  Meanwhile, Howard was forced to build roads through the park for his wagons. Finally, near the eastern boundary, he abandoned them because the rainy days and cold nights made the march so fatiguing for the horses, and the soldiers encountered so many precipitous canyons and fallen timber that eventually they could no longer find even a faint apology for a road. So the general placed his wagons in charge of Captain W. F Spurgin, Twenty-first Infantry, who brought them to Fort Ellis. The command continued the chase with a packtrain.

  At the Baronet Bridge over the Yellowstone, a war party of Nez Perces partially burned the structure to delay Howard’s troops. The bridge was a flimsy affair, fifty feet above the river, and it took the soldiers two hours to repair it. The command then crossed safely and marched twenty miles down the Yellowstone to Mammoth Falls, where the general learned he had just missed Lieutenant Colonel Gilbert.

  Joseph later admitted that he “did not know what had become of General Howard, but we supposed that he had sent for more horses and mules.”17 And we can imagine a faint smile flitting across the handsome features of the chief whenever he thought about the Camas Meadows raid.

  20

  The Battle of Canyon Creek

  Colonel Samuel D. Sturgis had the Seventh Cavalry in the field, scouting the valley of the Yellowstone about twelve miles from Miles City. The regiment, composed of recruits and young and inexperienced officers, had been reorganized following the terrible disaster of the Custer Massacre the year before. There has been so much controversy over this phase of the military campaign that it is illuminating to examine the official reports.

  Colonel John Gibbon states that he sent two dispatches to Colonel Sturgis “to move with all speed to Fort Ellis [near Bozeman, Montana], hoping to get him there in time to move up the Yellowstone River, and head off the Indians before they crossed to the eastward of that stream; but my dispatches did not reach him until he had arrived on the Musselshell [after the battle of Canyon Creek was over.]”1

  Part of Sturgis’ cavalry, though, left at once for Fort Ellis, and upon arriving there August 27, Gibbon writes:

  Lieutenant Doane was ordered by telegraph to push up the Yellowstone to the bridge at the mouth of East Fork, cross that, and feel for the Indians up the right bank of the Yellowstone.2

  In the park Doane’s force overtook Lieutenant Colonel Gilbert of the Seventh Infantry, escorted by Captain Norwood’s cavalry, which had been detached from Howard’s column and was returning to its headquarters post. The combined detachments later struck the trail of the general’s command in the Lower Geyser Basin and followed it down the Clarks Fork, but failed to overtake him and so returned to Fort Ellis.

  While in camp at the Lower Basin, Howard dispatched Captain Cushing to Fort Ellis with three companies of the Fourth Artillery on August 24, with the intention of their operating from the Crow Agency in advance of the hostiles. The general hoped Cushing would form a junction with Colonel Sturgis, and so prevent the Nez Perces from continuing their northward march.

  Sturgis, then at the old Crow Agency on the Big Rosebud above its confluence with the Little Rosebud and southeast of Fort Ellis, received orders from Gibbon on August 27 “to push up to the head of Clarks Fork,” one source of which rises on Sunset Peak near Cooke City, Montana, at the northeast boundary of Yellowstone Park. But instead of leaving immediately, Sturgis remained at the agency to await word from his Crow scouts as to the movements and line of travel of the Nez Perces.

  Because of subsequent events, Sturgis blames Lieutenant Doane for not following his orders to guard the lower canyon of the Yellowstone, and for not keeping him posted through Doane’s Indian scouts as to the route taken by the Nez Perces. The full responsibility, however, falls on Gibbon for countermanding Doane’s orders. Gibbon made a second serious mistake in countermanding Howard’s orders to Cushing. This point will be discussed at the end of this chapter. To complicate matters still further for Colonel Sturgis, his two mountain men, Groff and Leonard and an Indian boy with them, whom he had sent to reconnoiter, were discovered and killed by Nez Perce scouts.

  Still not knowing the whereabouts of the Indians, Sturgis left the agency on August 31 with Companies H, I, F, M, G, and L of the Seventh Cavalry, commanded respectively by Captains F. W. Benteen, Nowlan, Bell, and French, and by Lieutenants Wallace and Wilkinson. About thirty Crow scouts later joined the command. The column marched toward Clarks Fork Canyon and encamped at the eastern base of the mountains, a strategic site as it guarded the outlets of the Stinking Water and Clarks Fork rivers. The former stream, now called Shoshone, flows in a general northeasterly course to empty into the Big Horn a few miles south of the Montana boundary. The Clarks Fork rises in the Absaroka National Forest not far from the park’s northeastern border, flows southeastward into Wyoming, where it makes a big bend to the north around Sawtooth Mountain, and forms a confluence with the Yellowstone at the present site of Laurel, Montana.

  Sturgis’ movements were hampered here because he had been unable to obtain any reliable guides for the strange country in which he found himself, nor could he get any accurate information as to the topography of the region.

  Since he found no trail through the Clarks Fork Canyon, the colonel left his wagon train and artillery, intending to continue his march with pack mules toward the North Fork of Clarks Fork in the direction of Soda Butte Pass. When ready to start, however, a party of Crow scouts, with a Frenchman as leader, rode into camp and reported no trace of the Nez Perces and no trail leading to Soda Butte Pass, which is in the northeastern section of the park. So Sturgis unpacked again and went into camp on the spot.

  He had the foresight to warn prospectors near the Pass at “Miner’s camp” that Indians might attack them. His messengers fell in with Howard’s command and apprised the general of Sturgis’ location about fifty miles away. Heretofore, every courier sent by Howard to communicate with the colonel had been killed by the Nez Perces, which effectively prevented the two forces from uniting or e
xchanging information.

  Howard at once telegraphed General McDowell that the Indians were then between his command and that of Sturgis, and he “could not see how it was possible for them to escape.” Nor could they, that officer agreed, if he had known the whereabouts of the general, and if the couriers between the two commands had not been intercepted and murdered. The last dispatch from Howard on August 24 had come to the colonel from Virginia City.

  Sturgis’ camp was located on the east escarpment of the mountains. His troops had to guard the various passes through them from the lower Yellowstone Canyon over a wilderness of rugged hills for approximately two hundred and fifty miles. It was then that Lieutenant Doane could have rendered valuable aid to his colonel, had he not received counterorders at Fort Ellis.

  On September 6, Sturgis dispatched Lieutenant Varnum, the quartermaster, and a force of twenty-five men to pick up supplies at the old Crow Agency. He then moved his command toward Hart (Heart) Mountain (located north of the present Cody, Wyoming), and encamped in a canyon. From here he detailed two scouts to reconnoiter the country between the Stinking Water (or Shoshone) and Clarks Fork. Since they failed to return to camp, Sturgis sent Lieutenant Hare and twenty men on September 8 to make a reconnaissance in the direction of the Stinking Water by way of Hart Mountain. Lieutenant Fuller and twenty more men scouted the region along the North Fork “if possible,” Sturgis writes, “to discover a way by which the command might reach the Miners’ Camp.”3

  Lieutenant Hare returned in the afternoon to report that he had found the two scouts sent previously, one dead and the other dying, about sixteen miles from camp. According to the pony tracks he estimated about thirty Nez Perces had attacked them. Lieutenant Fuller returned later and reported the hostiles to be moving on the Stinking Water trail about eighteen miles away. His men had discovered the Indians’ pony herd two miles from them. The animals had just been taken to water, and were being driven up one of the numerous ravines by some half-naked boys. The young herders were unaware of the soldiers’ presence, for they made no attempt to conceal the herd.

  Fuller’s prospector guide assured Sturgis that the country was too rough and broken for the Indians to cross over to the Clarks Fork, and that they must debouch on the Stinking Water River.

  When the Nez Perces found themselves cut off between the two commands, they feigned flight along the Stinking Water—a stratagem which McWhorter ascribes to Poker Joe.4 The Indians passed by Sturgis’ right flank, and then, after a short detour south they turned north toward the Clarks Fork, gained a heavily timbered ridge and passed through a narrow chasm, which opened into a towering canyon with cliffs scarcely twenty feet apart. This gorge abruptly opened into the Clarks Fork Valley after a course of three or four miles, not far from Sturgis’ former camping place. By forced marches the Nez Perces then avoided the colonel completely. Howard writes:

  The Indians left the Stinking Water trail, doubtless, because Joseph heard that the prairie ahead of him had been set on fire and was burning, and that some of General Crook’s troops [Sturgis’ Seventh Cavalry] were coming up from that direction. By this information my command was saved nearly a hundred miles of circuitous following, the toughest journey which this pursuit occasioned, for we traced the chord of the arc which the astute young chieftain was forced to describe.5

  While the Nez Perces were eluding Sturgis on the Clarks Fork, Looking Glass reportedly rode ahead to hold a conference with the Crows, for the purpose of seeking refuge among them. However, their attitude toward the Nez Perces had undergone a change, as they were friendly to the whites and did not wish to offend the latter by giving succor to the Nez Perces. The Mountain Crows decided to remain strictly neutral, but the River Crows became allies of the army. When Looking Glass brought back this discouraging news to the village, the other chiefs realized that they would have to find sanctuary in Canada, the “old woman’s country,” as the Nez Perces referred to it.

  In the meantime Sturgis decided it would require too much time to go in direct pursuit of the hostiles. He determined to try for the outlet of the Stinking Water trail in advance of the Indians, hoping to head them off, or throw them back on Howard, wherever he was at the moment. (Actually, the general was moving toward the colonel and was surprised to find that the Seventh Cavalry had decamped from Hart Mountain.) Advice from Miles, which reached Sturgis at this time, confirmed the latter’s judgment. The colonel did not divide his command to watch both rivers simultaneously because he had been informed that “the Nez Perces had 400 warriors, well mounted and well armed.” He feared the division would weaken his strength and lead to disaster against a superior force of hostiles. The colonel sent his wagon train and artillery back to the old Crow Agency, and moved his command south along the Stinking Water trail in hot pursuit of Joseph and his tribesmen.

  According to Lieutenant C. E. S. Wood, Howard’s aide-de-camp, if Sturgis had remained at Hart Mountain, abiding by his orders (although whose orders from higher authority Wood fails to state), Joseph’s escape would have been blocked, since the Nez Perces made their exit through “the dry bed of a mountain torrent, with such precipitous walls on either side that it was like going through a gigantic rough railroad tunnel.” During the night, Wood explains, Joseph sent a few of his young men “around Sturgis’ force toward Hart Mountain. There, at daybreak, they stirred up a great dust by tying sagebrush to their lariats and riding furiously, dragging the bundles of brush along the ground.”6

  Sturgis, completely fooled into thinking he was chasing the main band, flew south after them. This ruse left the mouth of the pass to the north clear and the Nez Perces marched through. The young men who executed the strategy made a long circuit and rejoined their tribesmen on the plains between the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers.

  Howard, once again close on the Indians’ heels, explains:

  My command, discovering Joseph’s ruse, kept the trail which Sturgis had been so near, but had not seen, and finally slid down the canyon, many a horse, in his weakness, falling and blocking the way. The mouth of this canyon, which debouches into Clarke’s Valley, was not more than twenty feet across from high wall to high wall.7

  The Nez Perces, meanwhile, took cover in a dense forest then and, keeping a mountain between them and Sturgis’ command, managed to escape from between the two forces (Howard and Sturgis) by following the Clarks Fork Valley and crossing the Yellowstone in the direction of the Musselshell Basin.

  On September 10 Sturgis arrived at the point “where the Indians had turned back and headed for Clark’s Fork,” which they reached contrary to the assertions of his guide, the colonel grimly notes in his report to the Secretary of War.

  It was then Sturgis realized the trick the enemy had pulled on him. Theodore Goldin, one of his men, relates:

  We knew our old Colonel was hopping mad that the savages had outwitted him, and as we returned to camp we heard the old veteran, with many an explosive adjective, declare that he would overtake those Indians before they crossed the Missouri river if he had to go afoot and alone. He wound up his impromptu oration with an order for reveille at half-past three and an advance at five o’clock.8

  Sturgis faced his cavalry about and by long marches over rugged and precipitous mountain country tried to catch the elusive Nez Perces. He was now surprised to find himself within a mile or so of Howard’s camp. The general rode over and mutual explanations were exchanged between the two officers. They decided that Sturgis should continue the pursuit by forced marches, since his horses were fresher than Howard’s. The latter loaned Lieutenant Otis to the colonel with the howitzers on pack mules, accompanied by fifty men from Major Sanford’s cavalry under the command of Captain Bendire of the First Cavalry. The commanders further decided to apprise Colonel Miles of the situation by courier, giving him plenty of time to head off the Indians if Sturgis failed to stop them. The latter sent duplicate dispatches on to Miles, which he duly received.

  A stretch of rainy weather set in, which mad
e the trails slippery and, in addition to numerous swollen fords, delayed Sturgis’ march, although he moved his troops forward with all feasible speed. Several days later on September 13, ten miles north of where the Clarks Fork empties into the Yellowstone near the present site of Billings, Montana, the colonel had about given up the chase. He had called a halt when one of his scouts, Pawnee Tom, rode wildly into camp, shouting, “Indians! Indians!”

  As the command quickly remounted they could see a large column of smoke down the valley. They proceeded about seven miles toward Canyon Creek at a trot, Major Lewis Merrill’s battalion being in the lead with Lieutenant Wilkinson’s L troop as advance guard. On reaching the crest of the first ridge they found that they had overtaken the Indians at a rest camp. Sturgis immediately dismounted and attacked with 350 soldiers. These included his reenforcements from Howard’s command.

  The Indians evidently had discovered the troops about the same time as the soldiers sighted them. According to Yellow Bull, the chiefs held a hurried consultation and Looking Glass dispatched young warriors to check the cavalry, while the women and children began a hasty retreat. The Nez Perces quickly collected in force along the ridges on both sides of the canyon. S. G. Fisher, Howard’s chief of scouts, describes Canyon Creek as “a narrow ‘wash,’ with banks from ten to twenty feet high. At this season of the year there is no water running in it, and only occasional pools of alkali water.”9

  A series of gallant charges by Captains Bell and Nowlan with Companies F and I drove the hostiles from this position back upon the main body. As the warriors retreated, though, they fought hard to delay the troops in order to give the women, children, and old men a chance to escape through the canyon, which would furnish admirable defense for whoever gained possession of it first. Its course, three or four miles distant, lay through a gradually narrowing valley, seamed with gullies, ravines, and side canyons, and protected by overhanging rock ledges. An armed force of even fifty could hold it.