Saga of Chief Joseph

by Helen Addison Howard

  When his men topped the first ridge Sturgis ordered Captain Benteen’s cavalry, which had been held in reserve, to detour to the left in order to gain an open plain running along the base of some farther hills, so that he could “charge across the front of Merrill’s battalion, cross the creek, and cut off the herd before it should enter the canon,”10 at this point 1800 yards wide at the bottom.

  At the same time that Benteen was executing his orders, Sturgis directed Major Merrill to gallop forward “so as to get beyond and in rear of Benteen” as soon as the latter’s troops had passed. Merrill was supposed to protect the captain’s left flank from the fire of the Indians “who had by this time occupied the mouth and sides of the canon in strong force.”11

  Theodore Goldin, a trooper in Captain Benteen’s battalion, thus describes the fighting race to capture the canyon:

  On we went at a mad gallop. The Indians seemed to divine our purpose and redoubled their efforts. For a few moments it was doubtful which would win. An instant later and our flankers were assailed with a murderous fire from the bluffs, and we realized that an advance-party of the Indians were in the canon ahead of us. The fire was so fierce that our men were compelled to draw away from the hills and rejoin the main body of the battalion. It was apparent, now, that our only hope lay in heading off the main body, which was by this time dangerously near the entrance to the pass.

  On we galloped and a little later, sheltered from the enemy on the bluffs, we were dismounting in a deep ravine. Our loss so far had been only two men. Leaving our horses in charge of the horse holders, we scrambled up the bank, deployed as skirmishers and were soon hotly engaged. In the meantime, so far as we could see, the other two battalions, as dismounted skirmishers, were moving up the valley, keeping up a running fight with the Indians. Just about this time up came Lieutenant Otis with his “jackass” battery. Pushing well out to the front he opened fire on the enemy, apparently doing considerable damage. By this time the first and second battalions had joined us and the fight was raging fiercely, the Indians gradually drawing into the canon in spite of our efforts to restrain them. The first and second battalions had been pushed out toward the hills, and from the incessant firing in that direction we knew they had their hands full.12

  Merrill’s troops, who had been skirmishing on foot for nearly three miles across broken and rough country, were too exhausted to reach Benteen in time to support him. This enabled the Nez Perces to get the main herd of their ponies into the shelter of the canyon, but Benteen pushed the animals so closely that the Indians had to abandon four hundred of their most worn-out horses.

  Benteen’s third battalion, strengthened by Bendire’s detachment of cavalry and the howitzer loaned by Howard, received orders to make a flank movement and clear the heights on the west side of the canyon. The troops put spurs to their tired mounts, keeping them at a gallop as they swung up the valley toward a narrow ravine at right angles to the former line of battle. No sooner had the cavalrymen entered its narrowest part, however, when a fusillade of rifle shots zipped past them from the cliffs on their right and thudded into the banks on the opposite side of the canyon. Those at the column’s head spurred their horses and soon got out of range. The soldiers in the rear were taken unawares, and two recruits became panic-stricken and fled to the shelter of a ravine.

  Captain French’s arrival with M troop checked the threatened rout, “and with a mad cheer the men rushed up the steep hillside, some mounted, some dismounted, in a wild effort to reach the enemy,” Goldin continues. “The head of the column soon rejoined the charging lines, and a few moments later we stood on the top of the plateau, but not an Indian was in sight.”13

  After taking a breathing space, the troops reformed their ranks and advanced cautiously across the plateau, from where they could peer through the grass and sagebrush into the valley below. They observed some thirty or forty mounted Indians in a huddle and fired into the group, presumably killing or wounding most of them and their horses, although Yellow Wolf says only one man was slightly wounded and two animals were slain. The others fled on their ponies in wild haste. Preceded by a skirmishing line, the cavalrymen then advanced into the valley. Hardly had they reached level ground when the Indians poured a volley into them from the bluffs across the canyon. Their position being dangerously exposed the soldiers dismounted and took shelter under a rock ledge. Both sides then indulged in a game of sniping.

  All afternoon until sunset the Indians hotly contested every foot of ground, and forced the exhausted troops to withdraw at nightfall and camp at the mouth of the canyon. The raw winds of September that whistled through the ravines at evening did not add to the comfort of either side. The air grew chill and the ground was damp from recent rains.

  Having won the race to the canyon the main body of Nez Perces continued their successful retreat after a short rest during the night while young men blocked the passageway behind them with logs and brush. All next day they kept up a running fight with a large party of River Crows, gaudily arrayed in war paint, who had reenforced Sturgis. So vigorously did these scouts pursue the Nez Perces that the latter abandoned more weary ponies, Sturgis placing the loss at nine hundred in all—a costly price for escape after a running battle of two days’ duration. Amply satisfied, the Crows then gave up the chase within forty miles of the Musselshell River. This loss of stock was another serious blow to the Nez Perces, and no doubt counted heavily in the troops’ favor at the final conflict. The Indians’ casualties, as reported by Sturgis, were twenty-one killed, whereas the soldiers had three killed and eleven wounded.14 The Nez Perces denied having any mortalities, and scout S. G. Fisher affirmed that he found no dead Indians at Canyon Creek.

  The cavalrymen, mostly recruits, for the first time were engaged under fire and fought with “coolness and courage.” In his report, Major Merrill commends the enlisted men:

  They fought on foot over some eight miles of difficult and intersected ground, on the heels of a forced march of 80 miles, almost without rest and on half rations, and this preceded by two days of severe exertion, during which 70 miles, chiefly of mountain climbing, had been covered, and men and horses were pushed to the very verge of physical endurance, yet there was not seen a falter or a moment’s need of urging forward.15

  At dawn the next day Sturgis grimly continued the pursuit, hoping the Crows could check the enemy until his command could close up. But the Nez Perces did not linger by the wayside, and fought the Crows for every mile they covered in their flight to freedom. By night the army column was scattered for ten miles, with many cavalrymen on foot, which forced the colonel to go into camp after “a weary march of 37 miles.” Trooper Goldin reports the men feasted on “pony steaks and rib roasts,” that night, so famished were they that they surreptitiously killed the weaker horses.

  Still without rations, as his supply train from the agency had been unable to overtake him, Sturgis’ force wearily resumed the chase in the morning. On reaching the Musselshell River the colonel found the distance between himself and the Indians had increased, so, in disgust, he gave up the pursuit. In any case, his cavalry was too worn out to continue. For a week men and horses had been pushed to the limit, making long, weary marches, sometimes fifty and sixty miles a day, on half rations and with very little rest. “Hungry, tired and discouraged,” writes Goldin, “it was not a good-natured crowd to say the least, but officers and men were on an equal footing.”16 Besides, a disease of the hoof had broken out among the animals, which placed the men on foot and rendered it impossible to overtake mounted Indians.

  Here, on the banks of the Musselshell, Sturgis held another conference with Howard, who merged the two forces upon his arrival. The colonel then accompanied the general’s brigade on to the Missouri River.

  In a dispatch to Miles, Sturgis, greatly chagrined, explained the reason for the failure of his campaign:

  . . . The absence of a single guide who had ever been in the country in which we were operating, taken in connection wi
th our ignorance of it, and its exceeding rough and broken character, and my inability to learn anything of Howard’s position, enabled them to elude me at the very moment I felt sure of success. This is extremely mortifying to me, I assure you, and we are doing all that human endurance can possibly accomplish to circumvent them yet. . . .17

  In his report to the Secretary of War, Howard places the blame on Colonel Gibbon for the Indians’ escape at Hart Mountain, and for Sturgis’ failure. The general accused Gibbon of countermanding part of his order to Captain Cushing. Howard had ordered Cushing to operate from the old Crow Agency, to push up the Clarks Fork and join Sturgis. It seems that Gibbon, without a full cognizance of the facts, acted on his own responsibility, held Cushing at Fort Ellis, completely detached Norwood’s company from Cushing, and did not strengthen the captain’s force with Lieutenant Doane’s troops. Gibbon held Norwood’s cavalry at Fort Ellis to act as couriers, but, Howard complains, “the real or perhaps additional reason was probably a desire to give Lieutenant-Colonel Gilbert a command while en route to join me and to meet a supposed emergency in the direction of Mammoth Springs, where the Indian raid, before described, had just occurred.”18 (The raid when Dietrich, of the Weikert party, was killed.) Regarding Gibbon’s action, Howard writes:

  I was exceedingly annoyed at this conflict of orders, for it certainly prevented Cushing from being at Clarke’s Fork with sufficient force to take either the offensive against the crossing Indians or from cooperating effectively with Colonel Sturgis at Heart Mountain. Had Cushing been at Clarke’s Fork with the force I had directed him to have, the escape of the enemy across the Yellowstone in the direction he took, without an engagement, would have been absolutely prevented. Indeed, Captain Cushing reported to me that Lieutenant-Colonel Gilbert had treated him with marked official coldness, and when he, at Fort Ellis, asked him for the means of complying with my orders, and said, “What, sir, is my status?” Colonel Gilbert replied, “You have no status, sir,” and directed him to report to the commanding officer at Fort Ellis for duty, which, if he had been constrained to do, would have cut off my expected supplies.19

  Cushing loafed around the fort for several days. Then, since no one there seemed to know much about anything, least of all the Indians, he acted on his own responsibility and tried to carry out part of Howard’s orders as best he could. He brought the general his expected supplies to the Clarks Fork, rejoining the command on September 14.

  Meanwhile, just prior to the Canyon Creek conflict, the Nez Perces had captured a stagecoach in which a party of young men took a wild drive, and then dismantled it and destroyed the mails. The passengers and station tender had hied themselves into the brush, whither they were rescued by Howard’s men. To complete their escapade the young braves burned the stage buildings to the ground. Other depredations had more tragic aftermaths when raiding parties killed four civilians, burned buildings, and ran off stock.

  By outwitting and outdistancing Sturgis, Joseph’s tribesmen once again had earned their freedom.

  21

  The Skirmish at Cow Island

  After leaving Sturgis’ command behind, the Indians retired up the Musselshell River, well knowing now that their people could expect no help from the Crows. They circled west of the Judith Mountains, and on September 23 crossed the Missouri River at a point called Cow Island, the head of fall navigation where a freight depot was located. Twelve soldiers under Sergeant William Moelchert of the Seventh Infantry and four citizens were guarding the fifty tons of supplies which had just been unloaded from the steamer Benton.

  A guard of twenty warriors stood by while the families and the herds crossed from the river’s south bank, watched by the little garrison. Yellow Wolf affirms the chiefs had told the braves “not to shoot unless the soldiers fired first.”1

  After all the five bands had moved on to encamp two miles away up Cow Creek, two scouts approached the entrenched stronghold near the supplies. They parleyed with Sergeant Moelchert, asking for food and offering to pay for it. Moelchert refused their request as he was not authorized to sell government freight, but he gave them some bacon and hardtack.2 However, it was insufficient for several hundred people.

  Apparently the scanty amount of food disgruntled some of the hot-blooded young men who commenced shooting from the bluffs while the soldiers were getting their supper. After dark, a recent historian states, the Indians slipped up to the freight piles where they found four kegs of whiskey “and soon became a drunken and savage mob. They made at least three attempts to capture the entrenched defenders, the leaders taunting the bucks in ‘Indian talk’”3 This spree is confirmed by Josiah Red Wolf who recounted in the Spokesman-Review Inland Empire Magazine (November 17, 1963): “Joseph made the men break up the barrels with axes. As the whiskey flowed (from one axed-barrel) to the ground Zon [Red Wolf’s warrior brother] got down and lapped up that whiskey. (Red Wolf laughed and laughed as he recalled the scene.) Joseph told him ‘You will be shot if you get half shot.’”

  During the eighteen hours of the attack one Indian and two volunteers were wounded. In the interim the Nez Perce women replenished their stores, taking such badly needed food as flour, sugar, bacon, beans and coffee, also cooking utensils. Afterward, some “bad boys,” in Yellow Wolf’s words, burned the rest of the government and private freight at the landing during the night. “It was a big fire!” he commented.

  The chiefs stopped the shooting the next morning and at ten o’clock the camp moved on in the direction of the pass between the Bearpaw Mountains and the Little Rockies.

  Upon learning that the hostiles were probably headed for the freight landing, a company of the Seventh Infantry under command of Major Guido Ilges had set out several days earlier from Fort Benton before the Indians reached Cow Island. The major traveled overland with thirty-six volunteers on horseback, while Lieutenant Hardin brought the troops down the river in boats. The parties united at Cow Island shortly after the Indians had left.

  On the morning of September 24, Major Ilges and the mounted volunteers started after the Nez Perces, on a trail which led up Cow Creek Canyon from the freight depot. They had proceeded ten miles when an advance scout discovered the Indians’ camp. The warriors had surrounded a party of teamsters and their wagon train near the mouth of the Judith Basin. When the braves learned of the approach of Ilges’ men, they set the train on fire and killed two of the teamsters, the other seven escaping into the hills.

  Meanwhile, about seventy-five mounted Indians, acting as rear guard, came charging down the canyon toward the command. At one thousand yards they halted and divided into small parties, all of which disappeared. Ilges disposed of his men behind any available natural cover and awaited the attack. It began after high noon and lasted for two hours. The major writes:

  The Indians held the high ground above the high hills on right flank; they did very excellent shooting without exposing themselves. After the Indians had ceased firing and had withdrawn from the immediate front, Major Ilges fearing that they were trying to get to his rear and left, and on account of his unfavorable position for defense, slowly withdrew and returned to the pits at Cow Island, where he arrived at 6 P.M.4

  These warriors held the detachment at bay until the main band made their escape. One citizen with the troops and one horse were killed, and the Indians had two wounded. Major Ilges returned to Fort Benton on September 29, leaving Lieutenant Hardin in command of the force at the freight depot.

  The fact that these braves did not give pursuit and annihilate the detail seems to indicate that Joseph and Looking Glass were sincere when they said they didn’t want to fight, that they only wanted to go to the buffalo country. They felt secure now, believing that they had an open march across the Canadian border.

  Some time during the day of the skirmish, Looking Glass replaced Poker Joe (Lean Elk) as caravan leader. Many Wounds says the former remonstrated with Poker Joe for hurrying all the time, and he (Looking Glass), as ranking chief, again took over the lea
dership. To this the other chiefs consented.

  Meanwhile, Howard had sent a written order down the Yellowstone by boat to Colonel Nelson A. Miles to intercept the Nez Perces. To provide against emergencies, he also dispatched a duplicate letter overland by mounted messenger notifying Miles of Joseph’s escape from Sturgis. Howard then delayed his pursuit deliberately, knowing from past experience that the wily Nez Perces would only keep a day’s march or so ahead of the troops.

  Colonel Miles’s temporary headquarters was at the cantonment on Tongue River, Montana, later known as Fort Keogh, near Miles City. Upon receipt of Howard’s dispatch on the evening of September 17, the colonel immediately notified his superior, General A. H. Terry, commanding the Department of Dakota and in command of Fort Buford, that he would leave nine companies of infantry and one of cavalry at that point on the Yellowstone to keep the peace among the Indians of the region. With the remainder of his command he would “strike across by the head of Big Dry, Musselshell, Crooked Creek and Carroll, with the hope of intercepting the Nez Perces in their movement north,”5 as he presumed Howard and Sturgis would follow them to the Missouri.

  9. The eastward march of Chief Joseph.

  That night all of Miles’s available force was ferried over to the north bank of the Yellowstone. The morning of the eighteenth, the colonel’s command of Troops A and D of the Seventh Cavalry, Companies B, F, G, and I of the Fifth Infantry, mounted, with D and K of the Fifth marching on foot as escort to the wagon train, began the pursuit. Other troops were picked up along the route of march.