Saga of Chief Joseph

by Helen Addison Howard

  The country from the valley of the Clarks Fork to the Bearpaw Mountains is rolling plateau land, cut by bluffs and gashed with crooked ravines or coulees. Prickly-pear cactus and sagebrush dot the plains, while cottonwoods cluster along the river bottoms. Although the water is alkaline, bunch grass which nourished the buffalo for centuries grew in abundance and supplied nutritious forage for Indian pony and cavalry charger.

  Unaware of another army in the field, the Nez Perces moved along in leisurely fashion after their skirmish at Cow Island. They reached the northern slope of the Bearpaw Mountains within an easy day’s march of the Canadian line—and the blessed freedom for the lack of which they had suffered so much and would have to suffer much more. On Snake Creek, a tributary of Milk River, Looking Glass halted to give the exhausted people and horses a chance to rest, the wounded to recuperate, and to take advantage of the excellent hunting. Here, thirty miles southwest of Fort Belknap, he located his camp in a sheltered valley abounding in game, for he and Joseph both believed themselves safe from pursuit.

  This belief is evidenced in an interview held in 1900 with Indian Inspector James McLaughlin, in which Joseph said:

  I sat down in a fat and beautiful country. I had won my freedom and the freedom of my people. There were many empty places in the lodges and in the council, but we were in the land where we would not be forced to live in a place we did not want. I believed that if I could remain safe at a distance and talk straight to the men that would be sent by the Great Father, I could get back the Wallowa Valley and return in peace. That is why I did not allow my young men to kill and destroy the white settlers after I began to fight. I wanted to leave a clean trail, and if there were dead soldiers in that trail I could not be held to blame. I had sent out runners to find Sitting Bull, to tell him that another band of red men had been forced to run from the soldiers of the Great White Father, and to propose that we join forces if we were attacked.6

  The last sentence indicates that either Joseph anticipated possible pursuit by American troops into Canada, or his memory was confused as to the time when he sent out runners. In any event, he and Looking Glass made a fatal pause—the stop at the camping spot in the Bearpaw Mountains, like a siren, lured the five bands of Nez Perces to their final downfall. And the chief was big enough to admit his error. McLaughlin reports that Joseph almost wept when he spoke of this fatal blunder.

  “I knew that I had made a mistake,” he told McLaughlin, “by not crossing into the country of the Red Coats, also in not keeping the country scouted in my rear.”7

  Despite the fact that Joseph took the blame, Yellow Wolf declared it was Looking Glass, camp leader after crossing the Missouri River, who ordered the layover in the Bearpaw Mountains. There, as in the Big Hole, Yellow Wolf placed the responsibility for the Nez Perces’ disastrous final battle upon this chief’s dilatoriness.8

  22

  Battle of the Bearpaw Mountains

  All the while Colonel Miles was secretly approaching the Nez Perces with three troops of the Second Cavalry under command of Captain Owen Hale; four companies of the Fifth Infantry, mounted on captured Sioux Indian ponies, Captain Snyder in command; a breech-loading Hotchkiss gun and a 12-pound Napoleon cannon, besides a wagon train guarded by the two unmounted companies of the Fifth Infantry under Captain Brotherton—375 men in all. Miles advanced rapidly and reached the Missouri at the mouth of the Musselshell on September 23.

  Upon learning two days later that the Nez Perces had crossed at Cow Island and burned the supply depot on the twenty-third, Miles commandeered the last river steamer for the season and ferried his troops across the Missouri. The colonel then left his wagon train in command of Captain Brotherton, and pushed on with all speed by the northern side of the Little Rockies to intercept the Indians. These mountains are a range fifty miles in extent, running northwest and southeast. About ten miles beyond their northern spurs are the Bearpaw Mountains, with a low divide connecting the two. Miles could make rapid progress because his course led over the foothills and grassy plains.

  He kept his Cheyenne scouts on the west side of the Little Rockies to keep him apprised of the Nez Perces’ movements. These spies brought him word that the Indians’ trail led over the pass between the two ranges. Miles kept the Little Rockies between his command and the Nez Perces’ line of march. Thus he continued to approach them from an angle, and managed to keep his presence concealed from the Indians. To guard his movements further, the colonel ordered the soldiers not to hunt or disturb the vast herds of buffalo, deer, antelope, and elk which they frequently encountered.

  On reaching the northern end of the Bearpaw Mountains, fifty miles northeast of Fort Benton, the Cheyenne scouts discovered the Nez Perces’ camp, eight miles away. Miles reported to the Secretary of War that he broke camp at four o’clock on September 30. The command struck the trail near the head of Snake Creek and followed it to the Indian village, which they reached at 8:00 A.M. after a forced march of some two hundred miles.1

  It is thus described by Lieutenant, afterwards Captain, Henry Romeyn, of the Fifth Infantry:

  The camp was located on a small stream called Snake Creek, as it proved in an excellent position for defense in a kidney-shaped depression covering about six acres of ground, along the western side of which the stream ran in a tortuous course, while through it, from the steep bluffs forming its eastern and southern sides, ran “coulees” from two to six feet in depth and fringed with enough sage brush to hide the heads of their occupants. Here the Nez Perce chieftain had pitched his camp and here he now made his last stand for battle.2

  According to the Indians a boy went out to secure his pony about the same hour (eight o’clock), and discovered Miles’s Cheyenne scouts. The youth gave the alarm. Part of the warriors had time to hide behind a steep bank, and to take refuge in the entrenchments which it was customary for them to build at each important camp after the Big Hole battle. The Indians, however, had no time for concerted action, and they were unaware of the size of the opposing force.

  Yellow Wolf states that scouts had warned the camp earlier about seeing buffalo stampeding, and the Indians supposed soldiers were coming. But Looking Glass told the people to take their time packing and not to worry. Later, another scout waved the blanket signal of imminent danger, causing a “wild stir.” Yellow Wolf also reports his uncle, Chief Joseph, ran into the open and his voice could be heard above all the noise as he shouted, “Horses! Horses! Save the horses!”

  Meanwhile, Miles’s cavalry approached the village at a trot over the rolling, grass-covered prairie. In the crisp air the trot soon quickened to a gallop. As they rode over low ridges, Miles threw his troops into line of battle while in motion. “This gallop forward, preceding the charge, was one of the most brilliant and inspiring sights I ever witnessed on any field,” the colonel writes. “It was the crowning glory of our twelve days’ forced marching.”3

  “My God!” cried Captain Hale, who commanded the Seventh Cavalry, “have I got to go out and be killed in such cold weather!” He was the personification of the dashing cavalry officer, with slouch hat jauntily perched to one side, and mounted on a mettlesome gray horse.

  As they swept over a rise part of the leading battalions of the Seventh Cavalry and Fifth Infantry, preceded by Cheyenne and Sioux scouts, broke into a charge. With a pounding of hoofs over the turf, a creaking of saddles and jingle of bits they struck directly at the village.

  The Indians were not completely surprised this time, though, and withheld their fire until the cavalry was within one hundred yards of their rifle pits. Then, instead of breaking and fleeing before the blue-coated soldiers thundering down on them, the Nez Perces stood up to the cavalry charge and poured a cool, deadly volley into the oncoming ranks. They were no ordinary red foe. Soon an empty saddle, and another, and another, appeared among the cavalrymen until the loss became alarming, and the soldiers had to retreat before the withering fire. Within five minutes the Nez Perces had repulsed the first attack at
the southwestern end of the camp. They were still fighting for their freedom, for their right to live as free-born human beings, and they must have realized, in desperation, that it would be their last fight.

  When part of the cavalry took the bluffs east of the village, the Indians had to abandon a steep butte from which they had first directed their fire against the attacking force. As the mounted Fifth Infantry charged up behind the cavalry, they executed “left front into line” and halted at this crest. They had come up to the valley’s edge where the camp was located. Dismounting, the men held their ponies by means of lariats. These troops with their long-range rifles delivered a murderous fire on the village. Their captured Sioux ponies, so accustomed to the firing of guns, stood quietly, and many began nibbling the grass! From the coulees, fifty yards away, the Nez Perces also poured a hot fire, picking off infantrymen and horses.

  Captain Hale’s K troop had first engaged the Indians, who were ranged on “cut-banks,” or bluffs, twenty to thirty feet high. Curiously enough that officer, according to Miles, was the first one killed in the battle! His gray horse fell beside him with a mortal wound. Lieutenant Biddle was the next to fall—a singular coincidence that the only two bachelors at the post should be the first to die! It was the young lieutenant’s first battle, too. Hale’s ranks were almost decimated.

  The battalion of Second Cavalry under Captain Tyler had swung slightly to the left, to attack in the rear and cut off the herds grazing on a high plateau behind the village. In the running fight that followed, Lieutenants Jerome and McClernand succeeded in capturing most of the horses and mules, about eight hundred to a thousand in number. The animals were corralled in a small valley in the rear of the command.

  The Seventh Cavalry became separated. Captain Godfrey placed himself between his men and the Indians, and promptly his horse was shot under him. The animal pitched to the ground in a heap, stunning the officer. Trumpeter Herwood ran to his captain and fought off the advancing squad of warriors until Godfrey recovered consciousness and rejoined his troops.

  The casualties among the soldiers became fearful. Lieutenant Baird, adjutant of the Fifth Infantry, had his left arm shattered and one ear shot away while he was carrying orders. Captain Moylan of the Seventh Cavalry received a wound in the thigh. Another officer “had one shot through his belt, another carried away his field glass, while a third took off his hunting knife and cut the skin from an ear,” writes Lieutenant Romeyn. “Creeping carefully up to the edge of the bluff to look over, a bullet instantly lifted the hat and a lock of hair for a Sergeant, and another went through the head of a comrade at his side.”4

  So fierce and close was the fighting that the battalion of the Seventh had only one officer unwounded after the first charge. This man, Lieutenant Eckerson, remarked to Colonel Miles, “I am the only damned man of the Seventh Cavalry who wears shoulder straps, alive.”5 That battalion had 53 killed and wounded out of 115, while the loss suffered by Captain Hale’s troops amounted to over 60 percent.

  The reason so many officers were killed and wounded was because the warriors deliberately picked them off, for “wherever the Indians heard a voice raised in command there they at once directed their fire. . . .”6

  Mortality ran high among the Indian leaders also. Yellow Bull reports: “In the first day’s fighting were killed Tuhulhutsut . . . Looking Glass, Alokut [Joseph’s beloved brother], and Pile of Clouds.”7 Yellow Wolf adds that Hush-hush-cute (Husishusis Kute) killed three of his tribesmen, mistaking them for enemy Indians. Poker Joe (Lean Elk) likewise was slain in error by a Nez Perce the first day of the battle. However, Yellow Wolf stated Looking Glass died on the last day of the fighting. In describing the latter’s death, Yellow Wolf relates that the chief stood up from his rifle pit to view a mounted Indian, mistaken for a friendly Sioux from Sitting Bull. A sharpshooter, apparently, killed him with a single bullet in the forehead.

  At the beginning of the attack, according to Romeyn, “a portion of the lodges had been struck and about one hundred ponies packed for the day’s march.”8 This band of women and children, defended by fifty or sixty warriors, drove the pack horses and made a bold dash for freedom. They were pursued by G troop of the Second Cavalry under Lieutenant McClernand. After galloping five miles from the village, the warriors halted to fight. The cavalrymen were busy keeping the captured ponies closely herded to prevent them from stampeding back to the Indians. Thus the Nez Perces were able to take the offensive “and forced the soldiers back toward the main body, although they failed in their attempts to retake the stock.”9 Some of the warriors succeeded in reaching the shelter of the Indian camp again, where they aided in its defense. The others escaped, and probably made their way into Canada.

  When the first attack began, Joseph was on the opposite side of the creek from the village. This is one of those rare instances in which we have any definite knowledge of his personal activities in battle. It is also unusual for an Indian chief to describe such experiences in his own words. He said:

  We had no knowledge of General Miles’ army until a short time before he made a charge upon us, cutting our camp in two, and capturing nearly all of our horses. About seventy men, myself among them, were cut off. My little daughter, twelve years of age, was with me. I gave her a rope, and told her to catch a horse and join the others who were cut off from the camp. I have not seen her since, but I have learned that she is alive and well.

  I thought of my wife and children, who were now surrounded by soldiers, and I resolved to go to them or die. With a prayer in my mouth to the Great Spirit Chief who rules above, I dashed unarmed through the line of soldiers. It seemed to me that there were guns on every side, before and behind me. My clothes were cut to pieces and my horse was wounded, but I was not hurt. As I reached the door of my lodge, my wife handed me my rifle, saying: “Here’s your gun. Fight!”

  The soldiers kept up a continuous fire. Six of my men were killed in one spot near me. Ten or twelve soldiers charged into our camp and got possession of two lodges, killing three Nez Perces and losing three of their men, who fell inside our lines. I called my men to drive them back. We fought at close range, not more than twenty steps apart, and drove the soldiers back upon their main line, leaving their dead in our hands. We secured their arms and ammunition. We lost, the first day and night, eighteen men and three women.10

  At one o’clock in the afternoon Miles ordered a second charge, the object being to cut off the Indians’ water supply. Companies A and D of the Fifth Infantry had lost every officer in the first assault, so Lieutenant Henry Romeyn was placed in command and ordered to attack the Indians on the southwest. Part of the Second and Seventh Cavalry closely engaged the Nez Perces in desperate fighting in broken ground intersected by draws on the north and east. While they did so, Captain Carter, Lieutenant Woodruff and the detachment of the Fifth Infantry under Romeyn “charged down the slope, along the open valley of the creek, and reached the west end of the Indian village.”11 But, Miles reports to the Secretary of War, “the deadly fire of the Indians with magazine guns disabled 35 per centum of his [Romeyn’s] men, and rendered it impossible for them to take the remainder of the village.”12

  The Nez Perces had too strong a defensive position, Romeyn explained. Because of their withering fire the soldiers could not break through their lines. But fourteen men of Company I under Captain Carter of the Fifth Infantry did succeed in crossing the coulee and reached the lodges. It was these men whom Joseph engaged. His warriors immediately killed five outright—a third of their number—and the others concealed themselves in the draws and gullies until nightfall, when they were able to rejoin their comrades. Lieutenant Romeyn was shot through the lungs in this skirmish, but not mortally wounded.

  The troops held their ground until Miles ordered them to withdraw. This proved to the colonel that any more charges would be accomplished at further severe loss to his men.

  The soldiers, though, forced the Indians back to the ravines or “coulees” behind their c
amp. Here the Nez Perces entrenched themselves and easily defended their position against the troops. Indian women assisted in the work of increasing the entrenchments. In many cases they did all the digging by using knives and shovels made of frying pans with sharpened edges. This was accomplished after the first day, according to Yellow Bull. Some of the pits were dug separately and connected by underground passages. These trenches explain why the Indians’ casualties were not greater, and why they were able to hold off the superior force of soldiers for five days.

  Being unable to dislodge the Indians and suffering fearful losses, Miles withdrew his men at 3:00 P.M. and laid a siege after throwing a thin line of troops completely around the village. He was considerably worried by the fear that Sitting Bull would come to the Nez Perces’ aid and stage another Custer Massacre before Joseph’s surrender could be effected.

  And, in truth, Joseph did try to establish contact with the Sioux. That very evening he sent six of his most trusted warriors to get reenforcements from Sitting Bull. The unfortunate messengers, though, stopped at a village of Assiniboines, by whom they were all murdered, probably for their fine guns. It was apparently Joseph’s plan to withstand the troops until Sitting Bull could come to his aid. When some of the former’s messengers eventually did arrive, however, it was only to discover that the Sioux had learned hearty respect for the U. S. Army. Instead of gallantly joining the beleaguered Nez Perces, Sitting Bull and his people packed up bag and baggage and scampered forty miles farther north from the Canadian border! Perhaps the timely approach of Howard’s brigade may have lent speed to their heels.

  However, McWhorter’s Indian informants told him a Sioux war party led by Sitting Bull actually did start for the Bearpaw battlefield, but upon meeting White Bird’s group of refugees they learned of Joseph’s surrender, and so all turned back to the Sioux village.13