Cries from the Earth: The Outbreak Of the Nez Perce War and the Battle of White Bird Canyon June 17, 1877 (The Plainsmen Series)

by Terry C. Johnston

  “We must pray it will be so.” Joseph wanted to join in that hope with all his heart, but of all the Shadows he had known, there wasn’t one he could turn to now. Not one he felt he could trust.

  So Joseph rested his hand on the shorter man’s shoulder and told Two Moons, “But even if we talk to Cut-Off Arm and make some sort of peace with him, because of what these three fools have done—because of what Sun Necklace’s war party is on their way to do now—the white men will certainly take away everything we were going to have on the reservation. Now the soldiers will greedily strip us of what little would have been left us for our new life among the Treaty bands, just as the soldiers always do to those they defeat.”

  When he heard Ollokot sigh deeply, Joseph turned to gaze sadly at his brother.

  “This time, Joseph … it is for our people to fight,” Ollokot said. “Fight … or die.”

  * * *

  “Mamma, I see Papa coming down the road.”

  The instant her four-year-old daughter, Emmy, raised the call, Isabella Benedict stepped out from behind the wet clothing she was hanging across the yard on a line strung between the house and the store and gazed down the path that led in from the White Bird Road.

  “Looks like he didn’t find none of them cows,” she replied grumpily and pulled another wet shirt from the basket.

  A fiery redhead of Irish ancestry, Isabella had married Canadian-born Samuel Benedict back in ’63 when she was no more than fifteen. Four children later, she hadn’t seen her thirtieth birthday. But she hadn’t lost a drop of her spit and vinegar.

  By gum, if he won’t expect me to go looking for them cows now me own self, she thought as she lapped the damp shirt over the line and dug in her apron pocket for a clothespin. Then she stopped and stared again at her husband as he approached. Something was wrong, terribly wrong, with the way he was sitting that horse. Not riding it high and handsome, but clutching the horse like he was about to fall off. Now she saw that wasn’t his horse.

  “Isa—”

  When Sam’s voice choked off the way it did, she knew something was terrible wrong. And started walking, reminding herself to walk.

  “Isa—Isabella!”

  Then she was running, her long dress whipped between her lean legs like a damask table runner, her old ankle boots scuffing across the grassy yard to meet him.

  “Mamma?”

  “Stay with the little’un!” Isabella snapped at her daughter without stopping or turning, and kept running for Sam.

  She was at his side the moment the strange horse came to a halt beneath the big tree that shaded the yard stretching between their wayside inn and the short path down to the mouth of White Bird Creek at the Salmon. He smiled weakly at her as he held out an arm. That’s when she saw: nearly the entire back of his left leg was soaked with blood.

  “Oh, Sam—what the hell you gone and done to yourself?” she asked as she dove in under his arm, throwing one of her own around his waist to pull him off the horse.

  “Injuns,” he growled as he dragged his right leg down and struck the ground on his left, grunting in pain.

  “Injuns?”

  “Sh-shot me,” he groaned as the hottest pain seemed to pass. “Get me to the tree … there.”

  She did as he ordered. “Who, Sam?” And she knelt with him, letting him lean all his weight on her as they came down quickly onto the grass.

  Benedict lay back against the tree trunk, gasping, his eyes half-closed. “Three of them little pricks.”

  Then she noticed his other leg, just as bloody if not worse. “Goddamn, they shot you more’n once!” she shrieked.

  “I don’t ’member no more’n one bullet,” he gasped and opened his eyes. “Don’t know how they got me in both legs, for they didn’t get the horse.”

  “That ain’t our horse, Sam.”

  He wheezed, “I know. Think it’s Elfers’s. The bastards took mine. Later on, this’un come up to me all by itself.”

  “Who? Who shot you, Sam?”

  “One of ’em was in that bunch I run off two summers back,” he said, squeezing her hand till it turned white. “I know he was.”

  “I’m gonna get some bandages; then we’re gonna take you into the house where they can work on you—”

  “No,” he interrupted. “Get over here, Emmy.”

  The girl trotted over, her baby sister propped on her slim hip. “Papa—you’re hurt.”

  “You gotta go for help, Emmy.”

  “Me, Papa?”

  “Want you to take my horse and go fetch Hurdy Gurdy.”

  “Mr. Brown? You want me get him to help you?”

  Isabella stood and took the baby girl from her daughter’s arms. “Go do what your father tells you now. Get Mr. Brown and tell him come quick.”

  * * *

  At that very moment some ninety miles north as the buzzard would fly, General Oliver Otis Howard was stepping onto the dock at Lewiston, accompanied by U.S. Indian Inspector Erwin C. Watkins. This was still a woolly frontier town, no matter how kind the description: a Snake River settlement growing hand-over-fist by the week, already sporting a grist-and a sawmill, a local newspaper, and quite a number of enterprising merchants making hay off the gold miners.

  Two weeks earlier they had departed military headquarters in Portland for a tour of army posts and reservations in Howard’s Department of the Columbia. Over the past year the general had grown increasingly irritated that he had to deal with as many as fourteen Indian agents in his region, each one of them wanting a little something different, perhaps a little something more from Howard’s soldiers than the general was able to provide them.

  “It is not scriptural to obey so many masters,” he was fond of grousing about those carping and conniving civil servants who plagued his department.

  But now the general had the large-boned Watkins along, and Watkins clearly outranked those mealy-mouthed, frustrating agents. Besides that, Howard simply liked Watkins as a man. A Civil War veteran like himself, the inspector was a hale-fellow filled with Christian wholesomeness as well as unbounded courage.

  So with tomorrow, the fifteenth of June, being the deadline he had given the Nez Perce to be on the reservation, Howard had decided it would be prudent of him to return to this area in the event there was the slightest trouble with the Non-Treaty bands not living up to what they had agreed to do.

  To greet Howard and Watkins as they stepped down the steamboat’s gangplank was a small crowd of townsfolk, mostly curious people who showed up every time one of the steamers puffed its way upriver to Lewiston. On the dock stood the man in charge at Fort Lapwai, Captain David Perry.

  Saluting the post commander, Howard next held out his hand and addressed Perry by his brevet, or honorary, rank. “How are things with Joseph, Colonel?”

  “All right, by last accounts, General,” Perry replied, then shook hands with Watkins before turning back to Howard. “The Indians are, I think, coming on the reservation without trouble.”

  That was the sweetest piece of news Howard had heard in years. He grinned within his neatly trimmed beard. “Praises be, gentlemen. We’ve circumvented a war by holding firm—steadfastly firm, I might add. I venture to say the Indian problem is all but put to rest now.”

  Charles Monteith, the agent’s younger brother, who was serving as reservation clerk, finished introducing himself to Inspector Watkins, then told Howard, “The Indians appear to be acting in good faith, so we suppose they will make no trouble in coming in.”

  All around this group a small crowd of curious and interested Lewiston residents cheered those hopeful sentiments and gave the general three hearty huzzahs for dousing the fears of an Indian war. It had been a long, long time since Howard had experienced this kind of praise and adulation.

  These people have been scared, he remembered. They’ve been afraid for the better part of a year that war could break out at any moment, with the slightest provocation. But you’ve done it, Otis. By Providence! You’ve gone and
saved them from a war!

  “Mr. Watkins has some matters to attend to here in Lewiston for the next two or three days,” Howard announced as the small group turned and started toward the ambulance Perry had brought up from Lapwai.

  “I’m seeing to the civilian contracts for the Umatilla and Nez Perce reservations,” Watkins explained.

  “Then I’ll be taking you to the fort alone, General?” Perry asked.

  “No, Colonel—I believe I can keep myself busy here in town,” Howard told the officer. “Now that it appears affairs with the Nez Perce are quietly falling into place, I think I’m going to enjoy a few days of peace in Lewiston myself.”

  Chapter 13

  Season of Hillal

  1877

  “You mustn’t run away!” Joseph cried at a small group pushing past him on their way out of camp by the time he and Ollokot reached the village at Tepahlewam. “No reason to be afraid—you have done nothing wrong!”

  “The soldiers will come looking for us!” White Bird wailed as he stepped up between the lodges. “All must join now. There is blood. We will be punished if we delay our escape!”

  Joseph dismounted. “We look guilty when we run away,” he explained.

  White Bird shrugged, turning slightly to gesture at the frantic activities of those breaking camp. “I am afraid it is too late for talk now—the war has started. Look at these people—they are running for their lives before the soldiers come searching for the killers and find us instead.”

  “We must wait for the soldiers to come,” Joseph protested. “Then we can make us some kind of peace with Cut-Off Arm. It would be better than running and fighting, because too many women and children will die—”

  “Too late, too late,” White Bird groaned, wagging his head.

  “Why do you say it is too late?”

  “I told Sun Necklace not to go; I argued with Toohoolhoolzote,” White Bird explained, “said they mustn’t take all my young men with them. That would leave my people with no protection when the soldiers come.”

  “But there doesn’t have to be a fight when the soldiers come,” Joseph consoled him.

  “There will be a lot of fighting,” White Bird whimpered in protest. “So we must join in the war now.”

  Joseph reached out and put his hand on the older man’s shoulder. The venerable war chief turned and looked into Joseph’s face. “Where will you go, White Bird?”

  “Sah-pah-tsas,”1 he answered with regret. “The Drive-In near the Red Rocks.”

  “Yes, on the Cottonwood.” Joseph reached down and seized White Bird’s wrist affectionately. “We will see you soon.”

  The old man gripped Joseph’s wrist tightly, refusing to let go, and asked, “You are coming to join us there?”

  “I don’t know,” and Joseph shook his head. “My wife—she is about to give birth.”

  “Her time is soon?”

  “Perhaps today. Tomorrow at the latest.”

  Finally releasing the taller man’s arm, White Bird scrutinized Joseph’s eyes carefully, as if to read what lay behind them. “Will you turn your back on the rest of us and take the Wallowa into the reservation now?”

  Sensing such heavy responsibility weighing upon his shoulders, Joseph said, “Some of my people will surely want to surrender now that there is trouble, now that the smell of blood is on the wind. But the Wallowa will gain nothing by giving up to the soldiers. No matter what has happened, who committed the murders … I know the white men will look at all the chiefs the same. In their eyes now, you and I and looking Glass are equally as guilty as Toohoolhoolzote or Sun Necklace.”

  “Then we must run away to the hills and prepare to fight, Joseph.”

  He wagged his head sadly. “For now, I know we can’t run away. We must have time to think, to figure out how to put but these first flames of war.”

  White Bird stared into the taller man’s face, saying, “Those first flames are no longer small enough for you or me to put out, Joseph. Sun Necklace and his warriors are fanning the fire hotter. Already the flames are out of control.”

  “I cannot stand by and do nothing. I must do what I can,” Joseph vowed.

  “May the Creator guide your steps,” White Bird said. “No matter what path you choose for your feet.”

  Without another word, White Bird turned away to rejoin his people already streaming away from Tepahlewam.

  “Ollokot.”

  “Yes, Joseph.”

  “See that our people do not tear down their lodges and run away before I can talk to them.”

  Ollokot caught Joseph’s arm and asked, “Where are you going?”

  “To see my wife,” he said, his eyes turning sad, “to learn if I have become a father again.”

  * * *

  “What the hell you fellas doing back here so damn quick?” asked John J. Manuel as he stepped off the porch. The two horsemen brought their lathered mounts to an ungainly halt in the yard of the house Arthur Chapman had built at the mouth of Chapman Creek, here beside the White Bird.

  “Never did get anywhere near Mount Idaho,” explained forty-year-old Patrick Brice, an Irish immigrant who had come to Amerikay in the stinking hold of a ship filled with those who were fleeing the third potato famine to devastate the old sod.

  Despite his seventy-four-year-old bones, James Baker swung out of the saddle like a young cavalryman and landed right in front of Manuel. “We see’d a war party up on the divide, John. Better clear out and pronto.”

  “Coming this way?” asked George Popham, Manuel’s father-in-law, his eyes narrowing with concern as he stepped onto the porch.

  “We damn well didn’t stay long enough to ask ’em,” Baker snorted, grabbing hold of Manuel’s vest with one hand. “Now you gonna believe me and get your family out of here, son?”

  “Where the hell you ’spect us to go?” Manuel demanded defensively. This was the home he had bought from Chapman a few years back; this was his business—where his family was sinking its roots. He glanced quickly at his wife, then at his six-year-old daughter, Maggie. “They catch any of us out on the road to Grangeville, there ain’t no getting back. Better we stay here—”

  “My place,” Baker huffed. “It’s better’n yours here case they put us to siege. I cleared the trees clear round the place, and I got a good field of fire from ever’ side of the house. And if they try to burn us out, I allays got that stone cellar they can’t burn. You ain’t got much time to get your family away from here, John.”

  A few hours earlier old man Baker had been down near the Salmon River Road when the Benedict girl came riding up the White Bird Trail, scampering for the Brown homestead bawling the news that her father had been shot through both legs by the Injuns and had just reached home, bleeding something terrible. So just before noon Baker gathered up his most trusted hired man, Conrad Fruth, and together they rode off for the Manuel place, a little more than a mile on up White Bird Creek, intent on spreading the alarm among the local folk.

  At first he was planning to ride on over the White Bird Divide with Fruth, alerting the settlers near the Camas Prairie like Paul Revere himself, but at his first stop John Manuel talked him out of that notion.

  “We don’t know for sure what’s going on,” Manuel argued. “You know Sam Benedict’s played hell with them Nez Perce, and they may just be squaring things with him. I doubt it’s a war, Jim. Why don’t you and Fruth go on back to your place? You both’ll be one helluva lot safer there than you will be up on the divide, should any young bucks catch you two out with their blood all worked up over shooting Sam.”

  Baker had relented and taken Fruth back to his place down White Bird Creek. But the old man was back about an hour later, this time with Patrick Brice along. The Irish prospector wasn’t about to sit around Baker’s place and wait for a war party to come pay their respects. Together the three had decided that safety lay in numbers and ridden for the Manuel ranch. After John, his father-in-law, Baker, and Brice argued it all over again …
Baker and Brice decided they would head off to Mount Idaho to let folks know something evil was afoot.

  But here they were, back again, turned around by a band of horsemen they had spotted heading up the White Bird Divide.

  “Them Injuns might’ve followed you boys back here. Damn it all,” Manuel drawled, maintaining a strong vestige of his thick Virginia accent. He set his jaw, having come to a decision. “George, s’pose you get Jennet and the chirrun saddled up—”

  “I ain’t going, John,” George Popham interrupted sternly. “I figure to stay here and fight ’em off when they come. That way, I’ll give the rest of you a little more time to get clear of the place.”

  Manuel felt a sudden swell of sentiment burn in his breast as he gave his father-in-law a quick, fierce embrace. Amid the swirl of her long, honey-blond hair, Jennet Manuel pressed against her father the moment her husband, John, knelt to sweep up their eleven-month-old son from the porch.

  Manuel held out his hand for his daughter. “C’mon, Maggie.”

  After Jennet had climbed into the saddle, John handed the boy up to his mother.

  Patrick Brice stopped beside the horse and waited while John Manuel mounted, then hoisted six-year-old Maggie up behind her father. Brice stepped back from the horse. “I’ve decided to stay with George.”

  For a moment Manuel measured the immigrant with no small admiration. He cleared his throat and said, “Lock the doors ahint you, Patrick. There’s extra shells in the chest by the door, and a rifle in the corner, too.”

  “Better you get now,” Popham growled, slapping the rump on his daughter’s horse.

  “I love you, Father!” Jennet cried as they kicked their horses away from the house.

  Baker spurred his animal to the front of the line, leading them downstream along the narrow trail. They were bound for the sanctuary of the old man’s stone cellar. Just the place John Manuel figured he could keep his family safe from all harm.

  * * *

  Little Maggie had never seen her mother so frightened before. Jennet Manuel’s tanned cheeks were almost pale as the bleached muslin of her apron by the time they got on horseback and started out of the yard.