“Do this for me,” he continued. “Be slow about your surrender. The sun is more than halfway to its resting place. As you prepare to turn in your weapons, let it continue to fall. Only after you have gone over, let others follow. Stretch it out until dark. Give my people time to slip away before Soyappos come into our camp.”
Thunder Rising nodded. “It will be as you wish.” He turned to the crowd. “Everyone is free to choose whether you want to go across to soldiers’ camp, where there is food, or go north with White Bird, to Old Woman’s Country. If you come with me, do so slowly, after I go, until darkness falls.”
SIXTY-NINE
October 1877
Daytime Smoke put one arm around Yellow Hair and limped back to their shelter. When they reached what was left of it Red Bear was asleep. Little Fire brought a buffalo robe out and laid it on the melting snow, in the sun, and Smoke lowered himself onto it. He just wanted to sleep, too, and never wake up. He had been awake much of the night, grieving for Widow Bird, wondering why she was dead—why so many of his loved ones were dead. He had once loved Soyappos. His father had been beloved among the Nimíipuu. Fitzpatrick, Sublette, Bridger—they had been so warm, so generous. How could some Soyappos be so good, and others so bad?
Smoke had heard that even Cut-Off Arm, who had driven them from their homes, killed their people, chased them for so many moons, was a praying Christian. It was mystifying.
Perhaps, Smoke thought, he should have kept his family on the reserve, even after they were attacked. Yet it all felt inevitable, as if he could not have changed one bit of it had he tried. But why? And what kind of life would his children have? Would they have to live like Soyappos, on farms, spending their days hoeing and planting and harvesting? Smoke remembered farming—it was a hard life, a small life, narrow and weary. It was not the way a Nimíipuu lived. He had spent his life in freedom, ridden across stunning mountains, fought enemies, hunted buffalo, wandered great distances. Would his children—and their children—never know such freedom?
“What will we do, Grandfather?” Yellow Hair asked him.
“What do you want to do, Granddaughter?”
“Stay with you.”
He gazed at her, her slim face and body, her blond, braided hair. She looked like a Soyappo, but she had a Nimíipuu heart.
“Your grandfather is old,” he told her. “He can barely walk, and he is ready to die. But your life is just beginning. You and your mother and Red Bear will go with White Bird, live in freedom, as our people have always lived. I will stay with Thunder Rising.”
Yellow Hair burst into tears.
He held her close, stroked her hair. “Granddaughter, you have a full life to live. I want you to live it in freedom, not in Soyappos’ shadow.”
“But who will take care of you?”
“I will make do.”
“Who will bring you food?”
“People will help.”
She stared at him, tears streaming down her young face, then embraced him, her face buried in his chest. “I won’t go!”
“For too long I trusted Soyappos, Granddaughter. We have all suffered from my mistakes. I do not trust any Soyappos, and I do not want you to suffer any more.”
Little Fire knelt down, put a hand on her daughter’s pale arm. “Don’t listen to your Grandfather, child. He is old and his mind is leaving him. We will stay with him, go with Thunder Rising.”
Smoke looked up at his daughter, shook his head, no. She pulled her daughter to her, held her close. “Your grandfather is a silly old man.”
“What are they waiting for?” Howard asked.
“They have earned the right to take their time,” Miles said. They stood atop the bluff from which the Nez Perce had first stopped his attack. It was late in the afternoon. Joseph had agreed to surrender almost two hours ago, and still no one had appeared from the Indian camp. The sun had dropped low in the western sky, bathing the snow-covered prairie in a ruddy light.
Lieutenant Wood pointed: “There he is.”
Howard put his looking glass to his left eye. Joseph rode a black horse with a Mexican saddle, his head down, his hands crossed on the high pommel, a carbine across his lap. His braids hung on the front of his shoulders, but he had tied his front hair into a topknot with a strip of otter fur. He wore the same dirty buckskin leggings, full of holes, below a gray blanket draped around his shoulders. Five others walked beside him, their heads bare. They clustered close to him, their hands on his legs and horse, as if to offer him some kind of solace. Howard felt as if he were watching them lead their savior to the cross.
Hearing Miles move, he dropped the glass and followed the colonel back away from the bluff and down into the swale to the west, where a buffalo robe lay on the snow. There, out of the wind, they awaited the small procession. They could hear the sad murmur of Indian voices as the warriors talked to their chief. Joseph rode with his head bowed, a red scar across his forehead. Howard could hardly believe this was the man who had routed Perry at White Bird Canyon, fought off 500 men at the Clearwater, crushed Gibbon at the Big Hole, fooled Sturgis in the mountains, and outdistanced them all for so many months.
From the Indian camp, another small group made its way up out of the ravine, then another. They came in twos and threes, mostly women and children, a warrior here or there. Their clothes were thin and torn and covered with dirt. Some had no shoes, their feet wrapped in torn blankets. Others showed wounds, wrapped in bloodstained cloth; some needed help walking. Several of the elderly were blind. One woman held an infant that could not have been more than a few days old. The few horses they brought were thin and lame, their ribs poking out of their sides. How had these people traveled so fast? How was it that in 1700 miles, he had only managed to catch them once? How could they have come this close to freedom—40 miles from the border—only to be caught?
He felt a profound sadness. What had these poor people done to deserve this fate? They had defended their lands from those who stole them and killed settlers who had murdered their kin. What American would do otherwise?
He bowed his head, prayed silently for forgiveness, prayed that these poor people would be treated well and brought to know God. He had only tried to do what was best for them, to help them find the Christian road. It was inevitable that the superior race would prevail, and the Indians would have to change their way of life. It was God’s plan, and Howard had tried to help Him fulfill it. Perhaps it had gone wrong because these Indians had rejected God, when they rejected Reverend Spalding. “The sins of the father shall be visited upon the children to the third or fourth generation,” the Bible said.
Joseph stopped his horse and dismounted. He drew himself erect and pulled his blanket into place. He held his rifle in the hollow of his left arm, a look of dignity and pride—almost defiance—in his eyes. He walked toward Howard and thrust out his rifle, in silence, but Howard gestured toward Miles. Joseph turned to the man who had finally caught him and handed over his rifle. He raised one hand to the sky: “From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.”
Daytime Smoke shook his son’s arm to wake him. When Red Bear finally sat up, Smoke could see that he had cut his hair and slashed his arms; someone had bandaged them with fresh cloth. Smoke explained what had happened, that some were going across to the soldiers’ camp, some were leaving with White Bird. His son just listened, as if he no longer cared, while Little Fire and Yellow Hair watched.
“We will go with White Bird,” Smoke said.
Red Bear gazed at him, puzzled. “We have only one horse left.”
“Little Fire and Yellow Hair will ride together.”
“And you?”
“I will walk.”
The others just stared at him. Finally Yellow Hair broke the silence: “You take the horse, grandfather.”
He shook his head. His daughter and granddaughter might die without a horse. The Soyappos might pursue them, or the Walk-Around Sioux might take them captive.
“
You know you cannot walk,” Little Fire said.
He looked away. He just wanted them to go. “Please,” he said. “Take the horse.”
Little Fire shook her head, and Yellow Hair grabbed him around the chest and held him tight. He looked at Red Bear. “Please take them. Keep them safe.”
Red Bear nodded, then gathered his few possessions. But Little Fire would not mount the horse, and Yellow Fire clung to her grandfather.
“I will walk until I can walk no more,” he said. “It is better than surrendering to Soyappos.”
“Father, we are not going,” Little Fire said.
“You must go.”
His granddaughter squeezed him harder, and his daughter just shook her head.
All his life he had tried to do what was best for his family, and now he was powerless. The Soyappos had won. He turned to Red Bear, reached out and held his arm. “My son, please go with White Bird. Stay away from Soyappos. They have killed your mother, your near-sister, my wife. Don’t let them kill you. I am ready to die, but you have a long life ahead. Marry. Have children. Hunt. Live free, for your father.”
Red Bear looked torn. “I will stay and help my family,” he said.
“No!” Smoke stared into his son’s eyes. “Keep your freedom. Go north, for me. I beg you. I have lost so much.… If you stay here, I will have lost everything.”
Tears showed in Red Bear’s eyes. He nodded, then embraced Yellow Hair and Little Fire. Finally he embraced Smoke. “My heart weeps.”
Smoke pulled him close. “I will go to my death a proud man, my son. My heart will always be with you.”
Epilogue
Of the 800 Nez Perces who fled from their homelands in 1877, 386 surrendered to Colonel Miles; 45 more were captured a few days later, among the Cree, who had fed and sheltered them. Some 120 had been killed and 90 wounded during the war; another 30 were killed on their way to Canada by Gros Ventres or Assiniboines. But 233 Nez Perce made it safely to Sitting Bull’s camp, where they were taken in and treated with kindness.
On the U.S. side, 180 soldiers lost their lives; 150 more were wounded.
Colonel Miles fed and clothed his prisoners, as he had promised, then marched them slowly south, to the new fort the U.S. military had built where the Tongue River joined the Yellowstone. There he received orders from General Sherman to move them 300 miles east—the strong by foot, the weak by boat—to Bismarck, North Dakota, where the rail lines ended. Miles knew Sherman well—his wife was Sherman’s niece—and he protested that this violated the terms of surrender. But Sherman was adamant: it would be cheaper to supply them for the winter in Bismarck.
Despite Joseph’s repeated protests, his people were not allowed to bring the remnants of their great horse herd. And on the way down the Missouri, disaster struck: one of the flatboats capsized in the frigid rapids and all aboard were lost.
For months, the flight of the Nez Perce had been front-page news throughout the nation. Joseph, whom the whites mistakenly assumed to be the military genius behind this epic journey, was now famous. When his people limped into Bismarck, he was surprised to be invited to a banquet in his honor at the Sheridan House Hotel. He brought Yellow Bull and several leading warriors, and the group formed a receiving line and shook hands with the frontier town’s leading citizens. After the meal, they listened to Mayor George Sweet explain that white men who dug down into the earth had discovered that it had been inhabited by many races, each succeeding the other, each a little more civilized than the last. Now the white race had ascended to a controlling position, and if the Indian race wished to flourish it would have to change its habits and live as whites did. The buffalo, like the red man, was being supplanted by the fields and cattle of the white race. This was nature’s way, and if the Indians did not adapt they too would perish.
When Joseph was called upon to speak, he walked slowly to the podium. It took him a long time to formulate his words, and he struggled to control his emotions. After several minutes, he finally spoke. He had always tried to keep good sentiments in his heart for all people, he told the diners, and he had such sentiments in his heart this day. If all people kept such sentiments and expressed them, there would be less trouble in the world, for those who lived with good sentiments had no trouble. He wished only to speak well of others.
Colonel Miles had already departed to report to his superiors and insist that his terms of surrender be honored. That evening, his officers informed Joseph that orders had arrived to send his people further east and south, by train, to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The whites in Idaho did not want them on the reservation, and General Sherman wished to teach all Western tribes a lesson. The news came as a shock to the brokenhearted chief. He stared at the earth for a long time, then murmured, “When will these white chiefs begin to tell the truth?”
The Nez Perce spent the winter in canvas tipis on marshy bottomlands between Fort Leavenworth and the Missouri River. As winter turned to spring and the ground thawed, human waste from the town of Leavenworth filtered through the groundwater into the Nez Perce camp. The river water, brown with silt, became almost undrinkable, and people began to fall ill. By summer, the heat and humidity, the mosquitoes, and the violent thunderstorms had brought new diseases. Soon almost half the remaining 400 people were too sick to move, suffering from whooping cough, malaria, influenza and tuberculosis. Twenty-one of them died.
In mid-July, in 100 degree heat, they were ordered to the train station again, to move south to Oklahoma, then a territory set aside for displaced Indian tribes. The train did not arrive for 48 hours, and while the people waited, with little food or water, they began to succumb to heatstroke. By the time they reached their destination, three infants were dead.
Compared to their homelands, Indian Territory was a barren land. The Nez Perce called it the Hot Place. The Indian agent assigned to them, a Quaker named Hiram Jones, siphoned off much of the food and money intended for them, to line his family’s pockets. For nine months Joseph and his assigned interpreter—the same Ad Chapman who had started the war—protested. Each took a trip to Washington, D.C., to plead the Nez Perce case. Finally, in May 1879, Jones was fired.
As the people starved, their ability to withstand white diseases virtually disappeared. In seven years in Indian Territory, 150 Nez Perce died—more than had been lost during the war. Among them was Joseph’s infant daughter.
Daytime Smoke survived the journey to Indian Territory but died some time after the 1880 census, on which his name appeared. He was labeled a head of family on tribal ration rolls, but no one seems to know what happened to his daughter and granddaughter. One wonders what the tourists who occasionally visited the Nez Perce in Oklahoma thought, when they were introduced to this tall, thin, elderly man—nearly blind with eye infections—and told he was the son of an American hero.
White Bird and his followers made it to Sitting Bull’s camp, as did Bear Woman and her daughter, Sound of Running Feet. They were all received with kindness. Through a misunderstanding of the first emissaries’ sign language, Sitting Bull had thought the Nez Perce were fighting on the Missouri River, too far away to reach in time to help. When the next group arrived, a Nez Perce warrior who spoke Crow was able to talk with a Sioux who spoke Crow. When Sitting Bull learned that the battle was only 50 miles away, he organized a large war party. They were on their way when they encountered White Bird and learned that they were too late.
The next June, 25 Nez Perce, including Bear Woman and Sound of Running Feet, set off on horseback for their homeland. When they reached the reservation, most were arrested and sent to Indian Territory. Sound of Running Feet, still just a girl, was allowed to stay.
White Bird remained in Canada, with Sitting Bull. As a chief and a medicine man, he was responsible for both the safety and health of his people. In 1882, when two sick children he had tried to cure died, their grieving father killed him—an accepted practice among the traditional Nez Perce.
Immediately after the surrender, Gener
al Howard and Colonel Miles agreed on a message to be sent to Fort Benton, which credited both generals for the victory. Miles sent it along by courier, but when it arrived, it contained no mention of Howard. For the rest of his long life, Howard believed that his onetime aide-de-camp had rewritten the message to seize the credit for himself. In 1881 he authored a book about the war, which served to justify his actions but illustrated his profound ignorance of Nez Perce realities.
Three years after his victory, Nelson Miles received his coveted general’s star. From the moment he received the orders to move the Nez Perces east, Miles demanded that his government keep his word to the Indians. But General Sherman had no sympathy for the natives and little for his ambitious in-law. Still, Miles continued to advance, from commander of the Department of the Columbia to commander of the Department of the Missouri to commander of the entire Division of the Pacific. In 1894 he achieved his dream, assuming Sherman’s old position, commanding general of the army.
For his part, Thunder Rising to Loftier Mountain Heights never stopped asking the whites to fulfill the promise Miles had made to send his people back to the Idaho reservation. In 1879, he and Yellow Bull traveled to Washington, D.C., where they met with President Rutherford Hayes and Joseph gave speeches explaining the Nez Perce side of the story. The North American Review turned one of them into a widely read article. In it the famous chief reminded Americans that their first visitors to Nez Perce lands were Lewis and Clark, that his people had befriended them, agreed to let them pass through their country, and promised never to make war on white men. “This promise,” he said, “we have never broken.”
He reviewed the tribe’s history with Americans: Reverend Spalding arriving to teach about spiritual matters; Governor Stevens signing a treaty that allowed the Nez Perce to keep most of their land; gold miners overrunning those lands; the government demanding a treaty that took nearly 90 percent of their remaining land. He told them how his people tried to avoid war, then refused to harm women or children or scalp their enemies—while the soldiers deliberately killed women and children and their Indian scouts dug up Nez Perce bodies for their scalps.
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