Nez Perce
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Chapter 13: Bear's Paw: Siege and Surrender (continued)

The significance of the Bear's Paw engagement in ending the Nez Perce War of 1877 cannot be overstated. While the large percentage of deaths among the troops created certain consternation among the army hierarchy and the public, for the Nez Perce people—both those directly involved and those "treaty" people who had remained in Idaho—the final battle contained long-range implications that affected the respective Nez Perce groups for decades, to say nothing of their relationships with the tribes that helped or supported the government pursuit and capture of the people. Most immediately, the physical and psychological impact of Bear's Paw meant that many Nez Perces lost relatives and friends among the killed. In addition, families were torn apart, if not by death, then by separation of those who made their escape and went into Canada not knowing if their loved ones had survived the encounter with Miles's troops. And the later exile and incarceration of the prisoners exacerbated the pain and confusion over family members' whereabouts. Bear's Paw was the climactic engagement of the long, grueling ordeal of the people affected by the government decision to take their land—and the lives of the Nee-Me-Poo were never the same afterwards. Physically dominated, the people's spirits nonetheless remained buoyant, and they managed to live productive, meaningful lives despite the tragedy of 1877 as exemplified at the Bear's Paw Mountains battle.

For the army, the larger moral question concerned whether the government intimidation resulting in the expulsion of the Wallowa band of Nez Perces from their homeland with their supporting bands justified the vigorous and costly pursuit and the resultant deaths of so many soldiers and Indians. [174] Certainly, by modern standards it did not, but to such an institution as the post-Civil War U.S. Army, beset by budgetary and organizational problems and an increasingly negative public perception in the wake of the Sioux conflict, the frustratingly embarrassing Nez Perce campaign only afforded more of the same. As public opinion gradually turned in favor of the Nez Perces, it conversely turned against the army and its leaders, particularly Howard. [175] And although many officers, including Howard, sympathized with the tribesmen in their plight, they were institutionally bound to prosecute the conflict, despite the consensus of white Americans in favor of the Nez Perces. Even though certain figures, such as Miles, would eventually derive personal gain from the event, in its broadest sense the war with the tribesmen, as epitomized in Bear's Paw, advantaged no one at all.

Because of its significance as the climactic engagement of the Nez Perce War—both in terms of the numbers of casualties that occurred there and its status as the place where Joseph surrendered—Bear's Paw battlefield continued to attract interest after the encounter ended. One of the earliest post-surrender visitors was Scout "Yellowstone" Kelly, who accompanied Terry's commission to the Sioux after the battle, then stopped to look over the site on his return to the Tongue River Cantonment. When he reached the field, Kelly found some Gros Ventre Indians rifling a Nez Perce cache of goods seized at Cow Island. "The battle field, forsaken of life, looked gruesome enough with its scattered bones of cavalry horses and mounds of freshly piled earth that covered the remains of soldiers and warriors who had addressed their last roll-call." The cache disclosed all sorts of items—cooking gear, pillows, flour, and sugar"mingled in the utmost confusion." [176] It is known that in January 1878, Major Guido Ilges also visited the Bear's Paw battlefield while on business at Fort Belknap, although his reaction to the site is not known. [177] Almost thirty years later, in October 1907, Indian Inspector James McLaughlin toured the field. By then, the evidence of warfare at the Bear's Paw site was disappearing due to time and nature. As McLaughlin observed:

The battlefield is wholly neglected. It presents no other proof of the fact that it was the scene of one of the decisive battles of the Indian wars, except the disturbed face of the ground where the rifle-pits were dug, and a yawning trench, some thirty feet long and six feet wide, where the fallen soldiers were hastily buried. . . . In a few years the roller of time will have utterly removed even these evidences of the past. [178]

By the time of McLaughlin's visit, the Bear's Paw army dead had been removed from the trench grave for reinterment at Fort Assinniboine, which had been established near Havre in 1879. In 1902, largely at the urging of then-Commanding General Miles, who had spent several days hunting prairie chickens near Fort Assinniboine (and whose aide-de-camp, then-Colonel Marion P. Maus—a battle participant—had visited the site), a detail from the post went to the battlefield where they found "a trench fifty feet in length by four feet wide surrounded by a circle of rocks several feet high," which they temporarily opened to reveal the twenty soldier dead of Bear's Paw. The remains were not exhumed, however, until August 1903, when they were brought to Havre in a wagon drawn by six mules for reburial in the post cemetery under the direction of the post quartermaster, Captain John B. McDonald, Third Cavalry. [179] Soldiers of the Twenty-fourth Infantry escorted the remains (contained in two wooden coffins) to the cemetery, served as pallbearers during the Episcopal service, and furnished the firing squad. The Third Cavalry band played appropriate airs. In 1908, the Bear's Paw army dead, along with others interred in the Fort Assinniboine cemetery, were moved to the Custer Battlefield National Cemetery south of Hardin, Montana. [180]

Meanwhile, as early as 1902, the imminent reburials of the Bear's Paw soldier dead seem to have sparked a local campaign seeking official recognition of the Bear's Paw site. In 1902, landowner Henry Winters, on whose tract the trench grave was situated, offered to deed the land back to the government so that it might be designated a "national burying ground and set aside for its historic interest." Senator Paris Gibson (D-Montana) pursued legislation for a national park designation and funding for a suitable monument to the dead; in anticipation of that, a section of battlefield land was withdrawn from entry by the General Land Office. But this effort waned, and all but 160 acres of the core site was restored to entry. It was not until after 1925—when a party headed by Major General Hugh L. Scott and Governor John E. Erickson of Montana came to the battlefield—and the later efforts of Blaine County Commissioner L. V. Bogy and others of Chinook, that Congress in 1930 passed legislation authorizing a marker on the battlefield. [181] In 1929, the Daughters of the American Revolution, aided by the Chinook Lions Club, had placed a memorial on the site dedicated to the soldiers who were killed there. And in September 1931, the congressionally sanctioned monument, consisting of an eight-ton rock with bronze plaque, was installed on the field. [182] In addition, the work of Lucullus V. McWhorter and Blaine County Surveyor C. Raymond Noyes, aided by Yellow Wolf, White Hawk, Peopeo Tholekt, and the interpreter Many Wounds—to mark localized places on the battlefield in the late 1920s and mid-1930s—helped to ensure its historical integrity while enhancing its potential for interpretation, thus making Bear's Paw one of the best preserved Indian wars battlefields in the country, commensurate with its importance in American history. [183]


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Nez Perce, Summer 1877
©2000, Montana Historical Society Press
greene/chap13f.htm — 26-Mar-2002