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
peopleboth those directly involved and those "treaty" people who
had remained in Idahothe 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 landand 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 Warboth in terms of the numbers of
casualties that occurred there and its status as the place where Joseph
surrenderedBear'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
itemscooking 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. Mausa battle
participanthad 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
1925when a party headed by Major General Hugh L. Scott and
Governor John E. Erickson of Montana came to the battlefieldand
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 Woundsto mark localized places on the battlefield
in the late 1920s and mid-1930shelped 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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