Chapter 14: Consequences (continued)
Beyond the rift and ultimate rupture of relations
between Howard and Miles over distribution of honors, the army underwent
something of an institutional evaluation of its cavalry following its
debatable performance during the four-months-long pursuit of the Nez
Perces. Although the procedural investigation took place in Howard's
department and consequently could have turned into a self-serving
exercise tailored to the department commander's publicity-conscious
agenda, the resulting report fairly critiqued then-current field
techniques and afforded an important insight into the workings of field
commands during the Nez Perce and, presumably, other period Indian
campaigns. Howard believed that the performance of his cavalry, as
manifested particularly at White Bird Canyon, but also at Looking
Glass's camp, Clearwater, Weippe, and Camas Meadows, was below par, and
at the request of General McDowell, he solicited information from the
many cavalry officers who took part in his field operations. Among the
recommendations for improvement were (1) establishment of a cavalry
school to provide more drill for both horses and soldiers ("Our Cavalry
soldiers have been obliged to work as laborers, and have not . . . been
drilled enough. . . . It should be remembered that the Cavalry soldier
has a double part to perform, namely: to care for and manage his horse,
and besides to acquire even more skill with his arms than the Infantry
man. . . ."); (2) increased drill with arms, including firing with
blanks to keep the animals from bolting, and target practice from
horseback; (3) arming the troops with Springfield rifles or with
carbines with lengthened barrels; (4) improved training in skirmishing
from horseback; (5) development of improved proficiency with the saber
("in drill, if not in campaign") to increase soldiers' confidence and
agility; (6) relinquishment of the revolver for combat in favor of the
long arm; (7) increased practice in swimming cavalry horses across
rivers ("at Salmon river, [some] . . . had to be towed over by boats two
and four at a time"); and (8) implementation of a system of reward and
recognition for the cavalry soldier (who has "more to do in the way of
preparation and subsequent work than the Infantry soldier"), including
increased compensation. [27] Beyond
improved training in marksmanship, few of these recommendations were
immediately implemented, the army opting to continue its overall
sluggish and reactive performance throughout the remaining years of the
Indian wars.
Army losses in the course of the fighting through
June, July, August, September, and early October of 1877, numbered 6
officers, 101 enlisted men, and 6 citizen employees killed (total
killed: 113); plus 13 officers, 125 enlisted men, 4 citizens, and 2
Indian scouts wounded (total wounded: 144of whom 2 later died).
Aggregate casualties stood at 257. [28]
Total monetary cost of the military campaignexclusive of private
property destroyed or otherwise lostwas $1,873,410.43 [29] (approximately $22,405,989.00 in 1990
dollars). As a direct result of the Nez Perce campaign, a new post was
erected near Milk River in northern Montana to keep watch over the
activities of the Sioux and Nez Perces in the country adjoining the
Canadian border. Fort Assinniboine was also strategically situated
between the boundary and the Missouri River to oversee the Assiniboines,
Gros Ventres, Crows, and Blackfeet. But by the time the fort was
constructed in 1879, the need for it seemingly had passed, for with the
surrender of the Lakotas in 1880 and 1881, and the dissipation of the
Nez Perce threat, the potential for further large-scale Indian conflicts
ceased to exist. Nonetheless, Fort Assinniboine operated until 1911. [30]
The post-Bear's Paw period brought manifold changes
for the Nee-Me-Poo. It involved the incarceration of the people who had
surrendered to Miles, as well as the troubled coexistence of White
Bird's followers and other of the tribesmen who, one way or another, had
managed to escape before or during the tumult of Bear's Paw, with the
followers of the Hunkpapa Lakota leader, Sitting Bull, in the Cypress
Hills region of the Northwest Territories (present southern
Saskatchewan). The odyssey of the Nez Perce prisoners began almost
immediately following their arrival at the Tongue River Cantonment on
October 23, 1877. While Miles and his command basked in the favorable
publicity engendered by their victory, the prisoners raised their lodges
and shelters on the south side of the Yellowstone in a grove of
cottonwood trees where troops kept careful watch over them. [31] In the days after their arrival at the
cantonment, Joseph and others of his people sat before the camera of
photographer John H. Fouch. [32] Yet
Miles's plan to keep them at the post through the winter and return them
to Idaho in the springpresurrender terms agreed upon by Miles,
Howard, and Joseph at Bear's Pawquickly dissipated with receipt of
a directive from General Sheridan that the tribesmen were to be sent to
Fort Abraham Lincoln, Dakota Territory. Even before the prisoners had
reached Tongue River, Commanding General Sherman had effectually
nullified the surrender accord, believing that as an example to other
tribes the Nez Perces should be punished and never allowed to return
home, and he directed their conveyance instead to the Indian Territory.
Sheridan told Sherman that he agreed with him, but cited the expense of
feeding the Nez Perces at Tongue River, and he recommended that the
people be "shipped to Yankton" to await their future disposition. [33] When Miles learned of Sheridan's
intention, he directed a letter to departmental headquarters:
I presume the Government is not aware of the severe
punishment the Nez Perces received or the number of badly wounded. I
have brought them 265 miles from the battle-field; three (3) died on the
road, two (2) on arrival and others cannot live. I consider it inhuman
to compel them to travel farther at this season of the year. [34]
But this appeal was too late. The decision had
already been made. Finally, Secretary of War McCrary directed Sheridan
to remove the Nez Perces either to Yankton or Bismarck (Fort Lincoln),
and the general chose Bismarck. On the evening of October 29, Miles
received the order to transport the Nez Perces to Fort Lincoln, which
would be but a stop en route to the Indian Territory. [35] Joseph quoted Miles as telling him: "I
have endeavored to keep my word, but the chief who is over me has given
the order, and I must obey it or resign." [36]
On October 31, accompanied by a detachment of troops,
the Nez Perces who could stand the trip (along with seventeen Northern
Cheyenne prisoners) started down the road to Fort Buford, at the
confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers. [37] Two days later, the ill, wounded, and
women and children set out via fourteen mackinawseach about
thirty-two feet long by eight feet wideto the same destination.
Miles traveled in a boat until he overtook the party traveling by land.
The journey was difficult, and the people agonized greatly from the
cold. On November 6, Lieutenant Frank Baldwin wrote of the movement as
"most inhumane, and if the public could get a hold of it, they would
raise a glorious row. The General can't sleep or take any comfort
thinking as he does of their suffering." [38] The people traveling by boat reached Fort
Buford on November 5; those coming by wagon and horseback arrived at the
post on the seventh. [39] A Fifth infantry
officer remembered that "when we reached the Missouri, cakes of ice were
floating in it, . . . but many of the Nez Perces took off their clothing
and jumped in the water for a bath." [40]
At Buford they rejoined fifteen refugees (including those taken by
Lieutenants Maus and Scott at Milk River) who had been forwarded from
the Seventh Cavalry camp opposite Squaw Creek on the Missouri. [41] Also, one of the men died and was buried
"near the water's edge, where the Missouri and the Yellowstone, meeting,
form angle." [42] Between November 8 and
10, the people left Fort Buford for Fort Lincoln, some two hundred
departing aboard the boats on November 9 guarded by two companies of the
First Infantry, the others on horseback escorted by troops of the
Seventh Cavalry en route to their winter quarters. [43] At the Fort Berthold Indian Agency, the
flotilla stopped briefly and the tribesmen took the occasion to meet
some members of the Mandan tribe before starting downstream again. The
mackinaws reached Bismarck on Monday evening, the nineteenth. [44]
The citizens of Bismarck turned out en masse to
welcome the Nez Perce prisoners, providing a sumptuous buffet for them
and the troops composing their military escort. Miles stood with Joseph
while a band played the "Star Spangled Banner." [45] The tribesmen encamped across the river at
Fort Abraham Lincoln, remaining there for four days. Miles's request to
accompany a number of the Nez Perces to Washington, D.C., "in order that
they may learn the intention of the Government and be satisfied that no
wrong is intended" was turned down, and Sheridan's petition that the
tribesmen be transferred to Fort Leavenworth won Sherman's speedy
concurrence. [46] Joseph's response on
learning of the new destination was: "When will these white chiefs tell
the truth?" [47] On the nineteenth, Miles
was feted at a banquet given by the city of Bismarck. Following the
colonel's departure for St. Paul, the townspeople similarly honored
Joseph with an expressly prepared invitation to him, as "Head Chief of
Nez Perces," to dine with them at the Sheridan House. Joseph "and other
chiefs" attended a reception at the Sheridan, where he "was presented to
a number of the ladies of the house." At the dinner, Joseph ate salmon
and reportedly said that it reminded him of his own country. [48]
On November 23, the Nez Perce prisoners loaded their
lodges and equipment in freight cars and themselves into eleven rail
coaches, and they started down the tracks to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas,
escorted by Companies B and G, First Infantry. [49] The route lay east, through Jamestown,
Dakota, and to St. Paul, Minnesota, then southwest through Marshalltown,
Iowa, to Fort Leavenworth. [50] They
reached the post on Monday afternoon, November 26. There the tribesmen,
wrote Sherman, would be "held as prisoners of war until spring, when I
trust the Indian Bureau will provide them homes on the Indian
reservation near the Modocs. . . . They should never again be allowed to
return to Oregon or Lapwai." [51] At Fort
Leavenworth, however, Major General John Pope, commander of the
Department of the Missouri, informed that he had only tents to shelter
the Nez Perces and recommended that they be transferred to either Fort
Riley, Fort Larned, or Fort Hays, where they might better be
accommodated through the winter in barracks. Sheridan denied this
application to remove the Indians, and they stayed at Fort Leavenworth
in 108 army tents arranged in the Missouri River bottom about two miles
above the garrison. [52] Howard's request
that thirty-nine more Nez Perce prisoners being held at Forts Vancouver,
Lapwai, and Missoula be sent to join their kin was summarily rejected by
General Sherman, who directed that they instead "be sent to the Agency
near Lapwai and then released." [53]
Army records indicate that the number of Nez Perces
arriving at Fort Leavenworth consisted of 87 men, 184 women, and 147
childrena total of 418 people. The discrepancy between that figure
and the number 448 given by Miles as having surrendered to his command
is probably not accountable, although several of the people had died
since the action at Bear's Paw. Other Nez Perces who subsequently turned
themselves in to the military authorities were also sent to Fort
Leavenworth. [54] Regardless of the
numbers, the tribesmen remained in the center of a defunct race track on
the alternating cold, humid, and hot Missouri River flats from the time
of their arrival until July 1878. [55]
Officials of the Bureau of Indian Affairs who visited the Nez Perces
denounced the location "between a lagoon and the river, [as] the worst
possible place that could have been selected." A doctor reported that
"one-half could be said to be sick, and all were affected by the
poisonous malaria of the camp." [56] Late
that month, the Nez Percesnow numbering 410embarked for a
new home on the Quawpaw reservation in extreme northeastern Indian
Territory. Three children died en route south from Fort Leavenworth, and
at the new location 260 of the people became sick, many from malaria.
Within months, more than 100 had died. [57]
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