On July 6, three days after the loss of Lieutenant Rains and his men, a burial party arrived on the scene. The Nez Perces had taken the guns and saddles and stripped the bodies to their underwear. Rains's gauntlets were still on his hands, and his West Point ring remained on his finger. [49] A courier from Howard who arrived at Cottonwood on July 5 was told that Rains and his men had been found south of the road, the lieutenant, "as if in life, was reclining against a large rock, a lesser one in front of him. He seemed to have died in the act of firing his last charge. His comrades lay dead around him." [50] Assistant Surgeon William R. Hall initially stated that the body of one soldier, Private Daniel Ryan, had not been found, but later amended his report to include Ryan. Surgeon Hall was unable to describe the character of the wounds. [51] Most of the bodies, including that of Scout Foster, who had been shot in the forehead, were buried near the road in the area of the fatal encounter. The party lifted the body of Lieutenant Rains into a roughly fashioned casket and transported it for interment "with military honors" the next day at Norton's Ranch. In June 1878, the remains of Lieutenant Rains and his men were received at Fort Lapwai, where funeral services preceded their burial in the post cemetery. When that post closed in 1884, the remains were reinterred in the cemetery at Fort Walla Walla. [52] The army posthumously cited Rains "for great gallantry in endeavoring to check the advance of the entire hostile force, with but a handful of men, in action against hostile Nez Perce Indians, at Cottonwood Ranch, . . . when he was killed." [53] Foster's grave remained along the road leading west from Cottonwood, known locally as the Cottonwood Butte Road. During the 1880s, a stone monument purchased in Walla Walla was raised at the grave and a wrought iron fence placed around it. [54]

After the pack train moved into Norton's Ranch on July 4, the soldiers, with Perry now in command, worked to strengthen the position Whipple had originally occupied two days earlier. Captain Winters described the military topography of the vicinity as follows:

This house [Norton's] facing to the north-east is located in a narrow ravine from which the ground rises gradually on every side. To the north-east and north-west the ground is broken by small ravines, which with the points or spurs thus formed, radiate from the larger ravine in which the house, barns &c are situated. To the south-west of the house the ground rises somewhat more abruptly to a high table land or mesa, trending off to the west and south-west, and on the south-east at the distance of about eight hundred yards from the house terminating in a high prominent hill which commanded all the ground in the vicinity and from which could be had a general view of the whole surrounding country, including Craigs Mountain to the north-west and Camas Prairie and the town of Mount Idaho to the south-east. [55]

Perry established major entrenchments, one series consisting of rifle pits arranged in a semicircle on the large hill immediately southeast of the Norton place, the other occupying a rise southwest of the house. According to Corporal Frederick Mayer, the soldiers had "excellent material" for building breastworks. "There was a pile of brown stone good for building a wall. They were all shapes and sizes about 3 and 4 inches thick, fine for a breastwork. We formed a half circle on the hill around the Ranch." [56] One soldier remembered that the day was "hotter than blaze."

Between 1:00 and 2:00 p.m. on July 4, the Nez Perces appeared in force. Several approached from the upper reaches of Cottonwood Creek, disrupting the Rains burial detail and driving those soldiers back to the ranch. Other warriors arrived and soon surrounded the troops. Perry reacted quickly, directing twenty-eight men of Company F into the southernmost rifle pits on the hill to meet the warriors. Ten more men of Companies E and L took up positions in the westward pits, where Lieutenant Forse commanded a Gatling gun. [57] A sergeant at the works on the hill called for a Gatling gun, and it was hurriedly hauled into position. Captain Winters described the action:

Galloping around with shouts and songs they soon completed the investment of our lines. While mounted they usually kept at long range, but frequently dismounting they approached under cover of ridges and ravines close to our lines, but always advancing cautiously and avoiding exposure to our fire. [58]

The warriors circled, making repeated bold attempts to storm the position on the hill, some closing to within one hundred yards. But the soldiers managed to keep them away. As Mayer recalled, "Sergeant St. Clair had the Gatling gun right in the center of our line [ready] to open fire when he thought it necessary." Finally, "somebody hollered [']open up Jersey, let them have it,['] and Jersey did open up. There were horses and Indians turning all kinds of summersets [sic]." [59] Another account stated that, "One fellow [warrior] came down across the road and had his horse shot from under him, and was himself wounded, and broke down the creek out of sight. The Indians soon gave him another horse, and he made an attempt to get up to the pits." [60] In the assault, the warriors generally maintained sufficient distance among themselves to keep the Gatlings from being effective. Once, the soldiers unleashed four revolutions (twelve shots) with one of the guns directed at a group of five warriors, but only hit some of their ponies. The warriors pulled back, but kept up a steady fire until after 9:00 p.m., when they withdrew. [61] General Howard later described the July 4 activities at Cottonwood: "There were doubtless plenty of flags flying; plenty of firing from carbines and Gatlings, to make the old Craig Mountain ring; add the Indian yellings and shootings and the day we celebrate was here properly honored." [62] In the fighting at Cottonwood on July 4, neither the soldiers nor the Indians suffered casualties. [63]

Nez Perce accounts provide more dimensions to the attack on the entrenchments at Cottonwood. One participant recalled the fortifications: "Five hollows [rifle pits] were dug so deep that the warriors could hardly do anything with guns, only to go up close to them. . . . When we reached the first hollow, the soldiers moved out and ran away. When nearing the second hollow fortification, one of the . . . [warriors] made the remark that we must quit for a little while, right where we were." [64] Another account stated that Joseph took part in the encounter and that the warriors succeeded in capturing two dozen army horses, although army records specify only "5 public horses" as being lost in the action. [65]

During the night of July 4, the soldiers threw up additional rifle pits. On the hill where the major entrenchments stood, they raised a special work where the reserve ammunition could better be protected. Perry's command now numbered 7 officers and 113 men, besides the packers and several citizens who had come in during the night. Companies F and L now occupied the southwest hill, and Company E covered the rest of the ground. Winters placed his men "on all the elevated points and in some of the intervening ravines." [66] The fighting from the trenches at Cottonwood, now designated Camp Rains, resumed at about 9:00 a.m., July 5, as the Nez Perces approached the southwest side of the south hill and opened a sporadic fire on Perry's command. Simultaneously, the men in the pits watched as the entire Nez Perce village, strung out several miles away in a caravan and with some sixteen hundred head of cattle and horses, proceeded diagonally across the prairie, crossed the road to Mount Idaho, and headed toward the Clearwater River.

Late that morning, the soldiers spotted two figures approaching down the road from Mount Idaho to the east. As they drew nearer, a party of twenty warriors moved out of the Nez Perce camp to cut the men off. Perry directed a part of L Company down the hill to saddle their horses preparatory to going to their aid. Two miles from the earthworks, the pair opened a race with six of the warriors to gain Cottonwood while Perry's men sent volleys of gunfire over their heads and succeeded in halting the warriors. The men proved to be members of Company L, couriers from General Howard sent out by Whipple thirty hours earlier. They reported that the Indians had attacked a group of volunteers en route from Mount Idaho to Perry's command. The party of seventeen had left Mount Idaho that morning on receipt of the news of Lieutenant Rains's defeat. [67] Forty-year-old Captain Darius B. Randall commanded the outfit, and as they went along the road to Cottonwood they sighted signal fires atop Cottonwood Butte straddling the Craig's Mountain range. Then they saw the Nez Perce village ten miles in the distance moving down from the area of Craig's Mountain to the prairie. Electing to push on, the volunteers presently found the warriors confronting them, perhaps 150 warriors who had filed off from the caravan and split into an unequal "V" formation, its long arm generally paralleling the road on the east side while its short arm stretched across the road, perhaps a mile south of Shebang Creek, to prevent passage and to intercept Randall's men. Before the envelopment could be perfected, however, Randall sent his men charging through the Indian line toward the creek, where he hoped to make a defense until Perry could send troops to their relief. While the breakthrough succeeded, the men were unable to outrun the warriors and reach the creek. Most gained a slight elevation about one and one-half miles southeast of Cottonwood and about one-quarter mile east of the road near a trail leading to Elk City. Captain Randall and four others were cut off in an adjacent swale. All the men dismounted and began shooting, some gaining cover behind a fence. Almost immediately, Randall, a Civil War veteran and a well-respected local citizen, dropped mortally wounded. [68] Another volunteer, Benjamin Evans, also fell dead and three more men were wounded as the small force labored to establish a perimeter to ward off the attack.

The warriors, meanwhile, soon diverted their position to the east of the volunteers' line and opened a brisk fire, felling several horses tended by holders. They later reported losing only one man in the fight. He was Weesculatat, also known as Mimpow Owyeen (Wounded Mouth), and he was shot three times when his horse, spooked by the volunteers' firing, ran directly among the party at the start of the fight. Although the warriors succeeded in retrieving the badly injured man, he died later, the first Nez Perce casualty identified by name since the war with the army had opened in mid-June. Another of the fighting men was Ollokot, who was unhorsed during the engagement and whose wife brought him another mount. According to Nez Perce sources, the party that attacked the volunteers numbered only twelve or fourteen, a figure unaccountably in stark contrast to that estimated by the volunteers and the army. By that time, however, the Nez Perces were principally concerned about moving their large village across the prairie, and most of them did not become involved in the fighting near Cottonwood on July 5. [69] Regardless, in their fight with Randall's men, by changing their position to a point east of the volunteers, the warriors left open a corridor leading to Cottonwood, and it was in that direction that the volunteers now looked for help.

From their defenses, Perry's soldiers watched the unfolding combat with growing apprehension, realizing that Randall's men would be wiped out if relief did not arrive soon. At one point, the volunteers fired a volley to attract Perry's attention. One of the cavalry officers, Lieutenant Shelton, prepared to lead some soldiers of Company L forward. Yet Captain Perry hesitated to send help, believing that it was too late to do any good and fearing that warriors in the rear would overrun his own position and capture the train of ammunition and supplies meant for Howard's main command. Perry later stated that he thought the action "a ruse on the part of the Indians to draw us out." The delay brought vigorous protests from his men, and Perry's individual leadership abilities were again called into question. When Whipple asked him about the fighting, Perry replied that "some citizens . . . are surrounded by Indians, and are being all cut to pieces." Any help, he said, would be "too late." [70] A tense command situation erupted at this juncture, causing tempers to flare over Perry's dilatory manner. A man in the ranks complained sarcastically to George Shearer and within earshot of the officers, "Shearer, you need not come to the 1st Cavalry for assistance, as you will not get any." [71] Finally, defying Perry, Shearer and Paul Guiterman rode off to join Randall's men, Shearer's horse being shot just as he reached the volunteers. After nearly an hour, and apparently after Sergeant Bernard Simpson, of Company L, threatened to lead out a squad on his own, [72] Perry relented, directing Captains Whipple and Winters and Lieutenant Shelton forward with about sixty men and a Gatling gun. Winters recalled:

As quickly as possible the men were drawn in and marched down the cañon at a run. Reaching the open ground Captain Whipple, with about 15 men, was seen marching obliquely to the left across my front, and was soon joined by Lieut. Shelton with his mounted party who had just preceeded [sic] me. . . . Deploying my men as skirmishers the advance was continued for about a mile when a note was received from Captain Perry with instructions not to go too far as the Indians were coming in on our right. My line, then some four hundred yards in rear of where the citizens were, was moved to the left a short distance and halted, the flanks well thrown back. Captain Whipple with his men, including the mounted party under Lieut. Shelton, moved up to where the citizens were. [73]

Protected in his advance by the line of skirmishers, Whipple approached to within two hundred yards of the scene, then hesitated. Nonetheless, the presence of troops with the gun created the desired impact on the tribesmen. They watched from afar, to the right and left, and beyond firing range, and, reported Winters, "manifested no disposition to close in on the command." The relief proceeded. In all the excitement and activity, the soldiers had fired no shots. Late in the afternoon, the dead and wounded were placed in a lumber wagon brought out from Cottonwood, and Whipple and his men escorted the remaining members of the so-called "Brave Seventeen" back to Norton's house. One of the wounded, D. H. Howser, died that night. [74]

On the evening of July 5, as the Mount Idaho volunteers tended their wounded following their relief by Captains Whipple and Winters and Lieutenant Shelton, the citizen troops of Captains McConville and Hunter arrived at Cottonwood, having been dispatched the previous evening by General Howard below the Salmon upon receiving word of the attack on Rains's men. The next day, Perry's soldiers buried the dead enlisted men from Rains's fight (the lieutenant was buried on July 7). The volunteers set out across Camas Prairie for Mount Idaho, escorting the dead and wounded from the previous day's fighting. Randall and Evans were buried at Mount Idaho on July 8. That day the volunteers from Mount Idaho, Lewiston, and Dayton hastily reorganized into a single battalion under McConville, then pressed north seeking the trail of the Nez Perces. Perry's men left Cottonwood late on July 8 and, near midnight at Grangeville, met the van of Howard's command, most of which had by then recrossed the Salmon opposite White Bird Canyon. As the men labored up the grade from the river, they saw that the heavy rains had washed away the soil, exposing many dead from the battle of June 17. But they could not halt. Early on Monday morning, Howard led his reunited force north out of Grangeville to find the Nez Perces. [75]

Taken together, the actions at Looking Glass's village on July 1, and at Cottonwood, July 3-5, had the effect of further escalating the warfare in the wake of the battle at White Bird Canyon, thus precluding any possibility of a peaceful solution to the outbreak. At Cottonwood, where General Howard had established a station overlooking Camas Prairie to confront the Nez Perces should they flee north, the tribesmen succeeded in executing ample diversionary actions to circumvent that strategy and permit the passage of their combined village toward the Clearwater and an important union with the refugees from Looking Glass's camp, an event that was to plague the army through the balance of the war.