Chapter 7: Camas Meadows
Colonel John Gibbon's active involvement in the Nez
Perce conflict was largely finished after his bloody confrontation with
the tribesmen at the Big Hole. All day long on August 12, his wounded
men received treatment from Howard's medical officers while the Bannock
scouts who accompanied the general's advance showed their disdain for
the fallen Nez Perces by digging up and desecrating the bodies buried
beneath a collapsed river bank. On the thirteenth, Gibbon departed for
Deer Lodge, ninety miles away, the nearest place where the injured of
his command, drawn forward in travois, could obtain extended medical
care. Before leaving, he assigned fifty men under Captain Browning,
First Lieutenant George H. Wright, and Second Lieutenant John T. Van
Orsdale to continue the pursuit with Howard in wagons as far as Bannack
City, sixty miles away. Gibbon reached Deer Lodge in two days, followed
by the balance of his men on August 16. [1]
Howard's cavalry pulled out on the Nez Perces' trail
on the thirteenth. Most of his infantry and artillery, following behind,
camped near the battlefield on August 14 and continued after Howard the
next day, although fifty men comprised of Batteries A and E of the
artillery under Lieutenant Humphrey and Company H, Eighth Infantry,
under Captain Daniel T. Wells, rolled forward in wagons and reached the
general's bivouac on the evening of the thirteenth, twenty-three miles
from the battleground. [2] Major Mason, in a
letter to his wife, explained what was doubtless Howard's thought on
pressing the chase:
I think a few days will determine whether we will
pursue the hostiles further. If they go east after passing Bannack City
or go over the old Mormon Road and down past the Salmon River and thus
sweep around through Pleasant Valleybetween Market Lake and Henry
Lake [west of present Yellowstone National Park]we will send word by
telegraph to General McDowell that having chased the Indians through the
Dept. of the Dakota, into the Dept. of the Platte, we will give up the
chaseas the Indians are in General Crook's Dept.who is so well
able to take care of them. [3]
At his camp of the thirteenth, Howard received word
via couriers from Bannack that the Nez Perces had killed some citizens
on Horse Prairie Creek and were likely on their way back into Idaho,
having passed farther to the west than Howard had supposed they would.
The news made Howard think that the tribesmen perhaps intended to head
back to the Snake River country in his department, where he might
combine with Major Green to close on them. If they, however, continued
east, Howardciting his "extraordinary marches"questioned the
advisability of pursuing "unless General Terry or General Crook will
head them off and check their advance. . . . Without this cooperation,"
he notified McDowell, "the result will be, as it has been, doubtful."
[4] Nonetheless, Howard sent word to Captain
Miller, with the balance of the command, hoping "that you will be able
to overtake us before we become engaged with the enemy." [5]
In fact, after leaving the carnage of the Big Hole,
the Nez Perces had traveled slowly over long days to put as much
territory as possible between them and Howard's troops. It was a
difficult journey, the people saddened by their losses in the fighting
as well as the deaths of many wounded along the trail. Their route,
evidently in no way modified because of their recent confrontation with
the soldiers, [6] took them up the Big Hole
River, southwesterly and west of the present communities of Wisdom and
Jackson, and within ten or twelve miles of Bannack City. They crossed
Bloody Dick Creek and Horse Prairie Creek, camping at the west edge of
Horse Prairie, traditionally familiar to the Nez Perces, and
historically the site where Lewis and Clark acquired horses from the
Shoshones in 1805. As the Indian vanguard appeared in their country,
many white settlers in their path fled for safety into Bannack City. [7]
On the evening of August 12, in a post-Big Hole rage
reminiscent of the initial outbreak and evidently aimed at all
manifestations of white culture, some warriors attacked a ranch owned by
Messrs. W. L. Montague and Daniel Winters where several families
resided, the women and children having been evacuated to Bannack.
Killing Montague and Thomas Flynn in the house, the warriors ransacked
the place and shot to death two more men, James Farnsworth and James
Smith, working in a field. Daniel Winters and two men escaped by hiding
and fleeing, and they eventually reached Bannack. Five miles farther the
warriors surprised four men, John Wagoner, Andrew Meyers, Alexander
Cooper, and a Mr. Howard near a ranch, killing Cooper while the others
managed to escape to some willows and hide until the Nez Perces left. Of
course, at both places the raiders took horses, too, apparently totaling
about forty. They also pilfered and destroyed the ranch of John and
Thomas Pierce in the area. [8]
Leaving Horse Prairie on August 13the same morning
that Howard was leaving the Big Hole battlefield, approximately two
days' march behind themthe Nez Perces dropped south and crossed
the Continental Divide through Bannock Pass, reentering Idaho Territory
not far from the Lemhi Indian Reservation and briefly passing along the
bottom of the Lemhi, a branch of Salmon River that separated Montana's
Bitterroot Range from Idaho's Lemhi Range. [9] Whereas, before the Big Hole encounter with
the soldiers, by common consent Looking Glass's regulation had
prevailed, that disaster resulted in his subordination as far as the
daily marches were concerned. By mutual consent of the band leaders,
general direction of the caravan devolved on Poker Joe, who had joined
the people near Stevensville in the Bitterroot and who was recognized
for his familiarity with the region the tribesmen would traverse in
gaining the plains. As the warrior Wottolen said, Poker Joe "would have
the people up early in the morning, and travel till about ten o'clock.
Then he ordered a stop and cooking was done while the horses filled up
on grass. About two o'clock he would travel again. Kept going until
about ten o'clock at night." [10] Looking
Glass, especially regarded for his military acumen, maintained the
people's confidence in that discipline but was likely chagrined at his
subordination after Big Hole. Probably, too, Ollokot gained in prestige
for his military experience in the wake of Big Hole, while Joseph, known
for his diplomacy, continued his oversight of the Wallowas and the
nonmilitary aspects of the overall train. While their hierarchical
marching system probably remained the same as before, with scouts well
out ahead of the column, the primary leaders in front, followed by
secondary leaders, common men, women and children with the baggage, and
finally the driven horse herd, after Big Hole the marching and camping
followed a strict regimen that ensured awareness of all around them. [11]
Settlers in the Lemhi Valley anticipated the Nez
Perces' arrival and built two stockades (one at Salmon City and one at
Junction) to protect themselves. Nor were the local Indians, Lemhi
Shoshones under the leadership of Chief Tendoy, receptive to their
age-old adversaries. After pausing several hours near Junction at the
mouth of Timber Creek, during which they assured the settlers of their
peaceful enterprise, the tribesmen proceeded east a short distance to
camp in the mouth of a canyon where they killed some cattle and readied
rifle pits in their newfound security-consciousness. [12] Next day, the Nez Perces turned up the
Lemhi Valley on the old Mormon Road and passed southeast over to Birch
Creek Valley, a monotonous gravelly plain bordering a tributary of the
Snake River. On Wednesday, August 15, along Birch Creek, sixty miles
from Junction, a group of warriors attacked a horse-and-mule-drawn
freight train, killing five menJames Hayden, Albert Green, Daniel
Combs, all of Salmon City, and two unidentified men (a man named Albert
Lyon escaped through the creek) and burning three wagons and three
trailers loaded with general merchandise, including canned goods,
crockery, window glass and sash, and whiskey, en route from the Union
Pacific Railroad transfer point at Corrine, Utah Territory, to Salmon
City and Leesburg, Idaho Territory. Two Chinese cooks rode with the
train. One of them, Charles Go Hing, later testified about the raid as
follows:
We camped for dinner about noon on Birch Creek, had
finished dinner and were lying under the wagons when we heard the
clatter of horses' feet, looked up and saw a party of armed and mounted
Indians advancing towards us at a gallop. The men all started for the
wagons to get their guns, but before they could get them the Indians had
surrounded us and leveled their guns and commanded us to surrender,
which we did. I counted them and there were 56 of them, all well-armed
and mounted. . . . The Indians after eating made us hitch up the teams
and drive up to their main camp about a mile away, where they made us go
into camp. The men started with some Indians to drive the animals out to
feed. I never saw any of them again. The other Indians broke into the
wagons and helped themselves to goods. The Indians said they were Nez
Perces and belonged to Joseph's band. [13]
As the warriors celebrated, the cooks managed to get
away in the night and made their way to Junction. The forty animals from
the train were absorbed into the Nez Perces' herd. On the night of
August 16, Tendoy and some fifteen of his Lemhi warriors caught up with
the Nez Perces and in the darkness ran off seventy-five of their stock,
some of which had been taken in the Horse Prairie raid. Next day, a
party headed by Colonel George L. Shoup of the local Idaho volunteers
(later first governor of the state of Idaho and U.S. senator, 1890-1901)
arrived at the scene of the smoldering train and buried the dead. [14]
From Birch Creek, the Nez Perces began moving
easterly, skirting the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and crossing
Medicine Lodge Creek and Beaver Creek to reach an area twenty-five miles
south of Pleasant Valley below the Montana line. Here, on August 16 and
17, they crossed the Corrine Road a few miles north of present Dubois,
stopping to gather in their scattered stock and taking over the
Hole-in-the-Rock Stage Station, disrupting travel on the road, and
destroying the telegraph lines. Word of their presence threw a brief
scare into the residents of Virginia City, Montana, sixty miles away.
One man in the vicinity of the road reported seeing dust "on the trail
direct to the south fork of Snake River, and which leads to the head of
Wind River valley" in Wyoming. But the tribesmen, in fact, continued
gradually northeast to Henry's Fork of the Snake River, then on toward
Henry's Lake, hugging the boundary between the territories just west of
the national park. [15]
All the while the Nez Perces were skirting the
Rockies, General Howardconvinced that they "were only deviating to
blind our pursuit" while resupplying their cavalcademarched his
men east and south, intent on heading them off before they reached the
stage road or, at worst, Henry's Lake. On the fourteenth, with his
primary infantry complement trailing two days behind in wagons, the
general and his available force traveled twenty-five miles amid further
word of the attack on the Horse Prairie settlers. Next morning, Howard
and his men passed by Bannack City to an ovation of the townspeople, who
were relieved at the presence of the troops. "Gen. Howard was the great
attraction," wrote Major Mason. "We camped [on Horse Prairie Creek]
about 12 miles beyond the town, but the people filled our camp all
afternoon, all full of advice as to what should be done, and giving
their opinions in an offensive manner." [16]
While Howard collected provisions in Bannack, a message from Colonel
Shoup alerted him to the presence of the Nez Perces in the Lemhi Valley
and decided him on his course to intercept them near the stage road from
Corrine. "We have the inside track and are very hopeful of taking them
on the hip," wrote Mason. [17] Learning of
the attack on the freight train at Birch Creek, Howard on the sixteenth
pushed forward, momentarily bolstered by the presence of two volunteer
companies from Deer Lodge that peremptorily returned home after a
too-brief scouting foray. [18] He dispatched
a courier to Miller, telling him to pick up two weeks' supply of
provisions at Bannack. "You must not obtain more supplies than the pack
train can carry, [f]or we may be obliged to drop the wagons at any
point." [19] Miller's battalion, tired and
weary from the constant pursuit, had trouble keeping together on the
trail, and many rode in the wagons. As driver Henry Buck recalled, "My
duty mostly was to pick up and haul foot-sore and worn out soldiers as
we traveled along. I usually started out empty, but by camp
timesay twelve or one o'clockI would have all the men that
could get into the wagon." [20]
|