Nez Perce Forlorn Hope: The Battle of White Bird Canyon

1. Perry, CI, p. 115.

2. Parnell, CI, p. 70.

3. McCarthy, "Diary," June 16, 1877.

4. Account of Schorr in Hear Me, p. 23+.

5. McCarthy, "Diary," June 16, 1877.

6. Perry, CI, pp. 115-16; O. O. Howard, Nez Perce, p. 108; Schorr in Hear Me, p. 233.

7. Letter from Perry to Lt. Col. James W. Forsyth, c. October, 1878, Fort Walla Walla, letter no. 1024, Letter received DC, p. 1; Perry, "The Battle of White Bird Canõn," in Northwestern Fights, pp. 113-14.

8. McCarthy, "Diary." June 16, 1877. The names of the three men left behind are not known.

9. Letter from Theodore Swarts to Alonzo Leland, July 21, Mount Idaho, Lewiston Teller, July 28, 1877, p. 4.

10. The nickname may have been a short term for adjutant. In a letter to A. F. Parker, Frank Fenn referred to "Adjutant Chapman." See The Idaho Statesman, September 4, 1927, section 3, p. 2.

11. Statement of Chapman, November 23, 1886; Statement of Chapman, March 21, 1890; Statement of David B. Baldwin, December 1, 1886; and Report of Special Agent Stanley, 1890, in Chapman 1102; "Colonel William William Chapman," in Portland, Oregon: Its History and Builders by Joseph Gaston (Chicago, 1911), 3, pp. 218-23.

12. McWhorter Notes, packet 150, item 28; letter from Many Wounds to McWhorter, November, 1926, packet 189, item 15; and undated statement by Thomas Beal, packet 189, item 19, McWhorter Collection; "Frank D. Vansise," North Idaho, p. 506; O. O. Howard, p. 133; Haines, Nez Perce, p. 220.

13. Although Shearer was commonly referred to as a major, Union dispatches called him a captain, and he is not listed in List of Field Officers, Regiments, and Battalions in the Confederate States Army, 1861-1865, which gives the names of all those holding the rank of major and above. For biographical information on Shearer see Twenty-seventh Biennial Report of the Board of Trustees of the Secretary of the State of Idaho, p. 73; Francis Haines, ed., "The Skirmish at Cottonwood: A Previously Unpublished Eyewitness Account of an Engagement of the Nez Perce War by George Shearer," Idaho Yesterdays 2 (1958), pp. 2-7.

14. Elsensohn, Pioneer Days, 1, pp. 470-71; Eleventh Biennial Report of the Board of Trustees of the State Historical Society of Idaho (Boise, 1928), p. 80; "Frank Fenn, North Idaho, pp. 457-58; Defenbach, Idaho, 1, fn. 13, p. 481; 3, p. 386.

15. "Theodore Swarts," North Idaho, p. 474.

16. McWhorter Notes, packet 150, item 29.

17. Elsensohn, 1, p. 131.

18. "William Coram," North Idaho, p. 493.

19. Letter from H. A. Faxon to George W. Webb, Winners of the West 14 (February, 1937), p. 7.

20. McCarthy, "Diary." June 16, 1877.

21. Parnell, CI, p. 58; Parnell, "The Battle of White Bird Canõn," in Northwestern Fights, pp. 100-101.

22. Schorr in Hear Me, p. 235. See also Schorr, "Participant in Whitebird Massacre Recalls Fatal March into Ambush," The Idaho Statesman, September 13, 1931, section 2, p. 2; Schorr, "The White Bird Fight," Winners of the West 6 (February 28, 1929), p. 7.