Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez Perce (22 page)

On the far end of camp, Five Fogs, one of the Palouse Dreamers of Hahtalekin's and Husis Kute's band, was seen shooting arrows at the soldiers coming from the creek. He was a man of only thirty but believed in the old-time ways. He got off several arrow shots before the soldiers were able to cut him down.

Wounded Head tied on his wolfskin headband, seeking to claim the spirit power that his animal spirit guide had given him. Other men sang out their medicine songs, seeking help from their
wayakin
power. The niece of old Kahpots begged him to use his medicine power to hold back the soldiers. “I have tried,” he said, “but my power has no effect. I feel helpless. You better look out for yourself. Go farther down the creek.”

But all were not without power. Wahnistas Aswetesk, a very old man of great medicine, called upon his
wayakin,
then sat down before his lodge and calmly smoked his pipe while the soldiers riddled him with bullets. Only steam came from his wounds. He continued to sit, unharmed, as the battle took place around him. Many others fought fiercely, surviving bullet wounds to their bodies because their
wayakin
powers had given them the gift of surviving all shots that hit below the neck.

The Nez Perce were frantic and confused. They did not know where these soldiers had come from, and they had not been prepared to fight. They did not have time to get to their horses and were not used to hand-to-hand ground fighting. As men saw their wives and children fall from bullet wounds or heard the screams of dying children from within their teepees, they were torn between continuing the fight and saving their families. Joseph was seen huddling near the creek bank. “I have no gun to defend myself,” he shouted to Two Moons. He was cradling his infant daughter in his arms.

The attack lasted no more than twenty minutes. Somehow, the Nez Perce warriors were able to regroup and drive the soldiers back across the creek and up the hill into a grove of pines. Joseph succeeded in getting the young boys across the creek to protect the horses. Whatever this attack had been, and wherever it had come from, it was now over, at least for the time being.

While the warriors held the soldiers at bay in the distant grove of pines, the people remaining alive in the camp crawled out from their hiding places and began to survey the carnage. Wounded horses lay screaming and writhing. Teepees were tipped over or smoldering. In the maternity lodge, which had been set up a few paces away from the camp, a woman lay dead with her newborn in her arms, its skull crushed and bloody from being smashed by a rifle butt or a soldier's boot.

All through the campsite there was horror beyond anyone's imagining. A wail rose up from the women loud enough to be heard by the barricaded soldiers far up on the distant hill.

Slowly, numbly, the survivors began to clear the camp. People dragged their relatives to the creek bank and pushed dirt over them to bury them as best they could. In the hollows they found old women—mothers and grandmothers—lying lifeless in pools of blood. Little boys and girls, holding shattered arms and oozing blood from bullet wounds, wandered whimpering through the camp, looking for parents who were lying still and empty-eyed on the earth near their lodges. Dolls, cooking pots, clothing—all lay scattered. Some of the dead lay in the smoldering camas pits, where their flesh burned and baked with the roots that had been cooking there since the previous night.

With the assistance of some of the young boys, Joseph brought the remaining horses down from the distant hillside. By running up to the herd at the first chance during the fighting, he and No Heart and the young boys had kept the soldiers from stampeding the pack animals during the confusion. Now he needed to get the people packed and moving before the soldiers broke through and attacked again. But many were too stunned to move. They simply sat, empty-eyed and moaning, looking at their butchered friends and children and staring at the bodies floating in the blood-filled stream.

But Joseph knew there was no time for grieving. The warriors could not hold back the soldiers forever, and others might be coming up from behind. The dead had to be buried as quickly as possible, and such belongings as remained had to be gathered and packed. Perhaps there would be time to come back later for proper burials. But now, the people had to be saved.

Slowly, as the sun rose higher and the smoke drifted up into the growing morning light, he assisted the decimated and traumatized remnant in loading their few remaining belongings onto the backs of horses and helping into their saddles the wounded who could still ride. Those too injured to stand were tied into blankets and placed on hastily constructed travois litters made from the lodge poles the women had cut the day before. Then the weeping, wounded survivors picked their way through the bodies of their horses and dogs and hastily buried wives and husbands and parents and children and rode aimlessly and hopelessly toward the mountains far to the south.

Above them on the hill, they could see the remaining warriors trying to set the grass on fire to burn into the trees where the soldiers lay hiding. Perhaps these soldiers might soon know some of the same horror and agony that they had visited on a people who had meant them no harm and who wanted nothing more than to find a place where they could raise their families in peace.

As if in a dream, the stunned people, led by Joseph and White Bird, moved across the cruel emptiness of the sweltering August Big Hole plain. The travois pole ends bumped harshly across the uneven ground, causing the injured to cry out in agony. Wounds broke open, shattered bones ground against each other, bullet holes stuffed with pieces of cloth oozed blood onto the grass and dust.

Joseph was like a man no longer living. His wife was wounded; his newborn infant daughter clung desperately to life in the relentless summer heat. Yet, as a camp chief, he could not focus on his own concerns and sorrows; it was his sacred duty to care for all the people and to do his best to calm their fears.

While a thin cordon of remaining warriors protected the perimeter of the moving procession, he moved among the injured and dying, offering such comfort as he could. As the wounded died, he assisted in their burials, standing by while the relatives sang death songs over the shallow graves. He then made sure the horse herd was driven over the ground so the graves could not be found and dug up by soldiers or Indian scouts intent upon scalping or thieving or desecrating the bodies.

When the wounded and elderly, unable to bear the bouncing of the travois and the jostling of the horses, begged to be left behind, he made sure they were left with food and water and the best blankets. Then he did what he could to console the families as they rode away, leaving behind the loved ones they would never see again in this life.

That night, camped on the edge of a small lake, the people began to take stock of the day's horrifying events. None knew where the soldiers had come from. One young boy confided that the night before the battle he had seen two men wandering near the fires wrapped in blankets. In the glow of the flames, he had seen that they had white foreheads. But he had been too afraid to tell anyone.

Others recounted the bravery of the men and women who had died. A few told of strange soldier kindnesses, where they were let go by men who easily could have killed them. But most remembered only the killing and the screaming and the settler fighters from the Bitterroot Valley who only days before had sold them goods and acted like their friends.

Joseph tried to assist the grieving and the wounded, but there was little he could do. He stood by helplessly as life ebbed out of Fair Land, his brother Ollokot's wife. He went through the camp making sure there were families to care for the little children whose parents had been killed. He assisted in the grisly task of doing a death count. Until the warriors returned, they would not know for certain how many they had lost. But by talking among themselves, the people were able to identify at least fifty women and children and elders who were no longer with them.

On the following morning, to the great relief of all, the few warriors who had not returned during the night began to trickle in. They had pinned down the soldiers in the grove of trees on the hillside and killed as many as they could. But the wind had kept the fire they set from catching the trees, so many of the soldiers had escaped death. They would have stayed longer and killed all the soldiers, but one soldier, trying to trade information for his life, told them that General Howard was close behind.

When they heard a cheer go up from inside the grove of trees, they thought it might be Howard and his troops coming up from the rear, so they had chosen to leave. It had been a hard decision. If they had stayed they could have killed all the soldiers. But they knew that each soldier who fell would eventually be replaced by another while each warrior who fell would be one less man available to protect the women and children. With so many of their best fighters now dead, it seemed better for those who remained to save their lives than to die fighting when their protection would be needed in the days to come. But one good had come from their siege— they had managed to capture a great amount of ammunition and had picked up many guns.

Their hearts were now dark with rage. They had held back all across the Lolo and all through the Bitterroot. They had listened to Looking Glass's claims that the settlers were his friends and that war had been left behind. Now it was clear what kind of friends these white men were and how much faith was to be put in the words of soldiers and settlers. War was not behind them; it was all around them. All white men were now their enemies, and all would be made to pay.

The anger in the camp now turned toward Looking Glass. He had always been held in the highest regard, but now he had lost much respect. It was his arrogance that had caused the people to move slowly, as if on parade. It was his claims of friendship with the whites that had caused them to reveal their goods and money to the settlers in Stevensville. He was the one who had refused to allow back scouting and had not listened to the vision warnings from the men with strong spirit powers.

He had never been willing to listen to anyone's ideas unless they coincided with his own. Now almost ninety of their people were dead, the best warriors were lost, and every family was grieving. Because of his pride, coyotes were digging up the bodies of their fathers and mothers, little children who should be playing happily were lying, half buried, in an unmarked creek bed, and Flatheads and Bannocks were parading around holding their grandparents' scalps.

A council was held to determine what should be done. Joseph spoke again for returning to their own lands, but this idea was rejected because it meant going back through lands controlled by whites. The chiefs knew the people could never get their wounded and elderly through the angry settlers whose fathers and brothers lay dead by Nez Perce hands. Charlot too had sworn to fight them if they raised weapons against the whites. His Flathead warriors would swell the numbers of the settlers and the army. There would be no Nez Perce left alive long before any of them ever set foot again in their own country.

Instead, the council voted to take leadership from Looking Glass and give it to Poker Joe, who had joined them in the Bitterroot Valley. He knew the country; he knew the Montana people. He could speak a little English, and it was thought that with his part-white blood he might be able to understand something of the white man's mind. All who had fought by him or hunted with him knew he had no fear, and he was familiar with the locations of the soldiers and the way to buffalo country. He was lucky in gambling, and gambling success spoke of strong ties to spirit power. It was felt that he would give them the best chance to get through to the Crow and the buffalo plains.

Looking Glass was insulted, but he could not resist. It was the people's will as decided in council, and he had to accept it, just as the others had been bound to accept his leadership when the council had granted it to him. Like Joseph, he must either go along or separate from the group and go on his own.

With Poker Joe in charge, the whole pace changed. Everything was now geared to escaping from an unseen enemy. The people rose at first light, ate a cold breakfast that required no fire, then rode without resting until late morning, when they stopped and cooked their only warm meal of the day. Their afternoon march began at two and extended far into the evening, sometimes almost until midnight, even though the shortening days of mid-August meant that much of that travel had to be done in the dark.

There was no scrimping on scouting now. Parties of warriors moved in front and behind and ranged in all directions around the group. Women and children were kept at the front where they could be protected. At night the people regathered into family groups, but while traveling the only concern was safety. It was no longer a procession but a flight, and all decisions were directed toward protecting those least able to protect themselves.

Joseph's task now became much harder. There were many wounded and many children without parents. Most of the lodge poles had been burned or shattered by bullets at the Big Hole. Those that remained had been commandeered for use as travois sticks to drag the wounded, so shelter once again was reduced to skins and blankets draped over trees and bushes. Many of the buffalo robes that the families had used for cover had also been lost, as had a great deal of their clothing. Much of what remained had been torn up and used for bandages and slings.

Because they had been forced to leave so quickly, food too was in short supply. The women had counted on the camas bulbs they were harvesting and drying, but those had been left in the ground when the people ran from the soldiers' attack. All foodstuffs that they had purchased in Stevensville had been lost or left. They were reduced, now, to hunting. And when hunting parties were not successful, it became a hard choice between feeding those who were still strong, and trying to nourish those who were weakened by injury.