USA > Montana > Blaine County > In the land of Chinook; or, The story of Blaine county > Part 7
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As Dr. Moody says: "It was a land of natural advantage, warm in winter, cool in summer, abundant grass, plenty of water, hills covered with game and all that would make it a lovely land in which to reside, to the white as well as the Red Man." It was mighty hard to give this land up to the behest of the white man.
"When the west-bound emigrant reached the Nez Perce country he felt safe, for at no time did these people harass travel- ers as did the tribes of the East."
It was only after a number of years when the whites looked upon the broad acres with covetous eyes that trouble began.
"Before the dawn of history, of them, the Nez Perces had been ruled by a dynasty of chiefs of which the Joseph of our day was the last. His immediate predecessor was his father, called by the whites, 'Old Joseph,' to distinguish him from his son."
The Oregon Trail ran through the land owned by these peo- ple, and all together too soon for the Indian, the emigrant turned his cattle loose along some rippling stream where he built his cabin, fenced the land and began to turn the sod. This last act, to the Indian, was desecration, as the earth was his mother and the white man had wounded her bosom. Not alone did he do that but he was coming in such numbers that he was taking the grass that the Indian needed to feed his ponies.
"Old Joseph" had called the Indian Agent's attention to the fact that the whites were taking their land and eating their sub- stance, but this did no good. More whites came and clashes took place in which an Indian was killed. (Remember this fact, the whites did not only take the land but they were the first to shed blood.)
The valley of the Wallowa was a particular section that the Indians desired to hold. A treaty was made and signed June 11, 1855, by some of the Indians but never by "Old Joseph," who was the one who was the most interested. The old chief died in 1872 bequeathing the reins of tribal government to Young Joseph, at that time about thirty-five years of age.
Before the old chief died he called his son to him and exacted a promise that the Wallowa should never be given up.
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Ere Columbus had set sail for India, these people had lived in their beautiful valley by the flowing water. Their dead had been placed in consecrated ground which had been moistened by the tears of loved ones. No other sun ever shone as bright as did this of theirs. They may have been savages but they were men, as Gibbon found to his cost, as he was whipped on the banks of the Ruby. They were never untrue to their fathers or their tradi- tions, as is evinced by their having taken the war path. No party of men, since the world began, ever put up a more glorious effort for independence than did the Red Men of the valley of Wallowa.
Troubles of various kinds took place for years and culminated in a war that began in June and ended in October, 1877.
The first man to be killed was Richard Devine, an old miner who lived alone in a cabin above the mouth of the White Bird, on the Salmon.
That took place on June 15th. Col. Perry, who was sent after the Indians, was defeated on the 17th of June and General Howard started in to clean out the Indians. Several engagements took place in Idaho in which the Red Men showed their ability in a most signal way. They came to the conclusion to leave the land which they had for so many years called home and go through Montana to Canada, where they thought it possible to establish a new residence.
That they had not thought of mistreating the people of Mon- tana in making their passage through this Territory, is now known.
As there were two battles and several skirmishes in the section now known as the State of Montana we must give something of them in order, as was above mentioned, to enlighten the reader.
I know of no more interesting matter to publish in respect to their coming to Montana than the one by Mr. W. B. Harlan of Como, who was one of the men who saw all that he has herein described.
THE FIASCO AT "FORT FIZZLE" ON THE LOLO TRAIL.
Early in July in 1877 word was brought to us in Western Montana that Chief Joseph and his band of Nez Perce Indians had broken out over in Idaho across the mountains from the Bitter Root valley.
"Aggravated and enraged by the encroachments and depre- dations of some of the lawless whites, the Indians had killed some of the settlers, burned their homes and were sure enough on the war path.'
"After some inconclusive fights with the soldiers sent to sub- due them, the Indians, some 900 strong, counting men, women and children, but all well armed, started over the Lolo trail, their
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objective point being the British possessions where they evidently expected protection and immunity from arrest and punishment for their crimes (?).
"They were pursued at a safe distance by Maj. General Howard, Col. Miller and about 600 soldiers of the regular army. The Indians sent couriers into the Bitter Root valley asking the Flatheads to help them fight and exterminate the whites. Chief Charlos not only refused, but said he and his tribe would fight on the side of the settlers if necessary.
"The Nez Perces then sent word that if they were allowed to go through the valley peaceably, they would not fight the whites or destroy their property. No answer was made to this offer as no one had authority to make any such agreement.
"In the meantime the settlers of the Bitter Root, becoming much alarmed for the safety of their families, placed them in old Fort Owens at Stevensville and two new sod forts which they hastily constructed at Corvallis and Skalkaho.
"The Indians were now reported to be on the Montana side of the mountains and they finally encamped on Woodman's Prairie, some ten or twelve miles up the Lolo from the Bitter Root river. We learned that the soldiers from Fort Missoula were going up to meet them and attempt to turn them back or obtain their surrender or fight them, as the case might be. On a Tuesday morning 35 men, pioneer settlers of the valley, left Fort Owens for the Lolo. They were, of course, well armed and took with them their blankets and a few days' provisions tied to their saddles.
"About where the town of Lolo now is they met Captain Rawn in command of 25 soldiers. With him were Captain Logan, Lieutenants English and Woodruth and two others whose names I do not recall.
"John Robertson, Cortez Goff and I were delegated to have a talk with Captain Rawn and explain our situation to him. We told him of the defenseless condition of the valley ; of the hundreds of women and children, to say nothing of our property that would be at the mercy of the Indians if infuriated by an attack that would not and could not be a defeat for them.
"Captain Rawn, with somewhat of that contemptuous manner that too often characterizes regular army officers in their inter- course with mere citizens, would hardly listen to us, but did say that he had been ordered to meet the Nez Perces and turn them back or fight them and he proposed to do so with or without our help, and added that 'he might as well throw up his commission if he did otherwise.'
"We realized that a fight with the Indians, whether by sol- diers or citizens would have the effect to make them hostile towards us, so we decided to go with the soldiers and naturally
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placed ourselves under the direction and command of the regular officers.
"Word was being sent out from Missoula to all western Mon- tana for help, and for them to come running. The call was nobly responded to, for in two or three days several hundred well armed men from Missoula, Philipsburg, Bear Gulch and Deer Lodge, together with 90 out of the 100 settlers of the Bitter Root valley were at the front up the Lolo.
"But to return to my story, on that Tuesday night the soldiers and citizens-60 men in all-rode ten miles up the Lolo and went into permanent camp in the heavy timber in a narrow part of the canyon and about three miles below where the Indians were camped on the big prairie.
"We immediately began felling trees and building log breast- works, and with the help of new arrivals, had in two or three days a very strong barricade across the gulch, behind which we felt secure from an attack in front, the only direction from which the commanding officer seemed to think an attack possible.
"There was no protection from the cross-fire of the Indians, dodging from tree to tree on the mountain sides and it was the belief of most of us, that in case of a fight, especially before our reinforcements arrived, it would have been another Custer massacre.
"On Thursday Governor Potts came up and with an escort of about fifty men went to hold a pow wow with the chiefs at the lower end of the prairie about half way between the opposing camps. Here we were met by an equal number of Indians who came down and stopped in line a hundred yards from us. Gov- ernor Potts with Captain Brown rode out and met Chief Joseph and Looking Glass with their interpreters and talked for a half hour or more. The situation was just a little bit tense and strained as we sat facing each other with guns ready for instant use and each side watching for the first sign of treachery. We remembered the fate of General Canby when killed by the Modocs in a similar situation, but nothing happened and we rode back to repeat the performance the next day.
"Nothing came of the meetings, the Indians refusing to turn back or surrender, so the Governor went back to Missoula and left the situation as he found it.
"The Indians had announced that they would move Saturday morning, but it was as yet unknown to us whether they would turn back or go north over a trail that would bring them out near Frenchtown, or come down headed for the Bitter Root, with the almost certainty, so far as we knew, of a battle.
"Early in the morning I was sent with five men as an advance picket to a point a half mile from camp and high up the mountain
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side to watch and report the movements of the hostile camp. Lieutenant English loaned me his field glasses and we took a position where we had a good view of their position.
"About nine o'clock I sent word that the Indians were driving in their horses and breaking camp. Another man was sent in when it was seen that they had packed up and had started down the valley toward us. By the time we had decided to go in, the Indians were below us and between us and camp, so we had to make a hurried detour and dodge among the trees to avoid them.
"I reported to Captain Rawn that the Indians were beginning to climb the ridge a fourth of a mile above our camp and were evidently going around us. He replied that it would be impossible for them to go around on that steep hillside and it was only a scout that I saw, and when I said I saw squaws and children with camp stuff going up, he turned back into his tent with the insulting remark that 'The trouble in this camp is that there are too many God Almightys in it.' As partly explaining such conduct and language, I will say that early that morning, Bill McQuirk, a saloon keeper of Missoula, had brought in a demijohn of whisky which was on tap in the headquarter's tent, with the result that when we finally broke camp an hour later the commanding officer could hardly sit in his saddle and the second in command could not, but was hauled out, stretched out upon an army wagon load of tents and bedding.
"Quite a number of Flathead Indians were with us and showed their true friendship by preparing to fight with us in the . expected battle. They had white cloths tied around their heads so we could distinguish between friend and foe. I well remember Delaware Jim's exhortation: 'Shoot low and kill horse, then shoot Injun,' which would have been good advice if the Nez Perces had been fools enough to attack in front, and on horseback.
"As the Indians were passing around, a detachment of thirty or forty citizens went out to the foot of the mountain, and a little way up, to see that no surprise attack was made from that direction, but with the exception of a few stray shots fired from the hill into the barricade, no hostile demonstration was made, and the whole body of Indians came down into the valley a mile below us.
"A half hour later we were ordered to mount and were hurried down the canyon after them. Several miles below we were halted in the edge of a wood facing a half mile of prairie where we could see the Indians in the timber on the far side, and we were told that here was to be the battle sure enough. We stood in battle line for a half hour expecting an order to charge, but none came. It was soon evident that the Indians had disappeared so we were led peacefully down the road.
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"Until we reached the junction of the Lolo with the Bitter Root valley, none of us knew which way the Indians would turn; whether they would go by way of Missoula or by the Bitter Root. The former was the shorter route but was much more thickly settled. When we reached the mouth of the canyon we found that the Indians had gone up the Bitter Root valley and right there the regular soldiers and all the volunteers from Missoula, Philipsburg and Deer Lodge turned north to Missoula and left the Bitter Root to its fate.
"We did not understand then, nor do we know now, why Captain Rawn, with more than five hundred men to back him, should decline to fight that day, while only a few days before he had been so anxious to open battle with only twenty-five. Whether it was under the advice of Governor Potts, or under the influence of Bill McQuirk's demijohn, has never been made public.
"This ended the 'Fiasco at Fort Fizzle," on the Lolo Trail.
"But the Bitter Rooters could not evade all the responsibili- ties and solve their problems so easily.
"On that hot Saturday afternoon there were cooped up in Fort Owens two hundred and fifty-eight women and children with just four old men with two shotguns to protect them, while in the two sod forts up the valley there were probably nearly as many more.
"Now that we were released from the authority of Captain Rawn and knowing that we could have no outside help in pro- tecting our families and homes, we were naturally anxious to get past the Indians and beat them to the fort. We did not believe that they would stop and camp till they were past the thickly settled part of the valley, and well away from the soldiers and volunteer citizens, they not knowing, so we thought, that the Bitter Root had been abandoned by all but her own men.
"As about thirty of us, including just two from Missoula, Judge Stephens and Mr. Kinney-afterwards state auditor --- galloped up the road across what is now known as the McLain or McClay flats, we decided to leave the west side road near where Florence is now, and cross the river at the Eight Mile Ford, thus avoiding the Indians. What was our surprise as we topped the Carlton bench to see, just in front of us, the whole Indian encamp- ment.
"They had turned their horses out on the prairie and the squaws were busy putting up their lodges on both sides of the road. To the right and left we could see the gleam of rifles in the timber, while in front were hundreds of Indians with guns in their hands, waiting.
"We halted, and realizing that we could neither advance or retreat, without their consent, and that to fire a gun meant instant death to each and all of us, we sent a half-breed, Alex Matt, to
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their camp to ask Chief Looking Glass to come down and talk with us. Now it is known that while Joseph was the war chief and was in favor of fighting the whites at every opportunity, Look- ing Glass was the peace chief and was in command of the whole expedition while on the march and it was his influence that saved the valley, people and property, from destruction.
"Looking Glass came to us and as we circled around him thirty or forty warriors, not knowing what our intentions were, jumped on their ponies and came rushing down but drew up a hundred feet or so from us and watched us.
"Acting as spokesman for our party I asked the chief if we could go through his camp to our wives and children. With much sarcasm, that we did not just at that time care to resent, he replied: 'This morning when you were many and strong you wanted to fight, but now that you are few you want to go home in peace.' With much more in the same vein he told us, at last, that we could go through his camp in safety. He and his warriors then rode back to camp, we following slowly in single file.
"The Indians were lined up on both sides of the road with guns in their hands, probably hoping for an excuse for shooting us down, but we gave them none, for just then we were 'too proud to fight,' and even Bryan himself would have been satisfied with our peaceful attitude.
"As I would pass a particularly ugly group in Chief Joseph's part of the camp, standing with their guns half-raised and with fingers on the triggers, I could feel a nervous twitching of the muscles of my back that belied the brave front I was putting up.
"As we passed the last Redskin, each of us urged his horse to a lope and stopped for nothing until we had reached the fort, where we found all well but somewhat anxious, as a deserter had brought them word of an actual battle in progress.
"The next morning we took possession of all the whisky in the saloons in Stevensville and locked it up in a cellar at Fort Owen. That day the Indians came up and camped opposite Stevensville. They came into town and announced that they wanted supplies, that they would pay for them, if permitted, but would take them anyway.
"The merchants of Stevensville were much criticised for sell- ing goods to hostile Indians but, under the circumstances, they were certainly justified.
"Looking Glass sat on his horse in the main street of the town for two days watching that none of his people started trouble, and on one occasion jumped off and jerked a quarrelsome warrior out of a store and sent him to camp across the river.
"Having obtained their needed supplies the Indians moved slowly up and out of the valley, apparently not fearing General
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Howard, who always kept several days behind them. It was a common report, at the time, that if General Howard found the camp signs too fresh he would stop and wait a day or two and this policy was followed until General Miles headed them off and fought them to a surrender in the Bear Paw mountains near the British line. In that battle Chief Looking Glass, the tried friend of the whites, was killed.
"But the Indians as they left the Bitter Root valley (and in going through which they destroyed nothing) were not aware of the rapid approach of General Gibbon, who was bringing a few soldiers from Fort Shaw, picking up those at Fort Missoula and about forty whites from the valley.
"If they had known of him he would not have gotten to sur- prise them in his attack on the morning of August 9th in the Big Hole which, though a surprise, was not by any means a victory. That is, though, another chapter in the story of Montana for some other writer."
Mr. Harlan is a high-class citizen of Montana who would not willingly take advantage of even an Indian. He has given a true statement of one of those things not generally known-the way the Nez Perces treated the whites in the Bitter Root. What a lesson to those very same white men who claim civilization under the advanced teachings of Christianity.
That chief of the Nez Perce tribe who held his warriors in check the summer of '77-who did not allow them to be even insulting-was more of a follower of the Meek and Lowly One than the same Bitter Root volunteers who had had their lives given them only a few days before by that same chieftain who could have, had he been the blood-thirsty fiend the Red Man is so often depicted, taken all their property and ravished and murdered their wives and children. What a wonderful lesson could be learned by the nations at war in Europe today if they would tear one leaf from that Red Man's life story and read of his decency and honesty as he made good his given word.
THE BATTLE OF THE BIG HOLE.
On the morning of August 9th, 1877, the Nez Perces were surprised at a time when most of them were asleep. This fight, which has been the theme for many a writer, was fought by Gen- eral John Gibbon and one hundred and ninety-eight men, includ- ing thirty-four citizen volunteers from the Bitter Root. Now, in a way, I do not believe that those Bitter Root boys had any right to be in that fight. In the light of these latter days I really believe that most of them would like to forget that they were there. Now I do not want to say that those men were not honorable men,
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because I know they were. They were good citizens but ones who did not hold the rights of the Indians as anything which a white man should respect, especially when they were on the war path. He was simply an Indian who, in their desire to settle the country, had been a stumbling block that had to be destroyed. They had not taken time to go into the matter, as they would in the case of the white man, to see who was right, they had simply given the best of it to the whites, no matter how little they deserved it.
It was a good thing for Gibbon that they were there as, without them, he would, without doubt, have been destroyed.
Even though the whites had surprised the Nez Perce they could not retain the ground they had taken long enough to know they had taken it. The Indians rallied and soon had recovered the lost ground and made it so warm for the whites that they were compelled to seek cover on a point where there was some timber growing which could be used for fortifying, as many of the trees had fallen down. Here, without anything to eat, the whites were held for some time, not knowing what their fate would be. The truth is they would have all been killed if it had not been that Howard was known to be not far away. It was a fearful battle to the Red Men and one that those of the whites, who were engaged, will always remember. Over one-third of the white men were killed or wounded and probably the same proportion of the Red ones.
The Indians pulled up the Big Hole river and passed out at its head and down Bloody Dick Creek to the Horse Prairie. On Horse Prairie they killed several white settlers. It is the opinion of the writer that the volunteers of Bitter Root were the direct cause of the massacre of the men on Horse Prairie. As the men of Bitter Root had been in the engagement with Gibbon they (the Indians) could not tell whom their friends might be so they became as all other people at war, more ensanguined.
After they had killed these men on Horse Prairie they went into Idaho and began their long trip to the Yellowstone through the National park on their way to Canada. While this was the longest route it appeared to them much safer as there were many less settlers with which to contend. In fact there were no settlers along the route which they chose. They did not know, though, that there were several troops of soldiers that the Government could call at any time when necessary, and were almost within striking distance of them and would be called if those who were already after them failed in their attempt to conquer.
Not alone was General Howard after them but several com- panies of citizen volunteers were on their trail.
A
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PHOTO NO. 1.
-Is a point southeast of the battlefield showing the direction from which the soldiers were coming. The land is only broken prairie, that could offer no particular obstacle to one on horseback. The Bear's Paw Mountains are to be seen to the south, eight to twelve miles away.
The arrow is on top of the ent-bank, just above Snake Creek, and it was at this point that the Indians met the soldiers with a deadly fire as they tried to charge the camp which was on the creek bottom.
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One night they came back and surprised Howard and stole many of his horses and mules. They also captured some people in the park and one or two were killed or wounded but some were turned loose to later find their way to the settlement.
The country through which they were traveling, especially in the Natoinal park, was exceeding rough. They left Howard's command in the rear and reached the waters of the Yellowstone below the mountains and crossed over and started toward the Missouri. They had a set-to with the soldiers who did not seem strong enough to hold them, and continued on to the north and crossed the big river at Cow Island.
In the days before the railroad the steamers would start for Benton and go as far as they could. Some times they would get to their destination and, when the water was too low, they would only get as far as Peck, Carroll or Cow Island. This year they must have gotten as far as the island, for the Indians captured and destroyed a wagon train at the mouth of Cow creek and became well supplied with provisions and other things which came in handy.
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