Nez Perce Summer, 1877

Cover

Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Reasons

Eruption and White Bird Canyon

Looking Glass's Camp and Cottonwood

Clearwater

Kamiah, Weippe, and Fort Fizzle

Bitterroot and the Big Hole

Camas Meadows

The National Park

Canyon Creek

Cow Island and Cow Creek Canyon

Yellowstone Command

Bear's Paw: Attack and Defense

Bear's Paw: Siege and Surrender

Consequences

Epilogue

Appendix A

Appendix B

Bibliography

Nez Perce Summer, 1877 Chapter 13: Bear's Paw: Siege and Surrender

Chapter 13:
Bear's Paw: Siege and Surrender (continued)

Beyond those accorded Colonel Miles, the Battle of the Bear's Paw yielded no immediate individual honors for the soldiers who fought there. In June 1878, Miles recommended Lieutenants Baird, Carter, Romeyn, and McClernand for recognition via brevet promotions or Medals of Honor. It was not, however, until after 1890, when brevets for Indian wars service were at last authorized, that Carter and McClernand were so recognized, along with Lieutenant Woodruff and Captains Snyder, Moylan, and Godfrey. [153] And only in 1894 did Baird, Carter, Romeyn, McClernand, Godfrey, Moylan, Long, Tilton, and First Sergeant Henry Hogan, Company G, Fifth Infantry, receive coveted Medals of Honor for their services at Bear's Paw. [154] It is not known why the award of the medals was delayed for so many years, nor why only one enlisted man was deemed worthy for the honor. [155] Indeed, some of the awards, such as those for McClernand, Tilton, and Long seem to have been unwarranted based on knowledge of their roles in the action, which were no greater than those normally expected for officers in combat. And Baird, Moylan, and Godfrey were performing no distinguished acts of bravery when they were wounded. That received by Sergeant Hogan resulted from the recommendation of Henry Romeyn, who reported that Hogan had assembled the party that "carried me off the field" and "whose action probably enabled me to live." [156] Finally, Private John Gorham (John Quinn) was cited for gallant service at Bear's Paw, and—in perhaps the oddest recognition of all—Lieutenant Guy Howard was acknowledged for "accompanying the Department Commander through a hostile Indian country, with a small party, from [the] Missouri River to the battlefield at Bear [Paw] Mountain." [157]

While individual recognition was elusive in the years ahead, Miles on October 7 issued a general order applauding his men on their signal victory over the Nez Perces. He offered his congratulations "for the recent exhibition they have given of the highest degree of endurance with hardships and unyielding fortitude in battle." He noted that "it is an added source of congratulations that Gen. O. O. Howard . . . was present to witness the completion of his arduous and thankless undertaking." [158] Soon after that, General Howard assumed command, directing Miles to keep the Nez Perces within the District of the Yellowstone until next spring owing to the transportation costs required for moving them to the Pacific Coast. "Then," Howard told Miles, "unless you receive instructions from higher authority, you are hereby directed to have them sent, under proper guard, to my Department. . . . You will treat them as prisoners of war, and provide for them accordingly, until the pleasure of the President concerning them shall be made known." He told Miles he would move his own force back to their home stations, and he relinquished his command of Sturgis's men, requesting that they, too, be permitted to return to Fort Lincoln to recuperate from the severities of the campaign. "I am gratified to have been present," concluded Howard, "and to have contributed ever so little to facilitate the surrender." [159]

In reality, both Howard and Miles owed thanks to the native peoples living in the vicinity of the Bear's Paws. Even before the presence of troops in the area, word had reached the local tribes of the government's expectations regarding the war with the Nez Perces. The Gros Ventres (Atsinas) and Assiniboines had earlier sent parties to the Missouri River to watch for the Nez Perces. On October 3, a party of Gros Ventre warriors, assisted by some Assiniboines, encountered some Nez Perces on a fork of Box Elder Creek, killing five men and capturing two women. Later, they helped the army search for Bear's Paw refugees. Twenty-five Gros Ventres received a supply of tobacco as a reward for providing information about the location of some Nee-Me-Poo. Forty mounted Gros Ventres also ranged through the western Bear's Paw Mountains searching for escapees. And when several families of Nez Perces approached the Gros Ventre camps, they were turned away. [160] For their part, the Assiniboines had been formally solicited by the army leadership at Fort Benton to help contain the Nez Perces, and Miles sent word to them from the battlefield "that they could fight any that escaped and take their arms and ponies." The Assiniboines succeeded in capturing some army horses and mules near Milk River, and they claimed to have killed seven Nez Perces and captured four more. [161] On the other hand, there is evidence that Plains Cree Indians took in some Nez Perce refugees in the area of Milk River, provided them with food and blankets, and helped them in crossing into Canada. [162]

Against this backdrop and before he left Bear's Paw, Miles sent a request to Terry at Fort Benton to send supplies to meet Tyler's Second Cavalry battalion, which would start for that point to join the commission to the Sioux. On Major Ilges's direction, Second Lieutenant Hugh L. Scott left Fort Benton with a train of provisions, escorted by Company E, Seventh Cavalry, under First Lieutenant Charles C. DeRudio. Both officers had lately been in the national park at the approximate time of the Nez Perce passage. On October 10, as Scott and six of his men approached the trading post of Fort Belknap (discontinued as an Indian agency in 1876) along Milk River near the present community of Chinook, they stumbled on the remains of five Nez Perces. Assiniboines gathered at the former agency readily admitted that some of their young men had killed and scalped these people. [163] Meanwhile, as early as the fifth, Miles had sent detachments of troops (and evidently some selected Nez Perces, too [164]) to scour the countryside for tribesmen who had escaped the besieging force, either having gone with White Bird or with myriad parties that had broken away since the fighting began.

Lieutenant Maus headed one of these detachments. Near Fort Belknap, after turning over his provisions to Tyler's battalion, Scott shortly encountered Maus and his ten men ranging over the area searching for refugee Nez Perces. Two warriors who had been in the camp at Bear's Paw, Tippit and Nez Perce John, were with Maus. While DeRudio headed the wagons to a rendezvous point at Three Buttes near the Little Rockies, Scott and Maus traveled down Milk River to a village of so-called "Red River half-breeds"Metis hunters from Pembina—where they found twelve Nez Perces (mainly women and children, but also two wounded men) who had stopped there instead of proceeding directly to the line. Maus rented two wood-wheeled Red River carts and loaded the people aboard, and he and Scott started for Three Buttes and DeRudio's wagons, passing over the battlefield on the way. "It had gotten very cold then," recalled Scott. "Maus and I had . . . one robe & two saddle blankets & slept together shivering all night. We killed buffalo & we wrapped the children in fresh green buffalo hides to keep them from freezing." [165] From Three Buttes, they proceeded with their captives to meet Miles at the Missouri River. [166] Elsewhere, on the seventh Major Ilges reported that the Gros Ventres were turning a Nez Perce woman and a child over to him. [167]

Miles started his command on the back trail to the Musselshell crossing of the Missouri at noon Sunday, exactly one week after the Battle of the Bear's Paw Mountains opened. The Seventh Cavalry and Fifth Infantry troops escorted the Nez Perce prisoners, many riding ponies from the captured herd, their truck being transported in the wagons. Tyler's Second Cavalry battalion, Dr. Gardner accompanying, prepared to head for the agency at Fort Belknap en route to Fort Benton, there to join Terry's commission as originally planned. Wrote Tilton: "The Indians clad in lively colors and strung out in a long line; the pack train, the pony herd, the mounted troops, the wagons, the wounded on travois, all combine to make an unusual and striking picture." [168] Over the course of the ten miles traveled this day, seven of the wounded soldiers rode on travois, while the two amputation cases occupied the broken ambulance. Other injured men rode on grass and willow branches in the wagons, while two more of the travois were given over to the Nez Perces for their injured. On the trail, two ambulances from Sturgis's command arrived, and next day Lieutenant Romeyn, shot through the lung, boarded one of them, and two of the wounded men the other, for the balance of the journey. On the night of the seventh, a lightning and thunder storm struck, but subsided before causing a stampede of the stock; on the eighth a torrential downpour kept the command in camp all day. [169]

"Gen. Miles and Command crossing the Yellowstone with Joseph." Miles's arrival with Nez Perce prisoners at Tongue River Cantonment on October 23, 1877, was captured by post photographer John H. Fouch. Courtesy Wayne T. Norman and Jeanne Norman Chiaroten.

On the eighth, Howard prepared a dispatch for General McDowell, specifying his role in bringing about the surrender, explaining the Nez Perces' casualties (Ollokot, Looking Glass, Toohoolhoolzote, besides "33 warriors, either in battle or as fugitives to other tribes") and telling him that "the Camas Prairie murderers [are] now all killed in action." He also recounted his directive to Miles regarding removing the prisoners to Tongue River. Howard then departed, intending to send his command homeward down the Missouri. Joining Major Mason, he reached the mouth of Little Rocky Creek on the ninth and left aboard the Benton for Squaw Creek next afternoon to prepare the steamers Meade and Silver City to receive Miles's wounded and cross his troops. Meanwhile, Miles continued by slow marches on his diagonal trail back to the Missouri opposite the mouth of Squaw Creek. [170] On the ninth, Miles lifted the restriction on firing, and the men and prisoners dined on antelope steaks that evening. Over the next several days, they passed Peoples, Beaver, and Fourchette creeks, and on the afternoon of the thirteenth they arrived at the Missouri, "Joseph and some of his people riding with Miles at the head of the column." [171] That afternoon, Howard and his troops started home. The general would visit in St. Paul and Chicago en route, while the Twenty-first infantrymen and Fourth artillerymen would go by steamer to Omaha, then via rail to San Francisco, and by steamship to Portland. Leaving the reunited and resupplied Seventh Cavalry at "Camp Owen Hale" on the north side of the river as a precaution against Sitting Bull's possible resurgence, Miles and the Fifth Infantry and the Nez Perce prisoners Sunday and Monday forded the river aboard the Silver City. That afternoon, the most serious cases of wounded soldiers were placed aboard the Silver City for transport to hospitals at Forts Buford and Lincoln. On Tuesday Miles struck out cross-country for the Yellowstone and the cantonment. More than a week later, at noon on October 23, the troops and prisoners, several wounded of which had died en route, pulled up on the north bank opposite the post. [172] "As the command filed down the ravine," recorded Tilton, "flags were unfurled, the band struck up, 'Hail to the Chief,' while cannon thundered forth a salute of welcome to the troops who had so successfully ended the campaign against the Nez Perces." [173]

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