Cries from the Earth: The Outbreak Of the Nez Perce War and the Battle of White Bird Canyon June 17, 1877 (The Plainsmen Series) by Johnston Terry C

Author:Johnston, Terry C. [Johnston, Terry C.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2013-05-10T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 27

June 15, 1877

“How soon can you be ready to depart, Colonel?” When General Howard asked David Perry that question late of the afternoon, the captain gazed squarely at his superior and, without the slightest hesitation, responded, “We will leave at first light, sir. Everything is in place, except for some additional transportation I’ll call down from Lewiston.”

With those civilian messengers and their Nez Perce counterparts all racing in here to Fort Lapwai with their discouraging reports, it was clear that the army needed to move and be about its business without the slightest delay. For too long, so it seemed, they had dawdled in their dealings with the Non-Treaty bands, and now Oliver Otis Howard could see just what his liberality and evenhandedness had gotten him. Dead citizens and a territory just now being ravaged by the first flames of an Indian war.

That afternoon Howard had penned a message to be carried back to Loyal P. Brown in Mount Idaho, hoping to reassure those panic-stricken civilians that the army had received the two dispatches and that help was indeed on its way:

… [I am sending] two companies of cavalry to your relief … Other help will be en route as soon as it can be brought up. I am glad you are so cool and ready. Cheer the people. Help shall be prompt and complete. Lewiston has been notified.

Yours truly,

O. O. Howard

Next he dispatched his aide-de-camp, First Lieutenant Melville C. Wilkinson, off to the nearest telegraph at Fort Walla Walla to wire his orders for additional troops he wanted brought in from around his department, as well as his request to engage twenty-five Indian scouts. First Lieutenant Peter Bomus would take Wilkinson in a buggy to Lewiston, where the quartermaster had Howard’s order to hire, for fifty dollars in coin from a local stage company, a buckboard and team that Wilkinson would drive on to Walla Walla.

Because Captain Perry had only two companies of cavalry at Lapwai—no more than a hundred men at most—the general summoned two more cavalry companies under Captain Stephen G. Whipple to hurry over from that reconnaissance he had sent them on in the Wallowa Valley, in addition to calling up a large complement of foot soldiers stationed at Walla Walla, southwest of Lewiston, to come as quickly as possible by steamer, along with three months’ supplies and rations.

Finally, the last item of business before taking his supper was to have Perry’s quartermaster, Lieutenant Bomus, contract for the services of a string of pack mules and their handlers from the Lewiston freighting company of Grostein & Binnard for the coming campaign.

After bolting down his supper with a few of the unmarried officers, since his wife was already on her way to visit family in The Dalles, David Perry huddled with Howard to plan their strategies for the next few days. Both believed that it should take no more than a week to bring the murderers, outlaws, and renegades to bay and force the rest onto the reservation.

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