Saga of Chief Joseph by Helen Addison Howard

Author:Helen Addison Howard [Howard, Helen Addison]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO028000 Biography & Autobiography / Native Americans, HIS028000 History / Native American
ISBN: 978-1-4962-0428-8
Publisher: UNP - Bison Books
Published: 2017-09-26T04:00:00+00:00

Amazed and completely outwitted by the maneuver, Rawn formed skirmish lines across the canyon with his regulars and the remaining volunteers and advanced toward the Indians. He expected them to attack, but the Nez Perces continued up the valley while the rear guard fired a parting shot over the heads of the troops. Believing that the chiefs intended to keep the peace, all but a dozen or twenty Missoula citizens had deserted. So the captain wisely returned to the fort with his skeleton force, no doubt chagrined by his failure to check the Indians.

One settler, when asked why he had left the command, stated laconically, “We didn’t lose any Indians.” He was willing to let Idaho solve its own problems. Most of the volunteers were glad to escape a battle, and with droll humor referred to their recent barricade as “Fort Fizzle.”

The Nez Perces kept their promise as they moved up the valley, making twelve to fourteen miles a day. There was no need to hurry, for they knew Howard to be many days behind them. Besides, their footsore and gaunt ponies needed the opportunity to rest and graze after their arduous trip over the Lolo Trail. Grass had been scarce, but the meadowlands of the Bitterroot afforded abundant pasturage. The people, too, had been on scanty rations of food.

Evidence of strain showed most clearly in members of Joseph’s band, for during the entire two months since leaving the Wallowa Valley, they had been traveling and fighting. Joseph’s heart was sick with his troubles, and each mile of retreat from Idaho appeared to depress him the more. Doubtless he thought often of his homeland, the valley of winding waters, where lay the graves of his father and mother. Imbued with the Dreamer’s sacred love for the land of his ancestors, Joseph seems to have dreaded most of all that death would claim him and his people in a strange country, far from the graves of forefathers. This Oriental veneration of ancestors made bitter the Indians’ fear of racial extinction in alien lands.

After leaving Lolo, Yellow Bull states, the chiefs held another council in which Looking Glass and Joseph again agreed to go to the Crows’ country, although they were opposed by Pile of Clouds, who wanted to return to the Salmon River. At this powwow, Yellow Bull reports:

Joseph did not rise, but said: “While we were fighting for our own country, there was reason to fight, but while we are here, I would not have anything to say in favor of fighting, for this is not my country. Since we have left our country, it matters little where we go.”5

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