CHAPTER XI.

An Indian war.—Neighboring Indians go on the war-path.—The reason.
—Description of their domain.—Their horses and cattle. —‘A job on
Uucele Sam.”—How they plead for their country.—‘ Earth governed
by the sun,” ete.—Whom they killed. —How they marched and fought.
—Settlers either stampede or gather in fortresses.—Efforts made by
men to have other tribes break out.—For plunder.—What an Indian
must do to become a citizen.—How Indian claims are jumped.— What
the Indian was before the advent of the Whites.—Their government,
pursuits, etc.—What fire-arms and whiskey did for them.—How they
started fire, lived and died. ‘Their religion.—How to improve the
Indian.—‘‘A ery of the soul.”

THE summer of 1877 Chief J oseph and his band of Nez-Percé
Indians, joined by White Bird and Looking Glass with their
bands of the same, went on the warpath against Gen’l Howard
and his army, assisted by Gencrals Gibbons and Miles with
their troops. The Indians numbered less than three hundred
men, besides their women and children. They were non-treaty
Indians, and each band owned separate tracts of country.
Their country had been bartered to the Government many
years before by a chief, who was not, however, recognized as
such by this portion of the tribe. They denounced the trans-
action as fraudulent, and could never be induced to receive any
portion of the stipulated annuities or pay.

The Government had built a grist- and saw-mill, and
established an agency, and fenced and broke for them patches
of land. But they were not to be deluded into civilization, and
be governed by ring agents in any such way.

They could see nothing in the mode and vexation of living,
as practiced by the ignoble poor and ignorant of the Whites, to
cause in them any desire to become similarly situated. They
believed white men and their agents to be vile, grasping,
treacherous, tricky and mighty uncertain. And the chiefs de-
clared, that their people could not be educated to successfully
compete with them, and combat their whiskey and contagious
and loathsome diseases.

As it was, they were healthy, well to do in their way, happy,

(153)

154 AN INDIAN War.

contented end free, and had leisure from toil. They could not
see more for them in civilization. They could not expect to
achieve for their race, that which a great majority of the white
race were ever strvggling and toiling for, but failed to possess
and enjoy.

Joseph’s bard consisted of eighty or hundred men, besides
their women and children. I had seen him, and talked with
many thers of his band; and was well acquainted with several
of his tribe. One of whom had been to Washington, when they
were bartering off their country, of which distinction he was
very proud. It can easily be imagined, how the more simple
of the Indians could be deluded, and the more vicious other-
wise managed, by experts, employed but to succeed.

I suppose the records at Washington show that every foot
of land now, or ever, claimed by the Government, was honor-
ably treated for and bought of the Indians. But, if the race
was to-day strong, enlightened, and had a newspaper press, to
work against diplomatic liars, they could, with any acknowl-
edged standard of honor and law in one hand, and a rifle in the
other, burst into flinders enough of such titles, to give each
tribe a city and a good-sized bank account,—amid the plaudits
of the whole world; when, perhaps, they would take more
kindly to civilization.

A part of Joseph’s coveted domain lay in my county, and,
extending into Oregon, where it mainly consisted in the high,
frosty Willowa valley, containing about enough arable land for
each of his band a farm, less in extent than that allowed to
citizens under the homestead, pre-emption and other acts. This
section they used for a summer range for their herds of horses
and cattle, just what it was best calculated for. The rest of
their country was steep, rocky, wild and craggy; consisting
principally in a canyon, about 2500 feet deep, through which
runs the rapid Grande Ronde river, which empties into Snake
river. Here is where they lived in the winter with their stock;
this canyon affording « good winter range for them. There is
no river bottom or arable land in it, except a patch here and
there of a few acres, some of which the Indians fenced and cul-
tivated. But it was all a good game country, and there was
also good fishing. One could see bands of deer feeding a mile

Tue Truro apout INDIANS. — 155

away, but it might take half a day to ride to them, on account
of some deep, steep, rocky ravine intervening. There were also
mountain sheep, elk, bear and other game.

T was through this portion of Joseph’s domain, hunting
out a route for a through road from opposite Lewiston to the
Wil-low-a country for the county. Others with me, who alike
indignant and impressed with the ruggedness of it, declared
that “Joseph must be putting up a job on Uncle San, to get
him to buy the waste, and move him and his people to a
country more suitable even for Indians.” But with its good
winter and summer grazing, its good hunting and fishing
grovnds, its rapid, laughing waters, and it being an inheritance
from their fathers for many generations, it therefore just suited
Joseph and his band.

Joseph portrayed and supplicated with much feeling, in
exhortation to the grasping invaders, how his grand father
Joseph had, on his death bed, exhorted and obligated his father
Joseph with a solemn injunction, to “keep, cling to, and hold
with his people this their country,” and how, in turn, his father
had laid the same injunction on him. But they exhorted and
supplicated in vain.

These Indians excelled most others in ability, appearance,
living, dress and wealth. And they were peacefully disposed
towards the Whites. I never heard of them stealing anything
from even those who were encroaching on their domain. But
the time had come, when they must forsake their country, go
on to the reservation, and live as the poor, ignoble and ignorant
white man lives, or fight! ,

In pleading their cause, one of them said, that “ the Kart]
was governed by the sun,” and taking a piece of earth in his
fingers, crumbled it fine, letting it fall to the ground, saying,
that “rather than be ruled by the treacherous, grasping Whites,
he would become as that piece of earth ;’—dust to dust. And
he died, fighting for his liberty and country. When war had
been declared against them, they first killed the men they could
find who had taken action for their removal from their country,
about six.

When with the bulk of their horses and their families on
the travel with them, they combatted, out-generalled and out-

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156 AN Inpian War.

fought over 1000 soldiers, citizens and officials, who were en-
gaged against them, in one way or another, all summer. Old
soldiers, who followed them all through the campaign to the
surrender in Montana, say, that they were better trained and
did fight and charge more bravely and desparately than our re-
gular or irregular troops; that their horses were trained to
stand alone under fire, while they dismounted and charged the
soldiers among the rocks and cliffs; and that their systematic
manoeuvering and horsemanship was unequalled anywhere.
They would shoot under their horses’ bellies, etc., while riding.
An Indian of another tribe told me, that some of themselves
had horses trained to drop down behind a bush, rock, fallen
timber, or other obstruction, when under fire; that he had a
horse “that had more sense than himself.” And these Indians
never saw West Point.

Joseph sternly opposed the committing of any outrages,
usual in war, against persons or property, except as to those,
who had or were actively engaged against them ; for which, it
is said, the more vicious of them became rebellious. That this
element had a captive woman with them, and, after some of
their own women had been killed, they killed her in revenge, or
that their squaws did it—the same, however, of whom white
men frequently marry wives, and, ’tis said, they are good and
true. That, after several of their own wives and children had
been killed, Joseph saved, mounted on his horses, and sent
away out of danger, women of his enemies, and for which some
of his men called a counsel to kill him.

At the outset it was unknown which way the Indians would
go when attacked, to drive them to an equality with the ring-
ridden Whites, or what depredations they would commit in re-
venge. It was thought by many that they would raid through
our and adjoining settlements; a few soldiers were stationed at
a pass back in the mountain, and for a time nearly everybody
in the section about us, and to the south-east, either left this
part of the country, or gathered into fortresses. Some were
warned by Indians to leave. I was busy with my work all the time
and did neither. I would soonertrust my home and family to Jo-
seph and his tribe, than to many white men with more secret, self-
ish and hellish tribal relations; as they are more vile, cruel and

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treacherous than the worst of savages, as will be made manifest
to the most careless understanding.

On account of their superior generalship and training, had
the different Indian tribes of this upper country been so mind-
ed, they could have laid waste all the settlements in the
country, as Sheridan did the Shenandoah valley. And secret
ring-men tried to instigate and goad them into a general out-
break, so as to feast in the blood and destruction.

While a peaceable chief (Moses) with good record and
principle, was continually riding from one of his bands to an-
other, to pacify, prevent and hold them from rising to join
Joseph, White Bird and Looking Glass in their revenge, jobs
were put up on him, and he was thrown into prison by the
gang, backed by a servile press; just as they do with other
outsiders who are in their way, or to grasp their money.

It does not appear that either General Howard or the
Secretary of the Interior were in with this job; as to which I
herewith give an extract from the official report of the Secretary
of the Interior at Washington, dated 1879.

‘There never was any trustworthy information in possession of this
department, to justify any suspicion asto the conduct or intentions of this
Indian chief (Moses), on the contrary, he is known to have rendered good
service during the Bannock trouble, in maintaining peace and good order
among the Indians under his influence. But the efforts to take his life,
or at least his liberty, or drive him into hostilities, appeared to be so per-
sistent, that it required the most watchful and active interposition on the
part of the Government to prevent a conflict. On several occasions I
requested the Governor and General Howard to personally interfere and
protect Moses.”

And it is further declared that by Moses’ efforts a general
Indian war was prevented.

In Indian campaigns the transportation and supply
accounts are immense, (though the common soldier often fares
no better than the Indian warrior without any paid quarter-
masters’ department), and the plunder therein is a big object
to secret brethren.

“ General Crook was asked if the present campaign would put
an end to Indian outbreaks in Arizona. He answered with a
smile: ‘I know and you know that a great many people make

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Tue TrotH aBout INDIANS. 159

money out of Indian troubles. These same people exercise con-
siderable influence in control of the Indians.’ ”

The Nez-Percé Indians were rich in horses and cattle, and
in land to sustain and enlarge them. Some of them owned one
or two thousand horses. And among them were race horses,
equal to those bred by their white neighbors, and which they
would frequently beat on a track for coin.

Several companies of volunteers went to assist General
Howard and Co. in fighting these Indians, and they captured a
good many horses and cattle. Every few days during the cam-
paign some of them would pass my place with a band of Indian
horses, and all covered with glory and dust. These bands
numbered from a dozen to 150 head. Three men stayed at my
place one night with 125 of Joseph’s cattle. They thought the
Indians had more stock and land than they needed. And men
who had never earned a dollar by work in their lives, and would
steal and ravage before they ever would work, exclaimed, that
“the Indians should be made to work!”

To know and comprehend human character of each sort
correctly, it must be realized that there are widely different
elements and dispositions in each race, tribe and even family.
That there are but individuals, or a comparatively small
element of the Indians, that will flay alive a captive because he
belongs to a hostile, grasping race. And we should show them
that there are but individuals, or a small element of Whites,
who glory in killing their women of any tribe, and in dashing
out the brains of their children on the rocks, or who kill Indians
whenever they find them alone and defenseless, just because
some other of their race had, perhaps, committed a similar out-
rage on some one dear to them long before.

And let us look to those of virtuous pretentions, in high
station, wu.o directly and indirectly practice, with impunity,
heartless cruelties and traitorous prostitutions—deeds of dark-
ness that would make a savage blush!

“To become a citizen, the Indian must make affidavit before
some qualified person, that he has severed his tribal relations. He
must also bring two witnesses, to testify that he has severed such
relations.”

160 An InpDIAN War.

Why is it that they are denounced, plundered and killed
for clinging to their tribal relations and government, and re-
quired to renounce that first, before they can be citizens with
us in our Government ; while, at the same time, we suffer sworn
subjects of more secret and selfish tribal governments to pass
as full-fledged citizens, and to hold office and prostitute our
Government, to rob us and the Indian with impunity ?

“Sitting Bull is evidently a very observant Indian. He de-
clares, that, if affairs continue on in the same groove, the Indians
will not have ground enough left, upon which to stretch their
tepees and rest their limbs, and that they will have to pay taxes
and be as poor and ragged as pale-faces.”

As follows.—“ A delegation of Indians came up, on their way
to Fort Walla Walla, for a conference with the commanding
officer, concerning the jumping of their land The Indian whose
land has been confiscated is very intelligent. It seems that he
had a small place under cultivation, with fence, house and stable.
The jumper has filed on the land, and now requests the dusky Sis-
kiow to hiack clatawa, or he will blow off the top of his head.

Siskiow remarks that he is not as young as he used to be, or
he should not allow the jumper, or any other man, to scare him
out of house and home. He has concluded to have a talk with the
commanding officer and the land agent at Walla Walla, and find
out whether he has any rights a Boston man is bound to respect.”

“This place was the scene of the misunderstanding last spring
between the Whites and Indians, which looked as if it might prove
serious. It seems but little encouragement for Indians to try and
adopt the habits of their ‘civilized’ brothers, by locating and cul-
tivating their land, if they are liable to lose it any time their im-
provements are worth the taking.”

While we are enjoying the fame, glory, plunder and victory
over these poor, damned, friendless Indians, let us at least con-
cede to them the skill and the bare, fruitless sentiment of
patriotism and valor that is due them.

“Slowly and sadly they climb the distant mountain and
read their doom in the setting sun.”

Intelligent old Indians, of different tribes, tell me that they
were very numerous in the north-west before the advent of the

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Whites. That they were healthy, vigorous, and endowed with
fine constitutions, and were not on the decline.

The principal trouble with them was that they gloried in

rar and plunder, one tribe with another, and battles in which
1,000 or more Indians were killed, are related. The smaller
tribes would often combine to fight a stronger one, such as the
Sioux, as do civilized nations. And their great war chiefs were
glorified as those of the Whites are to-day.

It does not appear, however, that they were quarrelsome
or criminally disposed within the tribes, and peace and justice
were maintained without prisons or taxes, or much trouble or
pain.

They cultivated no habit or taste that could not be easily
supplied to all. They enjoyed and had leisure for the hunt, as
much as an English lord. They appear to have been more
happy, and have gotten as much good out of life as do the ring-
ridden, toiling masses of the Whites. The introduction of fire-
arms among them, first by the Hudson Bay Fur Company, in-
augurated a more peaceful era among the Indians, as the more
destructive war machines have done among the civilized
nations. But the whiskey, diseases and vices of the Whites

‘have proved far more fatal to them than their wars. Con-

sumption, deadly fevers, diphtheria, small-pox, measles, scro-
fula, and more loathsome diseases are said to have been wn-
known to the Indian until they hac known civilization.

Nor did they have any medical colleges or dollar-a-mile
doctors. A steam bath in their “sweat house ” was a remedy
for about all their illness. They had no taste for salt and used
none ; nor tobacco, opium, ete. They started fires with punk
and friction, The whirling of a hard stick set on to punk, by
looping the stick in a bow string, will soon produce fire.

The greater part of the country west of the Missouri river
is more adapted to the raising of buffalo, deer, elk, goat, bear,
rabbit, and other game, and horses, than for anything else.
And before the advent of civilization —that slaughtered them
off for their pelts, and the sport (?) of hunting down, maiming,
killing, and seeing God’s beautiful creatures suffer, quiver, and
die —there was a great abundance of such food supply. Deer
was as easily caught as sheep are now, and destroyed the
11

162 AN Inpran War.

crops of the first settlers on Puget Sound. This great natural
food supply—together with the fish, clams, berries, roots, and
seeds that made a rich flour, afforded food in great abundance,
more healthy and better than that had by millions of the
children of boasted, flaunted civilization, with all their endless
toil, diseases, vexation, sorrow and vices.

And by a little care and regulation this natural God-given
food and clothing supply could have been increased to support
a population—-dressed in seal-skin and martin, instead of calico
and dungaree—as dense as in the present toiling, vexatious and
vicious way.

It seems that even in Europe it has been found the best
economy to raise game instead of grain. Grasshoppers, un-
seasonable weather, fashion, the prosperity of others, had no
terrors for the Indians, and they knew not suicide or insanity.

Thus did the red man live—able to spurn common toil like
a prince, enjoying the sports of the chase like a nobleman, the
glories of war like a Bonaparte, Hannibal, and Grant. And
had leisure for study and that rest, that the Whites can only
hope and pray for in heaven. This thing, called civilization
indeed! has proved to be a humbug to every people in the
history of the world that have tried it very long, so that they
either called a halt, like the Chinese, or perished like the
Indian under the ban.

As to the religion of the Indian before the advent of the
Whites, it appears to have been similar to that of the Chinese
from whence the race is believed by themselves to have come
(crossing Behring Strait, or by the Islands). Itis a sort of
Spiritualism—that all animals have immortal spirits. It is in
accordance with the same that they had their favorite or
attached horses, ete., killed at their death, believing that the
attachment and association of these spirits -—man and horse,
etc. — before death would continue after death in some form if
freed of the body by its death.

They worshipped the sun, etc., as great sources or main-
springs of life and goodness, as some Christian people do the
“harvest moon.”

They say as to their belief in an intelligent supreme ruling
power, a living God, “great spirit,” “happy hunting ground,”

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Tue Trutrn apout INpIANs. 163

or any compreheusive future existence, that this is all an in-
vention of the Whites.

Like so many of the Whites, the religious belief of |
most of the Indians is very vague, and they are ready to
change it for anything else that will give them cash or in- i
creased happiness in hand.

If the Indians are to be benefitted by the better element of
civilization, they must be dealt with more honestly by the i
Government, and protected against the depravity of the worst
elements, masonic agents, etc., or else be permitted to protect
themselves against the lurking serpents. And the same can |
well be said as to the simplest and artless of the white race
also.

A CRY OF THE SCUL.

‘*T have read in the lore of long ago
How a symbol of our life below
Is wv boat with palsied men to row,
And a blind man at the rudder ;
Or a pensive, mild-eyed mother of kine
That roots and grubs in the ground like swine,
With a serpent at the udder.

O shaven priest, that pratest of souls,
Knowest thou not that men are moles

That blindly grope and burrow ?
The field that is gray shall be green again.
But whether with grass or whether with grain
He knoweth who turns the furrow !

It is only a step from eradie to grave,

And the step must be taken by knight and knave,
By stupid alike and clever ;

For sleep is a death that lasts but a night,

And death is a sleep when the lips are white,

And open no more forever.

O poet, be still, with thy maudlin verse ;
For singing of love, when love is a curse,
Neither mars the thing nor mends it ;

And sure as death and sleep are twins,
So life in mystery begins,
And another mystery ends it!

164 AN INDIAN WAR.

en ey

And he who only sleeps for a night,
Though never before were his dreams so bright,
Shall surely awaken with the light
To another day of sorrow ;
So better by far the sleep of the dead,
For the sleeper that sleeps it need not dread,
Though hard be the pillow beneath his head,
The doom of a sad to-morrow.

Ah, life is a riddle that none can guess ;
And whether it curse, or whether it bless,
Depends on no endeavor ;
For the spider of fate, with a thousand eyes,
Sits weaving its web for human flies ;
And the flies buzz ou forever !

a
And the wolf of hunger, gaunt and grim, ¢
Full often stops at the door of him
Who was cradled in bliss and splendor,
And the wolf of sin and the wolf of woe
Lie in wait for souls that are white as snow, t
Por the spider of fate is their sender. W
pl
And the king, who lifted his hand to slay, sk
And the priest whose blue lips tried to pray, fo
And the beggar in rags, who begged his way, fir
All beaten and brown with the weather ; aa
And the poet, who sang his song so sweet fe:
That the maiden knelt and kissed his feet, "
While he wrapped her about with her winding sheet, Ni
They are all rank grass together. Me
O
And the greener the grass on graves, ’tis said, sai
The surer its roots to be damp and dead, in
For both have a commor mother ; on
And death is a rest, and death is a spell; W.
And life is heaven, and life is hell, tio
But each completes the other. ad
Ah, true was the myth of long ago, ye
That a symbol of our life below :
Is a boat with palsied men to row, hin
And a blind man at the rudder ; of |]
For life is a pensive mother of kine, day
That roots and grubs in the ground like swine, the

With a serpent at the udder.”