“Forlorn Hope”
July 4, 2009
By Norm Klobetanz
Happy 4th of July everyone. Lately I’ve been thinking about this story, again, so I thought why not tell it on our day for celebrating our independence.
On the early morning of June 17, 1877, 106 cavalry men and 11 citizen volunteers descended into White Bird Canyon. (Sources vary on the exact number of participants.) Their mission was to quell an Indian uprising. This was the real thing, not some romantic, glorified hero story found in novels and movies.
The citizen volunteers where pioneers, settlers, who primarily made their living ranching and farming. They were by necessity rugged and capable as their lifestyle dictated, perhaps more than our modern sensibilities give them credit, but they weren’t professional gunmen either as we too often imagine them as integral with the mythos of the West. The enlisted men were a diverse mix of Americans and immigrants with mostly limited training as soldiers. Some of the officers had extensive experience from the Civil War and previous Indian fights, but still there weren’t many John Waynes or Clint Eastwoods—they, of course, are only found in the movies.
1877 was a mere 122 years ago, basically just two life times. Those of us who live here now would probably be surprised at the number of people who lived in this part of the country then. Reading the historical accounts it seems that miners, ranchers, and farmers where quite common on the prairie, along the Salmon River, and at mountain gold diggings. The towns, however, were small or nonexistent. The story of these people and the Nez Perce Indians is complex and fascinating and a relative stone’s throw back in history.
The Nez Perce Indians were a culturally unified group of wide ranging tribes or bands. They roamed and lived on the lower Salmon; lower Snake; Clearwater Rivers; and the side drainages, mountains, and prairies associated with them. Gold miners and settlers continued to press inroads and eventually some Nez Perce signed away a significant portion of the reservation. It was like neighbors living ten houses down the street sold your home to a shopping mall developer and you couldn’t do anything about it. Indeed the army came and threatened you to move out or else. But, hey, down the street, they did have some backyards for you to move to.
I think if you take an honest look at history, people are very much a product of their times. It is probably not realistic to think that the forward surge and dominance of a technologically advanced society could have been stopped, just as it probably cannot be stopped today. Injustice is a corner stone of history. It just should have been done with more honor and fairness. Today we do a little better job with these things. Heck, at that time slavery was only recently outlawed, and it would still be another thirty-some years before women would win the right vote--one step at a time, as they say. As products of our time, most of us would agree that these were good things, while not necessarily so in 1877.
The non-treaty Nez Perce were being moved against their will from their ancestral lands onto the greatly reduced reservation, when three young “hot heads” went up the Salmon River above White bird Creek and murdered some settlers in revenge for past wrongs, murders, and, well the lose of their homeland. The Nez Perce were famous for never having killed a white man and for saving the Lewis and Clark Expedition, but the evil genie was loose. The chiefs could not contain all the braves and in the next days Indian marauders killed more settlers including women and children in the White Bird area. The army sent their closest troops from Fort Lapwai to stop or hopefully contain the hostiles until more troops could arrive.
The non-treaty Indians with all their belongings, children, wives, and grand parents were camped on White Bird Creek on the morning of June 17, 1877. The lookouts roused the camp early and warriors mounted their horses and in small groups, not in organized military fashion, rode out to meet the advancing troops on the hills not far above their camp.
It is interesting to consider that just the previous summer, General George Armstrong Custer led an ill advised cavalry charge against a Sioux and Cheyenne encampment that proved to be much larger than he thought. The American public was not ready for another debacle like that. The “Indian situation” was a hot potato. In this situation approximately 70 warriors rode out against a little more than a hundred adversaries. The Indians tried to parlay by waving a white flag. One of the civilians would have none of it and fired on the peace party. The battle was on.
Nothing went right for the cavalry or the volunteers and everything went right for the Indians. A bugler was shot and killed and another had lost his bugle on the ride into the Canyon making it impossible to issue commands to the troops. Horses and men were tired and not steady under fire, the volunteers fell back. Out flanked and getting shot up, the soldiers began a retreat that became a panicked rout in some cases. A running battle ensued up out of the canyon and across the prairie almost all the way to Grangeville. The Indians fought effectively, showed good horsemanship under fire, and were good marksman. They demonstrated here and throughout the battles to come that summer that they were formidable foes and fought bravely and well earning the highest respect as fighters from the soldiers that pursued them. Thirty-four soldiers were killed that day during the White Bird Battle. Four were reported wounded, two soldiers and two civilians. There were no reported Indian deaths; they claim only three were wounded.
Like injustice war is another corner stone of history. The Nez Perce War that summer and early fall proceeded to be a running battle over 1,500 miles through Idaho, the newly minted Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, and much of Montana. There are many books about the Nez Perce and the war. I encourage you to explore them because this story contains nuance; pathos; and, yes, heroism on both sides. It’s the story of the real West.
I read a fair number of books on the subject in the 1980’s, but last summer my interest in the Nez Perce story was rekindled—especially for the battle at White Bird. I was asked to bid a video production job for a group of U.S. Army officers who were going to raft with an outfitter and tour the battlefield. They wanted the rafting and tour documented onto a DVD.
I assumed this was some sort of club or association, a group like an alumni reunion just out to play on the river and take in a local point of interest. So I bid the job at “Riggins” prices and they almost passed on the video because they thought it too cheap and I wasn’t legit. You see, they were from the real world and had paid $2,000 and more to have their weddings videoed.
I also was wrong in my assumption. This group was actually the active officers of 1-37 Artillery Battalion of the U.S. Army stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington. They had not long ago completed an active tour of duty and, I think, were scheduled to go on another. The Army was paying for this—you know, like a corporate retreat for professional skills development and team building—a seminar, if you will.
Well, I almost lost the job. No one can accuse me of gouging the government and over charging for services and equipment. The rafting outfitter assured them that I would do a good job. (And I can say that later they did tell me the DVD was ell done, and they were happy with it.) After landing the job I thought more about it and of course realized this was not just a reunion but a training and study course, and that I should try to document in detail their tour of the battlefield. I mean, this was how they were going to justify, prove if you will, that their trip to Riggins was legit. I should point out that during the tour the officers spent some time discussing the tactics on how the civilian volunteers were used and how they performed during the battle. The context here was for them to consider strategies for if they were deployed with foreign citizen fighters or soldiers—as in Iraq or Afghanistan I’m assuming! (Good luck and thanks, boys. Here’s to a happy fourth for you.)
I made my wife, JK, go with me on the battlefield tour. She videoed the presentation, comments, and questions up close while I shot scenery, battlefield pans, group shots, and hiking from one historical marker to another. The Hike is a solid mile and a half, and the trail is steep in places though it actually is mellow terrain for the Salmon River Canyon. In 1965 the White Bird Battlefield became part of the Nez Perce Historic Park that is made up of 38 sites. Our tour guide was a National Park Ranger from Spalding, Idaho, where the main office and museum for the historical park is located. The historical Nez Perce photo at the end of this article is courtesy of the Park. They granted me use of some photos for my DVD the Selway Journal, A Boaters Guide to the Selway River.
Editing the video of the tour was very involved because of using two cameras and piecing together the audio to make sense and to capture the story and discussion of the battle. The project was definitely under bid. In any case, even though the tour was on a July morning, it was still very hot. The battlefield isn’t in Hells Canyon, but it is right next door. This can be one of the hottest places along the Salmon River. I grew up in Pennsylvania and I like to do my hiking in the “woods” as we say. Well, the same typically holds true for me here, but the winter and spring snow has most of our trails blocked. The Rapid River Trail has become everyone’s favorite low altitude and therefore often snow free tail. But it dawned on me last winter, with snow far down the canyon sides, a father and son asked me while I was guiding them in my drift boat if I knew of a local place they could hike. Why of course, I told them they should hike the White Bird Battlefield.
It is a self guided tour and starts just up the road for the town of White Bird. There are
“interpretive waysides” along the trail. These sign boards include colorful drawings, renditions portraying scenes from the battle, and there are write-ups explaining how the battle progressed. It is easy for the hiker to imagine that June day in 1877. It is actually pretty cool stuff. Interestingly if you explore the history in detail you will run into differing accounts and discrepancies (as is true with most history). Part of the fun is to try and figure out what scenario is the most accurate.
After we vidoed the tour last summer I reread a couple books about the Nez Perce. One I took from my shelf was Forlorn Hope, the Battle of White Bird Canyon and the Beginning of the Nez Perce war, by John D. McDermott (Caxton Press, Caldwell, Idaho). In Chapter 12, “The reason Why,” the author quotes Lt. Gen. Philip Sheriden from a 1878 comment regarding the U.S. Army having a vast territory to cover in the West: “No other nation…would have attempted reduction of those wild tribes…the whole force deployed and scattered over this enormous region…never numbered more than 14,000…The consequence was that every engagement was a forlorn hope...”
Later in the chapter the author, McDermott, wrote, “The Battle of White Bird Canyon had several results.” One was that, “It gave the victors a forlorn hope, as it turned out, and it continued a struggle for freedom that, however noble, brought suffering and death to those who participated in it.”
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