Governor Stevens at once determined to proceed to the Spokane to rescue these men, and if possible to restrain the Spokanes from hostilities. He dispatched Craig with all but three of the Nez Perce chiefs to Lapwai, there to confer with Lawyer, assemble the nation, and prepare them for the governor’s arrival. He was also instructed to send an express to the Spokane with information of his success, and the disposition of the Nez Perces. The chiefs retained with the party were Looking Glass, Spotted Eagle, and Three Feathers.

As at Hell Gate, the governor’s determination rested in his own breast, and it was currently reported and believed that the party would move directly south along the base of the mountains to the Nez Perce country, the shortest and safest route to the refuge of that friendly tribe. To move away from it and adventure sixty miles farther among the supposedly hostile, and certainly disaffected, Spokanes seemed little short of madness. In the evening some of the men, in discussing the matter, declared that if the governor started for the Spokane, they would not follow him, but would take the Nez Perce trail; but Higgins swore that no man should desert the governor if he started for Hell, and the incipient mutiny went no farther. The next day, November 27, the party marched down the Cœur d’Alene River to Wolf’s Lodge, nineteen miles, and, starting at daylight the following morning and making a rapid, forced march of forty miles, reached the Spokane village, just below Antoine Plante’s, before sunset.

The last four miles across the prairie was made at a round trot, and within thirty minutes after first sighting the rapidly approaching column, the astonished Indians beheld thirty well-armed men gallop boldly up, range themselves in front of their lodges ready to open fire, and heard the peremptory summons to decide instantly for peace or war. Needless to say that they, too, were friendly and for peace. They were taken completely by surprise, and had no alternative but to choose the olive branch. Only three hours before they had heard that Governor Stevens had gone down the Missouri.

The Indian employees and goods and the miners were safe. They had built a blockhouse, and were on terms of armed truce with the Indians rather than actual hostility. Before midnight Indian messengers were dispatched to Colville and the various camps, summoning the head chief Garry and the other chiefs, the Hudson Bay Company’s factor, McDonald, and the Jesuit missionaries to meet the governor in council at Plante’s. It is noteworthy that during all these troubles the Hudson Bay Company people and the Catholic missionaries were not molested by the hostile Indians.

The governor now gave his party, augmented by the four rescued employees, a military organization and the name of Stevens Guards, the name being the choice of the men, and appointed as officers C.P. Higgins, captain; W.H. Pearson, first lieutenant; A.H. Robie, second lieutenant; and S.S. Ford, third lieutenant. He also appointed Doty lieutenant-colonel, aide-de-camp, and adjutant, and Tappan captain and quartermaster. The miners were also formed into a military company, and adopted the name of Spokane Invincibles, with Judge B.F. Yantis as captain. The governor ordered guards regularly mounted at night.

A half-breed, who had been captured by Pu-pu-mox-mox and set free by him on condition that he would take a message to the governor to the effect that he, Pu-pu-mox-mox, intended to take the governor’s scalp, came and delivered his message.

CHAPTER XXXV
STORMY COUNCIL WITH THE SPOKANES

During the next few days the Indians were gathering for the council. Garry and a party of Cœur d’Alenes came on the 29th, and McDonald with the Colville chiefs, the missionaries, and four white miners on December 2. The council lasted three days, December 3, 4, 5, and was marked by disaffected and at times openly hostile views and expressions and uncertain purposes, on the part of the Indians, and steadfast determination to hold their friendship and restrain them from war, on the part of the governor. The Spokanes openly sympathized with the hostiles. Many of their young braves had joined them. They insisted that no white troops should enter their country, and urged the governor to make peace with the Yakimas, for the rumor was current that the troops had driven them across the Columbia and into the region claimed by the Spokanes. They objected to the whites taking up their land before they had made treaties and sold it, and were much stirred up because a number of Hudson Bay Company ex-employees at Colville had staked out claims, and filed with Judge Yantis the declaratory statements claiming them under the Donation Act. Kam-i-ah-kan’s emissaries had imbued them with all kinds of falsehoods concerning the war and its causes, and the purposes of the whites, particularly of Governor Stevens, and what he did and said at the Walla Walla council. They were to be driven by soldiers from their own country, and forced to go on the Nez Perce reservation without any treaty or compensation. They were to be deported west of the Cascades, and shipped across seas to an unknown and dreadful doom. Highly colored but imaginary stories of wrong and outrage inflicted by whites upon Indians were industriously circulated, and equally mythical tales of Indian victories and exploits.

Governor Stevens met their excited and hostile talk with a firm and unruffled front. He appealed to the well-known facts,—to the policy he had uniformly and consistently urged upon them and upon all the tribes since first coming to the country, the policy of peace and friendship with the whites, and of adopting the civilization of the whites, and which had been proclaimed as from the housetops, and established by treaty at the Walla Walla council, in the presence and hearing of their own head chief, Garry, and others of their number. He showed them how this policy was for their own benefit and protection, and referred to the Blackfoot council, and the peace he had there established, of which the Nez Perce chiefs present could give them full particulars. He declared he was ready to make a treaty with them on the spot, if they desired one, but in the troubled state of affairs would not himself urge it. By this firm and conciliatory treatment he at length brought them to a more reasonable state of mind, and induced them to lay aside all thoughts of war and preserve their friendship with the whites. The results of this remarkable conference are graphically stated in his own words:—