On the morning of June 17 a battle took place in White Bird’s Canyon. Captain Perry, assisted by Lieutenants Theller and Parnell, was approaching with two troops of cavalry. Joseph had taken command. He quickly conceived of a daring triple-action assault. With instinctive judgment he chose strategic positions and gave brisk orders. He moved among his men, encouraging them, and directing them from place to place. He seemed an all-pervading, dominating force. He deployed his braves upon the heights. Protected by rocks and brush, they threaded a bobbing course upon the beleaguered cavalry. Dismounting and aiming deliberately, they decimated the ranks of soldiery.[190]
White Bird Canyon stands next to the Custer and Fetterman massacres as the Waterloo of white troops before Indians, but the conditions were in no way identical. The advantages were equally balanced at White Bird.
Young Joseph had proved himself a great war chief in a single engagement. From this time forth his destiny was with him. He was the last mighty Indian, and his name was Hin-mut-too-yah-lat-kekht, meaning “Thunder strikes out of water and travels to loftier heights.” Wherever one touches him he is great; every incident and circumstance discloses a big man. He exercised unerring judgment in strategy and tactics. Years afterward Joseph said, “The Great Spirit puts it into the heart of man to know how to defend himself.”
The defeat of Perry threw General Howard’s command into a frenzy of activity. Orders went out for reinforcements, and troops moved toward Lewiston from every direction. By the last of June, Howard was in the field. The wily Indian leader had moved his entire nation beyond the raging Salmon River where he made a stand. Said Howard, “A safer position was unchoosable, nor one more puzzling and obstructive.”[191]
Howard’s soldiers experienced great difficulty in going where Joseph’s whole band had gone. This was just the prelude to a game of hide and seek that lasted from late June to early October and lengthened into a dozen engagements as the two forces moved eastward for the space of sixteen hundred miles.
In the weeks that followed, General Howard learned to respect his adroit and formidable foe. Joseph’s forces never exceeded three hundred warriors. The whole band numbered about seven hundred. General Howard’s command numbered five hundred and eighty regulars, and it was later augmented by four separate commands in the course of the pursuit. The forces of Joseph and Howard came to grips on the banks of Clearwater River. There the Nez Percé fought with such courage and precision that the battle must be written up as a draw.[192]
Joseph was now ready to fight to a finish, but his captains voted for a retreat. Again he bowed to the will of the majority. They were destined to pursue a “trail of tears” during the next three months. It was a march as dramatic as the “flight of a Tartar tribe.”[193] The band was on the move, over the Lolo Trail—a terrific route. They lived on the country—roots, berries, and game.
Joseph could cope with one enemy, but the military resources of the whole Western Department baffled him. He found his exit from the Bitter Roots obstructed by Captain Charles C. Rawn from Fort Missoula. Rawn demanded surrender; Joseph parleyed until his forces outflanked Rawn’s position and escaped. At this juncture we see his humanity in making a treaty of forbearance with the settlers in Bitter Root Valley.
The entire Nez Percé tribe was overtaken and attacked at daybreak, on the Big Hole, by General John Gibbon’s force of one hundred and eighty soldiers, augmented by some of the erstwhile peaceful settlers. The slaughter on both sides was: whites, twenty-nine killed, forty wounded; Indians, eighty-three dead, wounded undetermined (fifty-three of the dead were women and children).[194] Joseph commented bitterly, “The Nez Percé never make war on women and children.” Notwithstanding the confusion of this surprise attack, Joseph’s band recovered and moved on. Howard was still on their trail.
Several Salmon City, Idaho, freighters fell before the drunken wrath of some of Joseph’s braves on Birch Creek. In Camas Meadows Howard maneuvered for a stand. The result was the loss of many mules and horses. Worse still was the mortal wounding of three soldiers and serious injury of five others. Just as Howard was expecting to pounce upon his prey, the crafty chief whirled around and inflicted a surprising blow, escaping almost scot free.