The Columbia River: Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery, Its Commerce

by William Denison Lyman

That was the last battle on the Walla Walla. Colonel Steptoe established a rude stockade fort on Mill Creek in what is now the heart of the present Walla Walla city, and went into winter quarters there in 1856-57. Governor Stevens returned to Olympia and launched forth a bitter arraignment against Wool. The latter, however, was in a position of vantage and issued a proclamation commanding all whites in the upper country to go down the River and leave the Cascade Mountains as the eastern limit of the white settlement. Thus ended for a time this unsatisfactory and distressing war. To all appearances Kamiakin and his adherents had accomplished all they wanted.

But this was not the end. Gold had been discovered in Eastern Washington. Vast possibilities of cattle raising were evident on those endless bunch-grass hills. Although there was as yet little conception of the future developments of the Inland Empire in agriculture and gardening, yet the keen-eyed immigrants and volunteers had scanned the pleasant vales and abounding streams of the Walla Walla and the Umatilla and the Palouse, and had decided in their own minds that, Wool or no Wool, this land must be opened. In 1857 the Government decided on a change of policy and sent General N. S. Clarke to take Wool’s place. General Clarke opened the gates, and the impatient army of land hunters and gold hunters began to move in. Meanwhile, Colonel Wright and Colonel Steptoe, though formerly they had closely followed Wool’s policy, now began to experience a change of heart. Out of these conditions the third Indian war, in 1858, quickly succeeded the second, being indeed its inevitable sequence.

Fort Sheridan on the Grande Ronde, Built by Philip Sheridan in 1855.
By Courtesy of Major Lee Moorehouse.

Three campaigns marked this third war. The first was conducted by Colonel Steptoe against the Spokanes and Cœur d’Alenes, and ended in his humiliating and disastrous defeat. The second was directed by Major Garnett against the Yakimas, resulting in their permanent overthrow. The third was conducted by Colonel Wright against the Spokanes and other northern tribes who had defeated Steptoe. This was the Waterloo of the Indians, and it ushered in the occupation and settlement of the upper Columbia country.

The Steptoe expedition was the most ill-starred event in the whole history of the North-west, unless we except that of the destruction of the Tonquin. Colonel Wright was then in command of the new Fort Walla Walla, located in 1857 on the present ground. Perceiving his former error in giving the turbulent and treacherous natives undisputed sway, he ordered Colonel Steptoe to go with two hundred dragoons to the Spokane region and subject the restless tribes centring there. Steptoe’s force was well equipped in every way except one. The pack train was heavily laden, and an inebriated quartermaster conceived the brilliant idea of lessening the burden by leaving out the larger part of the ammunition. Even aside from this fatal blunder, Colonel Steptoe seems to have had no adequate conception of the vigour and resources of the Indians.

As before, the Nez Percés were the faithful friends of the whites. Timothy, a Nez Percé chief living on Snake River at the mouth of the Alpowa, put them across the wicked stream, then running high with the May freshet, and went on with them as guide.

On May 16, 1858, the force reached a point near four lakes, probably the group of which Silver Lake and Medical Lake are the chief ones, a few miles west of Spokane. Here was gathered a formidable array, Spokanes, Pend Oreilles, Cœur d’Alenes, Okanogans, and Colvilles, the hosts of the upper country. Steptoe was soldier enough to perceive that it was time for caution, and he halted for a parley. Saltese, a brawny chief of the Cœur d’Alenes, declared to him that the Indians were ready to dispute his farther progress, but that if the white men would retire the Indians would not molest them. A friendly Nez Percé, seeing the duplicity of Saltese, struck his mouth, exclaiming, “You speak with a double tongue.”

The force turned back and that night all seemed well. But at nine o’clock the next morning, while the soldiers were descending a cañon to Pine Creek, near the present site of Rosalia, a large force of Indians burst upon them like a cyclone. As the battle began to wax hot, the terrible consequences of the error of lack of ammunition began to become manifest. Man after man had to cease firing. Captain O. H. P. Taylor and Lieutenant Gaston commanded the rear-guard. With extraordinary skill and devotion they held the line intact and foiled the efforts of the savages to burst through. Meanwhile the whole force was moving as rapidly as consistent with formation on their way southward. Taylor and Gaston sent a messenger forward, begging Steptoe to halt the line and give them a chance to load. But the commander felt that the safety of the whole force depended on pressing on. Soon a fierce rush of Indians followed, and, when the surge had passed, the gallant rear-guard was buried under it. One notable figure in the death-grapple was De May, a Frenchman, trained in the Crimea and Algeria, and an expert fencer. For some time he used his gun barrel as a sword and swept the Indians down by dozens with his terrific sweeps. But at last he fell before numbers, and one of his surviving comrades relates that he heard him shouting his last words, “O, my God, my God, for a sabre!”

But the lost rear-guard saved the rest. For they managed to hold back the swarm of foes until nightfall, when they reached a somewhat defensible position a few miles from the towering cone of what is now known as Steptoe Butte. There they spent part of a dark, rainy, and dismal night, anticipating a savage attack. But the Indians, sure of their prey, waited till morning. Surely the first light would have revealed a massacre equal to the Custer massacre of later date, had not the unexpected happened. And the unexpected was that old Timothy, the Nez Percé guide, knew a trail through a rough cañon, the only possible exit without discovery. In the darkness of midnight the shattered command mounted and followed at a gallop the faithful Timothy on whose keen eyes and mind their salvation rested. The wounded and a few footmen were dropped at intervals along the trail. After an eighty-mile gallop during the day and night following, the yellow flood of Snake River suddenly broke before them between its desolate banks. Saved! The unwearied Timothy threw out his own warriors as a screen against the pursuing foe, and set his women to ferrying the soldiers across the turbulent stream.