The red fish, just like the deer, elk, wolves and bears, were gone. The canneries wouldn’t be the last assault on the salmon runs that had helped define the Native tribes of the Northwest — nor would this be the last time the Nez Perce crossed paths with the technology of extinction.
While the pressure on the Wallowa’s wildlife was just beginning to build, the strain on the valley’s pastures had already reached breaking point. The seasonal grazing of the Nez Perce horse herd was a growing irritation to those settlers with dreams of cattle baronetcies, and as the year-round inhabitants and ‘improvers’ of the valley, the immigrants’ claims of rightful ownership grew more insistent by the year. Few were more obstreperous than Wells McNall, a violent-tempered Indian hater who was endlessly appealing for military protection for his farmland, and who took to corralling and castrating any Nez Perce horses that strayed into his fields. In June 1876 McNall’s running feud with the tribe took a fateful turn, as he stormed into a Nez Perce hunting camp and falsely accused a group of warriors of stealing horses. Alec Findley, McNall’s peaceable and popular neighbour, attempted to defuse the argument, but McNall and a young Nez Perce known as Wilhautyah came to blows. As both men scrambled for McNall’s gun (the Indians were unarmed), McNall soon found himself staring down his own barrel, and indeed at his Maker, as he squealed to Findley: ‘Shoot the son of a bitch! Shoot, you damned fool!’
Panicking, Findley let fly, killing Wilhautyah instantly. It certainly wasn’t the first murder of a Nez Perce by a settler (more than thirty tribal members had so far been unlawfully killed, with just one settler convicted of any crime) but in the tinderbox of the Wallowa it was by far the most significant.
The Nez Perce dressed for war and the settlers dug in for a siege. Warriors took target practice in clear view of Findley’s home; the whites sent for rifles and begged for military support. At a series of stormy meetings Joseph and Ollokot, close friends of Wilhautyah, demanded that Findley and McNall be handed over; the distraught Findley offered himself for surrender several times, but the other settlers resisted such capitulation. Government agents arrived to meet Joseph and Ollokot, and faced restrained but uncompromising demands — the camel’s back had been broken and it was time the whites left the Wallowa for good. The unlawful spilling of Nez Perce blood in the valley only made the land more precious, more certainly owned. An explosion seemed likely; many settlers left, and two cavalry companies were sent from Lapwai to keep the peace. Ultimately, though, a resentful compromise was reached in September 1876: Findley stood trial for the murders in the Union County Court, but, with the Indian witnesses unwilling to participate in the white judicial system, he went free.
An uprising had been averted, but the murder of Wilhautyah had focused federal minds, and all Washington agreed that the tense uncertainty of the Wallowa was no longer acceptable — chiefly because in twenty minutes, on 25 June 1876, the rules had changed forever. That’s how long the rebellious Sioux and Cheyenne warriors led by Crazy Horse, Gall and Sitting Bull are believed to have taken to cut down General George Armstrong Custer, at the time the most famous soldier in America, and more than two hundred of his men, at the Battle of Little Big Horn. It was a firestorm in which America’s national faith in the inevitability of continental conquest was painfully bruised, and the mood of the government was irreparably darkened, as the West was flooded with yet more troops with orders to drive any’renegade’ Indians into exile, extermination or surrender. The history keepers of the tribe that fought at the Big Horn now acknowledge that the finest hour of their resistance also marked the moment when their subjugation became inevitable — but for many other tribes of the West, the distant battle would prove an equally gloomy turning point. (Perhaps that explains why, according to several reports, Custer died laughing.)
All were agreed — the Nez Perce problem now demanded a permanent solution, and the roaming Dreamer bands needed to be securely tied down. It was the perfect task for that most predictable of historical arrivals, ‘the man from the government’, a distant appointee unencumbered with any basic understanding of the situation yet burdened with an absolute faith in his own compassion, wisdom and decision. General Oliver Otis Howard was just such a man.
CHAPTER FOUR
POISON
‘I never thought I’d see the day when you went to the store for a bottle of water. Water?’
HORACE AXTELL, spiritual leader, Nez Perce tribe
‘Did you ever see a real rose?’
‘Nope, but maybe some day, if they ever dam the river, we’ll have lots of water and all kinds of flowers’
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, directed by JOHN FORD, 1962
GENERAL OLIVER HOWARD had earned his spurs — but lost his right arm — in the Civil War, before going on to secure a reputation as a redoubtable Indian fighter pursuing the Apaches across the southern deserts. His widely admired career received another garland in 1874 when he was appointed Commander for the Department of Columbia, with responsibility for patrolling and pacifying America’s most north-westerly corner. He actually met young Joseph very early in his tenure, a chance encounter when both men were visiting the Umatilla reservation. Joseph asked Howard if he brought news from Washington of the Wallowa Valley’s legal status; the general replied that he did not, the men shook hands, and parted.
General Oliver Otis Howard, the Commander of the Department of Columbia.
Howard, a devout Presbyterian who enjoyed his press nickname ‘The Christian General’ and who fancied himself as a sympathetic student of the red men’s plight, read plenty into the exchange: ‘I think Joseph and I then became quite good friends.’ In the winter of 1875 Howard proclaimed himself a champion of the Wallowa band’s property rights, writing to Washington that ‘it is a great mistake to take from Joseph and his band of Indians that valley…possibly Congress can be induced to let these really peaceable Indians have this poor valley for their own.’ A military colleague, George Crook, recalled that Howard had ordained himself to a mission of mercy: ‘He told me he thought the Creator had placed him on earth to be the Moses of the Negro. Having accomplished that mission, he felt satisfied his next mission was with the Indian.’
In early 1876 Howard instructed his right-hand man, Major Henry Clay Wood, to undertake a legal study of the status of the Wallowa Valley. Wood returned from the treaties and textbooks unequivocal — the Indians still owned the land, their title had not been extinguished by the Thief Treaty, and the government needed to choose between purchasing the valley properly or paying off the settlers to leave. His report to Howard also revealed an understanding of what was at stake that, though unable fully to escape the ethnocentricity of the age, probably represents the clearest insight from any government figure during the whole Nez Perce tragedy:
I cannot refrain from adding a word to express my convictions of the real cause of the dissatisfaction existing among the Nez Perce with the treaty of ‘63. Nature has implanted in the human heart a strong and undying love of home — the home, with its scenes and attachments, of childhood. This sentiment pervades the heart of the child of the forest and plain — the rude child of nature — no less, perhaps with a more fervent glow, than the breast of the native of the city, the pampered child of enlightened and luxurious civilisation.
To the parties to the treaty, it brought no loss, no change; to the non-treaties it revealed new homes, new scenes; it left behind deserted firesides; homes abandoned and desolate;