BOOK REVIEWS: Nez Perce Summer 1877: The U.S. Army and the Nee-Me-Poo Crisis

National Park Service historian Jerome Greene spent 20 months researching the Nez Perce War of 1877 and many more months writing a book on the topic.

But the most thrilling experience of the project came just a few days ago when he held the gun that Nez Perce leader Chief Joseph turned over to Col. Nelson Miles after the Battle of the Bear’s Paw Mountains.

“I got goose bumps,” Greene said about the Winchester carbine that he received permission to handle at the Museum of the Upper Missouri in Fort Benton.

Greene is on a tour through Montana and Wyoming to promote his book, “Nez Perce Summer 1877: The U.S. Army and the Nee-Me-Poo Crisis” (Montana Historical Society Press).

Nee-Me-Poo means “The People,” in the Nez Perce language, and it is the name that they called themselves.

Greene, 59, grew up fascinated by Indian lore. A native of Watertown in upstate New York, he hunted for Indian pottery on the shores of Lake Ontario. But as buff of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, he particularly was drawn to “war bonnet Plains tribes.”

He graduated with degrees in history from Black Hills State College at Spearfish, S.D., and the University of South Dakota and put in two years toward a doctorate at the University of Oklahoma.

He spent three summers working at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument and joined the National Park Service full-time in 1976. Although he’s worked on historical projects from the colonial era through the Civil War, frontier history is his first and greatest love.

In 1994, he was asked by the Park Service to write a history of the Nez Perce War.

The seeds of the summer of 1877 were sown over several decades of federal government bungling in its dealings with the Nez Perce tribe, which had been friendly to whites since the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
 

That relationship began to change with a 1855 treaty that set up a large reservation in what is now eastern Washington and Oregon and northern Idaho. Pressure from white settlers and miners for that land led to a new treaty in 1863, which reduced the reservation to one-tenth of its original size.

While some Nez Perce settled on the smaller reservation, others, called non-treaty Nez Perce, did not, preferring to stay in their traditional home territory off the reservation.

As more whites moved into non-treaty Nez Perce land, tensions increased. Some Nez Perce were killed by whites who went unpunished.

A deadline was set for non-treaty Indians to move to the reservation. Incensed, some young Nez Perce killed four white settlers, and the situation escalated into another raid in which a dozen settlers were killed or wounded.

The U.S. Army, following its policy of protecting white settlers, was sent to bring non-treaty Indians under control.

During the subsequent fighting retreat, the Nez Perce led the Army on a 1,700-mile journey through Montana to within 40 miles of the Canadian border. Along the way, Indians would have 17 encounters with Army or volunteer troops.

The non-treaty Nez Perce at that time numbered 800 people, including 250 warriors, plus 2,000 ponies.

The two forces met at the first engagement of the war at Idaho’s White Bird Canyon on June 17, 1877. Nez Perce warriors surrounded an Army company and killed one-third of the soldiers before the rest could escape.

Gen. Oliver Howard took over the field command by the time the next battle occurred at Clearwater, July 11 and 12. While a tactical victory for the Army, the battle was strategic loss because the Nez Perce slipped away to Montana, where they planned to seek out Crow Indians with whom they had been friendly.

They settled briefly into the Big Hole area of southwestern Montana until Col. John Gibbon attacked on Aug. 9 and inflicted serious damage to the Indians.

Still, the Nez Perce moved on to Yellowstone Park, where they met two groups of tourists. Several of the tourists were killed, but others who were captured were later released.

The difference in treatment illustrates the wide latitude within the Nez Perce ranks, Greene said. They included young people who were seeking revenge for family members recently killed at the Big Hole, as well as older leaders who counseled patience.

One of the mysteries of that summer was the exact route the Nez Perce traveled through Yellowstone.

In his book, Greene maps out a conjectural path of the main body of the Nez Perce.

But in a Gazette interview last week, Greene said that Billings historian Stan Hoggatt has tracked down what is probably the precise route. Hoggatt’s information came out after Greene finished his book.

“He nailed it,” Greene said of Hoggatt’s theory on the route.

Coming out of the park, the Nez Perce followed the Clark’s Fork River to the Yellowstone River. North of present-day Laurel, they fought the Battle of Canyon Creek, which Greene describes as “an extensive skirmish,” against troops under Col. Samuel Sturgis.

Although not one of the larger battles of the campaign, Canyon Creek is significant for two reasons.

It stopped the Nez Perce’s progress by a couple of days, a delay that would enable Miles to eventually catch up with them as they neared Canada.

Second, Canyon Creek dashed Nez Perce hopes of getting help from the Crow, who helped federal troops during the battle and stole some of the Nez Perce livestock.

By Sept. 29, the Nez Perce reached Snake Creek in the Bear’s Paw Mountains southeast of Havre.

It was there that a force of 500 troops under Miles, which had cut diagonally across Eastern Montana from the mouth of Tongue River, caught up with the Nez Perce.

During the ensuing battle, the largest of the campaign, Miles’ troops suffered great casualties, but they were able to surround the Indians.

On Oct. 5, Chief Joseph — the only Nez Perce leader left, except White Bird — surrendered.

White Bird escaped to Canada with 50 Nez Perce. Eventually a total of about 200 Nez Perce reached Canada, although some would trickle back across the border onto U.S. reservations.

Joseph’s famous statement that that “I will fight no more” is one of most enduring legacies of the summer of 1877, but his exact words may not have been the message that we know today. Joseph’s message may have been paraphrased as it was transcribed onto paper by one of Howard’s adjutants, Greene said.

Another misconception has been that Joseph was the military leader behind the remarkable Nez Perce victories early in the campaign. Looking Glass, who was killed in the Bear Paw’s, actually was the real military leader, Greene said.

Accounts of the day do attest to Joseph’s dignity and intelligence, but he primarily was in charge of the logistics of moving the Nez Perce camp during most of the summer. He later did became an important leader of his people.

After the Battle of the Bear’s Paw, the Nez Perce were taken to the Tongue River Cantonment on the Yellowstone and then to Bismarck and the Indian Territory before being allowed to go to the Colville Reservation in Washington in 1885.

Greene largely used primary sources for the book, delving into Army documents as well as first-person accounts of Indian combatants. He also visited campaign battlefields and traveled extensively over the ground covered by the fleeing Nez Perce.

He uncovered several surprising facts, including that Joseph was captured during the Battle in the Bear’s Paw Mountains when the Nez Perce leader crossed the lines to talk with Miles.

It was only after the Nez Perce captured an Army officer that Miles agreed to a prisoner exchange.

The Nez Perce campaign has long fascinated Americans because it presents a different view of the Indian as antagonist, Greene said.

Joseph generally was portrayed sympathetically by newspapers across the country, which were closely following events on the Nez Perce Trail.

“Even some enlisted men and officers made comments about what the pinhead government was doing,” Greene said.

Then there’s a fascination with the Indians’ ability to time after time overcome the threat of the U.S. Army as well as the vast landscape through which they moved.

Both sides of the conflict sustained terrible casualties. Between 100 and 150 of the original 800 Nez Perce who started the journey were killed. Another 100 died from disease during their exile in Indian Territory.

On the Army side, 113 men were killed.

In the back of his book, Greene lists all names of the known casualties of the campaign.

Greene, who lives in Arvada, Colo., has written and edited several other books about frontier military history including: “Yellowstone Command: Colonel Nelson A. Miles and the Great Sioux War, 1876-1877”; “Slim Buttes, 1876: An Episode of the Great Sioux War”; “Frontier Soldier: An Enlisted Man’s Journal of the Sioux and Nez Perce Campaigns, 1877”; “Battles and Skirmishes of the Great Sioux War, 1876-1877”; and “Lakota and Cheyenne: Indian Views of the Great Sioux War, 1876-1877.”

Mary Pickett can be reached at 657-1262 or at mpickett@billingsgazette.com.
 

Updated: Mon Aug 27 09:17:14 CDT 2001 Central Time Copyright © The Billings Gazette, a division of Lee Enterprises.
 

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