← Legends of the Old West
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- [00:00]
Ryan Reynolds
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- [00:26]
Chris Wimmer
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- [00:29]
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- [01:15]
Chris Wimmer
By August 11, 1877, the day after the Battle of Big Hole, the Nez Perce had been running and fighting the U.S. army for seven weeks. The first engagement was the Battle of Whitebird Canyon on June 17. There were smaller fights in early July, and then came the Battle of Clearwater on July 11 and 12. After that tough loss, the Nez Perce went on the run. The five bands who would not submit to life on a reservation fled east, crossed the Bitterroot Mountains in the central part of the Rocky Mountain range and moved down into western Montana. About two weeks later, they were caught by Colonel John Gibbons army in a high mountain valley that valley borders Modern Day Highway 43. Outside the tiny town of Wisdom, Montana. The Battle of Big Hole could probably be considered a draw. Gibbon's force of fewer than 200 soldiers suffered pretty serious losses, and so did the Nez Perce. But neither side crushed the other, so the war continued. The Nez Perce had learned that their chances of living in peace in the land they called buffalo country were far worse than expected. They had hoped to find safety and help from their friends, the Flathead people, but that was the first sign of trouble. The Flathead Nation was afraid to be associated with the Nez Perce and told them to keep moving. Soon after Gibbon's army had attacked, the Nez Perce had no idea they were being hunted by more soldiers. They thought they had left their problems with the army behind when they ran from their opponent in Idaho, General Oliver Howard. But now the Nez Perce learned about the interconnected nature of the American army and of America itself. General Howard was still following them and he wouldn't stop until one of two things happened. He captured them or they made it to a place that was beyond his reach. Despite the cold welcome by the Flathead people, the Nez Perce still held out hope that they could find sanctuary with their last remaining group of friends, the Crow Nation, in south central Montana. If that failed, there was only one more choice. Make a run for the border between Canada and the United States. The Nez Perce called the border the the Medicine Line. After the Battle of The Little Bighorn 14 months earlier, sitting Bull led his people to Canada to stay out of reach of the US Army. If it came to it, the Nez Perce would run north to join Sitting Bull. But that decision was still about a month away. Right now, in the second week of August, the Nez Perce still needed to cross another mountain range on their way to the Crow Nation. As they marched, the war entered a new phase. The Nez Perce now assumed everyone was against them. They would no longer be hesitant. They would no longer be peaceful. For the next month, attacks on white settlers and clashes with the army would be frequent and bloody. The Nez Perce War would turn into a genuine running fight. From Black Barrel Media, this is Legends of the Old West. I'm your host, Chris. And this season we're telling the story of the Nez Perce people and their epic fight to remain free. This is the Nez perce war. Episode 5 the Medicine Line. After the Battle of big hole on August 9, the Nez Perce lost faith in the leader of one of the five bands. He was a respected warrior named Looking Glass. But he had been too confident that the group of 750 people were out of danger. He, like many others, believed that they were largely free from the U.S. army. When the party had reached Big Hole, a few people urged him to send riders back up the trail to make sure they weren't being followed, but he refused. Two days later, they were attacked by Colonel Gibbon's army. So Looking Glass was out as leader of the march and a man named Lean Elk was in. Five weeks earlier, as the battles unfolded in the Nez Perce homeland, Lean Elk was completing this exact same trek. He had been hunting buffalo in Montana and had returned to Nez Perce territory just in time to hear about the conflict and learn about the decision to flee to the East. At that time, Looking Glass was the established leader for the march. But now the Nez Perce turned to the man who had the most recent knowledge of the area. For the next 10 days, they moved south through a series of valleys and crossed a range of small mountains. And those 10 days were full of hostility. The Nez Perce crossed into another valley that was dotted with small ranches. Most of the ranchers had heard of the oncoming Nez Perce column and fled to the nearest town, Bannack. Bannack is now one of the best preserved ghost towns in the West. But back in 1863 and 1864, as the Five Bands of Nez Perce were protesting the newest treaty from the U.S. bannock was ground zero for vigilante violence in Montana. More than 20 men were shot or hanged by vigilantes, including the one who became the most infamous victim, Sheriff Henry Plummer. It was now 13 years after Plummer was hanged and the Nez Perce were going to leave their mark on the area. They now viewed all white settlers as enemies, and they killed five ranchers who did not flee to Bannack. They killed five teamsters who were driving wagons of supplies to nearby Salmon City. And they found more hostility from the tribes in the area. A local band of Shoshone refused to help. Other bands of Shoshone and the Bannock tribe volunteered as scouts for the army in an effort to track and stop the Nez Perce. Still others were ready to fight the Nez Perce if need be. As the column marched south through the corridor of valleys between mountain ranges, the urgency to make it to buffalo country grew. About a week after the Battle of Big Hole, the Nez Perce made it to the southern end of the mountain corridor and turned east into a wide open prairie. It was called Camas Meadows, named for the camas plants that grew in abundance and looked like flowers. Some of the prairie still exists, but much of it has been transformed into circular fields for local farmers. At Camas Meadows, the Nez Perce paused their march, but not because they thought they were out of danger. Before the Battle of Big Hole, a warrior had had a vision about soldiers who were chasing the column. In the vision, the column reached a meadow and then a group of warriors doubled back on their trail and stole many horses from the soldiers. On August 19, the Nez Perce looked at the meadow and decided they had a chance to make the vision come true. General Howard's force was hot on their trail. And closing fast. This would be a good time to stop his progress. After sunset, a raiding party left the meadow and rode back toward Howard's men.
- [08:39]
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- [09:08]
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- [09:25]
Chris Wimmer
Despite a slow start, General Howard's column made good progress and picked up its pace as it grew closer to the Nez Perce. Howard's men had started up low, low trail into the Bitterroot Mountains a full two weeks after the Nez Perce, but with fewer people and animals, they moved at least as fast or faster than the Nez Perce. Three days before the Battle of Big Hole, Howard was still 100 miles away, but a courier had reached him with Gibbon's plan of attack. Howard's cavalry rushed forward, and he instructed his infantrymen to follow as fast as they could. On August 11, two days after the main part of the battle, Howard and his cavalry arrived at Big Hole to help Gibbon's force. Gibbon's men were generally in good spirits despite their losses, but with a number of dead and wounded, they were no longer an effective fighting force. Gibbon gave his 50 uninjured men to Howard and then started the journey to the town of Deer Lodge with his wounded. That was August 13, the day before the Nez Perce started attacking ranches farther south. Howard was still three days behind, but he was moving fast. The next day, Howard arrived at Bannock to cheers from the locals. He learned of the attacks on the ranches, and he was told that the Nez Perce were trying to reach the Crow Nation. That was at least 250 miles to the east and would require more hard traveling. Howard thought about cutting through the mountains on the other side of Bannack to try to intercept the Nez Perce along their presumed line of march, but he was forced to scratch that plan. Instead, he resumed his direct pursuit. Over the next four days, he closed the gap. By August 19, when the Nez Perce paused at Camas Meadows, Howard was less than a day behind. He was close enough to see dust clouds in the distance from the Nez Perce column, but he obviously didn't know that the Nez Perce had sent a raiding party back to strike him overnight. On the 19th, while Howard's men rested, the raiding party rode toward them. Before dawn on the 20th, the Nez Perce crept up close to Howard's camp. The warriors fired blindly into the camp and scared the hell out of the soldiers and civilians. In the darkness, Howard's men ran and fired in all directions. The warriors hurried to the animals that had been turned out to graze. They gathered the animals and herded them away from the camp. The soldiers rallied and chased the warriors. A group of Nez Perce hid behind a low ridge and started a long range duel with the soldiers while the rest of the warriors escaped with their prizes. The warriors kept the soldiers from following and eventually crept away to rejoin the raiding party. Even though the soldiers had been caught off guard, they had taken a precaution that had saved them. They had securely picketed their horses on the other side of the camp. And the Nez Perce were about to realize an embarrassing fact of the raid. As the darkness slowly diminished with the first light of dawn, the raiding party understood why it was frustrated as it tried to race away from the army camp. The animals they had stolen were moving much more slowly than expected and that was because they had stolen the pack mules, not the horses. The running fight in Camas Meadows lasted most of the day, but the Nez Perce eventually broke contact and rode ahead to their camp. Several soldiers were wounded in the attack and two eventually died from their injuries. After the surprise attack, Howard fortified his men in their camp and prepared for another assault, one that never happened. The Nez Perce resumed their march and it would be nearly a month before Howard came in contact with them again. After the raid, the Nez Perce headed east into America's first national park, Yellowstone. President Ulysses S. Grant established the park five years earlier in 1872, though it's likely the Nez Perce knew nothing about it. And when they entered the park, they encountered something else they had never heard. Tourists. By 1877, there were already crude hotels for visitors. The Nez Perce continued to hold the position that all white settlers or travelers were their enemies and they terrorized the people they found in the park. They kidnapped a group of tourists and held them for a short period before letting them go. They attacked a second group and killed a man. They attacked a German immigrant whose cabin doubled as a hotel near a popular place called Mammoth Hot Springs. They attacked a ranch and fought a small group of soldiers for two hours. They spent about two weeks traversing the park. And as they neared the other side, they needed to make another major decision. At the time the Nez Perce entered the park, there would have been three options for how to proceed. But their route through the park suggests they crossed one off the list pretty quickly. That option would have taken them on a northern trail toward Canada. Instead, they continued east across the park, which left the other two options. They could take a southern trail toward the Crow Nation or an eastern trail toward the Absaroka Mountains. Their first choice overall would have been to take the southern trail toward the Crows. Joining their friends in southern Montana had been one of the earliest goals of the journey. But they recently exchanged messages with the Crows and the Crows refused to help. So that left only one option, the eastern trail. But that meant they would have to endure another brutal trip over tall mountains that had year round snowfall. And it was late August, which meant winter was fast approaching. Despite the hardship, the Nez Perce chose the eastern trail and headed across the park toward the mountains. They avoided the easiest routes through the mountains piercing because they would have run into gold miners who would have alerted the military. The Nez Perce were now far ahead of Howard's column even with their meandering path through Yellowstone park, and they didn't want to give away their position. So they took the more difficult trails which should have provided the Army a chance to intercept them on the other side. But that was easier said than done. Part of the reason Howard's force was so far behind was was that it stopped near a small lake outside the park to rest and buy supplies. General Howard rode up to Virginia City and bought a ton of supplies for his men. They needed to prepare for winter as well, and he bought horses, mules, coats, socks and a myriad of other things. And while he was there, he used the telegraph to communicate with his superiors. He noted that if the Nez Perce continued their course, they would deliver themselves straight into the territories of other commanders whose men hadn't been riding and fighting for weeks. Colonel Nelson Miles with the 5th infantry and Colonel Samuel Sturgis with the 7th Cavalry were on the plains of Montana. Miles and Sturgis were better positioned to cut them off. And Howard gently suggested that maybe the other Commanders should take over. Commanding General of the Army William Tecumseh Sherman shut down the idea of Howard quitting. He ordered Howard to, quote, pursue the Nez Perce to the death. So Howard and his men continued to follow the Nez Perce through Yellowstone Park. But Sherman also activated two other units. The 7th Cavalry under Colonel Sturgis and the 5th Cavalry under Colonel Wesley Merritt. Sherman was trying to organize a trap. Army commanders thought the Nez Perce would take one of three routes when they exited the mountains. To keep it simple, one route followed a river to the north, one followed a river to the south and one followed a river to the deeper south. That last option was the least likely. It would have taken them to the Wind River. But General Sherman wanted it covered anyway. He sent Colonel Merritt and and 700 men of the 5th Cavalry north from Wyoming to block that route. Then he ordered Colonel Sturgis and 300 men of the 7th Cavalry to block the other two routes with Howard's force behind the Nez Perce, Sturgis force watching both trails in front of the Nez Perce and Merritt's force blocking the only other escape route. The Nez Perce war should have ended in the second week of September 1877, but it didn't. Plans were easy to make but harder to implement as Colonel Sturgis was about to realize, and probably not for the first time. On September 5, the same day the Nez Perce started up the western side of the mountains, Sturgis set up his position on the eastern side. He established a base camp near a small mountain that allowed him to watch both river valleys. That were the only two choices for the Nez Perce. He was in the perfect position. In theory, all he had to do was wait. But sometimes waiting is the most difficult part of the plan. The Nez Perce entered the mountains on September 5 with General Howard following them a few days behind. But Colonel Sturgis, who was watching the exit from the mountains, didn't know what was going on. He didn't know where the Nez Perce were or how soon they might arrive at one of the two river valleys he was watching. Nor did Sturgis know General Howard's position or exact movements. Howard had tried to relay all of that information to Sturgis, but the relay failed. They were out there in the raw country with no access to the telegraph. The only way to communicate was through the old fashioned use of couriers. Howard sent two couriers ahead to connect with Sturges, but they were both caught by The Nez Perce warriors killed one immediately and left the other for dead. And warriors killed five miners who were in their path. Miners who might have given away their location. The Nez Perce successfully stopped all communication from moving through the mountains. So Sturgis sat in the perfect position watching the two most likely trails that the Nez Perce would use to exit the mountains. But he had no idea what was happening. Sturgis got anxious and sent patrols into both valleys to see if they could learn anything. The patrol that went to the northern valley came back and said the trail there was too rough. The Nez Perce would never go that way. The patrol that went to the southern valley found Howard's dead and dying couriers. The one who had been left for dead was still alive, but he could barely communicate. He seemed to indicate that the Nez Perce were moving toward the southern valley. To Sturgis, it sounded like the northern valley was not an option. And now he had a report that suggested the Nez Perce were moving toward the southern valley. He committed to the southern valley and moved his men down there to confront the Nez Perce. For most of two days, Sturgis and the 7th Cavalry, some of whom were veterans of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, waited for another battle with a Native American army. It had been 15 months since the regiment lost its flamboyant Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and about 300 men in the summer of 1876. Now the regiment was about 125 miles southwest of the Little Bighorn battlefield and it was searching for its enemy. On the second day in the southern river valley the soldiers started up the trail into the mountains and still couldn't see any sign of the Nez Perce. Then finally, they found the tracks they were looking for. Except the tracks led to the northern valley, the one with the trail that was supposedly too difficult to use. And not only that, but General Howard's tracks led the same way. Sturgis and the seventh had missed everyone. The Nez Perce were now loose on the plains, though that was a temporary condition. They were still in front of Howard's army and had successfully avoided Sturgis Army. But those two things would only be true for another three days. By September 11, 1877, the Nez Perce were out of the Abzarca Mountains, out on the plains of Montana and running north. Their only hope for freedom was to make it to Canada and joined Sitting Bull's village. They were now 50 miles ahead of the two American armies but they faced A new obstacle. At that part of the Yellowstone River Valley it was easy to move east and west along the river. But to go north, there was a problem. On the northern side of the river, for miles in both directions there was a towering bank of rock. It rose 400ft above the river and was impossible to climb with children and horses and supplies. There was only one way through the barrier, a narrow cut called Canyon Creek. The Nez Perce knew it well from their trips to hunt buffalo with the Crow. That spot was just west of the present day city of Billings, Montana. In 1877, Billings didn't exist yet. It wouldn't spring up until the railroad arrived in 1882. But the village of Colson did exist. It was on the eastern edge of where Billing now stands. As the main body of Nez Perce headed toward the canyon, raiding parties attacked Colson and then they would all have to reckon with the three American armies on their trail. The raiding parties burned houses, haystacks, a stage station and the saloon. In Colson, most people had fled, but two trappers stayed behind and fell victim to the warriors. When the destruction was complete, the raiding parties rode back to the canyon to rejoin the main column. And they inadvertently breathed new life into the faltering pursuit by the US Military. Two days earlier, as the Nez Perce started their march toward Canyon Creek, three armies joined together in the chase of the Nez Perce. General Howard's column from Idaho finally connected with Colonel Sturgis, 7th Cavalry. Then Colonel Wesley Merritt and the 5th Cavalry arrived. They had been blocking an escape route along the Wind river and then pushed north when it was clear the Nez Perce were heading for Canada. Their combined strength was nearly a thousand soldiers, but many were worn out and disenchanted. Howard's men were in the worst shape. They had been traveling and fighting for two months. Sturgis and the 7th Cavalry had been in the field for a month trying to locate or intercept the Nez Perce. They were tired, but not as much as Howard's men. Merritt's men were the newest to join the pursuit so they were in the best condition. Sturgis was eager to make up for the embarrassment of losing the Nez Perce a few days earlier and he put forth a plan. Sturgis wanted to press ahead in a series of forced marches. He took Howard's 50 freshest cavalrymen and two howitzers and Merritt's 5th Cavalry. From September 12th to the 13th, Sturgis led the combined force on a pounding 50 mile ride through cold, wet, windy weather and they never saw the Nez Perce. By mid morning on the 13th, as most of the Nez Perce were moving up Canyon Creek and the raiding parties were attacking Colson, Sturgis and his command were exhausted. Sturgis was ready to stop the chase, but then his scouts spotted the raiding parties far ahead. As they returned to the main body of Nez Perce, the soldiers hurried forward and saw the Nez Perce moving into the canyon with renewed vigor. Sturgis ordered a two pronged attack. Colonel Merritt would lead a squad straight ahead in a direct assault on the rear of the Nez Perce column. Captain Frederick Benteen would take a squad and ride in a wide loop around Merritt's assault and attack the mouth of the canyon. The two squads raced into action and Merritt's men came in contact first. Warriors spotted the army and doubled back to act as a rear guard. As they galloped toward the soldiers, the scene turned into a reenactment of Reno's charge at the Little Big Horn 15 months earlier. It looked like two armies of mounted fighters would slam into each other in a fierce battle. But then, like Major Marcus Reno, Merritt ordered his men to dismount and march forward on foot while they fired at the Warriors. As a result, the soldiers never came within 500 yards of the Nez Perce rear guard and were never a threat. Meanwhile, Benteen's squad made it to the mouth of the canyon and engaged in a heavy firefight. The warriors had established protected firing positions in the canyon and they held off Benteen's squad. While warriors fought on two fronts, the entire Nez Perce column made it through the canyon and up onto the plateau on the other side. They were now 400ft above the soldiers and completely out of reach. The warriors retreated into the canyon and covered their trail as they slowly disengaged from the fight. Army commanders considered following the column through the canyon but wisely decided against it. It would have been a disaster. The Nez Perce cut down trees and pushed boulders onto the trail to block the path. The narrow, rocky gorge would have been a death trap for the soldiers. Another phase of the war was done and there would be more hard decisions ahead for both the army and the Nez Perce. The Nez Perce had traveled 1300 miles, but they still had 200 to go before they reached Canada and Freedom. They had avoided or rebuffed three American armies, but they didn't know that there was a fourth still ahead of them. The US army had been bested again, but it was about to bring Colonel Nelson Miles and a new army into the fight for what would be the final showdown. Next time on Legends of the Old West. The Nez Perce are less than 200 miles from freedom. It's the last stage of the flight of the Nez Perce and the final battle of the Nez Perce War. That's next week on Legends of the Old West. And members of our Black Barrel plus program don't have to wait week to week to receive new episodes. They receive the entire season to binge all at once with no commercials, and they also receive exclusive bonus episodes. Sign up now through the link in the Show Notes or On our website blackberrymedia.com memberships begin at just $5 per month. Original music by Rob Valliere. I'm your writer, host and producer, Chris Wimmer. If you enjoyed the show, please give us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. Check out our website blackberrymedia.com for more details and join us on social media. We're Old West Podcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and all our episodes are available on YouTube. Just search for Legends of the Old West Podcast. Thanks for listening.