White Bear: A Novel of the Nez Perce Conflict, 1877

By Robert P. Wells

White Bear is a novel based on the amazing true story of the Nez Perce conflict of 1877, the so-called “last Indian war” of the American West. White Bear is an untested young warrior of the Nez Perce people, natives of the Pacific Northwest, led by his uncles Chief Joseph and the chief’s younger brother, the war-chief Ollokot. Forced off their traditional homelands and onto inadequate space on an Indian reservation by an unlawful treaty – enforced by the US Army – the Nez Perce choose peace instead of an unwinnable war. But renegade warriors among them suddenly attack white settlers in the area, in vengeance for old wrongs, before the people come onto the reservation—forcing the Nez Perce to escape in a desperate cross-country bid to reach sanctuary in Canada. Thus begins the extraordinary flight by the Nez Perce for freedom, a journey that will take them over a thousand miles of the roughest wilderness of the American West, and involve them in numerous battles and skirmishes until the final confrontation. It is in this turbulent context that White Bear comes of age.

Epic in scope and scale, White Bear features a large cast of characters on both sides of the conflict – the Nez Perce people attempting their long escape toward freedom, and the American military forces determined to stop them – to tell the unprecedented and highly dramatic story of the longest running battle in American history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert P. Wells
• Release date: Nov 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215516331

Robert P. Wells

Dr. Robert Preston Wells, Ph.D. was born in Los Angeles in the middle of the 20th Century and graduated from UCLA (B.A., summa cum laude), the University of Chicago (M.A.) and the University of Edinburgh (Ph.D.), where he also won a postgraduate scholarship, Writer's Bursary from the Scottish Arts Council, and membership in the Scottish Arts Society. He has taught undergraduate courses at UCLA, the University of Edinburgh, the University of Melbourne, and Millikin University in Illinois. He spent almost 30 years as a senior executive in IT publishing (Australian Macworld, Mobile Business, Upside Magazine, Linux Magazine,Technology & Investing, Asia) before semi-retiring to write fiction, and become an indentured servant to dogs and cats. His books include "White Bear," "The Virgin's Bastard," "Overlord / Underhand," "Judith in Hell," "Three True Tales" (short stories), "Veteran's Day" (one-act comedy), and "Journeyman: Selected Poems."Contact the author online:Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/auldmakarTwitter: http://twitter.com/auldmakar

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WHITE BEAR

A novel of the Nez Perce conflict, 1877

Robert P. Wells

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Auld Makar Publications

First American edition

Copyright © 2023 by Robert Preston Wells

All rights reserved under the 1976 United States Copyright Act as amended, International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions, and all other global agencies protecting intellectual property. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form, digital or analogue, or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, scanning, recording or otherwise – without the prior written permission of the publisher, excepting use of quotations in reviews.

White Bear – a novel of the Nez Perce conflict, 1877 is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

eBook License Agreement: This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people without permission. If you would like to share this eBook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. And thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

The author’s preferred typeface is Palatino Linotype, 11-point.

Cover photo: War-chief Ollokot, Chief Joseph’s younger brother (May 1877).

Published in the United States by Auld Makar Publications

Decatur, Illinois

ISBN 979-8215-516-33-1

Books by Robert P. Wells you might also enjoy:

Journeyman: Selected Poems

The Virgin’s Bastard

(an Elizabethan murder mystery)

Overlord / Underhand

(a novel of WWII espionage)

Judith in Hell – WRNS Officer Judith Burroughs, P.O.W.

(Overlord’s prequel, a novel of WWII)

Three True Tales

(short stories)

Veteran’s Day

(play, a dark comedy in one act)

For Dad, Robert H.—

who loved Nez Perce country

Heart of the Monster

In the beginning…

Every culture has its cherished origin stories. For the Nee-Me-Poo nation (Nimiipuu, The True People; or Nez Perce – pierced nose – as French trappers mistakenly came to call them), the story of their people begins at the stone landmark near present day Kamiah, in Idaho, called Tim’né pe, or "Heart of the Monster." This is the place where legend says Iceye'ye (or Coyote, pronounced ‘It-see-yi-yi’) killed the Monster that was swallowing all of the animals. Without the cleverness of the Coyote in outwitting the Monster, all the world’s creatures would still be imprisoned in the Monster’s vast belly.

One day Iceye’ye was building a fish ladder at Celilo Falls in today’s Oregon. He was busy at this when a passing animal shouted to him, Why are you bothering with that? All of the animals are gone!

Well, said Iceye'ye to himself, then I’ll stop doing this, because I was doing it for the animals; and now I’ll go along too.

From there he went upstream, by way of the Salmon River country, to find the Monster swallowing the other animals. Along the way he took a good bath, saying to himself, I will make myself tasty for the Monster and then he dressed himself nicely, Lest it vomit me up or spit me out."

Coyote tied himself with rawhide ropes to three mountains. From there he came along up and over the ridges, approaching the Monster. Suddenly he saw its great head. He was quick to hide himself in the grass, and gaze at it. Never before in his life had he seen anything like it; never such a large thing – its head was huge, and away off somewhere melting into the horizon was its gigantic body.

Coyote shouted to it, Oh Monster! We are going to devour each other!

The big eyes of the Monster roved around, looking everywhere for Iceye'ye, but it did not find him because Coyote had painted his body with clay to achieve a protective coloring in the dry grass. The Monster also failed to see that Coyote had on his back a pack containing five stone knives, some pure pitch, and a set of flint-stones for making fire.

At last, Iceye'ye shook the grass to and fro, and shouted again, Monster! Let us inhale each other!

The Monster now saw him moving, and it dared him: Oh Coyote, you inhale first. You swallow me first.

Coyote tried. Powerfully, and noisily, he drew in his first breath, but the great Monster just swayed and quivered, and did not move.

Then Iceye'ye said, Now you inhale me, for already you have swallowed all the beasts—so swallow me too, lest I become lonely.

Now the Monster inhaled like a mighty wind, and Coyote, pulled toward him, cut the ropes holding him fast.

Thus, Coyote dashed right into the Monster’s mouth.

From there he walked down the throat of the Monster. Along the way he saw many bones scattered about, and he said to himself I see that many creatures have died here. He also passed many animals still living, and he asked them, Where is the heart of the Monster? Show it to me.

His close friend Fox greeted him from the side, and asked: The Monster is so dangerous. What are you going to do to it? And Coyote instructed him and the other animals they met to bring wood and anything that would burn. When Iceye'ye at last arrived at the vast heart, immediately he began to cut off slabs of fat and throw them to the animals, saying It is too bad you are hungry. Here, eat this.

And now Iceye'ye started a fire with his flints, and smoke drifted up through the Monster’s openings—mouth, eyes, nose, ears, anus. This fire burned near its heart, and so the Monster began to writhe in pain; and Iceye'ye began cutting away on the heart. But it was so big that very soon he broke his stone knife.

Immediately he took up another to work, and in a short time this one also broke.

At this Iceye'ye said to all the animals, Gather up all the bones and carry them to the Monster’s openings. Pile them up, and, when it falls dead, kick all the bones out the opening closest to you. Take the elders to these openings also, so they may get out easily.

Then with another knife he began cutting away at the heart again, and the Monster was in great pain from this and from the fire burning at his center. The Monster wanted to cast out Coyote, but it could not do this.

The third knife broke and then the fourth, leaving only one more. Now the heart hung by only a very small piece of muscle, and Coyote was cutting away on it with his last stone knife. The Monster’s heart was still barely hanging when his last knife broke, whereupon Iceye'ye threw himself on the heart and hung on, just barely tearing it loose with his hands. In its death convulsions, the Monster loosened all the openings of its body, and now the animals kicked the bones outside and made their escape.

Once again free, the animals arranged all the bones and helped Coyote carve up the great Monster. And now Iceye'ye smeared blood on his hands and sprinkled this blood on the bones, and suddenly there came to life again all those creatures who had died inside the Monster.

Coyote began dealing out portions of the body to various parts of the country, over all the land—toward the sunrise, toward the sunset, toward the warmth, toward the cold. And by that act he destined and fore-named the various people he created: the Coeur d'Alene and their neighbors to the north became skilled gamblers; the Yakima, who were short and stocky, made good fishermen; the Cayuse were formed as small and hot-tempered people; the Black Feet were made from the Monster’s feet, and became tall and slender and warlike; the Flatheads and the Crow came from the head; and more tribes—Umatillas, Spokanes, Bannocks, Shoshone, Cheyenne, Sioux and many others—were made from other parts, and sent off to their own lands.

And now Fox came up to Coyote. The two friends were alone. What is the meaning of this, Iceye'ye? You have distributed all of the body to faraway lands, but you have given yourself nothing for this immediate locale.

Well, snorted Coyote in irritation, Why did you not tell me this before? I was so busy I did not think of it.

And so Coyote turned to the animals and said, Bring me some water with which to wash my hands. They brought him water and he washed his hands; and now with the bloody wash water he sprinkled the local regions and said, You may be little people, but you will be powerful. Even though you will be small people, because I did not give you enough of the Monster’s body, nevertheless you will be very, very manly. You will be brave and intelligent and work hard. Only a short time away is the coming of the human race. And you will be known as the Ni-mii-puu, the ‘True People,’ or Tsoop-nit-pa-lu, People Crossing Over the Divide.

And this is how Coyote came to create the Nee-Me-Poo, the True People.

But much later, a new, even bigger Monster came to be born in the East, which the Coyote could not foresee, nor would he be able to overcome it—a Monster with millions of heads and millions of arms and legs, a Monster very greedy for the lands and wealth of the La-te-tel-wit, the Human Beings, that Coyote had created, a Monster swarming westward from lands of the sunrise to overwhelm and bring great sorrow to the Nee-Me-Poo…

JUNE 1877

14 June 1877

Split Rocks, Tolo Lake, Idaho

White Bear could still smell the blood of slaughter on his hands.

The young warrior sat astride a swift gray war horse, scanning the prairie ahead at the rear of the small party of Nez Perce hunters.

The ten of them had left their main camp four days ago to butcher a dozen of their range cattle, prepare the hides and meat, and return with this bounty piled high on twelve pack-horses. And although White Bear had washed himself – he and the others refreshed by the shock of an early morning swim in the Salmon River behind them, breathtakingly cold, a swift-running torrent churning with snow-melt – he could yet smell the blood.

A small smile of pleasure played on his lips as they jogged along.

The afternoon sun warmed the blue- and black-checked flannel shirt on his back even as a north wind cooled his face.

Everywhere ahead he saw the gently rolling meadows, in full spring bloom with the blue lilies that gave the Camas Prairie its name, endless hot green grasses rippling in the breeze, topped with camas flowers stretching before them blue as an alpine lake to the dark hills on the far horizon, and even up those slopes toward the bright azure sky, as if lake-water might hold to the sides of mountains.

White Bear, Heyoom Hih-hih in his own tongue, took pride in riding at the back of the group, his bigger, older friend Grizzly Bear Blanket riding silent beside him. His present pleasure included the honor he felt at being assigned as the party’s rearguard, a position of trust, the place of courage, the place of last defense.

If a surprise attack should come, he and Grizzly Bear Blanket were expected to hold back the enemy until his uncles, Chief Joseph and his younger brother Ollokot, moved the women ahead to safety with Half Moon, Whittling, and Shell Rock – the other warriors who had made the journey with them – before riding back to help them in the fight.

No one expected any trouble. Yet White Bear felt the warm glow of pride all the same, happy Ollokot had ridden back to them, flashed his easy grin, and told them: I feel safe enough to sleep in the saddle on the way back, knowing two of my grizzly bears are here, watching out for us.

White Bear and Grizzly Bear Blanket had returned wide smiles and nodded to each other as Ollokot rode back to the head of their column to rejoin his brother Joseph.

Although young, just nineteen snows, White Bear was already considered a good hunter by his people, a patient tracker, a fine marksman with a steady hand and a true eye.

But he had not yet been tested in battle – no scouting for the US Army, no fighting off horse-thieving Bannock raiders, no counter-raids to retrieve stolen stock or take an enemy’s horses, in retaliation or for the pure joy of it.

His uncle Ollokot, leader of the young men on hunts and in war, had encouraged him since childhood to follow the warrior’s path.

As White Bear grew and gained in strength and experience, his uncle’s foresight proved wise counsel. Ollokot and his first wife Aihits Palojami, Fair Land, sister to his mother and White Bear’s aunt, had taken him in and raised him as their own when he had been orphaned ten years ago. And deep within White Bear blazed an urgent certainty that he could achieve no greater ambition as a man than to make his uncles proud.

The odor of the blood on his hands satisfied him. It meant a good hunt, food for all.

Not that he found harvesting cattle difficult. They did not run away from men on horseback, as did other game – buffalo, white-tailed and mule deer, elk, mountain sheep, the smaller animals. They did not fight back like wolves or bears. Nor had they wisdom to be afraid. They knew of death. But becoming food for the men who tended them, fearing the arrow or the bullet – these things fell beyond their understanding.

A man could ride up to a grazing cow, quietly, without disturbing it, aim his gun between its wondering eyes – in White Bear’s case, a Henry repeating rifle he had borrowed for the hunt – and fire. At the muzzle-flash and loud report the beast would thump down to the earth, its life-blood ebbing into the soil, often dying without protest or making any sound of its own.

White Bear, and the other men killing the cattle, would sing songs thanking the spirits of these animals, grateful they had given up their lives in order that the True People might live. They sang their prayers in praise of the ways of nature.

By ancient custom, men provided the game and the women did most of the hard work: skinning the carcasses, cutting and carving them up, drying and dressing the meat, wrapping and packing it on the horses. Joseph had brought his 12-year-old daughter Kapkap Ponmi, Sound of Running Feet, a girl eager to learn, quick of mind and energetic; and Ollokot had taken along his younger wife, Wetatonmi, White Feather, who had lost a baby that winter. Along to help also rode Welweyas, Coulee, a strange half-and-half creature who was made as a man but who dressed and acted as a woman.

There had been too few women on this trip for all the work involved; and so, joking and laughing about their new feminine charms, all the men pitched in as well.

Everyone felt the need to hurry now.

Chief Joseph and Ollokot, leaders of the Wallowa band of Nez Perce to which White Bear had belonged since he came to them as a nine-year-old, led the group as they traveled back to their camp at Tepahlewam, Split Rocks, a cavernous gorge located about a mile to the west of Tolo Lake, a sheltered place which offered a spacious and pleasant campsite at the head of the boulder-strewn canyon, with ample food and water nearby.

Here, by tradition, the five non-treaty Nez Perce bands – those True People who had chosen not to live as the white settlers did, as Christians and farmers confined to fixed homes on a small plot of land – gathered at the beginning of summer.

They chose the old ways of their ancestors. They met here annually, at the start of the hunting season, the four or five months of warm weather through to the first snows of autumn, that allowed them to gather food for the inevitable harsh winter to come.

Joining the Wallowa band of Chief Joseph at Split Rocks each year were the Lamtamas under Chief White Bird, the Alpowai of Chief Looking Glass, the Pikunans of Chief Toohoolhoolzote, and the Palouse of Chief Hahtalekin – over seventy lodges, more than seven hundred souls when all the bands met together beside Tolo Lake.

Once at this rendezvous, everyone greeted friends and relatives in other bands, exchanged gifts, caught up with each other’s news, participated in the nightly songs and dancing, and observed various sacred rituals and ceremonies of their Dreamer religion.

When not off hunting or fishing, the men sat in council together, smoking and talking and telling stories; or gambled at dice and cards and other games; or raced their horses, and wrestled, and held foot races and various contests of skill and strength.

White Bear and Yellow Wolf, his 21-year-old cousin, both did very well in these competitions. In riding in circles and firing at targets on a post from the back – or beneath the neck – of a galloping horse using a rifle, revolver, or bow-and-arrow, they earned praise for their commanding horsemanship and excellent shooting.

Children, when not at play or learning needed skills, usually helped herdsmen tend the vast numbers of Nez Perce horses and cattle, source of their nation’s great wealth.

They also helped the women with the practical matters of living – fetching water, and wood for cook fires; feeding the families; cleaning their cooking utensils, clothing and tepees; scraping and preparing and cutting hides and sewing leather into clothing, moccasins, bags and shelter covers; sharpening blades and repairing tools; weaving baskets and mats and other household goods from grasses, reeds and rushes.

Women tended the children and spent much of their time foraging, and preparing food. They cleaned and cooked, or dried, the abundant salmon, the cutthroat trout, and other fish, as well as cut and dried strips of beef and game meat that the men provided them.

In season, they harvested many sorts of berries, the biscuit-root kouse, wild carrots, and dozens of other edible plants. Just now, the blooming camas roots were becoming their sweetest, and the women spent hours gathering bushels of the black-skinned bulbs, abundant everywhere on the prairie, which they would cook, or dry and pound into meal for making breads and soup.

White Bear often watched with admiration as his aunts Fair Land and White Feather, and Joseph’s wives Bear Crossing and Springtime, along with all the other women of the village, as they patiently busied themselves with the many labors that kept them all going.

As a child, he did as he was told and helped the women with their work, and learned much from them. But as a man, a hunter and a warrior since last year, offering to help them would not cross his mind now; nor would it occur to the women to ask.

Each knew the needful roles everyone must play.

Thinking of home, White Bear’s reverie faded; his smile fell, and dissolved into an uneasy frown, remembering that from tomorrow’s sun their whole way of life, the ancient customs of their ancestors they followed still, lay under the gravest threat.

Up ahead, Joseph, aware of the lengthening afternoon shadows, urged his horse to a trot, and the entire party picked up their pace. The loads of meat began to sway awkwardly the faster their pack-horses went, the ropes around their necks stretched taut as they were pulled along.

White Bear wondered why Joseph had waited so long to speed up, knowing he had two compelling reasons to hurry home.

Springtime, Joseph’s younger wife, was large with child and she had been close to giving birth when they left to slaughter the beef. She had been confined already to the special women’s lodge where such events took place, attended by her sister-wife Bear Crossing and other medicine women acting as midwives.

He knew Joseph would be anxious to learn if he was coming back in time for the birth, or to greet his newest child.

The other need to hasten home weighed more on Joseph, as it did on all of them.

Tomorrow, the True People were to be deprived of their homeland, their nomadic traditions old beyond reckoning.

Tomorrow, all the people belonging to Joseph, White Bird, Toohoolhoolzote and Hahtalekin had been ordered by false law to travel eight miles northeast from Split Rocks and cross over onto the lands of the Lapwai Indian Reservation, where their estranged cousins, the treaty-bound Christian Nez Perce, had lived for decades like the white intruders they emulated.

Only Chief Looking Glass and his people were exempt, since they happened to live within Lapwai’s boundaries, to the east, where Clear Creek joined the Clearwater River. The other families of the True People were told they must abide on the reservation and choose small parcels of land, no more than twenty and as little as six acres, and settle down as farmers – a life for which they had no desire, no training, and a deep religious loathing.

Even if Joseph’s people had been willing to try it, even if the best land was not already occupied, even if places had been prepared for all of them to live, it was too late to plow the ground to plant and harvest crops this year. They had to hunt this summer to eat; but Joseph had been warned that Nez Perce hunters, once confined to the reservation, would only be allowed to go out to fish and chase game by special permit, given by the Indian Agent in charge, John Monteith, a man hostile to their beliefs and way of life. Nor did the Americans give any consideration to their thousands of horses and cattle, great herds in need of endless grasslands.

Tomorrow, if the True People failed to comply with their unjust orders, the American government threatened to send its cavalry and walking-soldiers to force them onto the reservation’s lands using bullets and bayonets.

White Bear seethed to think of it. But he understood why his uncles and the other chiefs – with the greatest reluctance – had chosen a bad peace over an unwinnable war.

The late afternoon light would soon fade into evening when they came within sight of their encampment at Split Rocks.

Even from two miles distance White Bear could tell something was wrong. Many of the lodges that had been there when they left were missing.

Beside him, Grizzly Bear Blanket stiffened in his saddle, alert.

A rider! Look! he said, pointing with his rifle barrel. Then he cocked the lever to put a round in the chamber, in case.

A horseman raced across the prairie toward them, whipping his pony’s flanks with his quirt to gallop faster. After a moment, White Bear recognized the diminutive figure of Two Moons. The long dark braids on either side of his head flew behind him as he raced toward them.

Because of his small size, Two Moons appeared to belong to another band of Nez Perce. Although middle-aged, he was short and lean, resembling a teenaged boy; whereas Chief Joseph stood at six-foot-one, his brother Ollokot was two inches taller, and both were graceful, agile, and athletic – powerfully built men, reflecting the demanding physical life they all led.

White Bear, close to Joseph’s height, was young and not yet as muscular; his older cousin Yellow Wolf was five-foot-eight and exceedingly strong – in fact, many of the men of the Wallowa band stood tall, well-formed, and moved with a quick and easy grace. Even local white men said the Nez Perce were the most impressive Indians they knew – good-looking and physically imposing, intelligent, proud, healthy, self-sufficient, peace-loving and obedient to a just moral code that would be the envy of many a Christian community, if those communities aspired to virtue.

Among the neighboring tribes, the True People were also renowned for their courage. And although small, Two Moons was a leader among warriors. He had always proved an exceptional horse-breaker, a deadly sharpshooter, and a fierce fighter who never showed fear in battle. If he led a war-party against enemy tribes, men going with him felt confident they would return successful, unharmed.

Joseph raised a hand to stop their column, awaiting Two Moons’ news. Without a word, White Bear and Grizzly Bear Blanket rode past the others pulling at the pack-horses until they flanked Joseph and Ollokot.

A moment later, Two Moons reined to a hard stop in front of them, sweating and out of breath, his thin face etched with anxiety.

War! he shouted. War has broken out! Three white men have been killed! Everyone is leaving Split Rocks, running away!

Joseph and Ollokot shot a quick glance at each other, instantly alarmed.

Quick! Joseph nodded around at the others. We must go!

The two chiefs applied their quirts and their horses surged forward. Two Moons, Grizzly Bear Blanket and White Bear fell in behind them at the run, leaving the others to bring in the beef.

As they approached their encampment, White Bear could see that the majority of the people had gone, and moved most of their large herds with them. Smoke still curled up from many stone-ringed campfires which had stood at the center of lodges.

When they entered what was left of the camp Joseph headed for his own lodge. His tepee and Ollokot’s were the only two still standing in their area; a few others nearby were being dismantled in haste. Noise and confusion reigned wherever they looked. Camp dogs ran about barking excitedly. The places where the Alpowai, the Pikunan and the Palouse had set up their lodges were already deserted. People shouted to each other as they rushed about, hurrying to get away, panic on their faces as they pulled down tepees and lodge-poles, packed satchels and rolled things into buffalo robes and blankets, loaded their belongings onto travois, horses and mules, put children on horses or pulled smaller ones up behind and in front of them, and trotted away to the east.

Joseph threw a leg over and slid off his horse in front of his lodge to look for his wives.

Ollokot and the others dismounted as well.

Find out what happened, Joseph called to his brother. We must stop everyone. And then he disappeared inside.

Ollokot raised his eyebrows and his hands in wonder as he turned to Two Moons, who stood looking around the deserted camp as if dazed.

Two days ago, he began, his gaze returning to Ollokot, "we held a tel-lik-leen, our last war parade around camp, singing songs of friends gone, old battles, old victories. Shore Crossing and Red Moccasin Tops took the position of honor at the rear, riding double on one horse just behind me."

Ollokot nodded. Both men, in their mid-twenties, were great friends, superb athletes, renowned for their bravery, standing out among Chief White Bird’s boldest warriors.

Two Moons glanced around their faces as he continued.

Shore Crossing’s horse strayed across a piece of canvas belonging to Yellow Grizzly Bear’s wife. She was drying kouse on it; and she got angry. And Yellow Grizzly Bear complained to Shore Crossing. ‘See what you do? Playing brave, you ride over my woman’s hard-worked food! If you are so brave, why don’t you go shoot the white man who killed your father?’

Two Moons glanced down briefly, coming to the bad news.

His rebuke upset Shore Crossing, who wept angry tears when he answered, ‘You will regret your words.’ And before dawn yesterday, Short Crossing rode off with Red Moccasin Tops and his younger nephew Swan Necklace to seek his revenge.

The killing of Chief Eagle Robe by a white rancher named Larry Ott almost led to war two years ago; but Eagle Robe himself wanted no fighting, and cautioned his son against vengeance even as he lay dying.

A recent settler, Ott had asked Eagle Robe if he could pasture some horses on Eagle Robe’s land; and the friendly old chief let his neighbor do so. The next year, Ott fenced off that pasture for his own use. When Eagle Robe confronted him to complain, Ott shot him with a pistol. Friends helped the mortally wounded chief home. Eagle Robe knew his son would avenge him, and with his dying breath he made Shore Crossing swear not to kill Ott, but let the white authorities deal with him, to preserve the peace.

Weeping bitter tears, Shore Crossing promised this to his father as he died. Larry Ott turned himself in, as ordered; and at his inquest a white jury acquitted him.

Shore Crossing’s hatred burned for his father’s killer ever since.

The cousins did not find Ott at home; he had gone to Florentine to hunt gold. So they went on to find another bad man, who had killed Dakoopin, explained Two Moons. He meant Richard Devine, a middle-aged Englishman living alone beside Carver Creek.

Dakoopin, a crippled man whose mind was like a child’s, had been hungry, and following the custom of his people he had simply gone to the white man’s door to ask for food. Devine held an implacable hatred for all Indians, and he shot Dakoopin to death for this affront. He too escaped any punishment for this murder.

Last night they surprised him at home, then shot him with his own gun. They took his horse and rifle and other things, and went to camp at Round Willow, by Thorn Creek. They stayed away from Split Rocks, so the rest of us would not be blamed.

White Bear wondered how Two Moons got the story, but he knew to keep still. A man speaking must be allowed to finish before questions might be asked.

Two Moons looked earnestly at Ollokot, whose usual sunny expression had hardened to cold stone with displeasure. Then early this morning, Shore Crossing and Red Moccasin Tops went to the ranch of Elfers, the man who steals our horses and sets his dogs on us. Swan Necklace held their horses as they went down and killed him, and one of his ranch hands, and wounded another. They left alone the women at the house.

Three dead. Henry Elfers, implacable enemy of all Indians, had been one of the men to acquit Larry Ott, scoffing then: He should not be prosecuted for killing a dog. Elfers’ 21-year-old nephew Henry Beckridge, the slain hired hand, and Robert Bland, who had been wounded, simply had the misfortune to be tending the horses in the corral that morning when the young warriors found and shot Elfers.

Ollokot shifted his weight as he stood, crossing his arms, angry, impatient.

Two Moons hurried on with his story:

This afternoon, Swan Necklace rode back to Split Rocks on Elfers’ roan horse, holding his captured rifle high, boasting of their deeds and of the spoils they had taken. Then he rode up and down the camp and called the other men to war: ‘General Howard spoke the rifle in our peace council!’ he shouted, ‘He made a prisoner of our leader, Chief Toohoolhoolzote. We will stir up a fight, stir up a war for General Howard!’ And sixteen of White Bird’s warriors, and one of ours, stripped for battle, mounted their horses, and took to the warpath, led by Yellow Bull.

Ollokot cocked his head. Which of our men disobeyed my brother, our chief?

Three Flocks of Geese Alighting on the Water.

Ollokot frowned, his jaw tight with suppressed fury. White Bear thought he would not like to be Three Flocks when he returned home, if he helped to make this war.

Despite many offenses committed against them over many years by white interlopers, the chiefs of the True People had always remained friendly to the Americans, and held the peace, and often asked their aggrieved people to put aside thoughts of vengeance.

Now that peace shattered like a clay pot, toppled suddenly.

White Bear did not dare guess what damage was being done even as they stood there – more killings, more destruction, the horrified settlers learning to fear the Nez Perce for the first time ever, more hatred stirred up against them among the whites.

At that moment Joseph emerged from his lodge, smiling. He carried a small bundle in his arms wrapped in a piece of buffalo robe blanket.

Springtime bore me another daughter yesterday, he announced, pride shining in his dark eyes.

White Bear waved back to him with the others, remaining solemn despite the happy news. As Joseph walked toward them, Ollokot stepped forward to tell his brother what he had learned.

While they conferred, Two Moons gave a resigned shrug.

Looking Glass went home before this, and Hahtalekin went with him; and Toohoolhoolzote had already gone to the mountains in the north to get his horses, he explained. Only the Lamtamas and our people were still here then. No other chiefs but White Bird. His warriors did not listen to him, but went to war, their hearts on fire.

He turned and gestured with a sweep of his arm behind him.

As you see, fear seized the others, he sounded resigned. "The women rushed back from harvesting camas and began packing to go, afraid of soldiers coming. They are running to Sapachesap."

Drive-in, the large cavern by Cottonwood Creek that Two Moons named, lay twenty-five miles northeast of Split Rocks, and was once the scene of a great victory of the Nez Perce over a large raiding party of enemy Bannocks.

Its good spirit power betokened a safe place of retreat.

White Bear felt a flush of envy when he heard a group of his friends had gone out to take revenge on some bad settlers for many wrongs inflicted on the people, his heart also enflamed with the eager anger of retribution.

Yet he knew Joseph and Ollokot would forbid it.

He could see the rage building on Joseph’s face as he heard how young hot-heads had gone out destroying his hard efforts to keep all his people safe, destroying the peace he had suffered so much to preserve.

White Bear could not understand why the rapacious Americans had grown so determined to steal their homeland from them.

He had been a child, not yet living with Ollokot and Fair Land but with his original Umatilla family to the northwest, when much of the present conflict between white settlers and the Nez Perce blazed up as hot as a prairie fire.

Gold was the lightning that sparked that blaze. White Bear had not experienced the abrupt arrival of thousands of white trespassers, miners swarming like a plague of grasshoppers onto their territories, once the greedy Americans discovered what the True People had known forever – that abundant gold could be found in the mountains and streams above the Clearwater River.

He had not witnessed Lewiston, Orofino and other boomtowns spring up overnight like wild mushrooms along the river banks – squalid, lawless places that drew the worst ruffians America could spit out in search of quick riches.

Gambling, whoring, crimes of all kinds flourished – especially crimes against his own people.

The military and civilian authorities to whom the Nez Perce appealed for promised help did not have the manpower, nor the will, to keep out the white invaders; nor the ability to keep the peace. Much of the treasure lay on Chief White Bird’s lands, and his people suffered the most from the abuse, insults, and offenses – the many thefts, rapes, and murders – that the whites inflicted on them, all without penalty.

And still the chiefs kept their word, counseled peace and friendship, and did not retaliate, but waited for white justice to prevail.

They were waiting yet.

American outlaws, even when brought to trial for their crimes against the people, had always gone unpunished.

Coming of age, White Bear had listened around the campfires at night as warriors recounted the people’s losses, the gold stolen from their lands without a penny in compensation, the horses and cattle rustled, the innocent women who had been violated, the men robbed, injured and murdered, and the names of their brutish white enemies.

White Bear and other young men obeyed their chiefs; but he understood why many could not forget their smoldering outrage.

He was only twelve, beginning his fourth year living with his aunt Fair Land and uncle Ollokot after his parents were killed, when Tuekakas died early in the winter, Old Chief Joseph, the leader of the Wallowa people. Tuekakas had been a child when he met the first white men the True People had ever seen before, Lewis and Clark and men of their expedition, whom the people succored, befriended and aided.

On the old chief’s death, White Bear’s uncle Joseph inherited his father’s title, his responsibilities, his defiant wish to live unmolested on his own lands, in the manner their ancestors had always done.

That same spring, when White Bear turned thirteen, Ollokot sent him to the sacred mountains on his vision quest to find his spirit power, his Wyakin; and it was during this rite of passage to manhood he found his spirit guide, the strong and courageous white grizzly bear who dwells in the ice-bound north, who gave him his name and his powers to protect him.

He also remembered that year because later that summer the first white homesteaders came to the Wallowa Valley, his people’s valley, and began to mark off tracts of land as theirs. They claimed it had been given to them by the Great White Chief living beyond the eastern mountains where the sun rises, a far-off stranger who had never seen the Wallowa.

Everyone knew this could not be true. The people knew their land had been made by Hunywat, the Creator, and only the Creator could change it or give it away.

But White Bear remembered how much Joseph and Ollokot had endured trying to co-exist in peace with the newcomers, even as more and more settlers arrived to crowd them out.

White Bear had been too young to attend the councils discussing the bad steal treaty the Americans wanted to force on them. He knew an older treaty existed, signed by Tuekakas, and fifty other Nez Perce chiefs. This was the agreement they all honored, for it acknowledged their rights to their traditional hunting grounds, many thousands of square miles of the high plains, rivers and mountains sprawling across what the Americans were pleased to call the territories of Oregon, Washington and Idaho.

That first Treaty of Walla Walla of 1855 – intended to maintain peace between nations, and keep the trickle of white settlers out of Nez Perce country – soon failed with the gold rush.

The Nez Perce then learned their Americans friends would not keep their word.

Gold fever changed everything. Territorial governors and other white chiefs came to regret their generosity in granting the True People that which was naturally theirs.

The whites coveted all their homeland, save the Lapwai Indian Reservation, a small corner of Idaho where the Nez Perce who had become Christians were living as farmers, imitating the settlers.

To make a new agreement, the white authorities appointed Chief Lawyer, leader of the reservation Christians, to be the head of the whole Nez Perce nation.

Lawyer was not elected; no one agreed he could speak for them. The idea of a single leader obeyed by all other chiefs was a concept unknown to them – every chief was his own master and made his own decisions, their people lived as equals, and to obey the wishes of the majority was an individual choice, always.

No one could order anyone to do anything, not even war-chiefs in battle.

Chief Lawyer knew this. But he was vain and avaricious, so he ignored their old laws. For a paltry sum of money and tools and other supplies that were, in the end, not delivered to him, he signed a new treaty surrendering the lands belonging to the other bands.

Joseph and the other chiefs immediately disowned their Christian cousins. Yet the white chiefs falsely insisted Lawyer – a chief of less than one-third of all the Nez Perce people – had the authority to speak for everyone.

Even as a youth, White Bear understood this steal-treaty was a despicable swindle, and he felt enraged by the depth of Lawyer’s betrayal. The True People never signed this paper cheating them of their rights and their homeland. To Joseph and the other chiefs – whom the whites came to disparage as the non-treaty Nez Perce and malcontents and renegades – the US government’s thieving edict was false law.

As Joseph explained it to him: If we ever owned the land we own it still, for we never sold it. Suppose a white man should come to me and say, 'Joseph, I like your horses, and I want to buy them.' I say to him, 'No, my horses suit me, I will not sell them.' Then he goes to my neighbor, and says to him: 'Joseph has some good horses. I want to buy them, but he refuses to sell.' My neighbor answers, 'Pay me the money, and I will sell you Joseph's horses.' The white man returns to me and says, 'Joseph, I have bought your horses, and you must let me have them.' If we sold our lands to the Americans, this is the way they were bought.

White Bear was still too young to accompany Joseph and Ollokot as they traveled to meet with the settlers themselves, and different white authorities, to persuade them to turn aside this injustice.

Year by year, he watched their hope melt away to frustration.

At first, logic prevailed and they seemed to reach sympathetic ears. But gradually, as more settlers came, hungry for their lands, American hearts hardened against them -- especially after last summer’s brutal defeat of General Custer and his troops by Lakota Sioux, Cheyenne and several other Indian tribes under Chief Sitting Bull – and at every negotiation thereafter his uncles were told they had to move onto the Lapwai reservation, for such was the new law.

They continued to ignore it.

And White Bear remembered well the shocking moment at the peace council when General Howard spoke of the rifle and threatened war if they did not comply.

Last year, turning eighteen, White Bear had been accepted by Ollokot as a full hunter and warrior, no longer a youth in training. And last month his uncles had invited him to go to Fort Lapwai with fifty others representing the Wallowa people. They – and men and women from the bands of Chiefs White Bird, Hahtelakin, and Toohoolhoolzote – were to meet with Brigadier General Oliver Otis Howard, commander of all the American military forces assigned to the Department of the Columbia, a peace-keeping army stretched wafer-thin from Oregon to Alaska.

The Nez Perce knew Howard as General Cut-Arm, as he had lost his right arm at the elbow fifteen years earlier leading his soldiers in battle during the Americans’ Civil War. His empty sleeve was folded up and buttoned high at the shoulder; and sometimes he waved the stump about as if his arm was still there, gesturing when he grew excited.

General Cut-Arm had agreed to hear a last appeal that the legal rights of the non-treaty Nez Perce should be respected – this, despite his having led a stubborn US government commission which had used false logic and lies to rule against them in this quest last December.

White Bear decided that Lapwai, the place of butterflies, was not much of a fort. He looked around as they rode in singing the song of the True People, how Coyote had made and blessed them after defeating the Monster. He saw a useless gate standing open at one end, but no walls, no defenses, no fortifications at all, merely a collection of low wooden buildings painted white, scattered around a rectangular parade ground at the center, the bare outpost of the pared-down US First Cavalry.

Littered with trash, and with few soldiers seen about, the fort seemed lifeless.

Under brilliant May skies, General Howard had put up a large green hospital tent at one end of the parade ground for the open meeting, its sides rolled up for light and air.

When everyone had assembled, Howard sat at a table beside a middle-aged lieutenant with thinning dirt-blond hair, an aide who took notes. He sat beside John Monteith, the slight, sallow Indian agent in a black suit that matched his unkempt hair and beard. James Reuben stood by to interpret, one of the treaty Indians from the reservation. Several other officers stood at ease behind them; and whenever Howard spoke, he stood up to do so, filling a row of dark blue uniforms.

Reuben, as a Christian, cut his dark hair short and wore the same hat, coat, shirt, trousers and shoes as the white farmers, in marked contrast to Joseph’s people, who wore their finest traditional beaded buckskin clothing and brightly colored striped blankets, and tied ribbons, feathers and animal furs in their black hair, worn in long braids on both sides of their heads, the center combed in a high pompadour, a sign of their allegiance to their Dreamer religion.

Seeing General Howard for the first time, White Bear had been surprised to learn that he was accounted a brave war-chief among his own people, for he seemed too short and slender to command respect, an unassuming man in his late forties with thick wavy hair turning from black to gray as quick as autumn leaves, and a full, bushy beard that was black on the cheeks and neck, but gray around the mouth and chin. Only his penetrating blue eyes stood out among his fine, almost delicate, features.

He wondered if perhaps Howard was like Two Moons, small but smart and ferocious in battle.

Their own leader, Toohoolhoolzote, looked every inch the war-chief he was.

Seven or eight years older and six inches taller than Howard, he towered over him. His large face was plain, neither ugly nor handsome. Where the general seemed slight, the chief was heavy-set and solidly built, as if carved from a giant red cedar tree – broad-shouldered, deep-chested, thick-necked. Compared to Howard’s high, reedy voice, the chief’s voice was strong, deep and guttural.

Because Chief Joseph’s reasoned diplomacy had failed thus far, the other chiefs decided to elect Toohoolhoolzote as their spokesman for his commanding presence and determination. As a seasoned fighter, they felt he was intelligent enough to stand up to Howard, and tough enough to reject the military’s unjust demands.

General Howard and Chief Toohoolhoolzote proved a combustible match.

White Bear and the others had watched with growing alarm as the two opponents clashed like rutting elks crashing antlers together, exercising their volatile temperaments – both men were strong-willed, stubborn, and short-tempered when challenged.

The peace council had not gone well from the start.

The Nez Perce sat on the grass in front of Howard’s table, the chiefs centered in the front row. White Bear sat next to Yellow Wolf two rows back among the warriors, with others behind them, outside and around the tent, women at the rear.

White Bear had been educated at the Umatilla mission school for a number of winters before coming to the Wallowa, and he was proficient enough in English to follow most of the argument as it developed, needing James Reuben’s translation only for a few unfamiliar words. His gasps of surprise, scowls of anger, his scornful laughter, and other reactions came somewhat ahead of his fellows; but they mirrored his responses.

Tensions rose quickly as it soon became evident that neither side was prepared to yield, an explosion slowed only by the delay in translating each man’s position.

The general had declared at the start he was there to listen. But in this he lied, for he issued commands and obstinately ignored all that he heard, insisting that "in any event, the Indians must obey the orders of the government of the United States. He made it plain that he viewed Chief Lawyer’s steal treaty" as binding, an inviolable edict obliging the people to give up most of their country and their successful way of life, to be confined to farm tracts on the Lapwai reservation controlled by Agent Monteith.

Angry murmurs arose as the people began to realize the general’s mind was fixed.

General Cut-Arm confused White Bear about their status. The general saw them neither as a free people nor as Americans.

The US government seemed to regard the Nez Perce as a sovereign nation, observing their own culture and laws within their own territory; yet it refused to accept their homeland was theirs because they had not settled down in permanent dwellings on it, but traveled with the seasons, hunting and fishing according to ancient custom.

On the other hand, Howard insisted they were subjects of the American government, bound by its laws; yet, clearly, he did not mean they enjoyed citizenship, with their rights protected by its legal system. If the True People were sovereign and free, how did America have any rights over them? Why were they subject to its laws?

White Bear looked around at his friends, and by looks in their eyes he understood they knew Howard spoke with two faces in trying to enforce this grand fraud.

White Bear and the others nodded in agreement as Chief Toohoolhoolzote made the case against obeying the false law, the same arguments Joseph and Ollokot had put more diplomatically earlier. The old chief was direct, blunt, in making the point that the Americans held no authority over them.

He explained again to Howard, his gestures of impatience growing, about their chieftainship over the land that bore them, how the laws and traditions of his ancestors had been given to them by Hunywat, the Creator, and how it was not for white foreigners to dictate what they must do in their own country.

He scorned the foolish steal treaty Chief Lawyer had signed: that agreement could be no true law at all, for Lawyer had no authority to give away the lands of others, who received nothing in exchange. Lawyer’s word was worthless, he could not speak for all. Nor did his band of Christians constitute the majority of the Nez Perce, even though Howard persisted in claiming the will of the majority obligated them to obey Washington.

Toohoolhoolzote reminded him that he and the other non-treaty chiefs had not signed it. They were not bound by it, and would not heed it.

Leave Mister Washington alone—that is, if he is a man, he mocked. He has no sense. He does not know anything about our country. He never was here.

General Howard, impatient, answered none of his points, but dodged instead.

He angered the people when at length he complained: "I don't want to offend your religion, but you must talk about practical things. Twenty times over I hear that the earth is your mother, and about chieftainship of the land. I want to hear it no more, but come to business at once."

By business all there listening understood he meant obedience.

Howard, his face reddening with suppressed anger, his voice rising higher with frustration, continued to insist the law demanded they all move to the reservation the government had set aside for them, that you may live in peace, and prosper.

Howard scowled when he heard derisive laughter ripple through the crowd when Reuben translated that phrase, for they did live in peace, in harmony with their world, and were quite prosperous already, wanting for nothing, needing no help.

White Bear had been surprised that Howard used no persuasion; he offered no sound arguments, no inducements. He merely repeated this demand to move there as if good reasons to surrender their lands and livelihood were self-evident.

Seeing Howard persist in ignoring his words, Toohoolhoolzote grew louder and more animated.

Finally, exasperated, the old chief demanded:

"Who are you to tell me what to do? He gestured at their surroundings. Are you the Creator? Did you make the world? The sun? The animals? Make the rivers to flow for us to drink? No! What person pretends to divide the land and put me on it?"

Howard drew himself up straighter and pushed out his chest, thumping his heart once with his left fist: I stand here for the President, and there is no spirit, good or bad, that will hinder me. I had hoped that the Indians had enough good sense to make me their friend, and not their enemy.

"I am telling you I am chief here! Toohoolhoolzote growled back, defiant. No man can come and tell me anything I must do. Go back to your own country. You are a chief there. I am chief here."

Then Howard lost his temper, raising his fist and shouting at him: "You will come on the reservation, within the time I tell you. If not, my soldiers will put you there or shoot you down!"

When Reuben finished the translation, there came a sharp collective intake of breath, followed by angry murmurs of confused disapproval among the people listening. General Howard had just committed a serious offense, a forbidden breach of protocol at their peace council: he was showing the rifle, threatening to use force.

How could General Cut-Arm not know that simple truth? Plainly, to make this threat at a peace council was wrong, never done. This was why the men had sheathed their rifles in gun-slings and put their revolvers in saddlebags on their horses before coming to sit around the negotiating table.

Showing the rifle stood as an invitation to war.

Toohoolhoolzote, who had been speaking sharply in anger, dropped his voice in a cold rage.

Are you trying to scare me? he demanded, scoffing. "I know I will die someday, and I do not fear it. I say I will not go. The earth is my mother, a part of my body. I will not leave my home, the land where I grew up."

"Then you propose not to comply with these orders?" demanded Howard, breathing hard and trembling slightly in rising desperation, despite his stern look.

He had staked his reputation on success here. In Arizona five years earlier, by sheer force of will, he had negotiated the surrender of the Apache renegade Cochise, without firing a shot; he expected to do the same now.

Yet he showed his alarm. If the Nez Perce refused to obey the government, their defiance could signal rebellion for every discontented tribe in the Pacific Northwest.

Are you speaking for yourself, or everyone? he demanded.

The old chief stared at Howard a moment, keeping his voice low and steady when at last he answered:

"So long as the earth keeps me, I want to be left alone. You are trifling with the laws of the earth. The other Indians may do as they like; but I tell you three times I am not going on the reservation."

Howard shook his fist again, this time the stump of his right arm rising too in his fury, as he shouted: "My orders are plain, and will be executed! You will go on that land, or I will send soldiers to put you on it!"

Again he spoke the rifle!

Again, Toohoolhoolzote studied Howard, his dark eyes narrowed to slits.

White Bear could see he was not afraid, and his words were strong as he spoke slowly: "I hear you! I am a man. I have a simiakia, that which belongs to a man! You will not tell me what to do!"

And he reached down and grabbed the middle of his breechcloth, and gave his groin a quick shake, to show his contempt.

The word simiakia meant both penis and pride of manhood, but Reuben, looking uncomfortable, did not translate it, letting the word and the gesture stand.

Howard understood.

Although enraged, he too tried to control his voice as he stared back, the knuckles on his clenched fist going white.

Joseph and White Bird seem to have good hearts, but yours is bad. You are an impudent fellow. The Indians can see no good while you advise them to resist, and risk losing all their horses and cattle, and suffer unending trouble.

Then he turned to the tall, bored-looking sergeant-at-arms standing at ease in the corner behind him, who started in surprise when Howard barked: Take him to the guard-house! I’ll banish him to Indian Territory if it takes years!

The shock was palpable among the people, who froze, unable or unwilling to believe what was about to happen. A fit of pique, another abuse of power! Howard had no reason, no legal right, to jail their spokesman for speaking his heart.

Toohoolhoolzote stood glaring at Howard, opening and closing his fists at his side as the sergeant approached him.

The sergeant, looking as if he were about to poke a rattlesnake, gingerly pushed his rifle flat against the chief’s chest with both hands to get him to move. Joseph and White Bird sat close behind Toohoolhoolzote; and when he stepped back to regain his balance after being shoved, he stumbled against their feet and fell back, sitting heavily on them.

White Bear – instantly seized by a thrill of excitement – put his hand on the hunting knife at his belt. Uncertain what to do, he tensed, ready to leap to his feet and rush the soldiers nearest to him to get their guns. A glance to the side told him Yellow Wolf sat coiled and ready to act as well, his hand on his knife.

If given a sign, all the warriors would attack Howard and his soldiers for this insult, and they would not stop until they or every white man at Fort Lapwai lay dead.

A nod would signal war.

He agonized in suspense, breathing fast, his mind racing. He knew that Chief Toohoolhoolzote, although in his mid-fifties, was still the strongest man for miles around. He could break two horses at the same time, using two ropes tied around his body. He had once carried home on foot through rough country two black-tailed bucks he had killed, one on each shoulder. And not long ago, when he had been drunk and unruly, eight men tried to get him down and tie him up until he quietened; but they could not overpower him and had to give up.

If their leader chose to resist the sergeant, the man did not stand a chance.

Joseph and White Bird helped heave Toohoolhoolzote to his feet, and he looked down at them, waiting.

White Bear gripped his knife-handle tighter.

After a brief moment, Joseph closed his eyes and gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. No fighting. He knew most of the warriors were not armed, even with side-knives, as was proper for a peace talk. As well, many of their women were here with them. And none of the chiefs had wanted war, knowing they could never win.

White Bear, shaking with anger, let go of his knife-handle as Toohoolhoolzote turned to address Howard:

"Is this your order? I do not care. I have spoken my heart to you, spoken for my country. I have nothing to take back. You can arrest me, but you cannot change