Battle of the Clearwater

On July 11 and 12, 1877, forces under Chief Joseph clashed with United States troops at what became known as the Clearwater fight, fought within Idaho Territory. General O. O. Howard's men caught a Nez Perce encampment off guard, only to face a fierce counter-thrust from the tribe that left the soldiers with heavy losses. Even so, the Nez Perce ultimately had no choice but to give up the village and withdraw.

This engagement formed one episode within the larger Nez Perce War. In its aftermath, Joseph's people turned eastward, pushing across the Bitterroot Mountains by way of Lolo Pass into Montana Territory, all while Howard continued to press them from behind.

Background

General Oliver Otis Howard assumed direct command of the army following its June 17 defeat at the hands of the Nez Perce during the fighting at White Bird Canyon. He sent out a small detachment hoping to seize Looking Glass, who had remained neutral, but Looking Glass and his people slipped away and threw in their lot with Joseph.

Howard trailed several days behind as Joseph led roughly 600 Nez Perce, driving more than 2,000 head of livestock, past a small detachment of American troops during the clash at Cottonwood, fought July 3 through 5. The group pushed on another 25 miles (40 km) toward the east. As they traveled, thirty ranches and farms went up in flames, their owners having already fled to the safety of Mount Idaho. These homesteads sat on Nez Perce Reservation land, making them unlawful in the eyes of the Nez Perce. The band settled into a camp within the steep valley walls of the Clearwater River's South Fork, north of what is now Stites. On July 7, Looking Glass and additional Nez Perce arrived there, swelling their combined numbers to roughly 800, including some 200 able fighters.

The following day, July 8, a volunteer company of 75 civilians commanded by Edward McConville located the Nez Perce encampment and passed word of its position to Howard. Come morning, the Nez Perce spotted these volunteers and launched an assault, pinning them down atop a hill where the two sides traded shots from a distance. Deprived of water and stripped of their horses by the Indians, the volunteers gave their hilltop position the name "Fort Misery." A single Nez Perce suffered wounds in the encounter. Around midday on June 11, the volunteers pulled back from the hill toward Mount Idaho unopposed.

Expecting Howard's soldiers to approach their village from the northeast, the direction from which the volunteers had come, the Nez Perce were caught off guard when the general instead came at them from the south, tracing the Clearwater's eastern bank downstream through difficult terrain. Near noon on July 11, Howard caught sight of the village stretched across both sides of the river. Confidence built from earlier victories may have left the Nez Perce unprepared for his abrupt arrival.

Facing an estimated 200 Nez Perce fighters, Howard commanded 440 soldiers along with civilian packers, scouts, messengers, and Indian scouts, a combined force that possibly numbered over 600. Some of those serving as Indian scouts were themselves Nez Perce, since many members of the tribe had never joined Joseph and continued to side with the United States.

The battle

From his position on the ridge above the valley, Howard launched the engagement by turning howitzers and Gatling guns on the Nez Perce encampment below. The barrage accomplished little beyond alerting the Indians to the army's arrival, sending riders scattering across the hillsides in all directions while stock was gathered and later moved into the hills behind the camp by elderly men, women, and children.

Twenty-four Nez Perce warriors, led by the elder Toohoolhoolzote and including Yellow Wolf among their number, climbed to the ridge crest to block Howard's approach. Using a hastily built stone breastwork, they opened fire on the troops and managed to halt the cavalry's progress for a time. When the soldiers threatened to encircle them, however, they pulled back toward the village. This holding action bought precious time, allowing the rest of the Nez Perce to establish defenses along three sides of a tableland prairie roughly a mile and a half across and two miles in length, situated above the Clearwater River's eastern bank.

As Howard pushed forward and occupied the prairie, he faced resistance from around a hundred Nez Perce fighters. A correspondent later observed that despite the numerical edge held by the troops, the fight favored the defenders, since the Indians held a fortified canyon position while the soldiers had no choice but to cross open, exposed ground to reach them. The engagement dragged through the afternoon without resolution, and when darkness fell both sides remained dug into their respective lines. Hunger and thirst plagued the soldiers overnight, while women from the village kept the Nez Perce fighters supplied with provisions.

When dawn broke on July 12, Howard's complete force stood arrayed against the Nez Perce across the prairie. Pushing the Indians back from a nearby spring gave his men access to water and food at last. Howard then devised a plan to strike the Nez Perce left flank, assigning the task to Captain Marcus Miller's battalion. The operation took an unforeseen turn when a supply train of 120 mules, bound for Howard's forces, wandered into view on the battlefield. Miller advanced to shield the pack animals, and recognizing the opportunity his forward position offered, ordered his men into a sudden charge. The Nez Perce line broke and turned into a general retreat as Howard's troops surged forward across the entire front, pushing into the village near the riverbank. Warriors, along with their women and children, crossed the Clearwater carrying whatever belongings they could manage to save. Howard chose not to press the chase across the river, bringing the battle to its close.

Aftermath

The morning after the fighting ended, Howard set off in pursuit, tracking the Nez Perce roughly twelve miles (20 km) north to the village of Kamiah, where he spotted them fording the Clearwater River. His troops hurried forward but arrived too late to stop the crossing, and a single cavalryman suffered a wound in the process. On July 15, a message reached Howard claiming that Joseph and his followers intended to give themselves up, even as Looking Glass, White Bird, and Toohoolhoolzote made plans to push on eastward until November. Joseph never showed up the following day as promised, though thirty-five Nez Perce, fourteen of them men, did surrender, feeding the Army's growing belief that Nez Perce resistance was crumbling. Howard soon discovered that the tribe's camp had relocated to Weippe Prairie, some fifteen miles (24 km) distant, and he moved to track them down. Because of his deliberate, unhurried tactics, the Nez Perce nicknamed him "General-Day-After-Tomorrow."

In the hours surrounding the close of the Clearwater fight, the Nez Perce appear to have struggled with a breakdown in unified command. Joseph held no unquestioned authority; the tribe was made up of five separate bands under five separate leaders, and individual warriors felt free to fight however and whenever they chose. Joseph, likely joined by his brother Ollokot, seems to have opposed abandoning Idaho and the homeland they knew. Yet White Bird, Looking Glass, and Toohoolhoolzote won the argument, and the group resolved to strike out along the punishing Lolo Trail toward Lolo Pass and into Montana. Looking Glass, who counted many friends among the Montana tribes, insisted that safety awaited them there, seemingly unaware that Idaho and Montana belonged to the very same nation.

There was a bitter irony in this decision: seventy-two years before, on that same Weippe Prairie, the Nez Perce had welcomed the starving members of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with open arms. Legend held that Clark had fathered a child with a Nez Perce woman, and that child, now grown old, traveled among Joseph's people.

Once word came that the Nez Perce were abandoning Weippe Prairie, Howard dispatched a sizable detachment from Kamiah on July 17 to determine their route. Major Edwin C. Mason, alongside civilian volunteer "Colonel" Edward McConville, commanded this mixed force of cavalry, volunteers, and a handful of Nez Perce scouts. Warriors loyal to Joseph ambushed the scouting party, killed two men, wounded another, and forced Mason to withdraw, though not before confirming that the tribe was following the Lolo Trail. On July 18, the Nez Perce carried out their final raid within Idaho, making off with several hundred horses near Kamiah.

The bulk of the tribe left Weippe Prairie on July 16, beginning the grueling trek across 120 miles (200 km) of empty, mountainous terrain along the Lolo Trail. Roughly 750 people made the journey, accompanied by two thousand horses and countless dogs strung out in a column stretching for miles. They emerged on the Montana side of Lolo Pass on July 25, having crossed the difficult route with surprising ease, and it would not be long before they encountered federal troops again. Howard, commanding 700 men, began his own pursuit along the Lolo Trail on July 30. Having wired ahead, he ensured that soldiers were waiting for the Nez Perce just inside Montana at Fort Fizzle. It fell to Colonel John Gibbon to finally catch up with the tribe, engaging them at the Battle of the Big Hole.