White Bird Canyon

On June 17, 1877, forces clashed in Idaho Territory at what became known as White Bird Canyon. This clash marked the very first engagement of the Nez Perce War, pitting the Nez Perce Indians against the United States. For the Army, the outcome proved a substantial and costly setback. The site of the fighting lies in the western reaches of what is now Idaho County, situated to the southwest of Grangeville.

Prelude to war

When the United States first struck an agreement with the Nez Perce in 1855, the resulting reservation reflected the tribe's ancestral homelands and seemed to secure their claim to the land. That arrangement did not last. Gold turned up on the reservation near Pierce in 1860, and miners and settlers poured into the region with no real check on their numbers. The Nez Perce held to peace even as the treaty was violated again and again.

Pressure to open more land for white settlement eventually pushed federal officials to impose a second treaty in 1863. This agreement stripped away ninety percent of the original reservation. Bands whose homes fell outside the newly drawn lines refused to put their names to what became known as the "steal treaty," and their leaders kept their people on that land for fourteen more years, right up until the spring of 1877.

By May of that year, following a series of army assaults, the bands who had never signed the treaty began moving from their homelands toward the diminished reservation. Chief Joseph's Wallowa band, the Wal-lam-wat-kain, suffered heavy losses of horses and cattle while fording rivers running high with snowmelt. Eventually the bands led by Joseph and by Chief White Bird converged at Tepahlewam, a customary gathering place on the Camas Prairie beside Tolo Lake, meant as a final chance to savor their old way of living before submitting to the new order. The mood there was heavy with feeling, since not everyone present accepted the path of surrender and peace.

Then, on June 14, seventeen young warriors, Wahlitits among them, rode into the Salmon River country intent on avenging the 1875 killing of Wahlitits' father, Tipyahlanah Siskan, along with others slain in earlier violence. Word of their success stirred a hunger for further vengeance in other fighters, and on June 15 more settlers in the district came under attack. By the end of it, at least eighteen settlers lay dead at Nez Perce hands. Alarmed residents of Mount Idaho dispatched riders to Fort Lapwai, laying out what had happened and pleading for troops.

Back at Tepahlewam, word had reached the Nez Perce that Brigadier General O. O. Howard was readying soldiers to move against them. By June 16 the bands had shifted position to the lower end of White Bird Canyon, a stretch roughly five miles long and no more than a mile wide at its widest point, hemmed in by steep ridgelines. That evening, lookouts spotted troops advancing from the north. After lengthy discussion among themselves, the Nez Perce resolved to remain at White Bird, hoping to steer clear of open war but ready to fight should there be no other choice.

The combatants

On the army side stood two companies of the 1st Cavalry Regiment, one led by Captain David Perry and the other under Captain Joel Graham Trimble, designated Company F and Company H respectively. Together their officers and enlisted men numbered 106. Riding alongside them were eleven civilians who had volunteered their services, plus a group of 13 Nez Perce scouts drawn from treaty bands and enlisted at Fort Lapwai. Foreign-born recruits made up close to half the soldiers, and the majority lacked seasoning, sitting poorly in the saddle and shooting with little skill. Neither the men nor their mounts had been prepared for combat, and after covering more than 70 miles in a punishing two-day march, both arrived at White Bird Canyon worn out.

Opposing them, the Nez Perce could muster as many as 135 fighting men, though drink complicated matters considerably. Whiskey seized during their raids had circulated freely, and by the morning of June 17 a great many warriors were too intoxicated to take part in the fighting. In the end, the actual number who fought numbered only about 70. Command of these warriors fell roughly equally to Ollokot and White Bird. Chief Joseph might have joined the fray himself, though he held no position as a war leader.

Firearms were scarce among the Nez Perce, totaling somewhere between 45 and 50, a mix of shotguns, pistols, and outdated muskets, supplemented in some cases by bows and arrows. They had never before clashed with White soldiers, yet other strengths compensated for this: intimate familiarity with the landscape, exceptional riding skill, and Appaloosa horses trained to a fine edge. Years of conserving ammunition while hunting had also sharpened their aim. In battle they typically dismounted to shoot, leaving their horses to graze calmly nearby, an animal would simply "stand and eat grass while his owner fought." The cavalry's horses told a different story, many of them bolting in terror during the engagement, a breakdown in control that observers cited as a chief cause of the American defeat.

Truce party

Just before sunrise on June 17, the Nez Perce readied themselves for the fight they knew was coming. Ollokot led fifty warriors to a butte overlooking the canyon's western flank, while Two Moons took fifteen men to a rise on the eastern side, so that any cavalry moving down the canyon would find itself flanked on both sides at once. Meanwhile, six warriors positioned themselves apart from the rest, carrying a white flag and hoping to open talks with the soldiers before violence erupted.

Coming from the northeast along a wagon road, the army column, made up of regular troops, volunteer civilians, and Nez Perce scouts, made its way down into White Bird Canyon. Out in front rode a small detachment: Lieutenant Edward Theller, Trumpeter John Jones, several scouts drawn from the Lapwai Agency, seven men of Company F, and the civilian Arthur "Ad" Chapman, known as Ad. It was this group that first encountered the warriors bearing the flag of truce. Yellow Wolf recalled the moment years afterward:

Five men, under the leadership of Wettiwetti Houlis, had been dispatched from across the valley to meet the approaching soldiers peacefully. Their orders from the chiefs were clear: hold fire unless fired upon first. The white flag they carried was meant to open a path to peace without bloodshed.

What drove Chapman to shoot at these men remains unclear to this day, but he did, sending the peace envoys scrambling for cover. The Nez Perce answered with gunfire of their own.

The Battle

When the first rounds cracked out, Lieutenant Theller swung down from his horse in his forward position and spread his men along a low ridge to fight as skirmishers. He directed Trumpeter Jones to sound officers' call, summoning the rest of the command to his side. Jones never got through the notes: Otstotpoo, firing from a knoll more than 300 yards (270 m) to the east, cut him down before he finished.

Captain Perry, for his part, had his company dismount and form a firing line along the eastern edge of Theller's advanced group, while Captain Trimble's Company H arrayed itself mounted along the western edge of that same position. Meanwhile the civilian volunteers tried to take up ground along the low ridge at the cavalry line's eastern terminus.

Perry assumed the volunteers on that ridge would guard his left, though his vantage point kept their actual location hidden from him. Not long after splitting off from the main body, those volunteers, now under George Shearer's direction, ran into warriors concealed in brush just below and east of them. Shearer told his men to dismount and fight on foot, and while a handful complied, most simply pulled back from the line and rode north to safety. Trying to shield Perry's men, Shearer took the few who remained up to the ridge crest, where he found himself caught between Two Moons's assault on Perry's left and gunfire from warriors defending the White Bird camp.

Hoping to link up with Theller and drive off the Nez Perce fighters threatening his flank, Perry prepared his men for a mounted charge, ordering carbines holstered and pistols readied. He called on Trumpeter Daly to blow the charge, only to discover Daly no longer had his instrument. With that, Perry's only way of signaling his troops vanished, and the charge never happened. Instead, Perry chose to hold the ridge. He gave the command for a count by fours, so that every fourth trooper took charge of the horses and led them to safer ground away from the gunfire, while Perry and the rest of Company F pushed forward on foot toward the ridge.

Company H, meanwhile, tried to spread out at five-yard intervals along the ridge without dismounting. The results were poor: their horses grew skittish, and the inexperienced troopers found it nearly impossible to fire accurately from atop panicked animals.

Riding between the two companies, Perry watched the volunteers pulling back up the canyon. A string of setbacks followed that would determine the outcome for the cavalry at White Bird. Both Perry's left and Trimble's right had become exposed. In response, Trimble sent Sergeant Michael M. McCarthy with six men to hold the highest ground overlooking the fight and secure his right side. Perry, spotting the same high ground, tried to send men of his own to reinforce McCarthy's position.