Lay the Mountains Low by Terry C. Johnston

Besides these there are Flatheads and their confederates in Montana, with whom the Nez Perces arein close alliance … He obtains his data from accurate knowledge acquired by long residence among the Indians. He regards the liberty allowed the Indians to remain off the reservations and the unrestricted intercourse allowed between them and the whites as the principal causes of the present outbreak.
    Fort Lapwai
June 27, 1877
    Dear Mamma,
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    â€¦
Our little post is quiet today, but more troops will be here on Saturday. Major Boyle, Mr. Bomus, and Doctor, along with twenty men, are our entire garrison just now. All the rest are in the front. General Howard sent in dispatches last night hurrying up the troops. He wants to make an attack, and we all feel today that there may be a fierce fight raging and many poor fellows suffering not fifty miles from us. The Indians are in a horseshoe of the Salmon River, a place with the most natural fortifications, equal to the lava beds * of the Modocs, and we know them to be well provisioned. They have at least five hundred head of cattle in there, and quantities of camus root, which they use a great deal. We hear this place has only one trail leading into it. So you see the advantages they have. Oh, how I hope our commanders will be cautious and not risk anything. I suppose General Howard has out there now about four hundred men and some artillery, which I don’t suppose he will be able to use at all. Those four hundred men are nearly the entire body of troops from this Department. The army is so small at best, and the various companies are so small, that it takes five or six companies to make a hundred men. None of the companies, not even the cavalry, is full.
    How glad I should be if I could pick up John and the babies and get out of this region. I feel that nothing else will let me feel calm and settled. My brain seems in a whirl, constantly seeing the distress of these poor women who have lost their husbands, and constantly expecting and fearing to hear from our friends in the front, and also sort of half afraid for ourselves here. I wonder if poor little Lapwai will ever seem peaceful and calm to me again.
    Do write soon … We all join in love, and I am glad you are safe.
    Your loving daughter,
Emily F.
    M ERCIFULLY, OVERNIGHT THE SOAKING RAIN HAD CLEANSED much of the stench from the air in that valley of death by the time Howard’s troops returned early the next morning.
    Second Lieutenant Sevier McClellan Rains had never been so happy to ride out of any place the way he had been happy to ride out of White Bird Canyon as the sun began to set yesterday. After a second night’s bivouac at Johnson’s ranch, the commanding general had everything packed up and ready to depart by 7:00 A.M. on the morning of the twenty-seventh. It continued to rain past dawn, a slow, steady weeping from a low gray sky. The young lieutenant dreaded ever returning to this valley of such unspeakable death.
    As they had on Tuesday, the various cavalry and infantry companies again worked over the battlefield in platoons, searching the ravines and the thickets for the remains of fallen soldiers. While the rain kept down the revolting stench, the unrelenting showers soon soaked every man through to the skin, making them all as miserable as could be. So it was with no little eagerness that Rains looked forward to taking his nine men for a ride back up a sidewall of the canyon to search a narrow ravine for any of Perry’s soldiers who might have fallen during their mad retreat backup White Bird Hill.
    Born in Michigan, this young officer had graduated from West Point only the year before, a mere ten days before the Custer massacre in June of ’76. Prior to graduation, Rains had applied for an appointment to the Fourth Cavalry, a move endorsed by the regimental commander, Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie. Instead, Rains was assigned to the First Cavalry, disappointed that he would have to