A Correspondent Reports on the Nez Perce Conflict

OLYMPIA, W.T. July 2, 1877.

Editor New Westminster Star:

According to your request and my promise I send the following notices from the memorandums of my late trip through the 'upper country' as the vast region east of the Cascade mountains is termed. The whole land comprising the Walla Walla and Snake river valleys and the Palouse country beyond, except a small portion along the river bank, is fertile almost beyond description.

...Reserving a portion of this for a future letter, I will here briefly say, that Joseph, the leader of this rebellion, is the son of an old head chief of the tribe—that he and his followers in well as his allies in this war have never assented to the treaty by which the tribe ceded to government the beautiful valleys in which they have their homes and agreed to go upon the Reservation. They have all along since that treaty stood apart from the tribe, preserving their headquarters in the valleys of Wallowa and White Bird, and on the branches of the Snake river.

Last spring on account of the complaints of the settlers who have lately begun to take up ranches in those valleys, orders were issued from the Indian department to the Sea Perce Agent, Hon. J. B. Chouteau, to bring all those scattering little bands of rebels upon the Lapwai Reservation... Joseph and the other chiefs were invited to a council at Fort Lapwai... they decided to take peaceably and very properly left their tents thirty days from that thirtieth day to bring all their cattle and their people.

They spent three days fixing over the Reservation to select locations. Just as White Bird chose the upper valley of the south fork of the Clearwater and Bush-hush-chute selected a location in a fertile valley about eight miles above the agency on the main creek, everything seemed so promising and allured me that a clap of thunder could not have surprised me much more than the startling intelligence which reached me over the wire a few weeks afterward, that Joseph and White Bird had shot through the lines.

It went very well as if these Indians had been perfectly fulfilling their promise. They had got as far as Camas Prairie on their way to their new homes... But suddenly the air is made hideous with the hue's of savage nature. And, to make the matter worse, with the usual white man's contempt for Indians, Capt. Perry's command falls into something very like a trap.

Two things are under the notice in connection with this: First, that the Reservation Indians—those who are christianized and civilized under the operations of the late Indian Policy—are not taking any hand in the fight... The other noteworthy fact is that no outrage has been made upon them. The women and children, with I believe a few exceptions, have been spared and sent further on in their protection to their friends.

This is a new phase in savage warfare. A phase which I regret to say has not always been presented by so called civilized Americans in their wars of conquest against ignorant Indian ravages, who after all, are only fighting for their homes, which they have held undisputed possession of for ages, by a tenure that goes way back beyond the memory of man.

Our fathers were heroes when Magruder did this kind of thing—that of course Joseph and White Bird are only renegade savages. More anon.