The Dying Grass, page 147
1806
John Coulter, formerly with Lewis and Clark, makes what might be the first Euro-American contact with the Crows.
1815–20
Smohalla (Smohallie or Smowhala) born in Wallula, Washington Territory, sometime in this period.
1818
Establishment of Fort Nez Perce, “Gibraltar of the Columbia.”
ca. 1822
About five thousand Crows (half the population) massacred by Sioux and Cheyennes in one day.
1822
Rutherford B. Hayes born. He will be President during the Nez Perce War.
1824
Creation of the Indian Department (which belongs to the War Department).
1827
John Gibbon (who will lead the Big Hole attack) born in Philadelphia.
1828
George Crook born near Taylorsville, Ohio.
1830
Oliver Otis Howard born in Leeds, Maine.
1831
Four Nimiipu travel to Saint Louis, requesting Christian instruction.
1833
Howard’s father brings the Negro boy Edward Johnson to help with farmwork.
1834
Congress creates the Indian Territory, which will become (approximately) the state of Oklahoma.
1834
Fort Laramie built by William Sublette. Bought by Army in 1849.
1834
Hudson’s Bay Company constructs Fort Boise (abandoned in 1855 due to Indian troubles). Meanwhile, in Montana, the American Fur Company establishes a trading post in Blackfoot country. The Crows, enemies of the Blackfeet, attack the post but are beaten off. “Thus ended the first, last, and only warlike attempt ever made by the Crows . . . upon the whites.”
1836
Marcus and Narcissa Whitman establish their Cayuse mission at Waiilatpu. Henry and Eliza Spalding establish their Nez Perce mission at Lapwai.
1838
Old Chief Joseph becomes a Christian and sets up his lodge by Lapwai.
ca. 1840
Chief Joseph (Heinmot Tooyalakekt) born, and christened Ephraim.
1839
Nelson A. Miles (the future captor of Joseph) born in Massachusetts. (Some sources give 1840.)
1842
Nez Perce tribal government invented by Spalding and a Dr. Elijah White (Indian subagent for Oregon) who (kind souls) draft laws for the Nimiipu. The first head-chief they impose is a convert named Ellis. Not surprisingly, he is unpopular, and according to some sources presently departs for the Buffalo Country.
1843
Foundation of first Oregon militia.
1843
A measles epidemic impels the Cayuse to murder their missionaries (this is the “Whitman Massacre”).
1844
Foundation of Oregon Rangers.
1847–50
Cayuse Indian War in Oregon, initiated by the Whitman Massacre.
1848
Upon the death or departure of Ellis, Richard becomes Nimiipu head-chief.
1848
Gold discovered at Sutter’s Mill, California, precipitating an immigration “rush.”
1849
Richard resigns, to be succeeded by Lawyer (Hahlalhotoost).
1849
Oregon Territory created.
1849
Control of Indian matters transferred from Department of War to Department of the Interior. The new organization is now called the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Looking back on this event in 1878, one bleeding heart Congressman will consider soldiers to have been better to the Indians than “their present guardians of the Interior Department, whose amazing villainies would astound the sturdiest felon.”
1850
Ostensible ringleaders of the Whitman Massacre hanged.
1850
Lee (Thomas Leander) Moorhouse born. Many Nez Perce photos will be stamped with his name.
1850
Howard graduates from Bowdoin College and enters West Point. Robert E. Lee’s son is in his class.
1852
Charles Erskine Scott Wood born.
1852
Moses Milner founds Mount Idaho, the town which will play so significant a part at the beginning of the Nez Perce War.
1853
Creation of Washington Territory (split off from Oregon Territory).
ca. 1854
“Finding the buffalo diminishing in their own country,” the Sioux begin to encroach westward on Crow country.
1854
Bannock and Shoshoni attack emigrant train along the Snake River.
1854
Howard graduates from West Point, fourth in his class. Commissioned a brevet second lieutenant.
1855
Howard marries Elizabeth (Lizzie) Waite on Valentine’s Day. Guy Howard born at Augusta, Maine (December. 16). Howard will write about this son: “His was an ideal life from his babyhood to his death in the service in the Philippines.”
1855
Walla Walla Treaty sets aside a joint use area for the Cayuse, Walla Walla and Umatilla. Nimiipu sign a treaty whose provisions (following Spalding and White’s edicts of 1842) require them to relinquish some traditional territory for the transcontinental railroad. They retain 12,000 out of almost 30,000 square miles (7 million acres). The English-speaking convert Lawyer becomes head-chief.
1855
Head-chiefs also established for Cayuses, Flatheads, Kootenais, Pend d’Oreilles, Walla Wallas and Yakimas.
1855
Washington Territory invalidates marriages between whites and Indians.
1855–56
Rogue River Indian War in Oregon. About its causes General Crook remarks: “It was of no unfrequent occurrence for an Indian to be shot down in cold blood, or a squaw to be raped by some brute. Such a thing as a white man being punished for outraging an Indian was unheard of. It was the fable of the wolf and lamb every time.” (In this description Crook conceptualizes a whole series of Rogue Wars spanning 1850–58.)
1856
As Chief of Ordnance in the field, Howard takes part in the military removal of the Seminoles from Florida.
1856
Nez Perce aid the U.S. Army in the Yakima War.
1857
While in Florida, Howard comes forward in a Methodist revival meeting and finds salvation. Around this time his second child Grace is born. When the Seminole campaign concludes, he teaches mathematics at West Point (1857–61).
1857
Grande Ronde reservation created in Oregon.
1858
Discovery of the Comstock Lode spreads gold fever through the Sierras around Virginia City.
1858
The Nez Perce chief Timothy helps Colonel Steptoe’s troops escape encirclement by Yakimas, Coeur d’Alenes and Spokanes.
1859
Oregon granted statehood.
1859
The soon to be famous Bannock chief Buffalo Horn leads five hundred of his people to Fort Brigadier in hopes of getting a homeland in the Utah Territory, but the Eastern Shoshoni chief Washakie refuses to share land.
1860
“In the year 1860 there was nothing within the limits of what is now Montana that could be termed a settlement . . .”—Lt. James H. Bradley, 1876.
1860
Discovery of gold on Nimiipu lands, near eponymous Orofino, Idaho.
1861
Sixteen hundred gold claims filed by whites on the Nez Perce reservation. Illegal establishment of Florence and Orofino towns. Lewiston springs up as an illegal supply depot on the reservation. Lawyer signs a new treaty to allow white access to the Nez Perce gold fields, but this remains unratified.
1861
Outbreak of the Civil War. First ten Gatling guns sold to President Lincoln at $1,300 each.
1861
Colonel Howard leads the Third Maine volunteer regiment into the Civil War. At Bull Run he commands a brigade.
1861
Captain Jack succeeds his father as Modoc chief.
1861
Foundation of Dakota, Montana and Nevada territories.
1862
Birth of La Barge City, Montana (the future Deer Lodge); construction of the Overland Telegraph.
1862
Howard loses his right arm at the Battle of Fair Oaks (May 31). Later that year he resumes active duty.
1862
Brig. Gen. Rufus Saxton becomes military governor of the Department of the South, and begins to establish free black labor and education in the Sea Islands of the Carolinas.
1862–63
Howard serves in the Virginian campaign. At Antietam he becomes division commander; in March ’63 he becomes major general of volunteers.
1863
Howard (commanding the Eleventh Corps) experiences one of the greatest embarrassments of his military career when Stonewall Jackson takes him by surprise in the Battle of Chancellorsville.
1863
Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation. The Union resorts to conscript armies.
1863
Foundation of the Idaho Territory. Lewiston is the capital for one year (afterwards Boise). The first governor receives charge of Indian matters.
1863
Bannocks and Fort Hall Shoshonis sign a treaty at Soda Springs, I.T.
1863
Foundation of the Arizona Territory.
1863
Thirty-eight Sioux hanged en masse in Mankato, Minnesota, after a hunger-induced uprising in which they killed 644 civilians and 93 soldiers.
1863
Death of Old Looking-Glass at age seventy-eight.
1863
Nimiipu at Lapwai sign away more than 13 million acres (ninety percent) of their land [see entry for 1805–6] in what White Thunder will later call a “thief treaty.” (Bill Gulick: “So one-third of the tribe signed away seven-eighths of the reservation as its boundaries had been laid out in 1855.”) (Emily Greenwald: “Government agents devised the 1863 treaty to protect the lands of ‘friendly’ Christianized bands but to dispossess the non-Christian bands . . .”) As a result, the tribe splits into treaty and non-treaty factions, the former headed by Lawyer, the second—who never signed—including Old Joseph at Wallowa and White Bird in the Salmon Valley. Taking heed of the latter group, President Lincoln declines to ratify the treaty.
1864
William Pitt Fessenden, Secretary of the Treasury, establishes “Freedmen’s Home Colonies” for former slaves in Confederate-free parts of the South.
1864
Howard commands the Fourth Corps and helps conquer Atlanta. During this campaign he is wounded again. Upon the death of General McPherson he is chosen by Sherman to lead the Army of the Tennessee.
1864
Massacre of Cheyenne civilians at Sand Creek, Colorado, by Col. J. M. Chivington with the Third Regiment of Colorado Cavalry. See source-note to p. 631: “Without a shadow of excuse . . .” on p. 1313.
1864
Nevada admitted as thirty-sixth state. Montana Territory formed from parts of Idaho and Dakota. Most of Wyoming is likewise split off.
1864–68
Snake Indian War plays out across the Great Basin. Among the troopers fighting the Snakes is David Perry, who will lose the Battle of White Bird Canyon in 1877.
1865
“Until 1865 government policy meant what it said: an America for whites east of the Mississippi and west of the Rockies, and a red America in the ‘desert’ in between.”—John Keegan.
1865
Sioux and Cheyennes raid the Powder River in Wyoming to avenge the previous year’s Sand Creek Massacre.
1865
Chief Joseph’s elder wife Good Woman (conjectural name) gives birth to a daughter, Sound Of Running Feet.
1865
Howard teaches Sunday school to freed Negroes while stationed at the Sea Islands. Sherman issues his Sea-Island Circular turning over the islands, abandoned rice fields and certain other lands near Charleston to black settlement.
1865
Helena, Montana (founded a mere year before), now contains 8,000 inhabitants.
1865
Lee surrenders. The Civil War is over. General Howard becomes a brigadier general.
1865–1920
Lincoln establishes the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands (March 3, 1865). After the President’s assassination, Howard disregards Sherman’s advice and becomes the bureau’s first head (commissioner), beginning in June 1865. By December 1868 the institution has been effectively undermined and paralyzed by President Johnson’s administration. It limps along until its abolition in 1872. The associated Freedman’s Savings and Trust Co. (incorporated by Congress 3 March 1865) fails in 1874; a final accounting of its assets will not be completed until 1920. Howard is charged with malfeasance and spends many years and much money to clear his name.
1866
Captain Fetterman’s 81 troops massacred by Cheyennes and Sioux.
1866
Gatling guns officially adopted by U.S. Army.
1867
Placer mines in Nez Perce ceded territory are mostly exhausted.
1867
Custer and Hancock ride against the Cheyennes, but succeed only in burning one empty village.
1867
Buffalo population within limits of present U.S. estimated at 50 million. See entry for 1492.
1867
Kansas Pacific constructs a railroad line to Abilene, Kansas, allowing Texas cattlemen to sell beef to parts east.
1867
Foundation of the Dominion of Canada.
1867
The U.S. Peace Commission concludes that the best policy is to place all Indians on reservations. Meanwhile, Sherman writes Grant: “This conflict . . . will exist as long as the Indians exist, for their ways are different from our ways, and either they or we must be masters on the Plains.”
