The Indian Hater

Notes from Lynn:

After 132 years of Montana weather, the inscription is almost illegible. The tombstone is planted among the Mitchells, Hulls and Schwabs, just a few feet from my mother, in the Corvallis Cemetery. It marks the grave of my 19th century relative, C.L. Mitchell. He died a violent death when he was only 28 years old, unmarried, handsome, energetic and enraged, we are told, by hatred. Chiseled at the bottom of the stone is a lugubrious prophecy chosen by his grieving family as a kindly threat to the living.

Remember friends as you pass by
As you are now so once was I.
As I am now now so you must be.
Prepare for death and follow me.

* * *

Patches of early-season snow greeted us when dawn came to the May Creek Campground which, left open by the U.S. Forest Service, is only a few miles on State Highway 43 from the Big Hole National Battlefield (at left) in southwestern Montana. It was warmer in the Visitor Center, which overlooks the bloody ground of 1877. Tipi frames mark the encampment where the 7th Infantry surprised 800 sleeping Nez Perce Indians, indiscrimately killing 60 women and children and burning the tipis with families inside. But across the Big Hole River are the rifle pits and trenches where the same soldiers, who broke and ran from the infuriated warriors, spent 24 hours besieged and helpless in fear of another Custer massacre.

Bitterroot is named for a pink flower, Lewisa rediva, but as metaphor it evokes the story of young Campbell L. Mitchell. My branch of my maternal grandmother's family had emigrated by wagon in the 1860s from Missouri to the fertile Bitterroot Valley. By 1877 the Army had just expelled all but a few of the Flathead (Salish) Indians from their historic homeland. Then came panic among the white settlers. Desperate bands of the Nez Perce nation, its reservation cut by 90 percent in eastern Washington and the midsection of Idaho, were coming across the Bitterroot Mountains. In flight from battles that had humiliated the Army, the Nez Perce were headed for the Canadian border.

Campbell Mitchell, said to be an ardent Indian-hater, had been frustrated. Chief Joseph declined to fight. His warriors, families, baggage and 2,000 horses avoided the armed settlers packed into in a Lolo Pass redoubt (later called Fort Fizzle) and Stevensville’s Fort Owen (immediately called Fort Skedaddle). Col. John Gibbon’s 163-man infantry force soon showed up. In pursuit of the Nez Perce down the Bitterroot Valley and over the Beaverhead Mountains, the troops were joined by 34 civilians. They included Camp Mitchell, my great-great-great uncle, and others of my ancestral relations – five Chaffins, one Hull and two more Mitchells. Gibbon's pursuers caught up with the Indians on the early morning of August 9. In the Nez Perce camp the war chief, Looking Glass, had failed to post sentries.

Forming a skirmish line about 200 yards from the tipis, the soldiers waited for sunrise. An Indian named Natalekin got up to check on unusual sounds from the horse herd. An impatient volunteer shot him dead – and alerted the camp. The shooter, we are told, was Campbell Mitchell (above).

The troops and volunteers stormed across the shallows, shooting low (to hit the sleepers) and burning tipis with children trapped inside. Looking Glass and others organized the warriors, described later as the most effective fighters in western history, to mount a counterattack. The soldiers were forced back across the river, where they were pinned down for a day – long enough to allow the surviving Nez Perce to escape. About 30 warriors were killed. Col. Gibbon’s force was crippled with 29 dead (two others later died) and 39 others wounded, including the colonel himself. Five volunteers were killed. Gibbon and the Army called the defeat a victory. Gibbonsville (see below) was named for him. Seven soldiers received Medals of Honor.

More bluecoats marched into the battlefield the next day. Under Col. Nelson Miles, the new unit defeated the remnants of Chief Joseph’s fighters in another bloody battle on September 30 at Bear Paw. It was only 40 miles from the border. The Nez Perce surrendered.

Campbell Mitchell didn’t go to Bear Paw. For what happened to him, we are indebted to Aubrey Alan Haines and his book published in 2007 by The Globe Pequot Press, “The Battle of the Big Hole.” Haines quotes volunteer Tom Sherill, whose 1916 memoir was written by A.J. Noyes and filed with the Montana Historical Society. Sherill told Noyes, “He (Mitchell) was killed among the lodges near the upper part of the Indian camp. He was lying face down, his arms stretched out full length, with five wounds in his back, stripped of all his clothes.”

Haines also writes that Yellow Wolf, quoted years later in a Caxton Printers book by L.V. McWhorter, said the wounded volunteer had been led past a tipi when shot dead by an angry Indian named Otskai. Yellow Wolf remembered Otskai shouting, “Look around! These babies, these children killed! These young girls, these young women you see dead! Were they warriors? These young boys, these old men. Were they warriors? … Why should we waste time saving his life?”

A different version, according to Haines, comes from Nez Perce refugees interviewed in 1879 in Canada by Duncan MacDonald. “Looking Glass ordered the warriors not to kill him, saying he was a citizen, and they might obtain information from him… (A) woman had who had lost her brother and some of her children came up. She was crying at the time, and on seeing the citizen slapped him in the face. On receiving the blow he instantly gave her a vigorous kick with his foot. He had had no more than kicked her when some of the warriors killed him.”

Campbell Mitchell was reburied in Corvallis Cemetery.

Notes from Margo:

The ride from Battle of the Big Hole to Salt Lake City was two days of amazing geology and scenery down the Salmon River canyon – huge red-rock formations and cuts through layers and layers of different colors of sandstone. You would think of the Southwest, except that the highway followed a lovely river, running wide and shallow, which occasionally opened up into fertile bottomlands with horses, cattle, sheep and llamas grazing sleepily. And in the distance rose jagged, snow-dusted peaks.

We slept in the Guppy two nights running at campgrounds with snow on the ground – one near the Battle of the Big Hole, the second at Craters of the Moon. The snow was just in patches, but it was enough to make us nervous about winter coming on, and plenty enough to make it so we weren't really camping. We didn't use our campstove to cook dinner in the evening or make coffee in the morning. We just looked at the snow, and headed out for the nearest cafe or espresso bar. Both mornings, we drove for a long time before coffee appeared. There just weren't any towns big enough to have coffee perking for the few travelers who might be driving down Highway 93 on a fall morning.

We stopped at Gibbonsville, named for Col. Gibbon, just as we passed into Idaho from Montana. In the 1890s, it was a booming mining town and girlhood home of Lillian Hull Schwab, Melda Schwab Ludlow's mother and Lynn's maternal grandmother. Now it's a creek hollow with a string of houses, many of them looking a bit wearworn. Some appear to be log cabins that have been repaired and added on to over the years, and are still habitable. Some were newer structures, some were mobile homes. No businesses of any kind seem to have survived. But the historical marker said that back in the day, there were at least two banks, six to eight saloons, sawmills, a newspaper, the whole works. Melda once told Conrad, her son, that Gibbonsville was also the loneliest place in the West.

On that drive, maybe 150 miles, we saw numerous log cabins. Some were caving in or falling down. But some were clearly still in use, having been updated over the years with modern windows, or more rooms added on. We saw some that were being used for livestock shelter, some being used as outbuildings for newer homes – an interesting note that they are still useful all these years later. Solid structures, I guess. There is also a booming business in new log cabins, but they have a totally different look, with newer, yellowish logs, and big, modern layouts. But that's a different kettle of fish.

That scenic, one-day drive for us was most likely the cutoff from the Oregon Trail that Lynn's forebears took when they immigrated to Montana from Missouri in wagons during the 1860s and later. How would they have managed this pass or the next, and where would they have settled their stock during the nights?

As the sun went down on jagged, snowy peaks in the distance, we closed in our goal, Craters of the Moon National Monument. We had been cold enough the night before that we decided to eat dinner at the nearest town, stay in the restaurant for a hour or so after dark, and then make camp late enough so we could just go to bed. Once we're in bed, we're warm; it's just the time in camp before bed that can be uncomfortable. The nearest town was Arco, “The Atomic City,” the first town in America to be lighted with nuclear power. And so we went to Pickle's Place, "Home of the Atomic Burger." As far as atomic burgers go, dinner was fine. And we stayed warm even though there was snow on the ground at our campsite.

We toured Craters of the Moon the next day, with its amazing variety of lava flows, volcanic formations, lava rocks, lava tubes, the works. It looked like it would probably have been more impressive in the summer, when it would have been infernally hot. But it was pretty impressive anyway, in the bitter cold of the rocky, coffee-less morning.


Notable:

Two bald eagles flew over us on the drive down the Salmon River. I saw the first when we were still quite a ways away, and was thinking, “Man!! That is a big *?*~** hawk!!” As we got closer, I saw the flashing white head. I shouted: “Bald eagle! Bald eagle!!” And of course, Lynn, being such a stickler for safety, was yelling at me to keep my eyes on the road. Jeez!! Yeah, it IS dangerous to birdwatch while you're driving on a winding, two-lane road. But it's not every day that two bald eagles fly over your minivan.


Mileage: from Salmon, Idaho, to Craters of the Moon: 158

From Craters of the Moon to Salt Lake City: 264

Total mileage so far: 2,747