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SKETCHBOOK |
Something of the spirit that lay behind these encounters, daring encounters, and the eye to detail that chose the moment to depict, is summed up in the events of a skirmish narrated by the late Otis Halfmoon to Stern in the summer of 1957, as he had heard it from his father, Hiyum Pakhat Timine (Grizzly Five Hearts), David Halfmoon. The time was the early 1850s, when, a young man, he was with his brother and a party of fellow Nez Percés numbering eight or nine in the Wallowa country.
My father and the others were camped down along the river at the forks of the Imnaha. And at daybreak they heard the sound of horses moving. One man yelled, "Somebody's taking our horses!" Just about that time, one of the Snakes called back, "ila'rxni i tiwa'rka, ila'rxni itiwarka!" (Nez Percé', "ile'xni i time Ika," " There are a lot of Snakes!") They looked for their horses--couldn't find them. Then one old man said, "You crazy people! they took our horses." Now they were on foot.
One old man who had lots of experience in that said, "There never was a time that people stole our horses in the morning; so there must be lots." They had some horses left, staked quite a ways off end they rode after them on thee. My father and his brother rode double on one horse. When they caught up with them, they were just going along the hillside there. [The Snakes were headed south toward Battle Creek.] They were all off the horses driving them afoot. Some crazy guys in the back were already charging them. They hollered to them, "i simawisi.'x?" "Who are you?" They still thought it was somebody playing a trick on them. The Snakes answered, "tiwarka!" (Snakes!) When the Snakes heard them, they beat it down toward the cliffs. Before they reached them, the lead Snake hollered--there were two of them on horse--and they got off and beat it down towards the cliffs in a little canyon.
The Nez Percés didn't know what to do. They said, "What shall we do with them?" In the meantime, my father and his brother went to the head of the draw and headed them off there. But there was one, with just a white wolf-hide around his shoulders and a breechcloth, came out right in the opening where my father and his brother were. They had just one gun; they were scuffling over the gun--"Let me kill him!" He was walking along uphill, using his gun as a cane. They shot at him, but the horse jerked up--knocked that wolf-skin off his shoulders, and he went back down to the others. My father ran and got that wolf-skin and came back. Then they both went back down the draw to where the others were already shooting.
The Snake Indians were cornered into the cave, and my father and his brother looked where they were shooting.
Then a bullet hit below his feet, a rock, and it spattered all over. And one of the Nez Percés told him, "Get out of there; you'll get hit!" And told him that they had them headed off in a hole. It wasn't very long and the Snakes were killed, six of them, and one got away. There were two Nez Percés chiefs killed--Saqanma [band] chiefs--Hiyumyatimu'xtuluin [Grizzly Immersed in Charcoal] and one other, his brother.
Then they dragged the Snakes all together into the creek. They scalped one of them, a handsomely dressed fellow with his hair all fixed up--they scalped him on account of that. They all got together on the cliff, after they had carried their own dead up there where they can load them on the horses. They circled around and sang a song--kind of a rally, like--they were glad in a way and they were sorry in a way because they had two dead. And they call that dance iye'stint. When they finished singing they looked way up high on the cliffs and they saw him [i.e. the remaining Snake] standing way up there and he raised his blanket just like he was saying farewell . . . Then he disappeared.
They came back with those dead back to the camp and buried them there. Then they went on down towards the main camp on the flat above Wallowa town, on the forks of the Lostine and Wallowa Rivers. There were Palus, Wallawallas, Yakimas, Nez Percés--from all over the Northwest.
Now Philip McFarland's father was in a bunch from along the Snake River
there--Sisnimpu, right across from Grand Ronde River--that were behind
my father and his people. And they stopped along the same creek where
the Snakes were in that water. They were drinking that water, cooking
with that water, and didn't know it till they caught up with them. And
there was a sign in one of the camps--tent poles, and a Snake Indian
arrow,
and bear fur and a piece of charcoal tied with it, and two sticks tied
down below it. And they looked at it and wondered what it was. And they
called the old man, Wiswiyalwit, and he walked over and put his head
down,
and said, "The Snake Indians killed two of our men, Hiyomyatsimuxtuluin
and his brother, so many days ago."
They hurried on when they saw that. And somebody brought the message over to the camp, and the announcer went around saying that the people are coming, the ones that killed the Snake Indians. Cap' Sumkin, from here, was in the camp. He told Albert Moore about it. He told him that that's the first time he ever seen my father--my father's name. And they must have got ready before they come in. They dressed up in their outfit just the way they were in the war--painted their faces (they didn't use charcoal unless they ordinarily did). They moved in like visitors, as a kind of parade; and they were leading my father, some of the old men.
Left: Indian police from the Umatilla Agency in 1888. Cap'n Sumkin is fourth from right. Moorhouse collection, PH036-5090.
My father and his brother were riding double, just the way they were in the battle. My father and his brother had killed the most of the Snakes--that's why they were kind of honoring him. They rode them around in the camp and then into the dance circle in the middle. There were already a lot of gifts piled in there in the middle, and the leader of the camp gave it away to the people--a kind of potlatch. The gifts were buffalo hides, buffalo robes, blankets, beads, and anything that was valuable. They came from anybody in the camp to show that they were glad the Snakes had been killed. It might have been from people who had lost relatives to the Snakes.
That same evening they had that dance. The dance forms in the middle. All women, single or married, in their best clothes, danced in a circle in the middle. (They do it nowadays; they call it step-and-half, a love dance.) The women circled one way, kind of oval shape, the men outside moving in the other directions. That was that iwe'lwetset [welcoming dance for returning warriors, usually termed the scalp dance]. The had the scalp right in the middle, on a pole. There was a song.
After that, the old man in charge of company, an organized group--his name was Takliks--he took charge of the scalp. He'd stick it way out there by his tent. The group went under his name and had a Takliksdance. He was the leader of that iwe'lwetset dance. He was just a prominent man, a spokesman, an older man, but not a chief. He was related to my father somehow, and that's why he took that over.
That was two or three years before the treaty of 1855.
Next: Works Cited
http://libweb.uoregon.edu/ec/exhibits/sketchbook/grizzly.html |
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