Were they essential to me now? I lay there asking myself why they suddenly seemed trivial. Had Elizabeth Ann Everett been left behind, a casualty of war between a peaceful tribe making hard choices and the U.S. Army? Who was she?

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen

We crossed the Missouri at Cow Island, where the river was not so wide, and shallow this time of year. The U.S. Army had a supply dump at Cow Island. A soldier in the Fifth Infantry told me later that ordinarily, the goods would have been transported by steamship up to Fort Benton, but the river that year was too low. The supplies at Cow Island were to be freighted this time to garrisons upriver, and also to some settlements in Canada. A contingent of eight or nine soldiers guarded the supply.

Even now, I can’t help but wonder if that little group of Bluecoats was a decoy to delay us. Remember, please, that no one in the army knew precisely where The People were going to emerge from the vastness that was, and still is, Montana. Cow Island seemed a logical spot.

Whatever the merits of speculation from a woman’s writing desk in Oregon twenty-seven years later, I do know that The People hit the jackpot at Cow Island. The last steamship of the season had unloaded a pile of goods. I recall a mound of kegs and barrels along the riverbank.

Chief Joseph and several others, Hawk among them, rode to the supply dump to bargain for some food. The sergeant in charge was reluctant to part with any of his goods, which I thought foolhardy of him. He did unbend enough to hand out some hard tack and a little bacon, and grudgingly, some sacks of flour. It was obvious to everyone that such a stingy amount of food wouldn’t go far among five hundred or so people. Perhaps he figured Joseph could duplicate the miracle of the loaves and fishes.

We camped near the supply dump on the opposite side of the Missouri. Under the cover of darkness, which came earlier and earlier every day, many of the braves raided the dump and burned what they couldn’t liberate. You could smell bacon for miles. The sky lit up with the great fire until the night turned bright.

The soldiers dug themselves in near the supplies and kept up a steady fire all night, until the Nimiipuu sharpshooters showed them a few things about marksmanship. They retreated then to a discreet spot farther from the river and why not? The supplies were all ablaze. I doubt that sergeant was given too many more independent commands, once the army got around later to fixing blame for all the weakness and error displayed from Lapwai to the Canadian border.