Battle of The Clearwater - Aftermath

Aftermath

The day after the battle, General Howard pursued the Nez Perce about 12 miles northward to the village of Kamiah where he saw the Nez Perce crossing the Clearwater River. Howard rushed his forces forward, but was too late. One cavalryman was wounded. On July 15, Howard received the surprising message that Joseph and his band wished to surrender, while Looking Glass, White Bird, and Toohoolhoolzote planned to continue eastward to November. However, Joseph failed to appear the next day to surrender, but 35 Nez Perce, including 14 men, did which bolstered the Army’s view that the Nez Perce were disintegrating as a fighting force. Howard learned that the Nez Perce had moved their camp to Weippe Prairie, about 15 miles away from Howard’s position and he set off in search of them. The Nez Perce called Howard General-Day-After-Tomorrow because of his slow, careful movements.

The Nez Perce seem to have undergone a crisis in leadership in the last hours of the Clearwater battle and the days which followed. Joseph was by no means the undisputed leader. Five different bands and five leaders were represented among the Nez Perce, and each warrior reserved to himself his right to fight as he wished and when he wished. Joseph (and presumably his brother Ollokot) apparently argued against leaving Idaho and their traditional lands. However, White Bird, Looking Glass, and Toohoolhoolzote prevailed and the Nez Perce decided to follow the rugged Lolo trail to Lolo Pass and Montana. Looking Glass had many friends in Montana and argued that once there the Nez Perce would be safe, not understanding perhaps that Idaho and Montana were states in the same nation.

An irony was that 72 years earlier the Nez Perce had greeted in friendship the half-starved Lewis and Clark Expedition on Weippe Prairie. Clark, it was reputed, had a son with a Nez Perce wife and that son, now an elderly man, was with Joseph.

Hearing that the Nez Perce were leaving Weippe Prairie, Howard sent out a strong force from Kamiah on July 17 to ascertain in which direction the Nez Perce were heading. Major Edwin C. Mason and “Colonel” Edward McConville, a civilian volunteer, led the force of cavalry, civilian volunteers, and several Nez Perce scouts. Joseph’s Nez Perce ambushed the scouts, killing 2 and wounding one, and Mason turned back, but after having learned that the Nez Perce were traveling the Lolo trail. The Nez Perce undertook one last raid in Idaho on July 18, stealing several hundred horses at Kamiah.

On July 16, the main body of the Nez Perce departed Weippe Prairie on the arduous Lolo Trail through 120 miles (200 km.) of uninhabited mountains. They were about 750 persons in all, two thousand horses, and hundreds of dogs in a column several miles long. They reappeared on the Montana side of the Lolo Pass on July 25 having accomplished the difficult passage with relative ease. Soon, they would again meet up with the U.S. army. Howard, with 700 men, set off after the Nez Perce on the Lolo Trail on July 30. He telegraphed ahead and soldiers awaited the Nez Perce just over the Montana border at Fort Fizzle. Colonel John Gibbon would intercept the Nez Percé at the Battle of the Big Hole.