The Nez Perces
way who were not the victims of their pursuers' bullets; many women and children of Joseph's band were left in hastily made graves. It is a sad truth that desperate men among the fleeing Indians committed a number of robberies and murders which could not be considered as acts of war; but the dishonors of the campaign seem to weigh against General Howard's Indian allies. "See these women's bodies disinterred by our own ferocious Bannock scouts!" writes General Howard. "See how they pierce and dishonor their poor, harmless forms, and carry off their scalps! Our officers sadly look upon the scene, and then, as by a common impulse, deepen their beds, and cover them with earth." ("Joseph Nez Perce.")
Notwithstanding these few barbarities committed on both sides, the campaign was singularly free from incidents that add bitterness to the inevitable horrors of Indian war. Brave and hardy soldiers, doing a stern duty under orders from their Government, pressed to the utmost a band of some six hundred fleeing men, women, and children who could not be made to understand why the country of their fathers from time without reckoning should pass to the white man "by right of discovery and occupation." Many old men in that stricken band had been with Old Joseph when he said, "The land on the other side of the line is what we gave to the Great Father." Is it to be wondered at that the
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