The Indian Dispossessed
Affairs had said in his report to the Honorable Secretary of the Interior, no more than three months before the Nez Perce removal took place:
"Experience has demonstrated the impolicy of sending northern Indians to the Indian Territory. To go no farther back than the date of the Pawnee removal, it will be seen that the effect of a radical change of climate is disastrous, as this tribe alone, in the first two years, lost by death over 800 out of its number of 2376. The Northern Cheyennes have suffered severely, and the Poncas who were recently removed from contact with the unfriendly Sioux, and arrived there in July last, have already lost 36 by death, which, by an ordinary computation, would be the death rate for the entire tribe for a period of four years."
Yet these Nez Perces, accustomed to the high altitude, the cool bracing atmosphere of mountainous Idaho, were to be sent to the hot prairies of the Indian Territory with the full approval of this same Commissioner. The political consideration must have been great to have compelled this fourth sacrifice of human life.
The Indians were first taken to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and placed in camp on the Missouri River bottoms for the winter. The change from Idaho to Missouri River bottoms, enough in itself to invite disaster, was aggravated by their surroundings; says an inspector, "Between a lagoon and the river, the
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