Truth,
Facts and Rendition:
The Battle
of Pierre’s Hole
One of the chiefs came
forward by himself and unarmed, bearing the pipe of peace.
“Is your piece
charged?” asked Antoine to his red companion.
“It is.”
“Then cock it, and
follow me.”
They met the
Blackfoot chief half way, who extended his hand in
friendship. Antoine grasped it.
“Fire!” cried he.
Washington Irving,
Adventures of Captain Bonneville
This quote from Captain
Bonneville may seem like it came from a historical fiction book,
but actually was a direct quote from one of the many sources I
use regularly. The interaction was between a man bent on
vengeance, his Flathead accomplice and a Blackfoot chief that
started a battle which would became the largest and most well
known in the early west. This conflict happened at Pierre’s
Hole, located near the town of Driggs, Idaho and Wyoming border.
The fight took place on July 18, 1832, when that year’s annual
rendezvous was winding down and many of its attendees were
heading towards the areas they were to trap in. The trade fair
had started on July 8th and by the 17th;
groups of men like Captain Benjamin Bonneville’s forty had
left the rendezvous site about eight o’clock in the morning
and traveled away from the valley, when they thought they caught
a glimpse of Lucien Fontenelle’s company of trappers. But when
Wyeth looked at the group traveling in a long, single file with
his spyglass, he realized they were about one hundred fifty
Indian men, women and children.
This “hole” or
mountain valley they found themselves in was named for Old
Pierre Tevanitagon, an Iroquois trapper who was killed by
Blackfeet in 1827. The glen is about thirty miles long, from
five to fifteen miles wide. The Rocky Mountain Fur Company
described it as “Pierre’s Hole, under the Three Teton
Mountains”.
It was fitting that in a
high mountain valley like this, a son Antoine Godin, was about
to repay a tribe for the death of his father. Thyery Godin, who
had been killed in 1829 or 1830 by the same tribe that was
coming down toward them. Zenas Leonard, one of the men in Wyeth’s
group noted, “They advanced towards us displaying a British
Flag.” The two camps wanted time to think about what might
happen, so both sides sent out men to talk. Godin and an unnamed
Flathead Indian mounted their horses and rode out from the white’s
side to hold a conference. On the opposite side, the Gro Ventre
leader came forth with the red blanket he always had with him
and a “Pipe of Peace”. When the three men came together,
they reined their horses close and a hand was offered forward to
shake. The events then proceed like this when the chief’s hand
was grasped and held on to:
“The Flathead
leveled his piece, and brought the Blackfoot to the ground.
Antoine snatched off his scarlet blanket, which was highly
ornamented, and galloped off with it as a trophy to the
camp, bullets of the enemy whistling after him.”
So starts what is now
called the Battle of Pierre’s Hole. If there had been a slim
chance for repairing the relationship between the different
Blackfeet bands and the whites it was at this meeting. But with
the death of the band’s leader, a breastwork of trees was
thrown together and pits were dug for the Indians to fight from
behind and under. Many history books state that this battle was
the largest and most recorded in White/Indian relations during
the fur trade. The kicker to all this is if anyone else had gone
out for the parlay, the battle might not have happened!
The stage was set for the
two groups to meet by four events: 1) the Gro Ventres band was
heading north, after they visited their kin, the Arapahos. 2) A
series of recent events added to the negative view many of the
Americans had toward the Blackfeet. Warren Ferris tells us that
a few days previous; seven young men who left the rendezvous
headed toward St. Louis were killed by a band of Gro Ventres, a
sub tribe or band of the Blackfeet. Hiram Chittenden wrote the
small group attacked was a portion of Wyeth’s men, which
included Alfred Stephens and two other unnamed men who died in
that encounter. Stephens lived through the fight, but died later
from his wounds received. 3) William Sublette had a run in with
a number of them on the way to the rendezvous, probably a
different group of the tribe. 4) And finally Tom Fitzpatrick
wandered into the main camp after a scrape with some young men
of their tribe. On foot, lost, almost senseless and with a head
of hair that had changed white over night because of his
experiences. It was these four incidents and the general
disregard for the tribe that laid the background for the parley
and the next happenings.
After learning the facts
surrounding this conflict, you may have some of the same
thoughts I had. Why did these particular people step forward to
parlay, when many others would have been a better choice? A
simple meeting, a few inexpensive gifts exchanged and a promise
to meet again someday could have avoided the whole fight. A new
start might have been made in White/ Blackfoot relations if only
one thing had happened different- a change of people to
represent the whites. The parlay was a peaceable way out of a
bad situation for both sides. This occurred many times in the
early west. These meetings saved face and provided a way to back
out and return another day when fighting would be better for at
least one of the sides. One opportunity of this was between the
Rocky Mountain Fur Company and a Blackfeet band; when the
Indians found the white men abundantly able to defend
themselves, they adopted a peaceful policy and opened a trade of
fur and skins that was advantageous to both parties. This is
what could have happened with the groups involved in our battle,
but hatred and revenge were to have their way that day. Antoine’s
need for vengeance really was not finalized in that parlay. The
battle left more people with other scores to even as we will see
later in the article.
On the Gro Ventre side,
their chief’s death did nothing on the Blackfeet side but
preserve what they were hearing from the English, who were using
those tribes as a barrier between their trapping men and the
American’s push into the Northwest. And did not help mend the
damage done when John Coulter first fought against them in a
battle, something that the Blackfeet or the English never did
not forget. History can be made or changed by the actions of one
individual; it was a shame to see how it turned out so wrong in
this situation.
You will read many
conflicting reports here. These were made by those who were
there, who fought, saw and relayed that they experienced. So,
let’s piece together what their accounts say and try to figure
out what really happened. LeRoy Hafen wrote that the men “were
plumed and painted for war” whooping onto the plain. Yet
the chief advanced with a pipe of peace, unarmed. Having seen
the whites first, the Indians broke into two groups. The first
included the fighting men and the chief, the second women and
children. When the fighting started the whites did a similar
maneuver involving Wyeth’s men, who being inexperienced and
were labeled “Downeasterners” were kept behind the baggage
and not involved in the main fight.
The men in the band of Gro
Ventres knew what they had to do when the fighting started- they
had to stand between these treacherous whites and rest of their
tribe to protect their women and children and give time to
escape if needed. The band was not on a hostile mission. It
appears to be just a moving camp when the chance meeting
happened.
After the parley went bad,
Godin and his Flathead friend dodged a wall of bullets all the
way back to where their friends were watching events unfold.
Many today do not realize that the Flatheads and Nez Perce were
enemies with the Blackfeet.
When the first shots were
fired, Milton Sublette entrenched his men in a ravine, while
George Nidever put a young boy on a fleet horse and sent him to
the rendezvous for reinforcements. It was about nine miles each
way. Zenas Leonard wrote that two hundred whites, the same
number of Flatheads and three hundred Nez Perce came to their
call for help. Most of the men from the rendezvous site were in
so much of a hurry to help in the battle they made the trip bare
backed. Nidever gave a different number, for he thought about
two hundred fifty men arrived from the camp, at about 10 o’clock,
two hours after the first sighting of the Indians.
While the courier was
heading to the American’s camp, the Gro Ventres headed into a
grove of willows and set up firing at the whites. In the
willows, the Natives showed good fighting techniques, while the
women threw up a breastwork of aspen logs in an area close by.
The first part of the fight consisted of long range shooting,
but when the reinforcements arrived, the whites worked their way
closer. Nidever wrote that the Gro Ventres had moved from the
willows to the fort the women had built. It was half moon
shaped, with an open back and partial sides. The open end of
this “moon” had trees on it, that provided a certain amount
of cover and protection from which the Indians could shoot and
protect themselves behind. Nidever said only about one hundred
men attacked the Indian fort; the rest stayed behind the baggage
at Wyeth’s camp spot.
A council was held during
all this, one writer noted and he wrote William Sublette was
elected leader of the whites, while Zenas Leonard recorded that
Tom Fitzpatrick acted as captain, but the men were not
disciplined and set off in groups without direction. William
Sublette wanted to charge the fort; Robert Campbell agreed and
went with him. Each gave a verbal will to the other, if either
would be killed; the other could pass on the dead friend’s
wishes to their loved ones. This was probably a good thing;
since a bullet in the shoulder wounded Sublette and it was
Campbell who had drug him to safety. The whites attacked the
horseshoe shaped fort head on and rushed it, but were driven
back by the fire coming towards them. For their second attempt,
they split into groups and surrounded it. Zenas Leonard gave us
a good perspective on bravery and glory in his account. He wrote
he was afraid, but not wanting the rest of the men to look down
on him or think of him as a coward or uncourageous went up the
hill beside the rest.
Leonard, Smith, a man
known only as Kean and two Indians separated from the group and
crawled on their hands and knees to get even closer. About forty
yards away from the Gro Ventre’s fort, one of the two Indians
in this group was killed. All laid still for some time, but when
one of Smith’s feet shook some weeds he was shot as he lay on
his belly. Everyone then started to retreat and when Leonard
crawled by Smith, he asked Leonard to carry him out, which he
did. As they passed Kean, they found him mortally wounded. He
died soon after.
Benjamin Bonneville told
us that Sublette and Campbell were out ahead of the men, since
most were raw recruits from St. Louis. Sublette, Campbell and
Sinclair (or St. Clair) crawled towards the fort on their hands
and knees, but when they were within ten to fifteen paces,
Sinclair was killed. Nidever said a man called “Phelps” was
like Sinclair, shot in the thigh. Sublette was hit in the
shoulder and Quigley was nicked in the side of the head. The
same round ball that struck Sublette, Irving wrote also struck
another man in the head, this could of have been Quigley. Irving
also noted that the bone was not broken in Sublette’s arm/
shoulder area, but was splintered by the bullet and it was
several weeks before he was healed up enough to leave camp. In
the midst of the chaos an Indian close to Wyeth was shot and
Wyeth was convinced the ball came from the other side of the
fort, shot from a friendly gun. This may not be the only
instance of friendly fire at the fight.
Robert Campbell told an
interesting story about something that happened here in this
fight, he wrote of a Nez Perce Chief who could not be killed by
a bullet, was hit in the chest by a round ball from the Gro
Ventre fort. The lead ball dropped to the ground in front of him
when he was hit and this caused quite a commotion; and was big
medicine to those around him! Bonneville said the Indian chief
threw up blood, but the skin was not broken nor was he hurt
otherwise.
Both sides until kept up
continual gunfire late in the afternoon and at sunset, the
whites thought of burning the tribe from their fort. This
request was denied, as the friendly Indians fighting on the
white’s side wanted any goods they found afterwards and if
they set the fort on fire, all would be destroyed.
Inside the Indian fort,
the wily Natives had done all they could to confound the whites.
It was made of downed, stacked tree limbs upon which they had
piled blankets, buffalo robes and the leather covers from the
lodges. This concealed their movements and from which they could
still shoot behind. Besides this tactical move, the tribe’s
members had dug trenches in the ground behind the barricade to
shoot from. Warren Ferris called this fort a “substantial
pen”. Leonard later said they were astonished at the fort
and how it was made. The whites got within a few hundred yards
of them and did not know it was even being built. And that pen
was large enough to contain five hundred warriors, while
resisting any attempts for them to force their way into it.
Historian LeRoy Hafen says that while the Indians went behind
the breastworks, the women and children went into the mountains
to escape. As we shall see later, this was not totally accurate.
Since the whites could not
take the fort or burn out its occupants, words were exchanged
between the two sides. John Kirk Townsend said they had a
Blackfoot in camp, who had killed a principle chief of the tribe
and escaped to join the first white group he came in contact
with. And was prepared to fight against his people. This may
have been the man Nidever wrote of, a renegade Blackfoot with
Henry Fraeb’s party who was instructed just before dark to
talk to them and ask them to surrender. The Gro Ventre refused
and said that while they all might be killed that day, the next
day would be the white’s turn as they had sent word to a
nearby village of fifteen hundred lodges and their
reinforcements would be there soon.
It was only a
misinterpretation of this response that ended this battle. A
voice from the fort harangued the whites in a high-pitched
tongue, extolled the virtues of the Gro Ventre and shouted
defiance to their enemies. Some of the Flatheads and Nez Perces
translated the words as an overwhelming number of Blackfeet were
already attacking the main body with its hundreds of unguarded
women, children and all their trade goods. It was then that all
the Gro Ventre started yelling, “which seemed to move
heaven and earth” as one witness wrote. Both Nidever and
Fraeb became alarmed by all this and withdrew their men knowing
if it were true, they would not only loose the battle but their
year’s supplies also. So complete was the effect of these
words that Zenas Leonard said “Within five minutes of this
translation [having] been spread around the battle lines,
not a white face were to be found within a hundred yards of the
Indian fort.” The watching of the Indian fort was then
left to the Flatheads and Nez Perces.
The whites rode back to
the main camp to protect it, but only found it as they left it.
This drove some of the men to an animal-like madness. For since
darkness had come, they could not return to the battle site and
continue the confrontation. Zenas Leonard wrote he felt regret
at how it all ended, but gave credit to the Indians for their
skill and how they fought in procuring their lives.
So ended the battle of
Pierre’s Hole. The whites came the next morning to the fort
after the Indians not killed or severely wounded left during the
night. Hafen wrote, the whites found ten bodies, all the wounded
being removed. Two of Fitzpatrick’s stolen horses were also
found in the fort from his recent encounter with the band.
Nidever counted fifty bodies, twenty five dead horses and
thought three to four hundred fought in the fort by all the sign
he saw. He also wrote that some of the bodies were thrown into
the river to keep them out of the white’s hands. These bodies
could have been those who escaped at the beginning but were shot
trying to cross the river.
The results at the end of
the day’s long fight are a confused set: Alexander Sinclair
was killed, Rottenbelly, a Nez Perce chief was wounded, and
William Sublette was shot in the shoulder, while leading a
charge up the hill. Warren Ferris wrote that three whites were
killed; eight were badly wounded, along with ten Flathead and
Nez Perce Indians who fought beside them.
When the whites did a head
count at their camp, they noted one of their group was missing.
Parties of men went out looking for him and he was found
severely wounded in the bushes. The unnamed man was carried a
few miles toward the main camp where he died and was buried
Indian style – wrapped in a blanket, laid to rest in the
ground with poles and earth over him. Bonneville also said five
whites and one mixed breed was killed, several wounded. Robert
Campbell noted that three of his party was killed; he counted
seventeen Blackfeet dead. Warren Ferris wrote sixteen Indians
and six whites were laid out for their interment in the white’s
camp when it was all though. They were lucky that it was not
worse for the fighters there. Andrew Drips whose wife, Mary, was
with him at this rendezvous and had just been delivered of their
third child, named Catherine, born six days earlier. He had a
hole shot in his hat, losing a lock of hair when the ball went
through it! A close call for a new father. Not all the wounds
gave to the whites were from the Gro Ventres’ weapons. Captain
Bonneville tells us that the whites and their Indian companions
came up on both sides of the fort the Blackfoot had constructed
and “A cross-fire took place, which occasionally did
mischief to friends as well as foes.”
Big discrepancies are also
found in how many Blackfeet actually fought and died in this
conflict. On the morning of the next day, the first whites to go
into the Indian fort wrote of finding between twenty-six and
fifty warriors dead along with as many as twenty-six Indian
horses. Nidever later noted he learned only six Indians were
found alive in the fort, having first reported the fort being
empty, the ground “strewn with dead bodies, mostly women
and children, very few warriors among them.” He went on to
comment that many of the women were shot “unintentionally”
and the children inside the fort “were killed no doubt by
stray bullets.” Zenas Leonard wrote he found the next
morning forty-two dead horses, two warriors and one woman,
besides a large quantity of baggage, furs and etc. Robert
Campbell was another who claimed to find several bodies hidden
in the bushes to protect their scalps. Later reports given to
the whites by the Gro Ventre said twenty-six men and thirty-two
horses were killed in the battle on their side. And Ferris wrote
the pen was full of bodies the next morning, noting seventeen
Blackfeet and twenty-five Indian horses found dead the when the
whites and their friendly Indians finally arrived to look into
the barricaded area.
All this being said, I
cannot fully say the band of Gro Ventres were totally innocent
on their part. For it was Zenas Leonard that wrote in his
journal a few days later, they ran into a Northwest Company’s
group who told them how the band came in procession of the
British flag. The English group gave a story of how the two
camps came together to trade and share a fire but at the end,
only a few whites escaped to tell about it. The tribe then used
the flag as a signal to deceive other groups they may meet. And
seven days later, on July 25th, Wyeth with More, Foyt
and Stephens were attacked by a different band of Blackfeet in
Jackson Hole.
Warren Ferris wrote that
afterwards to repay the friendly Indians for helping them “win”
this battle, Old Gurgues, one of the Indian chiefs was rewarded
with generous gifts. He left weeks later with enough tobacco and
ammunition to supply several years. The chief also gave a
blessing to the whites before he left which went like this: “The
Great Spirit protect us in all our pursuits”. The whites
did all they could to ease the suffering of the wounded friendly
natives while the two groups stayed together.
Side notes: it is Nidever
who gives us an interesting item that may have influenced the
battle. Two paragraphs written by him on the action and how
liquor may have been the only liquid brought from the rendezvous
by the whites. It had its effect in the hot July sun, since we
know of at least one white who was killed after drinking it and
fighting. He said the one man who crawled on his hands and knees
to get close to the fort, and was shot twice in the head was
half drunk at the time.
Bonneville inserted in his
book a story of a lone Blackfoot woman who was found standing
over her dead husband’s body to protect him from the whites.
He noted the female devotion and she could be the lone living
woman mentioned in other accounts. Ferris also wrote of two
young girls found alive, who were berry hunting when the battle
started. Each was about fourteen years old, very importunate and
begged to die with the rest of the families. An old warrior of
the friendly side then killed them with his tomahawk to the
astonishment of some of the whites standing around.
It did not all end in the
valley that day, for Hiram Chittenden gave us a report of how
the revenge that started with this battle continued on for the
Gro Ventre’s side for two more years. Some time between
September 1834 and September 1835, a party of Blackfeet came to
Fort Hall to trade. A member of the trading party, who was named
“Bird”, asked Antoine Godin to come across the Snake River
and meet with them. When all were set down to trade in a lodge,
he yells “Fire” (sound familiar?) and Godin was shot in the
back. In the may lay that followed, Godin scalped Bird and then
carved N. J. W., Nathaniel Wyeth’s initials, on his forehead.
As you can see, taken
individually, the accounts of the battle give a much different
perspective than when we blend the various accounts together.
History is not always set in stone; it can be fluid and hard to
understand sometimes. All of the accounts here give us a good
view of what happened; yet what they reported are not
necessarily the same. Different men gave us different
prospectives and statistics. What we do know is the ratio of
white and friendly Indians to the Gro Ventre was at least three
to one, yet a stalemate happened. The band that came over the
ridge was no war party, having women and children with them,
which made the unreliability of the whites to come up with the
hostile Indian story of the battle unanswerable. The fight was
not in that big of an area to cause so many views and reports.
Yet no one comes up with consistent numbers or details of the
fight.
To get a complete story
all seven reports needed to be compared and to try to figure out
who was right and wrong in their comments. All of this happened
in an area nine miles (the distance from the main camp to the
battle site), with the main fighting in less than two hundred
yards, yet the battle seems so big that even the entire valley
could not contain all the action that happened there. Did the
whites reporting the battle purposefully leave out details? Why
were the deaths of Indian women and children noted only in one
report? Even Marcus Whitman’s later account of the battle was
different than Bonneville’s report. Was the battle sanitized
later for the eastern newspapers?
Writer and # of whites
killed Friendly Indians who
died
Bonneville 5 8 (1 half
breed/ 7 Nez Perce)
Leonard 5 18 (8 Flathead/
10 Nez Perce)
Ferris 3 10
Nidever 50
Deaths on the Blackfoot
side 26
The battle and its
aftermath on the people involved in it, was carried with them
all through their lives. Yet it did not need to have been
fought. Conciliatory words may have been spoken, small gifts
given from the fresh supplies they acquired at the rendezvous,
with the pipe passed around and smoked.
A seldom seem letter from
Mr. Ball’s report on the battle was wrote at Fort Vancouver
and reprinted in the New York Spectator on November 28th,
1833. He wrote:
We stopped at the
place where I last wrote you in the mountains, [the
rendezvous] till the 24th of July, during which
time a skirmish took place between the whites and friendly
Indians and a party of Black Feet Indians. It lasted most of
a day, the Black Feet having fortified themselves in a
timber nigh a creek. We were about a mile distant during the
action, being prohibited by our immediate Captain from
joining. Hence I took no other part than to assist in taking
care of the wounded, and in guarding our camp. The result
was that the whites and friendly Indians retreated at the
approach of night; 7 of the whites were killed or morality
wounded, and as many Indians. The enemy they supposed
demolished, there was not fifty of them. Ten scalps were
taken and thirty two horses killed. The whole appeared to me
a needless and rash affray; for the Blackfeet wished to
avoid the engagement. (1)
So the valley, named after
an Iroquois trapper employed by the American Fur Company, was
killed by the Blackfeet during a battle in it, caused by an act
of revenge by a son of another man killed by the same general
tribe, only on a larger scale in the same place. Maybe it is
fitting that the valley should have in it the largest
non-military battle of its time, and was caused by the murder of
chief during a parlay. It was just a shame it happened at all.
If you are interested in
further reading on this battle, recommended books on this topic
and the sections to read more on this are:
-Rocky Mountain
Rendezvous, by
Fred Gowans, Peregrine Smith Books, Layton, 1985, pages 199-
211. [Mr. Gowans gives five different views on this battle in
an appendix at the end of the book.]
-Broken Hand
by LeRoy Hafen, University of Nebraska
Press, Lincoln, 1981,
pages 114-6.
-Adventures of a
Mountain Man by Zenas Leonard, Milo Quaife editor,
University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 1978, pages 68-75.
- A Narrative of
Colonel Robert Campbell’s Experiences in the Rockies
Mountain Fur Trade from 1825 to 1835 by Robert Campbell,
Drew Holloway editor, Ye Galleon Press, Fairfield, pages
39-41.
From Vic Barkin’s
personal collection of fur trade newspapers, this portion
used by his permission.
Mike Moore lives in Denver, has been a staff writer on the
Western American fur trade with On The Trail magazine for the
last eleven years, a member of the Western Writers of
American, does lectures, has been on the History Channel and
has four books out on the early west.