r to be successful, must be the
most rapid that horses could make. It taught the Nez Perces a lesson
they will never forget, and undoubtedly rendered their final capture a
much easier and less costly affair than it otherwise would have been,
if indeed it could else have been accomplished at all.

And the Nez Perces accepted the lesson so taught. So soon as their
village was well out of the way of Gibbon's rifles, they started for
the British Possessions, and though closely pursued by troops all the
way, who thrice overtook and attacked them en route, they made no other
stand until General Miles headed them off near Bear Paw Mountain in
Northern Montana, and captured nearly all their horses. Then they were
compelled to fight or surrender. They made a four days' fight, but it
was a spiritless one, and finally succumbed to the inevitable, and laid
down their arms.

It has for years been claimed, and repeatedly shown, that one white man
was equal to three or four Indians in a fight, position and other
things being equal, and rarely has any band of Indians been encountered
who would willingly stand their ground and fight white men, either
soldiers or citizens, unless certain that they outnumbered the whites
to some such extent. But here was a body of Nez Perces who stood
bravely up against a force of nearly half their own numbers; who fought
so desperately and so gallantly that the troops who assaulted them and
at first put them to flight, were afterward compelled to fall back and
take cover; who followed these troops; hemmed them in; advanced on
them; harassed them with a deadly fire for twenty hours; only
withdrawing when they had reason to believe that reinforcements for the
troops were at hand.

Yet General Gibbon and his Spartan band of veterans attacked this
superior force, charged into its midst, drove it from its camp in
confusion, fought it hand-to-hand in the brush, and inflicted on it
such a punishment as probably no command of equal numbers has ever
before inflicted on Indians under similar conditions and in so short a
time. Several of the veterans who were in this action, and who had
fought Sioux Indians repeatedly, said afterward that they would rather
fight five Sioux than one Nez Perce. It is, therefore, the highest
possible tribute to Gibbon and his men, to record the fact that they
were able to hold their ground for a day against such a force as this,
and to kill and wound so many of them.

Eighty-ni