nt,
the six companies engaged would have been sufficient to accomplish the
complete overthrow of the enemy. It is painful to contemplate the
famous Seventh Infantry, a regiment whose history is interwoven with
that of the country from the battle of New Orleans to the present hour,
so attenuated that with more than half of its companies present it
could take into action but 142 men. And it is equally painful to behold
its colonel, recently a major-general and a distinguished corps
commander, reduced to the necessity of fighting, rifle in hand, as a
private soldier, and compelled by a sense of duty to lead a mere squad
of men as a forlorn-hope against a savage enemy from whom defeat would
have been destruction."

General Sheridan has this to say of it:

"During the month of June the Nez Perce Indians made an outbreak in the
Department of the Columbia, and when followed by United States troops,
hastily collected by Gen. O. O. Howard, commanding the department, were
driven eastward, and, about the middle of June, entered Montana
Territory via the Lo Lo trail, committing some depredations by the way.
Col. John Gibbon, commanding the district of Montana, at once took the
field at the head of 146 men and thirty-four citizens, who joined as
volunteers, and on the 11th of August attacked them near Big Hole Pass,
Montana, and, after one of the most desperate engagements on record, in
which both sides lost heavily, he succeeded in driving them from the
field.

"When it is borne in mind that the Indians outnumbered the troops and
citizens who attacked them more than two to one, and were equally as
well armed and equipped, the good conduct of Colonel Gibbon and his men
will be appreciated."

And General Sherman comments officially on the fight in these words:

"There was but a single regiment of infantry (Seventh) in all Montana,
Col. John Gibbon commanding, distributed to five posts, four on the
eastern border and one on the western, with two small companies, A and
G, commanded by Captain Rawn, who were employed in building the new
post at Missoula. It is near this place that the Lo Lo trail debouches
into the Bitter Root Valley, the western settlement of Montana. Joseph
had many personal acquaintances among the settlers, some of which are
civilized Flatheads, and he managed with Indian cunning to cause
information to go ahead that he was bound for the buffalo country; that
if permitted to go on unmolested he would do no dama