se companies been maintained on a war-footing of 100 men each, as
all companies and regiments should be, his force would have been 600
men, instead of less than 200. With such a force, he could easily have
surrounded the Indians while they slept and have killed them all; but a
pettifogging Congress had cut down the strength of the army to such an
extent that the companies numbered less than twenty-five men each, and
with this force Gibbon was unable to deal with the Indians as he could
have done with a proper force. The fight was prolonged, and the loss of
life was much heavier than it would have been with a suitable force of
soldiers on the field, so that the Forty-third Congress, which first
reduced the army to its present beggarly proportions, is morally
responsible for many, if not all, of the lives lost and wounds received
by the brave men who participated in that affair.

Although, owing to this insufficient force of men, the fight was not a
complete victory for our troops, it was nevertheless a most stinging
blow to the Nez Perces. They had never before engaged in a war with our
soldiers, but Indian tradition and Indian gossip had told them that the
pale-faced soldiers were slow riders, slow walkers, and poor fighters;
that one Indian could whip five soldiers any day. But this fight proved
to them the falsity of these stories. It taught them that even "walking
soldiers" were swift pursuers, good hunters, and deadly assailants when
led by a brave chief. It taught them that the white man could move by
night; that while the Indian slept, the soldier crept; that his tread
was so stealthy that even the lightest sleeper, the most watchful
warrior, could not hear his approach, and that it was not safe for the
red man to close his eyes while the white soldier was on his trail. It
taught them that the foot soldiers were marksmen; that their bullets
could search out the hiding-place of the wiliest Indian in the
mountains; that in the face of the deadliest fire the Indians could
pour forth, they, the soldiers, could come into his camp, shoot him
down, and burn his lodges. It taught him that one white soldier could
whip two Indians; that the Indian's ability to skulk and hide were no
match for the white man's courage. In short, it taught him that the
Indian's only safety, when overtaken by soldiers, was in surrender or
in flight, in reaching a hiding-place beyond the White Father's domain,
and that the flight thither, in orde