In this narrow little valley created by White Bird Creek lived John J. Manuel and his family. The trio of the first raiding party stopped at his ranch to sharpen their knives on June 13. The next day, the second raiding party of seventeen warriors halted here.

Our family consisted of my father and mother, sister, Julia, a baby brother 11 months old, grandfather and myself With the exception of my sister, Julia, who was in school at Mount Idaho, we were all at home when James Baker and Patrick Price came to the house and told us that the Indians had wounded Mr. Benedict, and that we had better flee for our lives. They suggested that we go to Mr. Baker's stone cellar, about a mile down the creek, and there leave the women while the men defended the place.

We started immediately. I mounted father's horse behind him, while mother and the baby took another animal. Grandfather and Patrick Price remained at the house. We had proceeded about half a mile on our journey when, looking to a hill we had descended, I saw several Indians coming toward us on the run, yelling and whooping at the top of their voices. 'The Indians are coming,' I said to father. just as the Indians appeared, the horses we rode became frightened at the noise and stampeded, separating father from mother. The Indians opened fire on us with arrows, the first arrow striking my left arm near the shoulder. An arrow struck me in the back of the head and glanced and pierced my father's neck. An Indian who had only two cartridges, as we afterward learned, fired at father, at the same time, and shot him through the hips. A second bullet burned one of his ears. Father was also wounded between the shoulders by an arrow. The wound through the hips caused him to fall from the horse, dragging me with him. Our horse had taken us to the top of the hill before we fell from the saddle.

Father saw that our only chance was to roll down the hillside into the brush, and this we did, meanwhile undergoing the rock throwing of the Indians. One rock broke father's little finger, and another struck me on the forehead. The redskins were afraid to follow us, doubtless thinking that father still had his pistols. Very foolishly we had left all weapons and ammunition at the house, with the idea of showing any Indians we might meet, that we were peaceable.

Maggie Manuel
six years old

I was furnished with a bow and a few arrows, and somewhere above White Bird we chased a white man who was mounted with a small boy [actually it was a girl, Maggie Manuel] behind him. I used an arrow drawn on the man but it struck the boy on the arm and he cried. When I heard that pitiful voice, I turned my horse and backed away. Not used to killing, it hurt my feelings to hear that little child crying.

Lahpeealoot
(Geese Three Times Lighting on Water)

Mother's horse threw her and the baby and in the fall one of her kneecaps was broken, and the baby injured. Afterwards she said that two or three of the Indians took her to the house and promised not to injure her if she would give up the ammunition and a fine rifle that father had. She did this and was uninjured by her captors.

As soon as the Indians left the place, grandfather and Mr. Price came into the house. Mother told them where we had crawled and grandfather came to us. He brought me to the house about dark, and left blankets, food and water for father.

That night mother, the baby, myself, Mrs. Benedict (who had come over to the house after Mr. Benedict's death) and the men stayed in the brush. The next morning Mrs. Benedict tried to persuade us to go up the creek and escape to the prairie, but mother and grandfather decided to return to the house, thinking the danger was over. Then too, mother refused to leave father alone in the brush, wounded and without aid. So we returned to the house, except Mrs. Benedict who took her children and started up the creek where she was subsequently rescued.

Mother and I went to bed while grandfather and Mr Popham and Mr. Price stood guard. Along in the forenoon, Mox Mox [Yellow Bull] and a band of White Bird Indians, nearly all of whom we knew, as their camping ground was on a part of our place, came to our house. They ransacked it, but did not offer to molest us....

Being sick and exhausted, I fell asleep and didn't wake up until nearly dark....

My first impulse was to find grandfather and I started in search of him. Instead of him, however, I found Pat Price, with whom I stayed in the brush that night. In the morning the Indians attacked Mr. Price and me in the brush. He determined to go straight to them and try a ruse.... He then proposed to the Indians that if they would allow him to take me to Mount Idaho he would return and surrender himself to them. This the chief agreed to and ... we left for the prairie.

Maggie Manuel

Soon a person came to view and I recognized a white man. I saw on his left arm a child that he was carrying....

That white man nodded his head at me, a "how-do-you-do.- The first words I understood him say, was 'Will you kill me?' I answered, "No.'

I had a gun, a rifle. I turned and walked to the three men smoking. Close behind me came the white man with the child on his arm.... When approached near the smokers, the one facing me, Loppee Kasun [Two Mornings], an oldish man, sprang up pointing his gun ready to fire, trying to make a shot past me. One of the other men, all of them past middle age, spoke to Loppee, "Hold there! Do not shoot! Can you not see child in his arms?' . . .

The white man stood without speaking. I motioned him to the bushes. To beat it! Which he did!

When he reached the thicket, he turned again and nodded to me, then disappeared in the brush. I saw him no more. I now said to Loppee, "if you shoot the man, who can care for the child? Would you carry it?'"

Whylimlex
(Black Feather)


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