At Wood’s request, 40 Nez Perce rode from Wallowa to Lapwai for a council on July 22-23. During the meetings, Joseph spoke of how among Indians, the chiefs were responsible for controlling their young men and preventing them from doing ‘wicked things,’ and if the chiefs did not restrain or punish unruly Indians, the chiefs were held accountable. To Joseph, then, white authorities were responsible for the killing of one ‘much respected by the tribe.’

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Joseph also cited the killing as one more claim the Nez Perce had to the land. ‘Since the murder had been done,’ Wood reported Joseph saying,’since his brother’s life had been taken in Wallowa valley, his body buried there, and the earth there had drunk up his blood, the valley was more sacred to him than ever before . . . and that all the whites must be removed from the valley.’ Ollokot, Joseph’s brother, added that ‘he did not want the whites, Findley and McNall, tried and punished for their crime, but wished them to leave that section of country that he might never see them more.’

Wood told the Nez Perce that Howard had proposed that the U.S. Government appoint a commission to settle once and for all the ownership of the Wallowa country, and he asked the two Indians to let white law deal with Findley and McNall. Both Joseph and Ollokot agreed to this, and the Nez Perce returned home. Afterward, Howard wrote to Brainard to insist that the two men be tried for murder. But in August, Findley and McNall were still free.

Tensions grew. Some believed the Nez Perce were preparing for war; warriors spent their days shooting arrows at targets set up near the Findley home. ‘Several war dances were held,’ H.R. Findley said, ‘and the beating of their drums or tom-toms could often be plainly heard from their [Findley] cabin.’ Yet some white settlers continued to harass the Indians by stealing livestock, and against Joseph’s advice a few Nez Perce retaliated in kind.

During councils held at Indian Town, the Nez Perce summer encampment at the confluence of the valley’s two rivers, Joseph and the older chiefs advised against doing anything that would give whites an excuse to force them onto a reservation. The young men, however, had lost patience with white justice. The time had come for retribution. They agreed to move slowly and avoid force for as long as possible. When the meetings ended, the Nez Perce had decided on a course of action.

On September 1, Nez Perce riders traveled through the valley, stopping at every settler’s cabin and delivering the message that all whites, including Findley and McNall, were to attend a council the next day at Indian Town. Seventeen settlers showed up, but Findley and McNall stayed home. At the meeting, the Nez Perce insisted that the whites leave the valley and turn over McNall and Findley. When the settlers refused, the meeting ended with an angry agreement to meet the next day at the McNall cabin.

The next morning 60 warriors rode to the cabin, where a number of settlers waited with the Findley and McNall families. When the Nez Perce repeated their demands and the settlers again refused, Joseph warned that if they did not turn over the two men and leave the valley in one week’s time the Nez Perce would drive them out and burn their houses. Then the Indians rode away. The clock started ticking toward Sunday, September 10.

After dark, a few settlers rode through the valley to warn others, and Ephraim McNall, father of Wells, traveled to Fort Walla Walla to plead with Lieutenant Albert Gallatin Forse to send troops to Wallowa. Forse refused.

Denied military assistance, McNall headed back to Wallowa, stopping along the way to recruit armed volunteers. When Forse learned about this new development he changed his mind about sending troops. On September 7 he rode out of Fort Walla Walla with a company of 48 cavalrymen to protect the Nez Perce and prevent a war.

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