In Pursuit Of The Pursued

DAYTON - Kevin Carson must have been about 12 when his parents introduced him to books about Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce.

He devoured the l ike s of "Hear Me My Chiefs" by Lucullus Mc- Whorter and "I Will Fight No More Forever" by Merril Beal. Growing up in a household that admired the Native leader and sympathized with his plight as the last holdout of his tribe, the irony of his own ancestry wasn't lost on the teenager.

As the great great great grandson of Dayton Volunteer Lieutenant Levi Watrous, he was keenly aware that his ancestors from the Touchet Valley were once called to pursue and subdue the militarily brilliant and resourceful Nez Perce.

Perhaps that only fueled his passion to learn more about the displaced and courageous indigenes. In his early 20s, as a fine art student,

Carson cast a bust of the famous warrior and leader in bronze.

But it was only in recent years approaching his fifties that the Dayton High School graduate had a chance to delve deeper into the tribulations of a people that had fascinated him since childhood. He decided to write a military history of the Army's campaign against the elusive warriors, who surrendered only after three months when they saw their children starve and freeze to death near the Canadian border.

This week, the fruits of Carson's historical and onsite research will be released in his first book entitled "The Long Journey Of The Nez Perce: A Battle History From Cottonwood To Bear Paw," published by in paperback by Westholme Publishing in Yardley, Penn.

The book, essentially a military history of monthslong pursuit of Joseph and his people, will soon be available at major book stores such as Borders, Barnes & Noble, and online at Amazon.

Carson graduated as a Bulldog in 1976 and attended WSU, from which he graduated cum laude in 1981. He also graduated from the U.S. Army Combat Engineers School at Fort Leonard Wood, later serving as a combat engineer and non-commissioned officer with the 116th brigade.

He currently works as a network engineer at Sweitzer Engineering Laboratories in Pullman and lives in Idaho. His parents, Loren and Elizabeth Carson, still live in Dayton.

Not that much is known about Carson's great great great grandfather, who was a wagoneer for the Union Army during the Civil War before moving out west and settling in Dayton as a sawyer and cattleman. He is believed to have owned land at the confluence of Patit Creek yer and cattleman. He is believed to have owned land at the confluence of Patit Creek and the Touchet River.

In 1877, when Watrus was already in his 50s, the call came for volunteers from Walla Walla, Dayton, Pataha and other communities near the Blue Mountains to join a force organized by General Oliver Otis Howard in pursuit of Joseph's Nez Perce, who resisted their forced relocation to the reservation.

"The Nez Perce War is one of the most important and emotional campaigns of the Indian Wars," Carson writes in his book. "It essentially closed an era in American history, and the amount of time, money, and troops required to subdue the Nez Perce brought the plight of American Indians and the reservation system to the front pages of newspapers around the world."

In pursuing the pursued, Carson said he wanted to figure out under what circumstances and leadership the two sides fought in a campaign that is still studied by West Point students as an example of asymmetric war