George Shearer
Mount Idaho volunteer
July 26, 1877
Shearer dashed down to their assistance, exclaiming as he went: "The man who goes down there is a d---- fool, but he's a d----d coward if he don't."
Eugene T Wilson
...The Indians cut them off, and a hot skirmish took place, until one of our Troops [Shearer] was mounted and charged in among the Indians and saved the remainder of the party. The party were 17 men from Mount Idaho, who volunteered to come to our aid thinking we were in danger, but 5 of them were killed and two wounded' before we rescued them from the Savages. After this the entire command of 3 troops mounted and charged on the Indians and drove them towards the Clearwater River.
Pvt. Frederick Mayer
July 5, 1877
We did not know why the soldiers in their dugout rifle pits did not come to the fighting.
Yellow Wolf
Members of the Brave Seventeen minced no words and called Captain Perry a coward. Less than a week after the skirmish here, Lew Wilmot became so incensed at seeing Perry that he refused to give Howard intelligence regarding the Nez Perce location on the South Fork of the Clearwater. A court of inquiry convened in September to investigate Captain Perry's inaction; he was acquitted.
he seventeen volunteers in that small party from Mount Idaho have their names engraved on the Idaho-shaped stone.
The skirmish on July 5 with the Brave Seventeen was the last time the non-treaty bands of Nez Perce set foot on Camas Prairie. Nevertheless, the settlers who lived there were still very skittish.
McConville's Command remained on the Prairie to protect the scattered settlers, some of them now returning to their ruined homes.... The settlers began to breathe more freely, despite the many wild and groundless rumors that arose. The people's imagination was excited to a point where the could see an Indian in every shrub and fence corner, when there was no Indian near...
E. J. Bunker