George Cowan's RifleAn 1862 rifle was recently brought to the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee in Lapwai, Idaho. The 1862 rifle takes a .44 caliber long rimfire cartridge and is one of 500 or 600 made by gun manufacturer Cyrus B. Holden. The rifle belongs to a man from Addy, Washington. The owner of the rifle would like to sell it to the Nez Perce Tribe as an artifact of the War of 1877. The rifle is valued at around $1,500 -- but if it is in fact Cowan's "needle gun" then the value could be as high as $200,000. Grady Knight is trying to document his claim that this rifle was taken from George Cowan by a Nez Perce warrior named Poker Joe during the War of 1877. Poker Joe supposedly gave this gun to Sam Tilden, a ten-year-old boy at the time of the war. Poker Joe was later killed at the Bear Paw Battlefield, and Sam Tilden escaped to Canada and died in 1963 in Spalding, Idaho. Knight is still doing research on the rifle. His next step is to study cartridge shells collected at the Bear Paw Battlefield in Montana. For more information see the Lewiston Morning Tribune, for a story in the November 3, 2003 issue.
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