Cultural Geology Guide: The Yellowstone Region, Part 1

The Flight of the Nez Percé

By Julie Francis

YELLOWSTONE — As settlers and miners moved into the Columbia Plateau during the 1850s and 1860s, the Wallowa bands of the Nez Percé (Nimíipuu) refused to sign any treaties ceding their Snake and Salmon river homelands to the United States. By May 1877, “non-treaty” Nez Percé were given a 30-day ultimatum to “voluntarily relocate” by U.S. Army Gen. Oliver Otis Howard. As the bands prepared to move, a small group of warriors killed several settlers trespassing on their lands. Rather than face retribution from the U.S. Army, about 700 Nez Percé, under the leadership of chiefs Joseph, White Bird and Looking Glass, fled their homelands in mid-June with the goal of joining the Lakota and Sitting Bull in Canada. With only a few hundred warriors, women and children, and a herd of horses, the Nez Percé led 2,000 U.S. Army soldiers on a chase of nearly 1,500 miles through Idaho, Wyoming and Montana.

The Nez Percé outmaneuvered, held-off, or defeated a formally trained and much better armed military at several locations. Finally, on Oct. 5, 1877, Joseph surrendered to Col. Nelson A. Miles at Bear Paw Mountain, Montana, just 40 miles from the international border of Canada.

Between August 23rd and September 8th of 1877, the Yellowstone region served as the backdrop for this monumental pursuit. The Nez Percé entered the park from the west, with the objective of crossing the Yellowstone Plateau and reaching the Crow Agency. Almost immediately they encountered two groups of tourists, took food and supplies, conscripted a guide, and burned a ranch and at least one bridge. Several people were killed, but survivors were brought to the Nez Percé camps and ultimately released.

With few places to descend the Yellowstone Plateau, Gen. William T. Sherman laid a trap for the Nez Percé as they emerged from the mountains. With Gen. Howard following from the west, troops were to be placed at Mammoth Hot Springs on the north, the Clarks Fork on the northeast, the Shoshone River on the east and the Wind River on the south. As the Nez Percé approached Dead Indian Pass, they observed troops, commanded by Col. Samuel D. Sturgis, positioned near Heart Mountain. In view of the Army, they feinted a move to the south towards the Shoshone River. Sturgis took the bait and moved his troops south, while the Nez Percé, screened by timber and topography, headed north. Many scholars have inferred that the Nez Percé moved down Dead Indian Gulch and through the nearly impenetrable Clarks Fork canyon. More recent research indicates that the Nez Percé moved down Paint Creek to the river below the mouth of the canyon.

Though only used once, the Nez Percé Trail was designated a National Historic Trail in 1986. Wyoming Hwy 296, which follows some of the route out of Yellowstone, was designated the Chief Joseph Scenic Byway in 2000. Since 2008, the National Park Service, in cooperation with the Nez Percé tribe and the Office of the Wyoming State Archaeologist, has been researching historical and archaeological sites associated with the 1877 campaign within Yellowstone to resolve enduring questions about the route and experience of the Nez Percé on this part of their odyssey.