Images of Big Hole National Battlefield – Western Montana, taken in June 2021.

As with many of the historical places I have visited, the story told at the Big Hole National Battlefield is one every American should be required to know and understand.

The Nez Perce controlled over 13 million acres of land in the northwest until they were forced by settlers to give up more than half of their homeland in the Treaty of 1855. Five years later gold was discovered in the area and the government proposed the Treaty of 1863 which would shrink the Nez Perce tribal lands by another 90 percent. Many of the Nez Perce refused the treaty which led to the U.S. Army being tasked with moving the tribes to smaller reservations. These actions led to the Nez Perce War.

In August of 1877, as 800 Nez Perce (mostly families along with only about 200 warriors) retreated peacefully through Montana on their way to Canada, they moved through the Bitterroot Valley and set up a camp at Big Hole. Unbeknownst to the Nez Perce the U.S. Army was pursuing them and in the early morning hours of August 9th the 7th Infantry attacked the camp shooting ‘low into the tipis’; 60 to 90 Nez Perce were killed with the majority being women and children. Nez Perce Warriors regrouped and drove the Infantry back across the river and into the woods so the surviving women and children could flee. Thirty-one soldiers and civilian volunteers were killed. It was the largest battle of the Nez Perce War.

There were more battles in the aftermath of the Battle at Big Hole; eventually some of the Nez Perce made it to Canada while others were captured and sent to camps in Kansas and Oklahoma. As Nez Perce Chief White Bird stated, “The white man wanted the wealth our people possessed; he got it by the destruction of our people. We who yesterday were rich are beggars today. We have no country, no people, no home.”