Big Hole National Battlefield, Continental Divide

Here on the Montana-Idaho Border, the Nez Perce people bravely resisted the U.S. Cavalry, who launched a surprise attack in 1877.  This decisive battle in the U.S.-Nez Perce War led to the tribe’s surrender and subsequent displacement.  Th conflict happened because the Nez Perce refused to abandon their homeland in the Pacific Northwest and relocate to a reservation in Idaho.

The Nez Perce had previously signed a treaty with the U.S., agreeing to occupy a reservation straddling the Washington-Idaho border, ceding much of their ancestral land.  When gold was discovered on their new reservation, European settlers, with the tacit approval of the U.S. government, moved in to prospect for gold.  Eventually, the tribe was coerced into signing another treaty, where they would be moved to a much smaller area in Idaho.  When the Nez Perce refused, war ensued.  At the time, much of the American public thought the war was a great injustice.  In 1877, the New York Times wrote: “On our part, the war was in its origin and motive nothing short of a gigantic blunder and a crime.”

The consequences for the tribe were devastating.  As they attempted to flee, they were pursued and eventually divided into various reservations on marginal land.  Today, the Nez Perce people continue to honour their ancestors, and many make pilgrimages to this sacred battlefield.  It is a reminder of the hardships faced by the indigenous people of all the Americas, and as one tribal member described, a “painful and tragic encounter with ‘Manifest Destiny’”.