Following the Nez Perce Through Yellowstone: What Archeology Found on the 1877 Trail

In summer 1877 the Nez Perce passed through Yellowstone National Park during a 1,170-mile flight that ended on October 5 at the Bear Paw Battlefield near Chinook, Montana, about 40 miles south of the Canadian border. About 84 miles of what is now the Nez Perce National Historic Trail run inside the park. This article summarizes a Yellowstone Science feature by Daniel H. Eakin and Elizabeth Horton on a multi-year archeological inventory along that stretch. Eakin retired as a senior archaeologist after 38 years with the Archaeological Survey Division of the Office of the Wyoming State Archaeologist; the article gives no affiliation for Horton.

Why they were there

The 1855 Walla Walla treaty, ratified by Congress in 1859, set up a Nez Perce reservation of seven million acres on traditional lands in what became Idaho, Washington and Oregon. After gold was found in 1860, miners and settlers poured in, and in 1863 the U.S. Government renegotiated the treaty and shrank the reservation to about one-tenth its size. The Nez Perce split between those who signed (treaty Nez Perce) and those who refused (non-treaty Nez Perce), who kept much of their traditional culture. The new treaty was ratified in 1867. By 1877 relations were so strained that the government ordered all non-treaty Nez Perce onto the new reservation by June 14. On June 17 a volunteer soldier fired on six warriors approaching under a flag of truce at a camp on Whitebird Creek in western Idaho, which touched off the Nez Perce War of 1877.

Roughly 250 warriors and 500 elders, women and children, with over 2,000 horses, set out on the trek. The chiefs who led them included Ollokot, White Bird, Toohoolhoolzote, Looking Glass and Joseph. General O.O. Howard pursued them throughout, though their final defeat came at the hands of forces led by Colonel Nelson A. Miles. About 200 to 300 Nez Perce slipped past Miles's pickets into Canada, and the other survivors were sent to Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. Descendants of the non-treaty bands now live among the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and the Nez Perce Tribe.

Through the park

The Nez Perce entered on August 23, 1877 by the Madison River near present-day West Yellowstone. The main group followed the Madison and Firehole rivers to Lower Geyser Basin, crossed the Central Plateau and Hayden Valley, forded the Yellowstone River, went around the north shore of Yellowstone Lake and crossed the Absaroka Range, probably leaving between September 4 and 6. They likely followed existing trails much of the way. Howard's army followed essentially the same route, camping at many of the same places until the Yellowstone River, where it turned north to try to intercept them. There were no major military engagements in the park, but Nez Perce raiding and scouting parties were active, and twenty-two tourists met them: all were robbed, several were shot, two were killed and a number were captured, some used as guides.

How the survey worked

The park consulted descendants of the non-treaty groups. Their oral histories supplied information not found elsewhere, including where ancestors might have camped. Elders said that before 1877 their people used the park area to hunt, trap, fish, trade and visit other tribes such as the Crow and Shoshone, and that leaders used routes learned from their own elders, sent scouts ahead and a rear guard behind, and camped near water and grass for the horses. Traveling groups would have built only simple brush-and-matting lodges, and trees were stripped of edible inner bark (cambium) when food was short; elders confirmed that scarred trees near the Yellowstone River show this.

Park staff combined those accounts with army, civilian and Nez Perce records, newspapers, journals and photographs to pick likely search areas. Survey ran from 2006 to 2015 and involved the Office of the Wyoming State Archaeologist, National Park Service archeologists and student interns, the University of Calgary, and members of the Nez Perce Tribe and the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation. Crews looked for items from 1877: horse tack, clothing hardware such as military insignia, buttons and buckles, mess equipment and tin cans.

Two sites

The Radersburg party's camp and abandoned wagons. Tourists from Radersburg, Montana, camped along Tangled Creek in the Lower Geyser Basin. At first light on August 24 a small Nez Perce party led by Yellow Wolf approached, and the tourists left under escort. Near Morning Mist Springs they had to abandon two wagons, and later two members were shot and left for dead while others were taken hostage and released the next day. Howard's chief of scouts later noted that the harness had been cut up and things scattered about. Near Morning Mist Springs the survey found a cluster of period items, among them roller buckles, a harness terret, a snap hook, a pen nib and a brass shotshell made between 1874 and 1877, consistent with the abandoned wagon and with losses listed in the tourists' later depredation claims.

The mountain bivouac. Near the headwaters of the Lamar River, about 25 miles into the backcountry at nearly 10,000 feet, lies what may be the only intact Nez Perce campsite in the park from the 1877 war, probably the group's last bivouac there. In 1880 an early explorer of the park described standing lodge poles and more than forty fallen ones. Finds include parts of a pre-1874 pattern McClellan army saddle, .44-40 Winchester cartridge cases (a popular cartridge by 1877, also found at the Big Hole and Bear Paw battlefields), a tin cup handle, a meat can handle and cans of a brand marketed to travelers. About 110 axe-cut stumps stand in the surrounding forest, probably where lodge poles were cut. Tree-ring dating of six of them showed three died before 1877 and three in the late growing season of 1877, the time the Nez Perce were there, which the authors treat as some of the strongest evidence for the site's identification. Archival records place the Nez Perce in this area between September 4 and 6. Four trees show cambium peeling, one dated to early in the growing season of 1826. The authors think weathered pole fragments from lodges may have been lost to campers burning them as firewood over the past 50 years.

Looking ahead

The survey identified a segment of the route across the Absaroka Mountains, and in 2017 the National Park Service worked with the Nez Perce National Historic Trail's managers to add it to the pedestrian Commemorative Trail Route. The authors say the park wants to keep telling the 1877 story, including the several routes of army units, the scouting parties and splinter groups, and the civilian encounters. They stress that archeological sites cannot be replaced once disturbed, and that sites along the trail should be left undisturbed.

Sources

• National Park Service, Yellowstone Science, Volume 26 Issue 1, Daniel H. Eakin and Elizabeth Horton, "Archeology along the Nez Perce National Historic Trail"; rewritten in hubnx's own words.