Retracing the Fighters' Steps at the Battle of the Big Hole

In 1846 the United States and Great Britain settled their dispute over what was then called Oregon country, and settlers poured into the new Oregon and Washington territories with little regard for the Native communities already there. The Treaty of 1863 cut the reservation promised to the nimíipuu (Nez Perce) from 7.5 million acres to 750,000. When a band of nimíipuu was denied enough time to move from its ancestral lands in northeastern Oregon to Idaho Territory, fighting broke out with the U.S. Army. In the Nez Perce Flight of 1877, five nimíipuu bands sought refuge across more than 1,170 miles, clashing with the Army many times along the way.

One of the deadliest clashes took place at what is now Big Hole National Battlefield in southwestern Montana. The battle is unusually well documented, through testimony from soldiers, civilians and nimíipuu witnesses, including Yellow Wolf, who described the shock of the attack and the fury with which warriors fought for the women, the children and one another. But no one sees all of a battle, and memory is fallible. Archeology helps fill the gaps.

The battle

On August 9, 1877, midway through the five-month conflict, the 7th U.S. Infantry under Lieutenant Colonel John Gibbon attacked the nimíipuu camp on the north fork of the Big Hole River before dawn. The first shot killed Natalekin, an older man checking on horses on the hillside above the camp. As the soldiers charged, some fired into shelters and deliberately set tipis on fire. Within an hour the nimíipuu regrouped and drove the soldiers back, then besieged them until the evening of August 10, when the remaining warriors left to join those who had already fled.

What the ground has kept

Much has been lost: pot hunters carried off artifacts from the battle's aftermath into the mid-1900s. Attempts to inventory what remained began in the 1950s, but only the extensive surveys of 1991 and 1994 set out to settle debates about how the fighters behaved and in what order events unfolded.

• Buttons — general service brass buttons, trouser fly and suspender buttons, and civilian-style buttons — reflect the soldiers' regulation dress. Two hooks from hook-and-eye fasteners show that not every man obeyed Gibbon's order to leave unnecessary gear with the wagon train.
• Thirteen brass rings, seven from the Siege Area and six from the camp, may be jewelry the nimíipuu, surprised at night, had no time to put on. Soldiers left pocketknife fragments, harmonica reeds and a five-cent piece.
• Weapons. Five Fogs' bow, quiver and arrows show that bows still played a part, though firearms dominated. Cartridge cases and bullets identify at least 147 individual guns of nineteen types, including shotguns and cartridge guns. The nimíipuu guns had a higher rate of cartridge case failure — the same problem the Army blamed for its defeat at the Little Bighorn more than a year earlier — yet the nimíipuu won.

Reconstructing the routes

Where artifacts cluster, and how cases fired from the same gun are spread, reveal the fighters' positions and paths.

• The attack. Matched cases mark at least five separate Army firing lines west of the camp and defensive rifle pits dug by soldiers. Some companies used the dense willows for cover, though men broke ranks to avoid getting tangled in them. The attack seems to have been more orderly in the north and more haphazard to the east than once thought, and may have begun closer to the river rather than at the edge of the willows.
• The retreat. At least 58 individual guns were identified in the camp area east of the river, some of them tracing the soldiers' movement back to the Siege Area under heavy nimíipuu fire. Mixed cartridge cases show the Infantry's formation broke down in the willows. Bullet patterns around a spot called the Twin Trees suggest at least one skilled nimíipuu marksman harassed the retreating soldiers.

The view from the Twin Trees. NPS photo.

• The siege. Some soldiers fell in hand-to-hand fighting on the way; others were hit by nimíipuu fire into the Siege Area, where most stayed put in rifle pits. Cases and live cartridges along the trail north of the Siege Area show that, contrary to the old assumption that every reserve was committed, a small group moved down the trail firing at steady intervals to support the others.
• The howitzer. In late morning on August 9, six enlisted men and two civilians brought up a 12-pound mountain howitzer on a mule-drawn carriage. They fired just two rounds before nimíipuu fighters overran them, as nimíipuu cases and bullets around the soldiers' ammunition confirm. The nimíipuu took the carriage apart and scattered it, an event that still inspires the nimíipuu song and dance "Duck and Dive."

The cost

Grieving nimíipuu families returned to the camp that afternoon to mourn and bury their dead, and after holding the soldiers in place the next day, continued south into Idaho. Army reinforcements arrived on August 11; the soldiers left with 29 dead, including civilian volunteers. The nimíipuu, though they won, lost between 60 and 90 people, at least two-thirds of them women and children, and their full toll of dead and wounded is still unknown.

Later layers

Later visitors left their own traces: an iron spoon probably from a picnic, a floral barrette from the mid-1900s, and 20th-century coins. A U.S. Forest Service barn and a museum once stood on the Siege Area, picnic sites lay in and around it, and a homestead and a blacksmith shop occupied parts of the battlefield, all disturbing the patterns. Relic collectors have taken debris, cases and bullets for more than a century; trees in the Siege Area still bear scars where souvenir hunters cut out bullets.

Despite that, the archeology sharpens details that eyewitnesses disputed — where fighters stood, what guns they carried and how the fight unfolded. It does not change the outcome, but it deepens understanding of the nimíipuu victory while honoring the losses on both sides.

Sources

• National Park Service, "Retracing Fighters' Steps at the Battle of the Big Hole" (Big Hole National Battlefield): https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/retracing-fighters-steps-battle-big-hole.htm
• The NPS article draws on Douglas D. Scott, A Sharp Little Affair: The Archeology of the Big Hole Battlefield; Lucullus V. McWhorter, Yellow Wolf: His Own Story; Merrill D. Beal, A History of the Nez Perce Campaign 1877; and the park's 2008 Cultural Landscapes Inventory.
• The source spells the spoon's style "fiddleblack"; this page does not name it.