Home and Homelands Exhibition: Loss

At dawn on August 9, 1877, U.S. troops attacked the Nez Perce camped at Big Hole. When the warrior Wahlitits was killed, his wife took up his rifle and shot the soldier who killed him before she too was shot.

A 1944 photograph of three Chamorro women walking to Mass in an American internment camp on Saipan opens a history most Americans never learned: the battle, the camps, and Liberation Day.

Eiko Yamada carried her silk wedding kimono in a wicker basket from Japan to California in 1920. Sent to Manzanar in 1942, she cut it into strips so authorities would not take it.

Manuela Ygnacia López Peñuelas died after giving birth at the start of the 1775–76 Anza expedition to Alta California — the only colonist lost on a trek that at least eight women made while pregnant.

Chiefess Manono died beside her husband in the 1819 Battle of Kuamoʻo, fighting to keep Hawaiʻi’s kapu system. Her last words, “Mālama kō aloha,” still guide efforts to heal the place.