Camas Meadows Battle Site
Idaho
On the morning of August twentieth, eighteen seventy-seven, this quiet stretch of Camas Meadows rang with gunfire. The Nez Perce, fleeing more than a thousand miles toward Canada to escape forced removal, had camped near here while General Oliver Otis Howard's army pursued them. Before dawn, a small party of Nez Perce warriors slipped into Howard's camp and stampeded much of his pack train, driving off about two hundred mules and some horses.
When a detachment under Captain Randolph Norwood gave chase, the Nez Perce pinned them down for several hours in a running fight before withdrawing. The raid crippled Howard's mobility and bought the fleeing families precious time. It was one more failed attempt to capture them.
The sites are now part of Nez Perce National Historical Park and were named a National Historic Landmark in nineteen eighty-nine.
