Nez Perce 1877: The Flight That Passed Through This Corridor

In the summer of eighteen seventy-seven, the United States Army issued an order to the Wallowa Band of the Nez Perce, the Niimíipuu, to leave their homeland in northeastern Oregon's Wallowa Valley and relocate to the Nez Perce Reservation in Idaho. The band's leaders, including Chief Joseph and Looking Glass, had resisted reservation confinement for years. When the Army's deadline passed and violence broke out at White Bird Canyon in June of eighteen seventy-seven, approximately eight hundred men, women, and children began a flight across twelve hundred miles of western terrain toward Canada.

They passed through this corridor, through northern Idaho's Clearwater River country, over the Lolo Trail, across Montana, and through the Bear Paw Mountains. For four months, a much larger United States military force pursued them across territory the Army itself struggled to navigate. The Nez Perce won engagements at White Bird Canyon, at the Clearwater River, at the Big Hole. They did not lose by military defeat. They were caught by exhaustion, winter, and a closing pincer of troops coming from multiple directions.

On October fifth, eighteen seventy-seven, at the Bear Paw Mountains in northern Montana, forty miles short of the Canadian border, the flight ended. The surrender speech attributed to Chief Joseph, 'From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever,' was transcribed by an Army officer present at the surrender. The Nez Perce Tribe and tribal scholars have noted that the transcription may not fully reflect what was said, and that accounts within the tribal oral tradition differ from the Army's written record. It is an attributed speech, not a verbatim text.

The Nez Perce National Historical Park maintains a corridor of thirty-eight sites across four states, including the sites in northern Idaho where the flight moved through this region. The tribe's own website and cultural programs are the highest-authority sources for the Niimíipuu's account of eighteen seventy-seven.