The Battle of Pierre's Hole, 1832
Near Driggs, Idaho
As the eighteen thirty two rendezvous broke up in mid July, a column of trappers and their Native allies leaving the valley met a band of Gros Ventre, a people tied to the Blackfoot. Accounts of how it began differ, but a parley ended in gunfire when a Gros Ventre leader was shot down. The Gros Ventre fell back into a thicket of willow and cottonwood along the creek bottom and threw up a rough fort of logs and brush.
The trappers, joined by Nez Perce and Flathead fighters, laid siege through the long summer afternoon. When the fighting was over, the Gros Ventre had slipped away in the night. On the trappers' side, roughly five white men and seven of their Native allies were dead.
Contemporary counts of Gros Ventre losses vary widely and were likely exaggerated in the retelling, with figures around twenty six often repeated. It was the deadliest clash of the rendezvous era in this valley. Today a four hundred acre area associated with the rendezvous and the battle is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, a quiet stretch of ground that once rang with one of the fur trade's few pitched battles.
