White Bird: Where the Nez Perce War Began

On June seventeenth, eighteen seventy-seven, the Nez Perce War opened in White Bird Canyon with one of the most complete defeats the United States Army suffered in the Indian Wars of the West.

Capt. David Perry led one hundred six soldiers and civilian volunteers into the canyon to confront the non-treaty Nez Perce bands who had refused to relocate to a reduced reservation. The Nez Perce sent a peace party of six warriors carrying a white flag to meet them. A civilian volunteer opened fire on the peace party. The battle that followed lasted under an hour. Thirty-four soldiers were killed. Not one Nez Perce warrior died.

The defeat triggered a four-month fighting retreat that covered over one thousand miles through Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana, as the bands under leaders including Looking Glass and Chief Joseph tried to reach Canada. They came within forty miles of the border before being stopped. White Bird Canyon is now preserved as part of Nez Perce National Historical Park, with interpretive trails overlooking the ground where the war began.