Chief Joseph Crosses the Musselshell

On September seventeenth, eighteen seventy-seven, Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce people crossed the Musselshell River right here, near the small settlement of Ryegate, Montana. They were more than two months into one of the most extraordinary retreats in American military history, a flight of more than eleven hundred miles from their homeland in the Wallowa Valley of Oregon toward the Canadian border. Pursued by multiple columns of United States Army troops, the Nez Perce outmaneuvered their pursuers again and again through rugged mountain and basin terrain.

They would make it to within forty miles of the Canadian line before Colonel Nelson Miles cut them off at Bear Paw. Chief Joseph surrendered on October fifth, delivering his famous words: from where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever. The crossing of the Musselshell was among the final miles of a people's desperate bid for freedom.