Nez Perce (Nee-Me-Poo) National Historic Trail

Congress passed the National Trails System Act in 1968, establishing a framework for a nationwide system of scenic, recreational, and historic trails. The Nez Perce (Nee-Me- Poo) Trail, extending approximately 1,170 miles from near Wallowa Lake, Oregon, to the Bears Paw Battlefield near Chinook, Montana, was added to this System by Congress as a National Historic Trail in 1986.

The Nez Perce Indians, composed originally of a number of independent villages and bands, were long known as friends of the whites. They had welcomed Lewis and Clark, fur trappers, and missionaries to their homeland in the mountains, valleys, and along the rivers of southeastern Washington, northeastern Oregon, and north central Idaho. In 1855, Washington Territorial Governor, Isaac I. Stevens, responding to increasing white expansion, negotiated a treaty with the Nez Perce chiefs, recognizing the tribe's right to their traditional homeland and establishing a reservation of some 5,000 square miles.

In 1860, prospectors, encroaching on Nez Perce lands, struck gold. In the ensuing rush, thousands of miners, merchants, and settlers, disregarding Stevens's treaty, overran large parts of the reservation, appropriating the Indians' lands and livestock and heaping mistreatment and injustices on the Nez Perce. To cope with the crisis, the United States Government engaged the angered Nez Perce in new treaty talks that culminated in a large treaty council in 1863. Nearly all tribal bands were represented. When the government tried to get some of the bands to cede all or most of their lands, they refused to do so and left the council. In their absence, other chiefs, without tribal authority to speak for the departed bands, did just that, ceding the lands of those who had left the council. Their act resulted in a division of the tribe. Those who had signed were praised by the whites as "treaty" Indians; those who did not sign became known as the "nontreaty" Nez Perce.

For some years, the nontreaty bands continued to live on their lands, insisting that no one had the right to sell them. But conflicts with the growing white population increased, particularly in the Wallowa country of northeastern Oregon, the homeland of Chief Joseph's band. In May 1877, the army ordered the non-treaties to turn over their land to the whites and move onto a small reservation. Rather than risk war with the army, the non-treaty chiefs decided to move onto the reservation at Lapwai, Idaho. Pent-up emotions, stemming from years of mistreatment by whites and from the order to leave their homelands, moved several embittered young warriors to ride out to the Salmon River and kill some whites, avenging the past murders of tribal members. The hope for a peaceful move to the small reservation at Lapwai ended, and the flight of the Nez Perce began on June 15, 1877.

Pursued by the army, the non-treaties left Idaho, intending initially to seek safety with their Crow allies on the plains to the east. When this failed, flight to Canada became their only hope. Their long desperate and circuitous route, as they traveled and fought to escape pursuing white forces, is what we now call the Nez Perce National Historic Trail. This route was used in its entirety only once; however, component trails and roads that made up the route bore generations of use prior to and after the 1877 flight of the nontreaty Nez Perce. Trails and roads perpetuated through continued use often became portions of transportation systems, though some later were abandoned for more direct routes or routes better suited for modem conveyances. Most abandoned segments can be located today but are often overgrown by vegetation, altered by floods, powerlines, and other manmade structures, or cross a variety of ownerships.

General William Tecumseh Sherman called the saga of the Nez Perce "the most extraordinary of Indian wars." Forced into a fight they did not seek by the impulsive actions of a few revengeful men, some 750 non-treaty Nez Perces fought defensively for their lives. They engaged in some 20 battles and skirmishes against a total of more than 2,000 soldiers aided by numerous civilian volunteers and Indians from other tribes. Only 250 Nez Perce were warriors. The rest were women, children, and old or sick people, together with their 2,000 horses. Their route through four states, dictated by topography and their own skillful strategy, covered more than 1,100 miles before they were trapped and surrendered at Montana' s Bears Paw Mountains just short of the Canadian border and safety on October 5, 1877.

There is irony in the tragic fate of the Nez Perce. In addition to having been loyal friends and allies of the whites for almost three-quarters of a century, their conduct during the war was free of traits which whites usually associated with Indian warfare. Following what the whites regarded as a civilized code of conduct, the Nez Perces refrained from scalping, mutilating bodies, or torturing prisoners, and generally avoided attacks on noncombatant citizens. Nevertheless, as defeated Indians, the surviving Nez Perces were sent to several years of exile in present-day Oklahoma before they were allowed to return to reservations in the Northwest.

The Nez Perce (Nee-Me- Poo) National Historic Trail stretches from the Wallowa Valley of Oregon to the Bear Paw Battlefield in north central Montana. Today, travelers can retrace the approximate route of the 1877 Nez Perce flight by following the Nez Perce Trail auto route. The auto route consists of three-season all-weather roadways ranging from high-standard gravel segments to portions of Interstates 15 & 90. Nez Perce Trail signs mark the entire route

This is part of the online edition of Henry's Fork Country.

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