Big Hole National Battlefield Administrative History

Chapter One:
The Nez Perce Encampment

In the second week of August, 1877, about 750 Nez Perce made camp in a lush meadow on the south side of the North Fork of the Big Hole River. Known to their white adversaries as the "non-treaty Nez Perce," most of the group had been on the move since early June, forced by the U.S. Army to leave their homelands in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho and to resettle on the Nez Perce Reservation in Idaho. En route to the reservation, several young men in the group attacked and killed 14 or 15 white settlers in Idaho, and U.S. troops under the command of General Oliver O. Howard had begun their pursuit. Joined by other disaffected bands of Nez Perce, the non-treaty Nez Perce had fought a series of battles and skirmishes in Idaho during the latter half of June and the first part of July, before crossing the Bitterroot Mountains.

The Nez Perce intended to remain in their camp on the North Fork of the Big Hole River for several days. They believed that the war was behind them. Having eluded General Oliver O. Howard in Idaho and crossed Lolo Pass into Montana, they thought the U.S. soldiers would cease their pursuit. Proof of this, it seemed, lay in the Nez Perce's successful maneuver around Fort Fizzle on the Montana side of Lolo Pass, where the soldiers who had been called up from Fort Missoula let them pass without a fight. "Thinking in tribal terms, rather than national," historian Aubrey Haines explains, "their war had been with the Idaho people; there was no need to fight the Montanans, who had always been their friends." Adding to their newfound sense of security, they had traveled through the Bitterroot Valley without serious incident, buying fresh supplies of ammunition from white traders along the way. [11]

They arranged their 89 lodges in the form of a V with the apex pointing upstream. On the other side of the river, in the intervening area between the village and the foot of the mountain, stretched a stand of willows about one-quarter mile wide laced by an irregular pattern of shallow sloughs and grassy patches. Pine forest covered most of the mountainside, making the camp vulnerable to a surprise attack from across the willow-covered bottomland. [12] The site of the encampment was not chosen as a defensive position, but rather because it was a familiar site to the Nez Perce who had passed this way before on their way to the buffalo country. There was a part of the mountainside across the river that was bare of trees, making excellent pasturage for the horses. There were also plenty of trees nearby which could be cut and dried to make travois and lodge poles.

Making their camp on the North Fork of the Big Hole, Chief Looking Glass counseled rest and calm. While the women gathered firewood, cut and peeled lodge poles, and laid them out to dry for several days, the men formed hunting and fishing parties. A few Nez Perce remained uneasy about the threat of attack, but the leaders insisted that the bands were no longer at war. [13] On the night before the dawn attack, the Nez Perce did not post any sentries. [14]