Interpretation Throughout its history, Big Hole National Battlefield's land base has exerted a powerful effect on how the site was interpreted and protected. The soldiers' monument, erected in 1883, was explicitly dedicated to the U.S. military's role in the battle and tacitly overlooked the Nez Perce experience and perspective. This imbalance was perpetuated in the proclamation of 1910, which set aside five acres around the soldiers' monument but left the Nez Perce Encampment Area in private hands. Given the small land base, early interpretive efforts naturally focused on the drama of the siege and the valor of the U.S. soldiers and volunteers. The unit's managers came to believe that the emphasis on the siege was skewed; visitors needed to see the Nez Perce Encampment Area as well as the Siege Area and to recognize the tragedy of the event for the Nez Perce people. This search for balance drove managers' efforts to acquire more land, bring additional battlefield features under the government's protection, and broaden the interpretive focus at Big Hole. Again, it seemed that chronological chapters were the way to present this story. The unit consisted of 5 acres from 1910 to 1939, 200 acres from 1939 to 1963, and 655 acres after 1972. The size and scope of the protected area bore directly on how this battlefield was staffed, managed, and interpreted to the public. For most of Big Hole National Battlefield's history the search for a balanced presentation has involved two kinds of historical memory: the American military tradition and the Nez Perce military tradition. The American military tradition consists primarily of written documentation and monumentation, the Nez Perce of oral storytelling and ceremony. At Big Hole, interpretation of the events of August 9-10, 1877 shows these two kinds of historical memory in juxtaposition, but it reveals an unusual synthesis, too. Nez Perce have remembered events with their own stone monument, and they have assisted efforts to document combatants' positions and movements on the battlefield with a kind of precision that is more characteristic of the American military tradition than their own. Non-Indians, both inside and outside the National Park Service, have recorded Nez Perce oral traditions and encouraged Nez Perce ceremonial observances at the site. In recent years, non-Indian "re-enactors" have developed their own form of ceremony for remembering the Battle of the Big Hole. The National Park Service (NPS) has actively supported this blending of the two traditions. The search for a balanced presentation at Big Hole National Battlefield has also entailed a more subtle conflict between memorialization and preservation. For the most part, memorialization and preservation are complementary strategies to achieve similar goals. Both aim to protect the area from land uses that would detract from the site's intrinsic power to evoke historical remembrance. The pairing of memorialization and preservation is common to many units in the national park system. It is particularly pronounced in many Civil War and Revolutionary War battlefields in the East, where site administration by the NPS followed decades of guardianship by the War Department and various national cemetery superintendents. At Big Hole, memorialization began as early as 1883 with placement of the soldiers' monument. Here, as in the East, the Park Service has integrated memorialization and preservation through an interpretive program that informs visitors not only about the battle itself, but about the history of memorialization at this site. The monuments are historic resources in their own right. Excerpted from Administrative History of Big Hole National Battlefield by Ted Catton and Ann Hubber set for release in 2000.