Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce Retreat Through Montana, 1877

In the summer and early autumn of 1877 a small band of Nez Perce — led in large measure by the Wallowa-band leader Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt (Chief Joseph) and by battlefield leaders such as Looking Glass and White Bird — undertook a fighting retreat that has become one of the most storied episodes of the American West. What began as a contested attempt to avoid forced removal from ancestral lands in northeastern Oregon turned, after a series of violent incidents and military responses, into a months-long flight that carried the Nez Perce across Idaho, over Lolo Pass into Montana, through Yellowstone country, and finally to a last stand on the north slope of the Bear Paw Mountains — only forty miles south of the Canadian border. The retreat through Montana included the pause and massacre at Big Hole, the clever evasions through mountain passes and valleys, and the final, heartbreaking surrender in October 1877. 

Roots of the flight lay in contested treaties and broken promises. The 1855 Treaty of Walla Walla had recognized wide Nez Perce hunting and homeland rights, but an 1863 agreement—signed by only some leaders under great pressure—dramatically reduced Nez Perce lands. Many bands refused to accept the new reservation boundaries; tensions rose as settlers, miners, and agents pushed for removal. By 1877 the U.S. government insisted that “non-treaty” bands move to the Lapwai Reservation in what is today Idaho. When violence erupted between some young Nez Perce and local settlers, the army moved in; rather than submit wholesale to forced removal, several bands elected to flee, initiating the long retreat that would cross Montana Territory. 

The first pitched encounters occurred in Idaho in June and July (White Bird Canyon, Clearwater), but by late July Joseph’s people had crossed the Bitterroot via the Lolo Trail into Montana Territory. In Montana they hoped sanctuary and distance might end the chase; they traveled through the Bitterroot Valley and on into the Big Hole Basin in early August. The army’s pursuit, however, was relentless: detachments under different commanders — notably Colonel John Gibbon and Brig. Gen. O.O. Howard — and later elements under Nelson A. Miles, kept closing the net. Montana’s wide valleys and abrupt mountain passes both aided and imperiled the refugees; the terrain offered concealment but also made large groups of non-combatants vulnerable when surprised. 

The Battle of the Big Hole (August 9–10, 1877) stands as the most consequential clash in Montana during the flight. Believing they had outrun the soldiers, many Nez Perce camped in the Big Hole Basin; at dawn on August 9 a contingent of soldiers and civilian volunteers launched a surprise attack. The result was disastrous: although the Nez Perce ultimately rallied and inflicted heavy casualties on Gibbon’s force and escaped, they suffered grievous losses among women and children — estimates place Nez Perce deaths in the Big Hole battle at roughly 70–90, and military casualties at some 30 men. The encounter hardened the resolve of both sides and made clear that the flight could not simply vanish into the Montana backcountry. Big Hole is today a preserved National Battlefield and a center of remembrance for those events. 

After Big Hole the Nez Perce moved east and south into the Yellowstone region and then north, threading difficult routes across plateaus and ridges. Their crossing of Yellowstone — a then-new park with a scattering of civilian visitors and guides — created startling encounters: tourists and guides were sometimes astonished to see thousands of horses and Nez Perce families moving through the valleys and across high country. Army scouts and telegraphs, however, turned Montana’s openness into intelligence that aided pursuit. The Nez Perce display of horsemanship, scouts’ cunning, and capacity to move a large, mixed group under pressure over hundreds of miles drew contemporary praise for military skill even from many who supported the army’s aims. 

By mid-September the chase focused around the Yellowstone and Tongue River districts. A delaying action at Canyon Creek (near present-day Billings) showed Nez Perce tactical skill: warriors drew soldiers into contested ground, slowed the pursuit, and then slipped away over high country. Still, army reinforcements converged. In late September Nelson A. Miles — commanding a combined force that included cavalry, infantry, and Indian scouts from tribes hostile to the Nez Perce — moved to intercept. Miles' force, aided by Howard’s detachment, finally caught most of Joseph’s people at the Bear Paw (Bears Paw) Mountains. The Nez Perce made a brave defense through the end of September and into October, but exhaustion, cold, and dwindling supplies took their toll. 

The surrender on October 5, 1877, is one of the most quoted moments in U.S. Indian history. Chief Joseph, who was not the sole battlefield commander but who had become the central diplomatic and moral voice for his people, rode from the Nez Perce camp to meet the army commanders. He handed over his rifle and — in a translated statement whose path into print involved multiple witnesses and transcriptions — declared the famous lines rendered as, “Hear me, my chiefs: I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the Sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.” That phrase, whether in exact words or as the distilled version of what he said, captured a mixture of personal grief and a plea for humane treatment. Still, promises that apparently had been made in the field — that the Nez Perce might be allowed to return to their lands — were overtaken by policy and higher authorities; instead the government ordered large displacements, and many Nez Perce were moved far east to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). 

The immediate aftermath was tragic. Hundreds of Nez Perce were marched to cantonments in Montana and then sent to distant internments; disease, exposure, and homesickness killed many in exile. Chief Joseph himself spent years petitioning presidents and touring to plead for his people’s return; he met presidents, spoke publicly, and became for many Americans a symbol of the wrongs visited on tribal peoples — but despite decades of advocacy Joseph never obtained permission to resettle in the Wallowa Valley during his lifetime. Meanwhile a contingent under White Bird and others escaped to Canada and found temporary refuge there. The federal handling of the surrender and later removals remains a focus of historical criticism and a stain in the record of U.S.–Native relations. 

Montana’s role in the Nez Perce flight has left layered legacies. The Big Hole Battlefield, the Bear Paw site, and segments of the Nez Perce National Historic Trail in Montana are places of education, ceremony, and contested memory. Historians have interpreted the retreat as both a tale of tactical brilliance and as an object lesson in the limits of military solution to political and moral problems; recent scholarship has emphasized the voices of Nez Perce survivors and descendants and has sought to center their accounts rather than treating the episode only as a military narrative. Contemporary Montana commemoration often mixes sorrow, reconciliation-work with tribal nations, and public history efforts to present a fuller picture than earlier 19th-century accounts allowed. 

The 1877 flight through Montana remains powerful because it crystallizes broader themes of the American West: contested land, treaty-making and breaking, the movement of peoples under duress, and the often-misplaced language of “inevitable” expansion. Chief Joseph’s words, and the Nez Perce’s sustained movement and resistance, continue to resonate — rendered in many histories, novels, films, memorials, and Indigenous remembrances. For readers wanting deeper study, Jerome Greene’s NPS study Nez Perce Summer, 1877, Alvin Josephy’s classic monographs, and recent treatments such as Daniel Sharfstein’s Thunder in the Mountains provide layered archival and interpretive work — and the National Park Service, Library of Congress, and tribal sources preserve eyewitness accounts and artifacts that keep the story alive. 

Selected sources

U.S. National Park Service, “The Flight of 1877,” Nez Perce National Historical Park, last updated Aug. 16, 2023. 

Encyclopaedia Britannica, s.v. “Nez Perce War,” accessed 2025. 

Jerome A. Greene, Nez Perce Summer, 1877: The U.S. Army and the Nee-Me-Poo Crisis (National Park Service online book collection). 

Big Hole National Battlefield, “History & Culture,” National Park Service, (site narrative / administrative history). 

TeachingAmericanHistory.org, “I Will Fight No More Forever,” Chief Joseph surrender speech (text and study material). 

“The Pursuit and Capture of Chief Joseph,” DigitalHistory (University of Houston / public history synthesis). 

Daniel J. Sharfstein, Thunder in the Mountains: Chief Joseph, Oliver Otis Howard, and the Nez Perce War (New York: W. W. Norton, 2016). 

Library of Congress, Montana — the Nez Perces War — Incidents in the defeat and capture of Chief Joseph (1877 photographic/cartographic items).