Forty Miles

October 5, 1877.

The Bear Paw Mountains of northern Montana.

The Canadian border was roughly forty miles away.

For five days, the nimíipuu — the Nez Perce people — had been pinned in rifle pits and hastily dug ravines at the place they called C’aynnim Alikinwaaspa, the Place of the Manure Fire.

Colonel Nelson Miles had arrived with approximately 450 soldiers after a rapid march through the cold autumn plains, catching the nimíipuu almost entirely by surprise.

The first assault had cost both sides heavily.

The siege that followed was conducted in bitter cold, with artillery directed at the area where families had taken shelter.

They had traveled more than 1,170 miles to reach this place.

The group that began the flight included approximately 800 people: warriors, elders, women, children, horses, and the entire material world of five non-treaty bands.

They had crossed Idaho and Montana through mountain passes that the army thought were impassable.

They had fought at White Bird Canyon, at the Clearwater, at the Big Hole, at Camas Meadows.

They had moved through Yellowstone country and across the open plains of central Montana.

They had been pursued the whole way by General Oliver Otis Howard’s column, and now Miles had cut them off from the north.

Forty miles.

Two days of travel in good conditions.

For people who were exhausted, hungry, without enough horses, watching soldiers with artillery control the ridgelines above their camp — forty miles might as well have been four hundred.

On the morning of October 5, the two remaining hereditary leaders in the camp — Joseph and White Bird — met with two treaty Nez Perce men who had come in under Howard’s protection to try to end the fighting.