Military
5
On the morning of August 9, 1877, soldiers and Montana volunteers passed this point as they deployed for an attack on the Nez Perce encampment nearby. After the army's surprise attack, the Nez Perce launched a fierce counteroffensive, and soldiers frantically dug rifle pits here as warriors surrounded them. The desperate fighting centered on this pine thicket, where low mounds and shallow ditches remain as the only evidence. Corporal Charles N. Loynes of the U.S. Army recalled Captain Rawn and his company meeting the main body as it tried to entrench by throwing up dirt with trowel bayonets, with one man scraping up dirt while every second man kept firing, until they lay in a square about forty feet on each side with the Indians on every side and no man expecting to leave alive.
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Montana · United States
