Howard Camp

On July 30, 1877, General Oliver Otis Howard began pursuing five Nímíípuu (Nez Perce) bands over the Lolo Trail with 730 officers and enlisted men and a 350-mule supply train. Delayed while awaiting supplies and reinforcements, he tried to make up lost time, but the densely forested Bitterroot Mountains turned the 100-mile journey into a slow, arduous ordeal. The Nímíípuu, accustomed to mountain travel and familiar with the trail, had reached the eastern slope on July 25, five days before Howard set out, traveling with more than 2,000 horses and 750 people, mostly women, children, and elders. Howard's exhausted troops arrived at this campsite on August 4, by which time the Nímíípuu were en route to a familiar Montana refuge they believed would be safe, unaware that another column of soldiers was advancing and that a devastating dawn attack awaited them on August 9 at the Battle of the Big Hole. Along the trail, evidence of the Army's passage remains in older trees scarred where bark was peeled off for horses, and the Nímíípuu also peeled bark for a variety of uses.

Idaho · United States