Named for the blue flowering camas, an important root food for all interior Northwestern Indians, Camas Prairie is a traditional Nez Perce cultural center. Tolo Lake, visible below, provided a campground for Joseph’s Wallowa band and White Bird’s Salmon River band when war broke out on Salmon River directly south of here, June 14, 1877. Both of these bands were under military pressure to settle on Camas Prairie when three young men from White Bird’s band avenged a long series of past wrongs and army authorities retaliated.