In July 1877, nearly 800 Nimiipuu (Nez Perce) people traveled with heavy hearts across the Lolo Trail above this place, uncertain whether they would ever return to their homes, while the women sang songs of sorrow and longing. Their journey had begun in the Wallowa Valley of Oregon after they were ordered in the spring of 1877 to move to the reservation near Lapwai, Idaho. After a number of conflicts along the way, several bands decided to travel to Canada, where they felt they would be safe. After the Battle of the Clearwater near Kamiah, military pursuit continued to push them across the Lolo Trail, their traditional route over the Bitterroot Mountains. Before the conflict ended, most of those who had fled over the trail would be killed in battle or would surrender near the Bear’s Paw Mountains in northern Montana. Those who surrendered were taken to Kansas and then Oklahoma, far from their homeland. Years later some returned to Idaho and Washington, but they never returned to their original homes. As Horace Axtell said of the flight through the Montana area, home to the Selish (Salish) and Crow, they were not going there to settle but to save their traditions, culture, language, and religion in a place where they could live with peace and harmony to Mother Earth. The same route across the Lolo Trail that the Lewis and Clark Expedition had traveled in 1805 had become a trail of sorrow for the Nimiipuu. President Jefferson’s peace medals were still prized and revered by them, and the promises Lewis and Clark made with those symbols of friendship had been taken very seriously. Only 70 years later, sadness and betrayal hung in the air because of broken treaties. Today the trail is recognized as the Nez Perce (Nee Me Poo) National Historic Trail.