Big Hole National Battlefield
Nez Perce National Historical Park · Wisdom, Montana
A meadow in the Big Hole Valley where, at dawn on 9 August 1877, US soldiers attacked a sleeping camp of Nez Perce who were fleeing the army and believed they had left the fighting behind in Idaho. Between sixty and ninety Nimiipuu were killed, a large proportion of them women, children and elders. The Nez Perce counterattacked, pinned the soldiers on the hillside for a day and a night, and continued their flight — another eleven hundred miles before surrendering forty miles from Canada. Peeled tipi poles stand in the meadow where the lodges were.
16425 Highway 43 West, Wisdom, Montana, 59761, United States
FREE — there is no entrance fee. Open year round in principle, but the visitor centre keeps seasonal hours, generally daily in summer and reduced or closed in winter, and the trails into the meadow may be snowbound from roughly November to April. Ranger talks run in summer. The annual commemoration falls around the 9 August anniversary and is a ceremony attended by Nez Perce descendants rather than a visitor event. The Big Hole Valley is remote with very limited services.
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