DEATH AND DECISION IN WONDERLAND
For much of its first two centuries the United States was bent on conquering the wilderness. Cities rose from bare ground, forests were shorn for timber, open fields were subdued by plow, and indigenous peoples were pushed aside. But a dramatic reimagining of this philosophical course was signaled on March 1, 1872, when President Ulysses S. Grant signed “An Act to set apart a certain Tract of Land lying near the Head-waters of the Yellowstone River as a public Park,” shielding more than two million wilderness acres (most in northwest Wyoming) from development and creating the nation’s first national park. Such were its panoramic vistas, violently beautiful geysers, unique geological formations, and ominously bubbling hot springs that writers had dubbed it “Wonderland.” But just five years after its creation, Yellowstone National Park played host to a final stage of the last major military campaign pitting the U.S. Army against Native Americans: the Nez Perce War of 1877.
Until that time, the Nez Perce, writes historian Elliott West, “were arguably the nation’s strongest and most persistent ally in the Far West”; a contemporary declared them “the best type of Indians.” The Nez Perce—or Nimíipuu, as they called themselves—provided timely aid to Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and then tried to follow a path that preserved their tribal dignity while accepting but moderating white encroachment. Though often viewed as a homogeneous entity, the Nez Perce were a deeply fractured society whose differences would factor into the 1877 conflict.
The new park would play host to a final chapter in the Nez Perce war of 1877.
Their homeland in the Columbia River Plateau of the Pacific Northwest put the Nez Perce somewhat off the main currents of settlers. Tribal clans living along the Clearwater River regularly traveled to the Great Plains to hunt buffalo, while others bordering the Salmon and Snake Rivers were stay-at-homes content to fish. Christian missionaries found a tolerant reception among “upper” Nez Perce living in the northern home country but encountered opposition from the “lower” Nez Perce. But the deepest split in the tribe was caused by a series of U.S. treaties.
The first of the treaties was negotiated in 1855 by Isaac Stevens, the first governor of Washington Territory, who cleverly kept the Nez Perce areas intact while dispossessing weaker neighboring tribes, thus muting Nimíipuu opposition. A second treaty, prompted by a fleeting 1863 gold strike, slashed tribal areas to 10 percent of what they had been. Its U.S. negotiators chose to assume
