Indian Tales: the Bitterroot Valley and the Lolo Trail

Largest peak of the Bitterroot Mountains

We drove up through Montana on US 93 through the Bitterroot Valley, alongside the eponymous mountain range, the mountainous spine of the Continental Divide. Many Indians have called this valley home and their equilibrium with the valley preserved great abundance for thousands of years. Here grew the sustaining bitterroot and camas roots that tribes dug in the spring. But the valley was also a refuge from smallpox epidemics and war with rifle-armed Plains tribes.

In 1855 tribal leaders of the Flathead Nation and US officials signed the Hellgate Treaty (a Jesuit observer noted "not a tenth of what was said was understood by either side"), which designated the valley south of Lolo, Montana as a conditional reservation.

Steakhouse in Lolo, Montana

But mining, trapping and agriculture attracted settlers, and the Indian reservation was shrunk to a tenth of the original land. Chief Victor of the Selis people rebuffed efforts of US officials to get them to abandon the choice lands of their ancestors. After Chief Victor died, settlers successfully lobbied President Grant to declare the Flathead Reservation "better adapted to the wants of the Flathead tribe." In 1872, Congress sent future President Garfield to arrange for the removal of the Selis. Claw of Small Grizzly, or Chief Chariot, said the Bitterroot was where the bones of his ancestors were buried and he would not leave, but his "x" mark was forged onto the Garfield agreement. More whites moved illegally onto the Selis land and pressures intensified with the coming of the railroad. In November 1889, faced with the worsening conditions for his people, he finally agreed to leave. The Selis therefore planted no crops, but Congress delayed funding for the move pushing many people to the brink of starvation. Finally Troops from Fort Missoula roughly pushed the tribe on the sad march north to the Reservation.

Where the Nez Perce passed over Traveler's Rest

Nez Perce Chiefs

Big Hole, Montana was a battlefied for the Nez Perce,  where they lost almost a hundred women and children to a surprise attack by the US troops. But we were too late for visiting hours and saw the pretty Indian girl already cycling home. So we continued to drive up 93, past curious deer standing at the edge of the National Forest on a flat Montana highway, toward the "traveler's rest" that Lewis and Clark found in Lolo, Montana. We found a cheap motel and dined at a capacious pine lodge covered with the taxidermy trade, magnificent moose, elk, deer, mountain sheep and goats, the bounty of that great land majestically fixed in time. The Church in Lolo advertised "The Coming Apocalypse End-Time Series."

The Nez Perce Escape

Just across the road was the "Traveler's Rest" where Lewis and Clark (1805) rested before their cold and miserable way west, aided at critical moments by the Nez Perce who saved their lives.  Seventy-one years later, the Nez Perce tribe, heading east, would be halted nearby.  They had tried to negotiate with the US Army, after broken promises and the theft of their land, but a few younger warriors had killed some settlers in reprisal for Nez Perce killings, and now some 800 Nez Perce were on the run toward Montana, led by Chief Joseph.  It is said that they still carried Thomas Jefferson's letters of friendship. The US Army wanted them held at the border by local volunteers so they could attack from the rear.  But instead the Nez Perce bands passed above them on an Indian trail just north of Traveler's Rest, filing over a ridge above the heads of the US citizen army, with their 2,000 horses, papooses, old gray hairs and young boys, their warriors taunting the troops below.

Construction of US 12

We drove through their wild land of memories and heartbreak, along Highway 12 (built by Italian POW's and Japanese internees) that travels west through Idaho, south of the Lolo trail, now route 500 which requires a more rugged vehicle than our own. The Lochsa River, designated wild and scenic, sparkles alongside a million acres of protected wilderness on its southern bank, National Park land on the northern bank. The Nez Perce had, over four months, traveled 1,600 miles through the rugged wilderness of Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana, fighting and holding off an army of thousands with better equipment--some 14 battles in all. Until the last battle, notes the Encyclopedia of Native Americans, the Nez Percé "consistently outsmarted, outflanked, and outfought the larger white forces."But those fleetfooted Indians would ultimately be worn down by grief, loss, exhaustion, allies turning on them in fear of the white man. We followed their journey of valor and despair, and the smaller dramas of Lewis and Clark who had been nursed to health, fed and aided by these same tribes 70 years earlier. It is still a pristine wilderness of endless discovery, the warm pinesap fragrance, the singing waters, clear and laughing, glorious mountain vistas, an unfolding corridor of endless deep pine folding out before the river bed.

The Lochsa/Clearwater

From the fresh currents of the river valley we entered the  Nez Perce reservation, where the temperature reached nearly 100, heat trapped in an arid canyon between scrubby rock mountains, unrelieved by the broad Clearwater River. It seemed as if, for these brave people, the US army reserved a special hell. Chief Joseph himself would never be allowed back to his own lands. A hundred years before, the Nez Perce had been indomitable, peaceable with all, gifted horse breeders and proud stewards of the land. In 1877, on their way east, just 40 miles south of Canada, the US would hound them down. Their chief tactician, Olikut, whose methods are still taught in important military colleges, was shot in the head by a Crow scout riding with the thousands of US soldiers. Broken by grief, the loss of their great warriors and revered families, most of them would surrender and be herded back to cramped reservations on barren lands.

These were the words of Chief Joseph:  

"Tell General Howard I know his heart. What he told me before, I have it in my heart. I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed. Looking Glass is dead. Toohoolhoolshute is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say, "Yes" or "No." He Who Led The Young Men In Battle, Olikut my brother is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are -- perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever."