The Battle of Bear Paw (also sometimes called Battle of the Bears Paw or Battle of the Bears Paw Mountains) was the final engagement of the Nez Perce War of 1877. Following a 1,200-mile (1,900 km) running fight from north central Idaho Territory over the previous four months, the U.S. Army managed to corner most of the Nez Perce led by Chief Joseph in early October 1877 in northern Montana Territory, just 42 miles (68 km) south of the border with Canada, where the Nez Perce intended to seek refuge from persecution by the U.S. government.
Although some of the Nez Perce were able to escape to Canada, Chief Joseph was forced to surrender the majority of his followers to Brigadier General Oliver Howard and Colonel Nelson A. Miles on October 5. Today, the battlefield is part of the Nez Perce National Historical Park and the Nez Perce National Historic Trail.
In June 1877, several bands of the Nez Perce, resisting relocation from their traditional lands to a much smaller reservation in north central Idaho Territory, attempted to escape to the east, following a route through Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming territories over the Rocky Mountains and onto the Great Plains. The Nez Perce began their journey with the mistaken notion that after crossing the next mountain range or defeating the latest army sent to oppose them they would find a peaceful new home. They came to realize, however, that the only sanctuary available to them was in Saskatchewan, Canada alongside the Lakota led by Sitting Bull, who had found asylum there after the Great Sioux War of 1876. After passing through Yellowstone National Park, the Nez Perce headed north through the Montana Territory toward Canada.
By late September, the Nez Perce, numbering about 800, including fewer than 200 warriors, had traveled more than a thousand miles and fought several battles in which they defeated or held off the U.S. Army forces pursuing them. In the most recent of those battles, on September 13, the Nez Perce eluded the attempt of Colonel Samuel D. Sturgis to capture them at the Battle of Canyon Creek near present-day Billings. However, the Crow and Bannock scouts of Sturgis captured about 400 of the Nez Perce horses which slowed them in their race to the Canada–U.S. border. Meeting up with Sturgis after the battle, General Howard continued the pursuit, following the Nez Perce trail northward.
On September 12, Howard sent a message to Colonel Nelson A. Miles, who was stationed at Fort Keogh (then called the Tongue River Cantonment), requesting his assistance. On September 17, Miles received the message and replied that he would move northwest from the Yellowstone River with his soldiers in an attempt to intercept the Nez Perce and prevent what both officers feared: an alliance between the Nez Perce and the Lakota of Sitting Bull. To permit Miles the time he needed to get into position between the Nez Perce and the Canada–U.S. border, Howard slowed down his pursuit. The Nez Perce, exhausted by their long ordeal, also slowed down their flight, believing themselves a safe distance ahead of Howard's forces. They were not aware of Miles and his approach toward them.
The Indian Wars encompass more than three centuries of armed conflict between the United States government, American settlers, and Indigenous nations — from the Powhatan Wars of the 1620s through the final Plains campaigns of the late 19th century. The eastern conflicts — King Philip's War (1675–1676), the Tuscarora War (1711–1715), and the Creek and Seminole Wars — largely ended organized Indigenous resistance east of the Mississippi by the 1840s. On the Great Plains, the Sioux Wars (1854–1890), Red River War (1874–1875), and Nez Perce War (1877) followed the displacement wrought by the transcontinental railroad and the near-extinction of the American bison — an estimated 30 to 60 million animals reduced to fewer than 1,000 by 1890. The Ghost Dance religious movement and the massacre at Wounded Knee (December 29, 1890), in which US cavalry killed approximately 250 Lakota men, women, and children, marked the effective end of armed resistance. The Dawes Act (1887) allotted reservation land to individual families, opening millions of acres to white settlement and reducing Indigenous landholdings by about two-thirds over the following decades.
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