Pine-Nut-Chokecherry Thumbprints & Big Hole NB (Day 11)

Under brilliant blue skies, Day 11 has us in a somber, panoramic location…Big Hole National Battlefield in southwestern Montana.

Known by Native Americans as the “land of big snow” and “valley of the 10,000 hay stacks” from settlers, the Big Hole Valley is breathtakingly beautiful. Sagebrush and grass fields are broken up by the meandering Big Hole River and low-lying bogs and sloughs. Osprey nesting stands and hay-stacking “beaverslides” dot the landscape. The snow-capped peaks of the Pioneer, Beaverhead and Anaconda Mountains surround this basin.

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Before Lewis and Clark’s 1806 expedition, the Big Hole basin was the summer home of native peoples who came in search of seasonal plants. French-Canadian fur trappers with the Hudson’s bay Company, the North West Company and the American Fur Company passed through between 1810 and 1840 in search of beaver pelts and other fuzzy furs. When the beaver populations in area streams were drained, very few Europeans strayed through.

It took gold being discovered in July 1862 on Grasshopper Creek, about fifty miles south, to get folks flocking to the region with yellow rocks on their mind. The 1862 Homestead Act also encouraged settlers to the region with the promise of being able to prove up 160 acres of land. A.J. and Hattie Noyes were the first homesteaders to The Crossings (present-day Wisdom) in May 1882.

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Big Hole was officially marked on the map, and into the minds of the American people, after the 1877 Battle of the Big Hole between the U.S. Army and the Nez Perce people. This two-day long battle, however, is a snapshot from a longer narrative with themes of manifest destiny, settler migration, gold-fever, and forced relocation.

Prior to government treaties and Oregon Trail settlers, the Nez Perce, or Niimíipuu (pronounced Nee-MEE-poo), were nomadic hunter and gathering peoples in the Pacific Northwest states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana. Each year they’d migrate between the plains hunting buffalo and fishing for salmon in coastal areas.

Horses, arriving in the 18th century from the Spanish, altered the Niimíipuu lifestyle significantly. Family bands, once living in villages of up to 30 families, began to move from location to location. The Nez Perce traded with various Plains tribes, adopting cultural traits similar to the Crow and Shoshone people. This included war tactics, using mobile teepee made of buffalo hides, and remarkable horsemanship. Today’s spotted Appaloosa horse breed is credited to the Nez Perce people.

By 1855, the relationship among Oregon Trail settlers, Christian missionaries and the Nez Perce were tenuous in the Walla Walla region of Washington. Missionary activities among the Nez Perce tribes ended after Marcus Whitman and his wife Narcissa were killed by members of the neighboring Cayuse tribe in 1847. Settlers continued to pour into the region to claim land once part of the Nez Perce ancestral homeland. With tribes like the Yakima, the U.S. government and Washington territorial governor Issac I. Stevens arranged land deals framed as treaties. These treaties created geographical boundaries around so-called coveted ancestral native lands called reservations, in which settlers would be prohibited from homesteading. (Tribes were allowed to decide if non-native peoples could live on their designated lands.) The Nez Perce had been friendly with settlers to this point, and agreed to the 1855 treaty in return for goods, services and money. Fifty-eight Nez Perce leaders, including Looking Glass and Old Joseph, signed the deal.

Fast forward to 1863. Placer gold was discovered in the streams and rivers on Nez Perce lands in 1860, which sent a stream of about 15,000 eager, gold-eyed miners to the region. Congress never fully ratified the 1855 treaty, so the land (and rich gold) was open for their taking. The Niimíipuu people had enough. A second treaty between the U.S. Government reduced the Nez Perce lands further, forcing about one-third of the native peoples out of their homes. Rich gold mining areas were preserved for settlers. A growing dissent between pro-treaty and non-treaty Nez Perce bands increased. Five Nez Perce bands refused to sign the 1863 treaty, including Young Joseph.

By 1876, the situation between white settlers intruding onto Nez Perce lands was at a fever pitch.

Young Joseph, son of now deceased Old Joseph, was the official spokesman of the five non-treaty Nez Perce bands. Although he and his brother Ollokot tried to balance traditional ways with the settler infringement and treaties, Young Joseph was encouraged by words his dying father told him: “My son, never forget my dying words. This country holds your father’s body. Never sell the bones of your father and your mother.” In May 1877, General Oliver O. Howard was instructed by the U.S. Indian Bureau to move Young Joseph and his people onto the reduced reservation. Joseph requested more time be given to gather livestock and cross when the rivers weren’t swollen from mountain snowmelt. Howard denied the request. Joseph’s band, along with the four other non-treaty groups, fled.

Major U.S. newspapers of the day narrated the 1876 events and 1877 flight of the Nez Perce as a dime-store novel, interpreted by the era’s biased writers.

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By the beginning of August 1877, the non-treaty Nez Perce bands consisting of approximately 750 men, women, and children fled to Montana. The chiefs, including Joseph, hoped to meet up with other plains tribe allies in the area. Thinking the Idaho volunteers of the U.S. Army wasn’t in heavy pursuit, the group led by Chief Looking Glass slowed their pace and rested at the Big Hole River area to regroup and replace or repair teepee poles.

Before dawn on the morning of August 9, 1877, Colonel John Gibson and Montana Territory volunteer troops began to fire on the camped Nez Perce people, killing mainly women, children and elders. Through a series of attacks and counterattacks over the next two days, the Nez Perce buried their dead, and lead remaining families out of the area. When the smoke cleared, between 80 and 90 Nez Perce (at least two-thirds of those were women and children), 3 U.S. Army officers, 21 enlisted men, and 5 civilians were killed. Two months later on September 29, 1877, at the Battle of Bear Paw, Chief Joseph the remaining leader surrendered. Even this was pulled into tilted, tabloid drama of the day.

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When we visited several years ago, learning how to put up a Nez Perce teepee was a very interactive, interpretive feature. Teepees are extremely significant here. The Nez Perce hoped to replace poles in August 1877, and the subsequent battle caused families to abandon those same teepees as they fled for their safety. It seemed a fitting tribute to the memory of the Nez Perce who died here.

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Visitors can also hike up to viewpoints overlooking the battle along the Big Hole River, and read inscriptions on the 1883 Soldiers’ Monument. If you’re lucky enough you might catch someone who has a close connection to the park. Mom and Pop lived and worked in Big Hole NB for a couple of years. (They have some pretty good stories from there, especially of interpretive rangers blowing up soup in housing!)

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Chokecherries are dark-purple berries growing in clusters on large bushes in western mountain regions. Their name comes from their obvious puckery taste. I fondly remember my Pop stopping on Montana Bitterroot Mountain roadsides to pick chokecherries. We’d run the tiny berries through a sieve, removing the skins and seeds, and extracting the juice for pancake syrup. (It takes A LOT of sugar to make a palatable syrup though.) Mmm…sourdough pancakes and chokecherry syrup…

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Like those pesky Prickly Pears from yesterday, native people over the centuries (and settlers to this day) enjoyed western chokecherry. The berries are tasty as jellies, syrups and sauces. The bark and roots act as a herbal medicine for stomachaches and coughs, and the juice makes a pretty pink dye. (FYI, chokecherry seeds are toxic due to hydrocyanic acid produced in the plant’s leaves, stem and seeds.)

To make Pine-Nut-Chokecherry Thumbprints, the main ingredient is almond paste. Depending on your local mega-mart, almond paste is sold in tube or box forms and is found in the baking aisle with the chocolate chips and nuts.

When the cookies come out of the oven, use a rounded measuring spoon to gently re-indent them. Drop on 1/2-tsp. of chokecherry jelly or another Montana favorite, huckleberry jam, and let cool. If you can’t find chokecherry or huckleberry in your area, Becky’s Berries is a family run business in Absarokee, Montana making these wonderful tasting jams and jellies, and more! Cherry, raspberry or strawberry jam would also be yummy substitutes too.

The end of the Twelve Days of Christmas Cookies is here! We’ll be peering through one of the foggiest locations on the Pacific coastline and enjoying a little blue cheese in the process. Whew!

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Resources:

• Big Hole National Battlefield Site Cultural Landscape: https://www.nps.gov/articles/725543.htm#6/46.362/-116.169
• Montana: Big Hole Battlefield https://www.nps.gov/articles/bighole.htm
• Greene, Jerome A., NEZ PERCE SUMMER, 1877: The U.S. Army and the Nee-Me-Poo Crisis, Montana Historical Society Press, 2000.