Nez Perce War

AM’SÁAXPA, Wallowa County, Oregon — They were exiled from this place during the Nez Perce War in 1877, driven from their homes and ancestral lands by U.S. soldiers.

While it was called the Nez Perce War, the ensuing violent conflict was not really a war at all — but an extermination campaign.

While it was called the Nez Perce War, the ensuing violent conflict was not really a war at all but an extermination campaign.

While the shooting has long stopped, a different kind of Nez Perce War still goes on.

He is descended on his mother’s side from Chief Joseph, whose grave is at a lonely rise in a cemetery in Nespelem on the Colville Reservation, where he was forced after the Nez Perce War to live out his days in exile from his beloved home lands in the Wallowa region of northeast Oregon — taken in the Thief Treaty.