Montana's DAR Markers . . . Honoring Where History Was Made

The west-facing tablet tells that the monument is in remembrance of
officers and enlisted men of the U.S. Army killed in action and gives
their names–twenty-three in all. The east-facing bronze tablet
commemorates the surrender of Chief Joseph and his tribe of Nez Perce
to General Nelson A. Miles October 5, 1877.
On the Snake Creek battlefield in the foothills of the Bears Paw
Mountains south of Chinook, a band of Nez Perce Indians under Chief
Joseph and the army under General Nelson A. Miles fought from
September 30 to October 5, 1877. It was the last battle of the Indian
Wars in the Northwest. This brought to an end the gallant actions of
Chief Joseph and his band of approximately 800 Nez Perce who refused
to recognize the land sessions made to the U.S. by the Treaty of 1863.
Chief Joseph was a strong defender of his people’s rights, and
feeling that they could not obtain justice in the United States, in 1877
he determined to lead them from their homeland in central Idaho into
Canada. Accordingly, he set out on a hard march of 1,170 miles with
800 Nez Perce among whom were only around 200 warriors. The rest
were women, children and old men. On this retreat, Chief Joseph and
his warriors stunned the U.S. by defeating them in skirmishes where
the Indians were greatly outnumbered. The first day of the battle at
Snake Creek in the Bears Paw Mountains, September 30, 1877, the
U.S. troops lost nearly twenty percent of their force to the small band of
Nez Perce.
At Snake Creek, 40 miles from their goal of the Canadian border,
this courageous little band was so greatly out-numbered that they were
forced to surrender. They had lost their horses, their food supply was
cut off, and during the battle many of their greatest warriors were
killed. It was here that Chief Joseph made his famous statement:
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