Asset

Date of ingest: 6 July 2026

Description: This is an original hand-drawn color document, 55 x 43 cm., drawn by Nez Perce tribal member piyopyóot’alikt (Peo-Peo Tholekt). He had fought in the 1877 Nez Perce War, in which tribe members were pursued from their Idaho homes across into central Montana, and after the war had been relocated to the Yakima reservation in central Washington state. In the summer of 1927, three Nez Perce (piyopyóot’alikt (Peo Peo Tholekt), hímiin maqsmáqs (Yellow Wolf), and 'iléxni 'éewteesin' (Many Wounds)) returned with Yakima rancher Lucullus V. McWhorter to the battlefields of the 1877 Nez Perce War and recorded the Nez Perce men's memories of what had happened. Top here are elements of the ‘ickum’kiléelixpe (Battle of Big Hole), fought in western Montana on August 9, 1877, focusing on the theft of a cannon by the Nez Perce warriors; lacking cannon balls to use with it, they buried it in the forests. Lower, rotated 180 degrees upside down, is the Nez Perce camp on the ‘ickum’kiléelixpe (Big Hole River) prior to that battle. Both appear to be underlain by a light pencil map of the lower Montana route of the Nez Perce, including the ‘ickum’kiléelixpe (Big Hole), Cornchalic, and Yellowstone rivers. The stories and drawings collected with this are one of the few places this war is told from the point of view of the Nez Perce who lived it, while the U.S. military's side is well-preserved in governmental documents and soldiers' diaries. If you visit the Big Hole battlefield today, you'll find representations of the Nez Perce's camp marked out on the field, taken from this drawing.