Oregon Trails: Take in the solitude and grandeur of Nez Perce homeland in Eastern Oregon

July brings crowds to the mountain trails at Northeast Oregon’s Wallowa Lake, near the scenic vacation village of Joseph. But you’re unlikely to meet anyone on one of the most beautiful trails, because it starts on the other side of the Wallowa Mountains.

On the hike to the historic log cabin in Catherine Creek’s alpine meadow, it’s easy to imagine the Eagle Cap Wilderness as it once was, the Nez Perce homeland of Chief Joseph’s Wallowa band.

Descendants of that band gathered last week in the town of Wallowa for the Tamkaliks Celebration, reuniting 145 years after the U.S. Army forced them to leave Oregon.

In the first part of this “Oregon Trails” adventure, I described the lead-up to the 1877 Nez Perce War. In this second part, I’ll tell about the war and its aftermath. But first let’s get you to the wilderness log cabin I promised.

Start by driving Interstate 84 six miles north of Baker City. At Exit 298, follow Highway 203 east through Medical Springs for a total of 29 miles. Between mileposts 12 and 11, turn right on Catherine Creek Lane for 6.1 gravel miles to the signed trailhead parking area.

The trail doesn’t actually start here, but rather 0.1 mile farther up to the left on Road 7785, where the road ends at a delightful, primitive six-site campground by the creek. You’ll need a Northwest Forest Pass for your car.

From the campground message board (GPS location 45.1541, -117.6155), the trail climbs gradually along the creek for 4.8 miles to Catherine Creek Meadows, a broad field of grass and wildflowers. Continue half a mile through the meadow to find the unlocked, well-maintained log cabin from the early 1900s (GPS location 45.2205, -117.61).

The 14-by-18-foot log building has a shake roof, two glass windows, two cots, a box stove and a cupboard. Graffiti comments on the cupboard include “Dam Mosquitoes” (1994), “10 feet of snow” (Dec. 23), and “Fishing bad, Borbon perfect” (1961).

Now put your feet up by the wood stove while I tell the rest of Nez Perce story.

The Nez Perce tale continues

After Old Chief Joseph died in 1872, his son Hinmaton Lalaktit became the head of the Wallowa band. Whites called the young man Chief Joseph, but his Nez Perce name translates as Thunder Rolling in the Mountains.

For five years after his father’s death, Hinmaton Lalaktit fought for his land with words. Then, in 1877, the government issued an ultimatum: The Oregon Nez Perce must all be on a small Idaho reservation by April 1, or they would be forcibly moved there by the U.S. Army.

The young Joseph sent a negotiator to try to work out an agreement. The emissary told the government officials, “The Great Chief made the world as it is, and as he wanted it, and he made a part of it for us to live upon. I do not see where you get the authority to say that we shall not live where he placed us.”

The government threw the negotiator in jail and set a new deadline of June 14. This time there seemed no alternative. In late May of 1877, Chief Joseph gathered the 400 people of the Wallowa band, rounded up their 2,000 head of cattle and Appaloosa horses, and began the trek that would take them away from their Oregon homeland.

White settlers rushed in after the tribe, claiming pastures and branding the Appaloosa horses that lagged behind. Ahead, the flooding Snake River roared through a gorge at the bottom of Hells Canyon. Joseph ordered rafts built of hide bundles. He loaded the rafts with baggage and had the tribe’s infirm or elder members sit on top. Then he ordered young men to swim the rafts across with the strongest horses. Women and children followed on horseback into the raging river. The remaining horses and cattle were driven into the water to cross on their own. Many of the animals drowned, but miraculously, no human lives were lost.

After the tribe had regrouped and climbed the Idaho side of Hells Canyon, they stopped two miles short of the reservation for a “last council in freedom.” Chief Joseph went back to check on their cattle. When he returned, he found the tribe preparing for war. Three young hotbloods, taunted by an old warrior, had murdered settlers in nearby cabins. The U.S. Army was already advancing.

Oregon Trails Part 1:Wallowa hikes give great views of homeland and Nez Perce history

Hoping to avoid more bloodshed, Joseph managed to convince the tribe that they must first meet the troops under a white flag of surrender.

On June 17, 1877, a hundred cavalrymen and a detachment of Idaho volunteers marched into a box canyon near the present-day town of Whitebird, looking for the non-treaty Nez Perce. The soldiers stopped uncertainly when they found a group of warriors assembled for surrender. Then one of the Idaho volunteers raised his rifle and shot at the Indian holding the white flag.

For the Nez Perce, this was the signal that there would be no peace. The well-prepared tribespeople opened fire from the rimrock on all sides of the canyon. In the rout that followed, the Nez Perce killed a third of the white soldiers while suffering no losses themselves.

Peaceful exodus wins US sympathy

Thus began the Nez Perce’s historic flight toward permanent sanctuary in Canada. For three months Joseph led them on a zigzagging 1170-mile retreat across the Continental Divide, through Yellowstone National Park, and into the plains of Montana. As they went, they paid for all the supplies they obtained, harmed no noncombatants, and moved peaceably, except in brilliant defensive battles. Their conduct won sympathy across the nation. The people of Billings, Montana, welcomed them as heroes.

The final, crushing defeat came just 30 miles short of the Canadian border. In the surrender, as reported to the world by an alert young adjutant named C.E.S. Wood, Chief Joseph announced, “I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are dead. The old men are all dead. The little children are freezing to death. Hear me, my chiefs. I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.”

Even the army general who had pursued them was so moved by the tribe’s valor and integrity that he urged the government to return the Nez Perce to their homeland. Pleas for mercy poured in from around the world, but to no avail. The captives were sent to a prison camp in Leavenworth, Kansas, and later to a reservation in Oklahoma, where many died of malaria. Among the dead was one of the oldest Nez Perce, the 70-year-old son of explorer Captain William Clark.

After eight years in Oklahoma, the tribe’s survivors were allowed to return to the Northwest, but never to Oregon. Chief Joseph lived out his years on the Colville Reservation of Eastern Washington. Not once was he permitted to see his beloved Wallowa homeland. He died in 1904 of what the reservation doctor termed simply “a broken heart.”

A return to homeland

A hundred years passed before Chief Joseph’s descendants returned as landowners to the Wallowa country. In 1997 the federal government offered the tribe 10,000 acres as compensation for broken treaties. The tribe chose Joseph Canyon, a chasm in the northern part of Wallowa County that includes the cave where Chief Joseph was born.

Next, working with the tribe, the government opened the Nee-Me-Poo Trail, a route that traces the Wallowa band’s retreat across Hells Canyon toward Canada. Even today, that trail is so rugged that few attempt it.

An easier 1-mile trail has been built by the Oregon’s State Parks from the north end of Wallowa Lake, near Old Chief Joseph’s burial monument, to the band’s historic fishing site on the Wallowa River. A weir of woven willows once allowed them to catch a seemingly endless supply of salmon there. The trailhead on Highway 82 is just south of Joseph at a sign for the Iwetemlaykin State Heritage Site.

You can learn more about the tribe’s return to Oregon at the Wallowa Homeland visitor center in the town of Wallowa. You can even take a virtual tour of that museum at wallowanezperce.org.

But to appreciate the solitude and grandeur of the tribe’s mountain home, I think it helps to hike one of the quietest and most beautiful trails in the Wallowas, to a remote cabin in Catherine Creek’s alpine meadow.

Wallowa Homeland

Where: Wallowa in Wallowa County, the most northeast county in Oregon.

Directions: From Eugene, it’s about a seven-hour drive via Interstate 5 and I-84. To find the Wallowa Homeland from I-84, take La Grande Exit 261 and follow Wallowa Lake signs 47 miles on Highway 82 to the city of Wallowa. In the center of town turn left on Storie Street, and it’s a block to the visitor center at 209 E. Second St.

William Sullivan is the author of 22 books, including “The Ship in the Woods” and the updated “100 Hikes” series for Oregon. Learn more at oregonhiking.com.

This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: Hike to a secluded cabin in Nez Perce homeland in Oregon