Laurel to Canyon Creek Battlefield
The main body of Nez Perce was moving up Canyon Creek while their scouts watched from the top of the bluffs as they passed. The warriors who had been in the vicinity of what is now Billings, Montana, were returning to the main party as the military headed north from Laurel.
Just a little south of where Interstate 90 runs today, the stagecoach road, from the Tongue River (Miles City) and more eastern points, passed on its way to Helena, Montana. A stage station was located between the interstate and the river, west of Canyon Creek. In fact, a stagecoach had pulled in just moments before the Nez Perce raiders appeared.
“The stage had just arrived, when the lookout discovered a hostile war party dashing down the river, and everybody made a run for the thick willows with hostile bullets flying around them. There were half a dozen stage passengers, most of whom struck off afoot up the river, and eventually reached some settlement. One of the passengers was a dentist, and the hostiles scattered his gripsack full of store teeth and tools of torture all over the ground.”
– John W. Redington (U.S. Army scout)
About four miles north of Laurel, as you crest a ridge you see the flat of Canyon Creek. It may have been from this vantage point that the troops saw the Nez Perce moving up Canyon Creek with the stagecoach about half a mile behind.
“Although the hostile trail led down the Yellowstone, we saw Indian scouts watching us from the bluffs to the north, and soon they charged down. But our outfit sent them to charging backward, and when they had driven them over the bluffs we caught sight of what was on the other side, and there was the whole hostile outfit right under us, strung along the benches and bottoms of Canyon creek…. Half a mile in their rear was a big stage coach with its four horses trotting along, and on the box was an Indian driver, with nearly half a dozen other Indians squatting on the roof, with their war horses hitched behind. When these hostiles saw us they quickly unhitched the stage horses, mounted their cayuses, and dashed into skirmish line flanking their outfit, which had what looked like more than 2000 head of horses. The old stage was abandoned in the sagebrush.”
– John W. Redington (U.S. Army scout)
For the rest of that day, the Nez Perce warriors and military battled while the women, children and elders managed to get themselves and the herd of horses out of the canyon and headed north.
“Other soldiers horseback, like cavalry, were o to one side. Away ahead of the walking soldiers. They tried to get the women and children. But some warriors, not many, were too quick. Firing from a bluff, they killed and crippled a few of them, turning them back.”
- Hímiin maqsmáqs (Yellow Wolf)
“A Squad of Cavalry came up the gulch opposite where we were but did not stop long as the Indians opened a real hot re on them and they retreated down the gulch. We still tried to hold the ground, but the reds got so thick in the rocks above us that we could not raise our head to shoot without a dozen shots being red at us.”
– Stanton G. Fisher (civilian scout), September 13, 1877
The battle had resulted in three dead and 12 wounded soldiers. The next day Colonel Sturgis’s command hurried after the Nez Perce but failed to catch them and a couple of days later gave up the chase.
“Making our wounded as comfortable as possible and posting a strong guard, the idea of making night march in pursuit of our enemy having been abandoned....we rolled up in our blankets..., and we were soon sleeping soundly, but were awakened some time in the night by sharp challenges and loud talking near one of the outposts. Soon some two hundred young Crow warriors came dashing into camp, shouting and singing, and from that time on until early dawn sleep was an impossibility, as between the beating of their tom-toms, their shrill war whoops as they danced their war dances, pandemonium raged, but at the first peep of dawn they were off, vowing to overtake and annihilate the enemy.“
– Private Theodore W. Goldin
