Otis Gold hoping for vast cyanide-based Kilgore Project near Nez Perce battle site

Interpretive site near Kilgore recalls the Camas Meadows fight.

In August 1877, a year after Americans celebrated a century of independence, Nez Perce Indian men, women and children were in a fighting -- but ultimately unsuccessful -- flight from military forces sent to corral them. The attack on their camp at Big Hole, Montana, ended in defeat for government forces; but victory came at a terrible cost in warrior casualties.

Yet days later they did it again. They defeated U.S. forces at Kamiskin Takin (Camas Meadows) in Idaho, near today's hamlet of Kilgore, just south of the Montana state line in Clark County. (Sculptures stand at an interpretive site.) The Army bugler killed in the fight is buried here -- just down the road from a foreign company's proposed cyanide-based open-pit gold mine.