Department of Columbia map of the Nez Perce Indian campaign, Brig. Gen. O. O. Howard commanding (1877)
The Department of the Columbia’s map of the 1877 Nez Perce campaign, compiled by Lt. Robert H. Fletcher for Gen. O. O. Howard and printed with the Secretary of War’s report: the Lolo Trail — the Nimiipuu (Nez Perce) road to the buffalo country — from the Weippe and Kamiah country over the Bitterroots by the Lolo Hot Springs and down Lolo Creek to the Bitterroot valley and the Elk City trail. Only the Idaho–Montana part of the sheet is shown.
Source
| Map | Department of Columbia Map of the Nez Perce Indian Campaign |
|---|---|
| Author | Robert H. Fletcher (Department of the Columbia), 1877 |
| Archive | Wikimedia Commons |
| Rights | Public domain. An unpublished manuscript of the Army’s Department of the Columbia — a U.S. federal government work, so public domain in the United States. Evidence |
| Accuracy | About 37 km (RMS 11.1 km at 20 control points). Placed by hand in a map-queue session and approved by a person. If something sits in the wrong place, members can fix it with Fix placement on the map. |
| Method | Placed by hand: a smoothing thin-plate spline through 20 places read from the scan and matched to their positions today. See the methodology. |
| Version | 1.0.0, updated 2026-10-09 |
| Covers | Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming |
Downloads
- Google Earth overlay (KMZ) — free (0.5 MB)
- GeoTIFF, tinted trails, EPSG:4326 (8000 × 3055; QGIS, ArcGIS) — free (1.8 MB)
- Print sheet over today’s map (3600 × 2200 PNG) — free (1.4 MB)
Project Homeland
This map’s trails are traced into Project Homeland, one map of the trail network melded from every traced source, where they are compared with the other maps’ lines. Members can trace more of them: Trace a trail on the map.
Changelog
- 1.0.0 (2026-10-09): First release: placed by hand at 20 places. From the National Archives (NAID 102278583) via Wikimedia Commons; added for Project Homeland.
Credits
- From the National Archives (NAID 102278583) via Wikimedia Commons; added for Project Homeland
- Georeferencing: Native Routes
- Scan: Wikimedia Commons
Control points
The full list of control points with residuals is in control-points.geojson. Historic names indexed for search: names.geojson.
Something on this map sits in the wrong place? Members can show where with Fix placement on the map — confirmed fixes are tested against the map’s other control points each night and credited here. For anything else, report a problem.
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