The Nez Perces ― The History of Their Troubles and the Campaign of 1877

This history of the Nez Perce War was written in 1878 and 1879 by a part-Nez Perce relative of Chief Looking Glass. Duncan McDonald, 1849-1937, was the son of Hudson’s Bay Company fur trader and a Nez Perce Indian woman. McDonald spent most of his life on the Flathead Indian Reservation in western Montana.

He wrote the history based on interviews and family sources. In 1878 McDonald traveled to Canada to interview Nez Perce Chief White Bird and learn White Bird’s side of the story. Remarkably the history was published in a Deer Lodge, Montana, newspaper only a year or two after the war ended.

Duncan McDonald’s Nez Perce War history is published with a historical introduction and selection of other essays on Indian affairs written by McDonald. He objected to the United States government’s unjust treatment of northwest Indian tribes and condemned the threats of some Montana whites to attack Indians who were friendly to the settlers.

?Duncan McDonald (1849–1937) was a fur trader, entrepreneur, historian, and tribal leader on the Flathead Indian Reservation. For many years in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, he played an important role as a cultural broker between the Indian and the white communities in western Montana. Robert Bigart is librarian emeritus at Salish Kootenai College in Pablo, Montana. Joseph McDonald is president emeritus of Salish Kootenai College and the grandnephew of the author.