Image of Lamáta/White Bird canyon as it approaches the Salmon River. After Gen. Howard "showed the rifle" and several settlers had been killed. The Nez Perce and their allies sought refuge at Lamáta/White Bird canyon, the ancient Nez Perce stronghold "Lamáta." This meeting site centered on two underground wells where the tribes routinely settled. When McWhorter visited the canyon with 'iléxni 'éewteesin'/Many Wounds in August, 1932, he told him that these wells were at the site of an ancient Native American battlefield Penewes Pah, four miles from the Lamáta/White Bird battlefield which was at the spring Ewettamnetas. Inscription on verso of photograph reads "Looking down into the White bird Canyon where on June 17th, 1877 occurred the Battle of White Bird. At the entrance left center Colonel Perry and 90 troopers and eleven volunteers came upon the Nez Perce and suffered one of the most crushing defeats an army had ever suffered. Leaving 35 men upon the field, men to whom life was sweet, men who being soldiers were forced to do what they were told regardless of right or wrong. The wrongs of the country against the Nez Perces only makes the book more complete. Looking down into the White Bird Canyon toward White Bird village, the village where Colonel Perry and Chief Joseph's Nez Perce meet with a total route of Perry and his men."
