With few places to descend the Yellowstone Plateau, Gen. William T. Sherman laid a trap for the Nez Percé as they emerged from the mountains. With Gen. Howard following from the west, troops were to be placed at Mammoth Hot Springs on the north, the Clarks Fork on the northeast, the Shoshone River on the east and the Wind River on the south. As the Nez Percé approached Dead Indian Pass, they observed troops, commanded by Col. Samuel D. Sturgis, positioned near Heart Mountain. In view of the Army, they feinted a move to the south towards the Shoshone River. Sturgis took the bait and moved his troops south, while the Nez Percé, screened by timber and topography, headed north. Many scholars have inferred that the Nez Percé moved down Dead Indian Gulch and through the nearly impenetrable Clarks Fork canyon. More recent research indicates that the Nez Percé moved down Paint Creek to the river below the mouth of the canyon.

Though only used once, the Nez Percé Trail was designated a National Historic Trail in 1986. Wyoming Hwy 296, which follows some of the route out of Yellowstone, was designated the Chief Joseph Scenic Byway in 2000. Since 2008, the National Park Service, in cooperation with the Nez Percé tribe and the Office of the Wyoming State Archaeologist, has been researching historical and archaeological sites associated with the 1877 campaign within Yellowstone to resolve enduring questions about the route and experience of the Nez Percé on this part of their odyssey.

The route of what is now designated as U.S. 212, or the Beartooth Scenic Highway, followed much the same route taken by Sheridan’s 1882 expedition – from Cooke City to Colter Pass, along the Upper Clarks Fork, over Beartooth Pass and across the Plateau at the “Top of the World.” Construction was completed in segments and by several different contractors between 1931 and 1936 and included major rock cutting, grading, innumerable switchbacks, and 13 bridges. Landscape architects helped design bridge abutments and guardrails to “harmonize” with the setting. Quickly dubbed the “World’s Most Scenic” roadway, the Beartooth Highway received national attention. Most segments have been upgraded since 1936, and the highway is open only during the summer months. For its lasting contributions to the history of the region and its engineering, the Beartooth Highway was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2014.

Native tribes were removed from their traditional homelands onto reservations throughout the 1870s and thus forced to relinquish claims to the Yellowstone region. With the creation of Yellowstone National Park in 1872 as a natural area to be preserved for the public, American Indians were effectively banned from the park. However, many indians often left the reservations to hunt in their traditional areas. Anxious to quell the fears of tourists, especially after the 1877 Nez Percé and 1878 Bannock wars, Park officials asserted that American Indians did not use the area because they feared the geysers and mud pots as places of evil. In 1879, the Sheepeaters were removed from the park, and in 1880 all hunting was banned. Thus, Indians could be arrested for poaching in their traditional hunting territories. Rumors of Bannocks on the loose in the park persisted into the 1890s. Many traditional ties were broken and are only now being restored to tell a far more rich and complex picture of human and natural history.

The elevated Yellowstone Plateau, severe winters, and rugged glacial topography have also influenced archaeologists’ perceptions of how ancient peoples used this area. Traditionally archaeologists assumed that the region was used mainly in the summer by people heading to the mountains from the plains and that modern tribes only moved into the area within the last few hundred years. Sites such as Mummy Cave, with a continuous record of occupation for 10,000 years, and Dead Indian Creek, with evidence of deer hunting, ceremonialism and at least one residential structure over 4,000 years old, provided hints of something more complex. More recent research, much of which has been sponsored by the Wyoming Department of Transportation, indicates that highly sophisticated hunters of medium game animals, such as deer, pronghorn and in particular mountain sheep, moved into the high elevations soon after de-glaciation. Sinuous drive lines of deadfall timber follow high ridges and lead into cleverly disguised catch pens where sheep were trapped and captured, sometimes using juniper bark nets. Once subdued and killed, the animals were completely used for food.

Village sites near treeline, with evidence of intensive white bark pine nut gathering and processing, have also been discovered. Evidence from several other sites also suggests that ancient American Indians may well have lived in the mountains on a year-round basis. Winter camps have been found in Sunlight Basin and along the North Fork of the Shoshone River; spring usage for both intensive pronghorn hunting and root gathering has been found in the Pinedale area. Most of the stone tools and waste flakes are made from “local” sources, including obsidians and various cherts and quartzites found in the Absaroka volcanics. Notably absent are stone tools made from sources in the nearby Bighorn Mountains and on the plains. All of this points to the presence of a year-round, resident native population in the mountainous Yellowstone region beginning at least 10,000 years ago and continuing into modern times, forming an increasingly complex picture of the region’s ancient peoples.