On a June morning in 1877, 109 soldiers and civilian volunteers attacked a small band of Nez Perce Indians camped in White Bird Canyon, in what is now central Idaho. This account of that event is considered one of the best about the beginning of the Nez Perce War. McDermott's account of the battle, from both Indian and white points of view, is considered by many experts one of the best books ever written on an event from the western Indian wars.