The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896 (Oxford History of the United States)

by Richard White

With the Northern Pacific moribund after 1873, the park remained remote though not impossible for tourists to reach. When the Nez Perce fled across the new park, two very different but connected Americas collided. The Nez Perce, resisting forced incorporation into American society, ran into a party of tourists, whose members were vacationing to escape the pressures of an industrializing society. Some young warriors saw the Cowan Party as targets for revenge, and they tried to take it. Miraculously, in a harrowing escape, all survived what historian Elliott West has called “the worst vacation in American history.”