Fort Lapwai was a federal fort established in 1862 in north-central Idaho, in what is now the present-day city of Lapwai.

The Lapwai Valley has long been connected to the Nez Perce people, who have used the area for as long as anyone can remember. The name Lapwai comes from the Nez Perce word “Thlap-Thlap,” which refers to a butterfly and the sound that its wings make. The area became part of the Oregon Territory in 1848 and part of the Nez Perce Indian Reservation in 1855.

In 1860, Elias D. Pierce found gold on a tributary of the Clearwater River near the present town of Orofino. News of this discovery spread through the Pacific Northwest like wildfire, and by the spring of 1861, thousands of men descended on the Nez Perce reservation, trespassing on tribal lands.

Unable to stem the tide, civilian authorities called on the military to establish a fort on the reservation to protect the Nez Perce from the invading miners. In the fall of 1862, two companies of volunteers under Major Jacob S. Rinearson arrived at a site two miles above Lapwai Creek to establish an army post first called Camp Lapwai. It was renamed Fort Lapwai in 1863, in what would become the bounds of the Idaho Territory when it was created in March. That same year, the government and the Nez Perce began negotiating a new treaty that would shrink the reservation and place the gold fields outside its boundaries.

Many chiefs refused to agree to these terms during these negotiations and angrily departed. Amid uncertainty, pressure, and promises, the remaining chiefs reluctantly agreed to a reservation 90 percent smaller than the 1855 treaty. Without authority, they ceded Nez Perce land, and the Nez Perce left the council in a document called “the Thief Treaty.” Congress ratified the 1863 Treaty in 1867.

Meanwhile, the fort was briefly unoccupied in 1866 at the end of the Civil War, when the Volunteer regiments were disbanded and before sufficient Federal troops were available to garrison it. It was reoccupied again between July and November 1867. Most of the fort’s buildings were built during its early years, including barracks for enlisted personnel, officers’ quarters, stables, warehouses, offices, and corrals.

In the years after the 1863 treaty, many Nez Perce who had not agreed to it continued to live in the Wallowas and other locations within their traditional homelands. But conflict with newcomers increased, especially in the Wallowa region, home to Chief Joseph and his band. After settlers petitioned the government to relocate the Nez Perce to the reduced 1863 Treaty reservation in Idaho, the U.S. Army was commanded to do so in 1877, which led to the Nez Perce War. In June 1877, Fort Lapwai was the center of operations as many Nez Perce fled the area, hoping to seek safety with their Crow allies on the plains to the East. Their flight across four states over the next few months led to several battles and skirmishes. Afterward, the fort’s stockade held prisoners captured during the war, and other Nez Perce returned to the reservation after the hostilities had ended.

On June 5, 1884, the fort was decommissioned and turned over to the Indian Service. It then became a government Indian boarding school. The Northern Idaho Indian Agency moved to the site in 1904 from Spalding. Three years later, a tuberculosis sanatorium and preventorium were established at the fort site, and the boarding school closed in 1912. In 1945, the tuberculosis sanatorium closed, and soon a fire gutted the school’s original wing and destroyed all the records.

Today, only a few old fort structures remain, but they are not open to the public. The National Park Service protects an officer’s duplex built in 1883. It is located on the Nez Perce Indian Reservation in the village of Lapwai, which is the seat of government for the Nez Perce Indian Nation and home to the Bureau of Indian Affairs Northern Idaho Indian Agency.

 

©Kathy Alexander/Legends of America, updated September 2026.

Also See:

Native Americans – First Owners of America

Nez Perce – A Hard Fight For Their Homeland

Nez Perce Historic Trail

Nez Perce War

Sources:

City of Lapwai
National Park Service
Wikipedia