Palouse People Talk | Jennie Norton Bunker, Survivor of the ‘Norton Massacre’ at the 1877 Battle of White Bird Canyon

Presented by Kathy Meyer
Jennie Norton Bunker, who—with her second husband Thomas Bunker—built a house in Pullman in 1892, is generally referred to as “a survivor of the Nez Perce War”—but she was really only involved in one incident—the Norton Massacre during the Battle of White Bird Canyon. In mid-June of 1877, she had been severely injured during a two-day confrontation with Nez Perce (Niimiipuu) warriors while attempting to evacuate from Cottonwood House (now Cottonwood, Idaho). Injured as a result, she was later interviewed repeatedly and she herself wrote extensively about her experience—until her death in 1928.