Using try_files with uwsgi - nginx

Question

I am trying to use the nginx try_files directive with uwsgi_pass and having a ton of difficulty.
Basically what I want is for try_files to ask the uWSGI container if the request URI is valid and if not, then serve up the index.html file instead. My nginx config is as follows:
server {
listen 80;
access_log /tmp/nginx.log;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html;
include uwsgi_params;
uwsgi_pass 127.0.0.1:5001;
}
}
But what this does is check the docroot for every request and if its not there, it simply bails and returns the index.html file.
What I want instead is the following:
Request comes in for www.myapp.com
nginx forwards this request onto the uWSGI container
If that is invalid, then return the index.html
Is there a way to 'ask' uWSGI to try the files instead?
What I'm ultimately trying to accomplish here is HTML5 Pushstate with React Router. I'm running a Flask app with a React front-end. If the user refreshes the browser at www.myapp.com/preferences/userid, then I want nginx to forward that to the container and if its invalid, to return the index.

Answer 1

So, after talking with #Chamindu, I realized I was probably going about this the wrong way. I prevented uWSGI from serving my index.html (even though it could) and instead relied on nginx to serve that instead.
server {
listen 80;
access_log /tmp/nginx.log;
location / {
root /var/www/myapplication/;
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html;
}
location /api {
include uwsgi_params;
uwsgi_pass 127.0.0.1:5001;
}
}