Lucas Abelar
Professor Paul Hunter
English 1301
8 October 2012
Several events in Chief Joseph’s term as chief of the Wallowa band show us he was more diplomat than warrior.The Voice of the West The first event happened in 1885 when, Isaac Stevens, governor of the Washington Territory, organized a council to designate separate areas for natives and settlers. Joseph the Elder (“Young Joseph’s” father) and the other Nez Perce chiefs signed a treaty with the United States establishing a Nez Perce reservation encompassing 7.7 million acres in present-day Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. The 1855 reservation maintained much of the traditional Nez Perce lands, including Josephs Wallowa Valley. The second event was an influx of new settlers caused by a gold rush led the government to call a second council in 1863.” Government commissioners asked the Nez Perce to accept a new, much smaller reservation of 780,000 acres (3,200 km2) situated around the village of Lapwai in Idaho, and excluding the Wallowa Valley.” In exchange, they were promised financial rewards and schools and a hospital for the reservation. One of the allied chiefs signed the treaty on behalf of the Nez Perce Nation, but Joseph the Elder and several other chiefs were opposed to selling their lands, and did not sign. Their refusal to sign caused a rift between the "non-treaty" and "treaty" bands of Nez Perce. The "treaty" Nez Perce moved within the new Idaho reservation's boundaries, while the "non-treaty" Nez Perce remained on their lands. Joseph the Elder demarcated Wallowa land with a series of poles, proclaiming, "Inside this boundary all our people were born. It circles the graves of our fathers, and we will never give up these graves to any man." The third event was when Joseph the Younger succeeded his father as leader of the Wallowa band in 1871. Before his death, the latter counseled his son: “My son, my body is returning to my mother earth, and my spirit is going very soon to see the Great Spirit Chief. When I am gone, think of your country. You are the chief of these people. They look to you to guide them. Always remember that your father never sold his country. You must stop your ears whenever you are asked to sign a treaty selling your home. A few years more and white men will be all around you. They have their eyes on this land. My son, never forget my dying words. This country holds your father's body. Never sell the bones of your father and your mother.” Joseph commented "I clasped my father's hand and promised to do as he asked. A man who would not defend his father's grave is worse than a wild beast." The non-treaty Nez Perce suffered many injustices at the hands of settlers and prospectors, but out of fear of reprisal from the American military, Joseph never allowed any violence against them, instead making many proposals to them in hopes of securing peace. The fourth event was in 1873 when Joseph negotiated with the federal government to ensure his people could stay on their land in the Wallowa Valley. But in 1877, the government reversed its policy, and Army General Oliver Howard threatened to attack if the Wallowa band did not relocate to the Idaho Reservation with the other Nez Perce. Joseph reluctantly agreed. Before the outbreak of hostilities, General Howard held a council to try to convince Joseph and his people to relocate. I read that when Joseph finished his address to the General, which focused on human equality, he stated that he didn’t believe “the Great Spirit Chief gave one kind of men the right to tell another kind of men what they must do." Howard reacted angrily, interpreting the statement as a challenge to his authority. The day following the council, Joseph, White Bird, and Looking Glass all accompanied General Howard to look at different areas. Howard offered them a plot of land that was inhabited by Whites and Native Americans, promising to clear them out. Joseph and his chieftains refused, adhering to their tribal tradition of not taking what did not belong to them. Unable to find any suitable uninhabited land on the reservation, Howard informed Joseph that his people had thirty days to collect their livestock and move to the reservation. Joseph pleaded for more time, but Howard told him that he would consider their presence in the Wallowa Valley beyond the thirty-day mark an act of war. Returning home, Joseph called a council among his people. At the council, he spoke on behalf of peace, preferring to abandon his father's grave over war. But many other band leaders advocated war. The Wallowa band began making preparations for the long journey, meeting first with other bands at Rocky Canyon. At this council too, many leaders urged war, while Joseph argued in favor of peace. While the council was underway, a young man whose father had been killed rode up and announced that he and several other young men had already killed four white settlers. Still hoping to avoid further bloodshed, Joseph and other non-treaty Nez Perce leaders began moving people away from Idaho. The fifth event was the beginning of the Nez Perce War. I had read, The Nez Perce War was the name given to the United States Army's pursuit of the over 800 Nez Perce and an allied band of the Palouse tribe who had fled toward freedom. Initially the Wallowa band had hoped to take refuge with the Crow nation in the Montana Territory, but when the Crow refused to help them, the Nez Perce went north in an attempt to reach asylum with Sioux Chief Sitting Bull and his followers who had fled to Canada. For over three months, the Nez Perce outmaneuvered and battled the American military traveling 1,170 miles across Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana. The sixth event was when Finally, after a devastating five-day battle during freezing weather conditions with no food or blankets, with the major war leaders dead, Joseph formally surrendered to General Nelson Appleton Miles on October 5, 1877 in the Bear Paw Mountains of the Montana Territory, less than 40 miles south of Canada in a place close to the present-day Chinook in Blaine County. The battle is remembered the famous quote by Joseph at the formal surrender: “Tell General Howard I know his heart. What he told me before, I have it in my heart. I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed; Looking Glass is dead, Too-hul-hul-sote is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led on the young men is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets; the little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are—perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.” I also read… Although Joseph was not technically a war chief and probably did not command the retreat, many of the chiefs who did had died. His speech brought attention - and therefore credit - his way. He earned the praise of General William Tecumseh Sherman and became known in the press as "The Red Napoleon". Joseph's fame did him little good. By the time Joseph surrendered, 150 of his followers had been killed. Their plight, however, did not end. Although he had negotiated a safe return home for his people, General William Sherman forced Joseph and four hundred followers to be taken on unheated rail cars to Fort Leavenworth in eastern Kansas to be held in a prisoner of war campsite for eight months. Toward the end of the following summer the surviving Nez Perce were taken by rail to a reservation in the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) for seven years. Many of them died of epidemic diseases while there.
The seventh and final event was in the 1880’s when Chief Joseph went to Washington, D.C. to meet with President Rutherford B. Hayes and plead the case of his people. In 1885, Chief Joseph and his followers were allowed to return to the Pacific Northwest. Some of the Nez Perce were allowed to settle on the Nez Perce reservation around Kooskia, Idaho, but Joseph and others were taken to the Colville Indian Reservation far from both the rest of their people in Idaho and their homeland in the Wallowa Valley. Joseph continued to lead his Wallowa band on the Colville Reservation, at times coming into conflict with the leaders of 11 other tribes living on the reservation. In his last years Joseph spoke eloquently against the injustice of United States policy toward his people and held out the hope that America's promise of freedom and equality might one day be fulfilled for Native Americans as well. The powerful voice of the west died in September 1904, still in exile from his homeland, according to his doctor "of a broken heart."