Chief Joseph

Background

Chief Joseph was born Hinmuuttu-yalatlat (alternatively Hinmaton-Yalaktit or Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt (Nez Perce: "Thunder Rolling Down the Mountain"), or Hinmatóoyalahtq'it ("Thunder traveling to higher areas") in the Wallowa Valley of north eastern Oregon. He was known as Young Joseph during his youth because his father, Tuekakas, was baptized with the same Christian name and later become known as "Old Joseph" or "Joseph the Elder".

While initially hospitable to the region's newcomers, Joseph the Elder grew wary when settlers wanted more Indian lands. Tensions grew as the settlers appropriated traditional Indian lands for farming and grazing livestock.

Isaac Stevens, governor of the Washington Territory, organized a council to designate separate areas for natives and settlers in 1855. Joseph the Elder and the other Nez Perce chiefs signed the Treaty of Walla Walla with the United States establishing a Nez Perce reservation encompassing 7.7 million acres (31,000 km²) in present-day Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. The 1855 reservation maintained much of the traditional Nez Perce lands, including Joseph's Wallowa Valley. It is recorded that Chief Joseph's father requested that Young Joseph protect their 7.7-million-acre homeland, and guard his father's burial place.

An influx of new settlers, attracted 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 760,000 acres (3,100 km²) situated around the village of Lapwai in Idaho, and excluding the Wallowa Valley. In exchange, they were promised financial rewards, schools, and a hospital for the reservation. Chief Lawyer and one of his 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 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."

Leadership of the Nez Perce

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 militarily superior Americans, Joseph never allowed any violence against them, instead making many concessions to them in hopes of securing peace.

In 1873, 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 at Fort Lapwai to try to convince Joseph and his people to relocate. Joseph finished his address to the general, which focused on human equality, by expressing his "[disbelief that] 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. When Toohoolhoolzote protested, he was jailed for five days.

The day following the council, Joseph, White Bird, and Looking Glass all accompanied Howard to look at different areas. Howard offered them a plot of land that was inhabited by whites and Native Americans, promising to clear out the current residents. 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 30 days to collect their livestock and move to the reservation. Joseph pleaded for more time, but Howard told him he would consider their presence in the Wallowa Valley beyond the 30-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. Toohoolhoolzote, insulted by his incarceration, 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.

Nez Perce War

The Nez Perce War was the name given to the U.S. Army's pursuit of about 750 Nez Perce and a small allied band of the Palouse tribe who had fled toward freedom. Initially they had hoped to take refuge with the Crow nation in the Montana Territory, but when the Crow refused to grant them aid, the Nez Perce went north in an attempt to reach asylum with the Lakota band led by Sitting Bull, who had fled to Canada in 1876. In “Hear Me, My Chiefs!: Nez Perce Legend and History”, Lucullus V. McWhorter argues that the Nez Perce were a peaceful people that were forced into war by the United States when their land was stolen from them. McWhorter interviewed and befriended Nez Perce warriors such as Yellow Wolf who stated, “Our hearts have always been in the valley of the Wallowa”.

Robert Forczyk states in his book “Nez Perce 1877: The Last Fight” that the tipping point of the war was that “Joseph responded that his clan’s traditions would not allow him to cede the Wallowa Valley”. The Nez Perce band led by Chief Joseph never signed the treaty moving them to the Idaho reservation. General Howard was dispatched to deal with Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce, he tended to believe the Nez Perce were right about the treaty, “the new treaty finally agreed upon excluded the Wallowa, and vast regions besides".

For over three months, the Nez Perce outmaneuvered and battled their pursuers, traveling 1,170 miles (1,880 km) across Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana. One of those battles was led by Captain Perry and two Cavalry companies of the U.S. Army, they engaged Chief Joseph and his people at White Bird Canyon, the Nez Perce repelled the attack, killing 34 soldiers, while leaving only 3 Nez Perce injured. The Nez Perce would continue to repel the Army’s advances, the Nez Perce reached the Clearwater River where they united with another Nez Perce Chief, Looking Glass and his group, now totaling 740 with only 200 of those warriors. The final battle occurred approximately 40 miles from Canada, the Nez Perce camped on Snake Creek near Bear Paw Mountain. Colonel Nelson Miles along with Cheyenne scouts intercepted the Nez Perce, after his initial attacks were repelled, Miles captured Chief Joseph after violating a truce, however he would be later forced to exchange Chief Joseph for one of his captured officers.

General Howard, leading the opposing cavalry, was impressed with the skill with which the Nez Perce fought, using advance and rear guards, skirmish lines, and field fortifications. 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 (60 km) south of Canada in a place close to the present-day Chinook, in Blaine County.

The battle is remembered in popular history by the words attributed to 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, to see how many 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.

The popular legend deflated, however, when the original pencil draft of the report was revealed to show the handwriting of the later poet and lawyer Lieutenant Charles Erskine Scott Wood, who claimed to have taken down the great chief's words on the spot. In the margin it read, "Here insert Joseph's reply to the demand for surrender" 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". However, as Francis Haines argues in “Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce Warriors”, the battlefield successes of the Nez Perce during the Nez Perce War of 1877 were due to the individual successes of the Nez Perce men and not that of the fabled military genius of Chief Joseph. Haines supports his argument by citing L.V. McWhorter who concluded “that Chief Joseph was not a military man at all, that on the battlefield he was without either skill or experience". Furthermore, Merle Wells argues in “The Nez Perce and Their War”, that the interpretation of the Nez Perce War of 1877 in military terms as used in the United States Army’s account distorts the actions of the Nez Perce. Wells supports his argument “The use of military concepts and terms is appropriate when explaining what the whites were doing, but these same military terms should be avoided when referring to Indian actions”; The United States use of military terms such as “retreat” and “surrender” has created a distorted perception of the Nez Perce War, to understand this may lend clarity to the political and military victories of the Nez Perce."

Aftermath

Joseph's fame did him little good. By the time he surrendered, 150 of his followers had been killed or wounded. Their plight, however, did not end. Although Joseph had negotiated a safe return home for his people, General Sherman forced him and 400 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.

In 1879, Chief Joseph went to Washington, D.C. to meet with President Rutherford B. Hayes and plead his people's case. Although Joseph was respected as a spokesman, opposition in Idaho prevented the U.S. government from granting his petition to return to the Pacific Northwest. Finally, in 1885, Chief Joseph and his followers were allowed to return to the Pacific Northwest to settle on the reservation around Kooskia, Idaho. Instead, Joseph and others were taken to the Colville Indian Reservation far from both their homeland in the Wallowa Valley and the rest of their people in Idaho.

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. Chief Moses of the Sinkiuse-Columbia, in particular, resented having to cede a portion of his people's lands to Joseph's people, who had "made war on the Great Father".

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. In 1897, he visited Washington again to plead his case. He rode in a parade honoring former President Ulysses Grant in New York City, with Buffalo Bill Cody, but he was a topic of conversation for his headdress more than his mission.

In 1903, Chief Joseph visited Seattle, a booming young town, where he stayed in the Lincoln Hotel as guest to Edmond Meany, a history professor at the University of Washington. It was there that he also befriended Edward Curtis, the photographer, who took one of his most memorable and well-known photographs. Joseph also visited President Theodore Roosevelt in Washington, D.C., that year. Everywhere he went, it was to make a plea for what remained of his people to be returned to their home in the Wallowa Valley. But it would never happen.

Death

An indomitable voice of conscience for the West, in September 1904, still in exile from his homeland, he died - according to his doctor - "of a broken heart". Meany and Curtis helped Joseph's family bury their chief near the village of Nespelem.

Joseph is buried in Nespelem, Washington, where many of his tribe's members still live.

Legacy

The Chief Joseph band of Nez Perce Indians who still live on the Colville Reservation bear his name in tribute to their prestigious leader. His legacy lives on in numerous other ways. Chief Joseph is depicted on previously issued $200 Series I Savings bonds.

Chief Joseph has been portrayed in multiple media. Notable dramatic works depicting Chief Joseph include:

Literary works include:

Why I got lost once, an' I came right on Chief Joseph's camp before I knowed it . . . 't was night, 'n' I was kind o' creepin' along cautious, an' the first thing I knew there was an Injun had me on each side, an' they jest marched me up to Jo's tent, to know what they should do with me ...

Well; 'n' they gave me all I could eat, 'n' a guide to show me my way, next day, 'n' I could n't make Jo nor any of 'em take one cent. I had a kind o' comforter o' red yarn, I wore rund my neck; an' at last I got Jo to take that, jest as a kind o' momento."

Memorials to Chief Joseph include:

Multiple man-made and geographic features have been named for Joseph, such as:

Oral history

War shirt

In July 2012, Chief Joseph's 1870s war shirt was sold to a private collection for the sum of $877,500.