A place of honor.

Byline: Karen McCowan The Register-Guard

Many people in downtown Eugene know Sid Austin only as the white-haired man stocking auto parts behind the counter at CarQuest.

Nothing in his quiet manner, his conservative grooming or his blue-collared work uniform suggests he is also obsessed with a very different quest.

For nearly four years, Austin, 71, has waged a prolific letter-writing campaign to get a portrait of Chief Joseph displayed in the Oregon State Capitol. He aims to donate the watercolor he purchased from Lorane painter Alix Mosieur so it can hang in "a place of honor" by Sept. 21, the 100th anniversary of the Nez Perce leader's death.

To free as much of his part-time income as possible for the project's computer, printing and mailing costs, Austin lives in his van, parked on a friend's property.

His correspondence campaign is remarkable not only because Austin has nary a drop of Indian blood, but also because the Oregon native dropped out of school after eighth grade because of a severe learning disability.

"I was pretty much a reading and writing failure," Austin says, recalling the shame and frustration of his student days, which ended at Glenwood Grade School after he'd attended more than a dozen schools as his father chased logging jobs all over Western Oregon.

Austin's illiteracy was so serious, he was rejected for U.S. Army service during the Korean War. He spent years stuck in low-wage jobs - making ice-cream cones, delivering auto parts, doing physical labor - until the summer of 1956, when he was hired in the latter capacity by the late Gaile and Olga Good. He lived with the couple, both educators, while working at their Veneta nursery, and they soon recognized his plight.

"They helped me turn around my reading and writing disability," Austin says, gratitude still evident in his voice decades later.

His newfound literacy opened the door to a high school equivalency diploma and better-paying jobs in retail merchandising and records archiving at Lane Community College.

Though Austin's formal education never went beyond a year of community college, he became a voracious, self-taught student of history. He also was determined to make the most of his belated mastery of the written word.

The two passions came together when - as a middle-aged, fourth-generation Oregonian - he saw the film "I Will Fight No More Forever." He was appalled by government treatment of the Nez Perce a century earlier, and moved by the heroism of Chief Joseph.

After the government reneged on President Ulysses Grant's 1873 declaration of the Wallowa Valley as a Nez Perce homeland, the reluctant warrior led his band on a 1,600-mile, four-month evasion of U.S. Calvary troops bent on confining them to a federally controlled Idaho reservation.

They were just 35 miles from the sanctuary of Canada when a Montana blizzard forced Joseph to surrender: "It is cold and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death ... my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now shines, I will fight no more forever."

The story's sadness "really touched my heart," Austin said. "And I started reading about the Nez Perce. But it all came alive for me in 1982, the first time I visited the Wallowas. Oh, man, I just can't tell you - it was like turning all the lights on. I just truly felt welcomed, and I felt the spirit of Joseph there."

A few years later, he saw Mosieur's watercolor at the Lane County Fair, where it had captured both a blue ribbon and a "people's choice" award. As a salesman at an antique store, Austin didn't have the income to purchase much original art. But he couldn't forget the painting, based on a famous Edward S. Curtis photo of the chief shortly before he died in exile from his homeland.

Austin had jotted down the artist's information and, nearly a year later, called her and found it was still available.

"I had to eat beans for quite a few weeks, but I coughed up the $200 to buy it," he says.

After retiring from full-time work in 1994, he attended his first Tamkaliks Celebration - an annual Nez Perce friendship feast and powwow near the town of Wallowa. He has returned every summer since to work as a volunteer, and accompanied the Nez Perce people on their 1997 homecoming to 10,500 acres of their ancestral land. Several tribal leaders who've come to know him over that decade now support his campaign to get the painting into the Capitol.

"We're in agreement with what he is doing," said Keith Soy Redthunder, a descendant of Chief Joseph who lives on the Colville reservation in Washington, where the chief is buried. "Sid knows a great injustice was done, and he's trying to bring that to light."

Some of the hundreds of recipients of his letters have been obvious choices for his quest. Gov. Ted Kulongoski, Oregon Historical Society President Norma Paulus and State School Superintendent Susan Castillo are among those receiving his missives, all ending in Austin's trademark, flourishing signature with its star-dotted "i's."

But he also has written anyone and everyone he thinks might throw their influence behind his cause - from National Public Radio "Morning Edition" anchor Bob Edwards to conservative Portland talk show host Lars Larson, from President George W. Bush to Pendleton Woolen Mills CEO Broughton Bishop to the director of the Harlem Boys Choir of Harlem, which passed through Oregon last year.

Such a scattershot approach smacks of naivete or obsession. Austin readily cops to the latter.

"My life evolves around this," he says, and the verb is not a malapropism. Copies of his letters fill several neatly indexed notebooks he carries in a cloth book bag. That record shows that his eloquence has indeed evolved, thanks to his persistence.

In a letter this fall, the man once so illiterate he was rejected for military service, wrote to Gov. Kulongoski:

"On July 26, 2003, I took photographs of you in the Chief Joseph Days Celebration in Joseph, Oregon. That afternoon, I met you at the Indian Friendship Feast. It was good to see you there and to meet you ...

"As you know sir, one of Oregon's most famous and beloved people is Chief Joseph - to quote the book `Totally Oregon,' `Two of the most famous Indian Leaders in America were Old Chief Joseph and Young Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce Indians. Old Chief Joseph made a treaty with the United States that granted the Nez Perce the Wallowa country forever.'

"As you know that did not happen.

"So, I am writing you sir, to ask you to honor all Indian people and Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce by receiving a beautiful portrait of Chief Joseph, the Noble Man. ... This portrait is to be received and placed in the Capitol of Oregon in a place of honor forever on Sept. 21, 2004, the 100th anniversary of Chief Joseph's passing."

Filed behind the letter in Austin's notebook is a reply from the governor's office: Kulongoski and his staff will discuss possible acceptance and placement of the portrait early this year when they plan the governor's fall schedule.

And if Austin is naive, that has only enhanced his credibility with Nez Perce leaders.

Redthunder and Elder Horace Axtell are supportive of his efforts in part because of his lack of sophisticated or financial motive.

"As far as I know, what Sidney's doing is coming from his heart," says Axtell, who has come to trust Austin through his regular attendance at tribal events. "He's a nice man, a gentle man, who would like to have Chief Joseph more known by the general public."

Axtell, who has traveled internationally, says people in other countries are generally more knowledgeable than most Northwesterners about Joseph's life.

"There are places where I say, `Nez Perce' and they say right away, `Chief Joseph!' ' the elder says. "It's kind of sad, the way he doesn't have the same notoriety here. It would be a good thing, really, to have all the people know that, because some of us still have feelings about what happened."

Karen McCowan can be reached at 338-2422 or [e-mail].

CAPTION(S):

Austin's quest began after he saw the film "I Will Fight No More Forever."