Protector of the Nez Perce: chief Joseph of the Nez Perce tribe excelled as a military strategist, courageously fought as a warrior, and valiantly protected those entrusted to his care. (History-Struggle for Freedom).

They called themselves the "Nimipu" -- a name, like so many others taken by American Indian tribes, meaning simply "We People." Their territory extended across much of what would become northern Idaho and western Montana, but their home was the Wallowa Valley in what is now the northeastern corner of Oregon. In 1805, Twisted Hair, a Nimipu band chief, encountered explorers William Lewis and Merriwether Clark in the Weippe prairie of what is now northern Idaho. This amicable first contact enticed other Europeans into the region, including the French Canadian trappers who gave the Nimipu nation the name by which they are known: "Nez Perce."

The Nez Perce, like other Indian nations of the Northwest, were organized into "bands" led by chiefs and "tewhats," or medicine men. The nation itself was a loose confederation that did not recognize a single chief. Each band conducted its affairs on the basis of common consent. The group collectively made decisions concerning migration, hunting, and even warfare, and those who disagreed were not compelled to participate.

During their 1832 expedition to the mouth of the Columbia River, Captain B .L. E. Bonneville and his entourage camped in Wallowa Valley as a guest of Chief Tu-ekakas. Captain Bonneville wrote that the Nez Perce were "among the gentlest and least barbarous people of these remote wildernesses" -- and among the most religious.

In 1831, the Nez Perce had sent a delegation to Missouri to seek out Clark. They wanted to learn more about a gift his expedition had left with them -- a copy of the Bible, reverently called "The Book" by the Nez Perce. Four years later, Christian missionaries Marcus Whitman and Marcus Harmon Spalding, along with their wives, arrived in Nez Perce country. "Spalding recognized that the Christian purpose would be achieved best if settled community life could be developed," wrote historian Merrill D. Beal. "He also realized that white expansion would raise havoc with the old. bison-hunting and salmon-fishing economy. If the Nez Perces were to become Christian farmers their chance of survival was good." Spalding divided his time between his duties as pastor and foreman, while his wife Elisa instructed the Nez Perce children -- and any willing adults -- in reading and writing. Within n few years, records Beal, "the Nez Perce Christians became the most advanced Indians in the arts of civilized life...."

Chief Tu-eka-kas was one of the first to embrace the Christian "spirit law" in 1839 by being baptized and marrying his wife in the Presbyterian Church. "Tu-eka-kas appears to have been devoutly religious, and used his influence among his people to spread the teaching of Christianity," writes historian Helen Addison Howard. Upon his baptism, the chief took the Christian name Joseph, which he also conferred on his oldest son.

For a few years, Young Joseph went to school at the Christian mission in Lapwai (near the present town of Lewiston, Idaho). But most of his education came from his father, "Old Joseph," who taught him "how to hunt the creatures of the forest and to fish the streams for salmon, and how to ride a pony without saddle or bridle," recounts Howard. "He learned to fashion spears and knives, arrows and quivers, and other weapons of war."

His father's cherished copy of the New Testament provided Young Joseph with his most important lessons, which resonated with the moral law written on the hearts of his ancestors (Romans 2:14-15) and passed down to him.

"Our fathers gave us many laws, which they had learned from their fathers," Young Joseph would recall as an adult. "These laws were good. They told us to treat all men as they treated us; that we should never be the first to break n bargain; that it was a disgrace to tell a lie; that we should speak only the truth.... We were taught to believe that the Great Spirit sees and hears everything, and that he never forgets; that hereafter he will give every man a spirit-home according to his deserts...."

Around the age of nine, Young Joseph -- in keeping with Nez Perce tradition -- undertook n sacred vigil to "earn his name by divine revelation," recalls Howard. Unarmed and stripped of his clothes, Joseph left his village early one morning and ascended n nearby mountain, where he would fast and pray. Although he strove to remain awake, sleep eventually claimed him, and he dreamed "his big medicine dream." Returning several days later, Young Joseph informed his parents that the Great Spirit had named him Hin-mut-too-yah-lat-kekht - "Thunder Rolling In The Mountains." "That was an auspicious name," observes Howard, "for t offered the protection of Nature, so necessary for one who would become a chieftain."

Grand Designs

Even as Young Joseph was carrying out his prayer vigil in keeping with his people's traditions, distant diplomatic developments were taking place that would change the Nez Perce forever. The U.S. and Great Britain, through an 1818 treaty, jointly occupied the vast "Oregon Country," comprising the future states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. Mutual dissatisfaction with this arrangement brought the two countries to the brink of war during the 1840s, but an 1846 treaty averted hostilities by establishing the 49th parallel as the international boundary. Before that agreement, the British Crown had claimed the Nez Perce nation as subjects. In 1848, the Territory of Oregon was created, and Old Joseph's band suddenly fell under the jurisdiction of Washington, D.C.

By this time a steady stream of American migrants had flowed into the Pacific Northwest, drawn by the mining and logging industries. Through its "Donation Acts," Congress authorized American settlers to occupy any tract of land they desired -- irrespective of Indian claims. A collision between the expanding United States and the long-established Nez Perce was inevitable, and in 1855 federal and territorial officials convened a treaty council at Mill Creek, a tributary of the Walla Walla River.

First to arrive at the meeting were 2,500 Nez Perce, who brought along a copy of the New Testament and posted the U.S. flag in the middle of their campground. Oregon Governor Isaac Stevens outlined a proposed treaty establishing three large reservations. The Nez Perce were promised three million acres encompassing land on the north side of the Snake River, the Clearwater and Salmon river valleys on the east side of the Snake, and the lower Grande Ronde, Wallowa, and Imnaha valleys on the river's west side.

The final treaty created a Nez Perce reservation including "the present counties of Asotin in Washington, Wallowa in Oregon, and Lewis, Nez Perce, and the western half of Idaho County in Idaho," recalls Addison Howard. "The language of the treaty was clear enough to prevent any doubt as to its meaning.... As a result of the treaty signed by the Nez Perces, their disintegration as an independent people began, for the chiefs by being signatories first agreed to sacrifice their aboriginal way of life." Old Joseph, despite some misgivings, signed the treaty, with one critical provision: He refused to accept any of the gifts or monetary payments from the federal government, understanding that by doing so his people would be made dependent on Washington and vulnerable to further claims on their homeland.

Altering the Bargain

In 1860, gold was discovered on the Nez Perce reservation. Even though President James Buchanan in 1859 had granted the Nez Perce clear and indisputable title, in perpetuity, to their lands, federal authorities did nothing to stem the tide of squatters invading the reservation. "I could fill page after page in portraying the number and nature of the outrages the Indians and their families were subjected to," wrote an Indian Agent in a report to the Secretary of the Interior in 1862. In the same year the Oregon Statesman offered a telling commentary written by local resident William Purvine:

If open hostilities have not commenced with the Nez Perces, it is not because they have not been outraged to that degree when "forebearance ceases to be a virtue." In return for the continued friendship in time of want, and generous acts of hospitality always so readily extended towards the whites by these Indians, they now reap an abundant harvest of every species of villainy and insult.

Rather than enforcing the newly ratified treaty, Washington decided to alter the bargain by calling a second tribal conference in June 1863. Under the revised treaty, the Nez Perce reservation would be reduced to one-sixth its original size. Among the territories to be ceded by the Nez Perce was their beloved Wallowa Valley. "The new boundaries relegated the Nez Perces to a small and less productive part of their country, while confirming the settlers' right to occupy the bottom lands on the Wallowa River," wrote historian Beal. Under the treaty, the Indians would receive $260,000, in addition to the annuities that had been promised (but not delivered) under the 1855 treaty.

A Nez Perce chief named Lawyer, supposedly acting on behalf of the entire nation, signed the treaty on June 9th. Two days earlier Old Joseph and more than 50 other chiefs had met to debate the question of accepting or rejecting the treaty. When they failed to reach an agreement, Old Joseph and several other leaders, acting in accordance with their nation's custom, elected to leave the Nez Perce confederacy rather than support the new treaty. "Although sensing that separatism would render each band helpless before its enemies, Old Joseph tore a copy of the treaty to shreds, destroyed his long-treasured New Testament, and departed for the Wallowa," writes Beal.

The depth of Old Joseph's disaffection can be sounded in warnings he gave to his namesake son. "When you go into council with the white man, always remember your country," the older chief admonished, according to Young Joseph's account. "Do not give it away.... I have taken no pay from the United States. I have never sold our land." Unlike other bands that willingly received the annuities binding them to Washington, Old Joseph's band "pursued their semi-nomadic habits and preserved their 'rugged individualism' in the best of American traditions," recounts Addison Howard.

By this time, Young Joseph had grown to manhood. Unusually large for an Indian -- six foot two, 200 pounds -- his face radiated intelligence and character. By the mid-1860s Joseph had acquired the first of his four wives (the Nez Perce were polygamous) and the first of his nine children. As his aging father's vitality faded, Young Joseph began to assume the leadership role for which he had been prepared. In 1871, as his father lay sightless and dying in his lodge, Young Joseph received a sobering commission to protect his band's Wallowa Valley homeland:

I saw he was dying. He said: "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 for you to guide them. Always remember that your father never sold his country.... My son, never forget my dying words. This country holds your father's body. Never sell the bones of your father and your mother."

The Noose Tightens

Two years after his father's death, Washington summoned Young Joseph to the Lapwai Reservation. He was offered various enticements to agree to relocate his band there, but Joseph refused: "I did not want to come to this council, but I came hoping that we could save blood. The white man has no right to come here and take our country. We have never accepted any presents from the Government.... Our fathers were born here. Here they lived, here they died, here are their graves. We will never leave them."

John Montieth, the federal Indian Agent for the Nez Perce, was grudgingly impressed by Joseph's arguments and his band's comportment. On Montieth's recommendation, President Ulysses S. Grant issued an executive order allowing Joseph's band to remain in the Wallowa Valley, but depriving them of most of the promised territory. However, Oregon Governor L.F. Grover, acting on behalf of industrial interests already developing the Wallowa Valley, protested Grant's action. In 1875, President Grant repealed his earlier decree, and the federal government once again prepared to evict Joseph's band from land they had repeatedly been promised "forever."

The task of dealing with Nez Perce resistance was assigned to General Oliver O. Howard, a key Union battlefield commander at Antietam and Gettysburg. Gen. Howard did not relish the prospect of waging war on Nez Perce bands that had seceded from an artificial, federally created "union." He also recognized the fundamental injustice that was being done to the Nez Perce.

"I think it is a great mistake to take from Joseph and his band of Nez Perce Indians that valley," wrote Howard in his 1875 report to Congress. "The white people really do not want it.... Possibly Congress can be induced to let these really peaceable Indians have this poor valley for their own." In a report submitted to General Howard in 1876, Major Henry Clay Wood stated this case even more emphatically: "The nontreaty Nez Perces cannot in law be regarded as bound by the treaty of 1863.... The extinguishment of their title of occupancy contemplated by this treaty is imperfect and incomplete."

Despite these objections, a federal commission ruled in late 1876 that Old Joseph's acceptance of the treaty of 1855 "implied the surrender of any particular portion of the whole reserve which included the Wallowa Valley...." By agreeing to renounce sovereignty over any part of their country, the Nez Perce now lost sovereignty over all of it, and were required "to surrender a million acres of land for allotments upon vacant lands in the Lapwai reservations," records Beal. In dealing with federal officials making these demands, "The chiefs were courteous, dignified, and good-natured, but unyielding."

But the man ultimately charged with removing the Nez Perce was even more unyielding. Of refractory Southerners, General William Tecumseh Sherman once said: "To the petulant and persistent secessionists, why death is mercy." Presiding over the "Indian Removal" campaigns of the 1860s, in which the U.S. Army drove the Plains Indians out of the way of federally subsidized railroads, Sherman reportedly declared: "The only good Indians I ever saw were dead." In an 1866 letter to President Grant, Sherman wrote: "We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men women and children." "During an assault [on an Indian village]," Sherman wrote in instructions to his army, "the soldiers can not pause to distinguish between male and female, or even discriminate as to age. As long as resistance is made, death must be meted out."

Such are the recorded utterances and sentiments of the commander who, in January 1877. ordered General Howard to remove the Nez Perce from their homelands.

The Nez Perce War 

General Howard called a council at Lapwai in May 1877 to present Washington's demands to Chief Joseph. His orders from the War Department declared: "You are to occupy Wallowa Valley in the interest of peace." Joseph understood that the genuine purpose of Howard's "peacekeeping" force was to expel the Nez Perce from their country and imprison them in a tiny reservation. "I do not believe that the Great Spirit Chief gave one kind of men the right to tell another kind of men what they must do," protested Joseph.

Tuhulhutsut, a Nez Perce medicine man accompanying Joseph to the parley, seconded Joseph's point: "What person pretended to divide the land, and put me on it?" General Howard angrily replied: "I am the man. I stand here for the President, and there is no spirit, good or bad, that will hinder me. My orders are plain, and will be executed. I hoped the Indians had good sense enough to make me their friend, and not their enemy." Howard laid down an ultimatum: The Nez Perce had 30 days to gather their livestock, and leave their land.

Joseph was placed in an impossible position: He doubtless wanted to fulfill the solemn pledge he had made to his dying father, but he knew that his beleaguered band couldn't hold off the mightiest army on the continent. He reluctantly agreed to move his band to Lapwai, and prevailed on his fellow chiefs to do so as well. But as the Nez Perce began to evacuate, several younger warriors -- frustrated and under the influence of some of the more militant medicine men -- hunted down and killed four white men, allegedly to avenge the unpunished murders of Nez Perce. Predictably, these killings provoked the Army, accompanied by a group of civilian volunteers, to raid Joseph's band at White Bird Creek, where they had assembled to gather their livestock.

"While the Nez Perce were encamped at White Bird Creek, friendly Indians apparently convinced them that if they surrendered those responsible [for murdering white settlers], the rest would eventually be allowed to go free," recounts journalist Alan Bock. "But when a Nez Perce group under a white flag approached an army group to begin discussing the possibility, civilians with the army opened fire on them. After the battle that followed, 34 whites, mostly settlers, were dead, and four wounded."

Convinced that the government couldn't be trusted, Chief Joseph organized an eastward retreat. The Nez Perce's 1,500 mile strategic retreat was an almost unparalleled accomplishment. Chief Joseph led his entire band of 700 people -- mostly noncombatants -- while conducting a military campaign. Eyewitness accounts of whites taken prisoner during the Nez Perce war describe the solicitude displayed by Joseph as he tended to the needs of the women and children entrusted to his care. Although Joseph is properly honored for his prowess as a military strategist and his courage as a warrior (like Washington he had several horses shot from under him), it was in his role as "Protector" of his band that his greatness was most forcefully displayed.

Joseph's generalship earned the unabashed respect of his foes. "The leadership of Chief Joseph was remarkable," reflected General Howard after the war's end. "No general could have planned [his battles] more skillfully." Howard paid tribute to Joseph's skill in a message to the War Department in 1877 by noting that the campaign against the Nez Perce "has been a severer tax upon the energies of officers and men than any period of the same length of our late Civil War...." Describing an engagement with the Nez Perce in Camas Meadows, Sergeant H.J. Davis of the Second Cavalry wrote: "Chief Joseph had engineered as neat a double flank movement as could be imagined, and we were exposed to a raking fire coming from right and left."

The Nez Perce staged a hit-and-run raid against a scouting party at Cottonwood Creek on July 3rd, and fought a pitched battle at Clearwater, an engagement that claimed the lives of 15 soldiers and four Indians. Following that battle Joseph led his people on an arduous trek over the formidable Bitterroot Mountains, after which they camped at Big Hole near the present Idaho-Montana border.

Pursuing the retreating Nez Perce was a force of 700 soldiers commanded by General Howard. However, a second force led by Colonel John Gibbon -- who had received instructions via telegraph from Gen. Howard -- had flanked the Nez Perce. Gibbon's force of 146 soldiers attacked while the Indians were asleep, slaughtering many noncombatants before the warriors had time to mobilize. "Few of us will soon forget the wail of mingled grief, rage, and horror which came from the [Indian] camp ... when the Indians returned to it and recognized their slaughtered warriors, women, and children," Col. Gibbon later Wrote.

The Nez Perce resumed their eastward retreat, crossing the Wyoming border into Yellowstone Park. By August, accounts of the Nez Perce War had begun to circulate in eastern newspapers, and Chief Joseph was becoming a legend -- as much for his perceived military genius as for his humane treatment of noncombatants and captured enemy soldiers. "Joseph, in accordance with his code of civilized warfare, did not countenance unnecessary killings, nor the murder of noncombatants," notes Addison Howard. "Above all he would not tolerate the violation of white women prisoners by his reckiess young men."

By September, after traveling 1,500 miles, Joseph's band was near Montana's Bear Paw Mountains, 40 miles from the Canadian border. Knowing that General Howard's army was well behind them, Joseph allowed his people time to treat their wounded and hunt buffalo. He wasn't aware that General Howard had sent orders via telegraph to Colonel Nelson Miles, who had conducted a 200-mile forced march to overtake the fleeing Nez Perce. Miles' army staged a surprise attack on September 30th. After a five-day-long battle, Joseph finally surrendered.

Accompanied by several warriors, Joseph rode Out on October 5th to surrender to General Howard, who had joined Colonel Miles. As he handed over his rifle, Joseph uttered the sadly eloquent words for which he is best remembered:

I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed ... the old men are all killed.... The little children are 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.

The campaign to drive the Nez Perce off the land they had been promised cost the lives of nearly 300 people on both sides and nearly $1,000,000. "Judged by any military standard," comments Addison Howard, "the fighting Nez Perces had accomplished a military exploit of the first magnitude." This reflects the insightful leadership of Chief Joseph, as well as his war chiefs, Looking Glass and Poker Joe. But that leadership was not coupled with a workable plan for victory. Addison Howard points out that "the Indians had no overall plan of campaign and they fought a defensive war." As Napoleon observed, "the purely defensive is foredoomed to defeat."

Voice for His People

"The Nez Perces are the boldest men and best marksmen of any Indians I have ever encountered," wrote Colonel Miles in his 1877 report to the Secretary of War. "Chief Joseph is a man of more sagacity and intelligence than any Indian I have ever met; he counseled against the war, and against the usual cruelties practiced by Indians...." Miles had promised Joseph that the Nez Perce, having acquitted themselves with honor and distinction in battle, would be put back on the reservation, possibly in Lapwai. General Howard concurred. But General Sherman summarily vetoed their recommendation: "They should never again be allowed to return to Oregon or to Lapwai."

Despite the decades of betrayal, war, and hardship suffered by his people, Chief Joseph never lost his idealistic hope that justice would ultimately be done. "I know that my race must change," commented Joseph in an 1879 interview published in the North American Review. "We cannot hold our own with the white men as we are. We only ask an even chance to live as other men live. We ask to be recognized as men."

"Let me be a free man -- free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to think and talk and act for myself -- and I will obey every law, or submit to the penalty," declared Chief Joseph. "Whenever the White man treats the Indian as they treat each other, then we shall have no more wars. We shall be all alike -- brothers of one Father and one mother, with one sky above us and one country around us, and one government for all.... For this time the Indian race is waiting and praying. I hope that no more groans of wounded men and women will ever go to the ear of the Great Spirit Chief above...."

Chief Joseph published this impassioned plea to the U.S. Government in April 1879. Less than two months later he had his reply: The Nez Perce were removed to the Ponca Reservation, a blighted 92,000-acre tract unsuitable for anything other than subsistence farming. The numbers of Joseph's longsuffering band dwindled even further as malnutrition, exposure, and disease took their toll. "Certainly the criminals in our penitentiaries were given far more human treatment," observed Addison Howard.

Of the many tragedies that punctuated the encounter between the U.S. government and the Nez Perce, certainly the greatest was symbolized by Old Joseph's destruction of his copy of the New Testament. From the time of their first encounter with Lewis and Clark, the Nez Perce had hungered to learn the "Spirit Law" of the Gospel. The duplicity and corruption of the government's dealings caused many Nez Perce to lose that appetite. But during their exile in the Ponca Reservation, Young Joseph's dwindling band eagerly welcomed pastor James Reuben, a Christian Nez Perce from Lapwai.

"They keep the Sabbath Day holy, abstaining from all kinds of work, and the service ... is attended by every member of the tribe, whether a communicant or not," wrote their Indian Agent in his 1881 report to Washington. "Poor as they are, they have contributed $45 with which to buy the lumber, etc. necessary to build a house for their pastor...."

In 1885, a tiny remnant of the Nez Perce nation was allowed to return to the American Northwest. Two hundred and sixty-eight souls were all that remained of the five bands. One hundred and eighteen were sent under military escort to the Lapwai Reservation in North Idaho--but Joseph was not among them. Owing to lingering hostility against Joseph in that region, he and 150 others were sent to the Coleville Reservation in Nespelem, Washington.

In his remaining years, Joseph made several trips to the eastern United States, where he was greeted as a living legend. As an honored guest at the 1904 graduation exercises for Carlisle, Pennsylvania's Indian Industrial School, Joseph found himself seated at a banquet table next to none other than General O.O. Howard. "I meet here my friend, General Howard" Joseph told the gathering through an interpreter. "When my friend, General Howard, and I fought together I had no idea that we would ever sit down to a meal together ... but we have, and I am glad."

Joseph never abandoned hope that his people would ultimately be restored to their rightful homeland, the Wallowa Valley. In the summer of 1900, he was allowed to visit the valley in the company of Indian Inspector James McLaughlin, who was investigating the possibility of allowing the Nez Perce to reclaim a small fragment of the land that had, decades earlier, been promised to them in perpetuity.

With McLaughlin at his side, Joseph sought out his father's gravesite, which a white friend of the family had enclosed within a protective fence. At that moment, Joseph almost certainly remembered the promise he had made never to sell the land in which his father's remains had been interred. The dignified stoicism Joseph had displayed throughout his tragic and eventful life deserted him, and he wept. Joseph returned to Nespelem, where he lived out the residue of his days. On September 21, 1904, while sitting in front of his campfire, Joseph--between 60 and 64 years of age--pitched forward on his face. According to an Indian Agency physician, the aged but relatively healthy chief "died of a broken heart."

In a 1925 interview with Montana's Sunday Missoulian, Martin L. Brown, an army sergeant when he met Joseph during his exile in Kansas, offered an elegantly brief eulogy for the Protector of the Nez Perce: "Joseph was an honest man and really believed the government unjustly took his land from him. As for the war, he thought he was doing right by fighting for his ancestral lands and finally for his liberty."