"Chief Joseph"
Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt
(1840-1904)
The man
who became a national celebrity with the name "Chief Joseph" was born
in the Wallowa
Valley in what is now northeastern Oregon in 1840. He was given the name
Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt, or “Thunder Rolling Down the Mountain”, but was
widely known as Joseph, or Joseph the Younger, because is father had taken the
Christian name Joseph when he was baptized at the Lapwai mission by Henry
Spalding in 1838.
Joseph
the Elder was one of the first Nez Percé converts to Christianity and an active
supporter of the tribe's longstanding peace with whites. In 1855 he even helped Washington's
territorial governor set up a Nez Percé reservation that stretched from Oregon into Idaho.
But in 1863, following a gold rush into
Nez Percé territory, the federal government took back almost six million acres
of this land, restricting the Nez Percé to a reservation in Idaho that was only
one tenth its prior size. Feeling
himself betrayed, Joseph the Elder denounced the United
States, destroyed his American flag and his Bible, and
refused to move his band from the Wallowa
Valley or sign the treaty
that would make the new reservation boundaries official.
When
his father died in 1871, Joseph was elected to succeed him. He inherited not only a name but a situation
made increasingly volatile as white settlers continued to arrive in the Wallowa Valley. Joseph staunchly resisted all efforts to force
his band onto the small Idaho reservation, and
in 1873 a federal order to remove white settlers and let his people remain in
the Wallowa Valley made it appear that he might be
successful. But the federal government
soon reversed itself, and in 1877 General Oliver Otis Howard threatened a cavalry attack to force
Joseph's band and other hold-outs onto the reservation. Believing military resistance futile, Joseph
reluctantly led his people toward Idaho.
Unfortunately,
they never got there. About twenty young
Nez Percé warriors, enraged at the loss of their homeland, staged a raid on nearby
settlements and killed several whites. Immediately, the army began to pursue Joseph's
band and the others who had not moved onto the reservation. Although he had opposed war, Joseph cast his
lot with the war leaders.
What
followed was one of the most brilliant military retreats in American history. Even the unsympathetic General William Tecumseh Sherman could not help but be impressed with
the 1,400 mile march, stating that "the Indians throughout displayed a
courage and skill that elicited universal praise. [they] fought with almost scientific skill,
using advance and rear guards, skirmish lines, and field fortifications." In over three months, the band of about 700,
fewer than 200 of whom were warriors, fought 2,000 U.S. soldiers and Indian auxiliaries
in four major battles and numerous skirmishes.
By the
time he formally surrendered on October 5, 1877, Joseph was widely referred to
in the American press as "the Red Napoleon". It is unlikely, however, that he played as
critical a role in the Nez Percé's military feat as his legend suggests. He was never considered a war chief by his
people, and even within the Wallowa band, it was Joseph's younger brother,
Olikut, who led the warriors, while Joseph was responsible for guarding the
camp. It appears, in fact, that Joseph
opposed the decision to flee into Montana
and seek aid from the Crows and that other chiefs – “Looking Glass” and some who had been killed before
the surrender -- were the true strategists of the campaign. Nevertheless, Joseph's widely reprinted
surrender speech has immortalized him as a military leader in American popular
culture:
I am
tired of fighting. Our chiefs are
killed. Looking Glass is dead. Toohoolhoolzote is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say, "Yes"
or "No." He who led the young
men [Olikut] 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.
Joseph's
fame did him little good. Although he
had surrendered with the understanding that he would be allowed to return home,
Joseph and his people were instead taken first to eastern Kansas and then to a
reservation in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) where many of them died
of epidemic diseases. Although he was
allowed to visit Washington, D.C.
in 1879 to plead his case to U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes, it was not
until 1885 that Joseph and the other refugees were returned to the Pacific Northwest. Even then, half, including Joseph, were taken
to a non-Nez Percé reservation in northern Washington,
separated from the rest of their people in Idaho
and their homeland in the Wallowa
Valley.
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. An indomitable voice of
conscience for the West, he died in 1904, still in exile from his homeland,
according to his doctor "of a broken heart".
Source
www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/a_c/chiefjoseph.htm
modified slightly for blog presentation