ONEOFMANYFEATHERS'
Great Leaders, Warriors and People
Chief Joseph
"Thunder Rolling Down the Mountain"
He was known as Young Joseph during his youth because his father had the same name. Joseph the Younger succeeded his father as chief in 1871. He inherited not only a name but a situation made increasingly volatile as white settlers continued to arrive in the Wallowa Valley.
Chief Joseph (March 3, 1840 – September 21, 1904) was the chief of the Wal-lam-wat-kain (Wallowa) band of Nez Perce during General Oliver O. Howard's attempt to forcibly remove his band and the other "non-treaty" Nez Perce to a reservation in Idaho. For his principled resistance to the removal, he became renowned as a humanitarian and peacemaker.
"If the white man wants to live in peace with the indian...we can live in peace. There need be no trouble. Treat all men alike.... give them all the same law. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. You might as well expect the rivers to run backward as that any man who is born a free man should be contented when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases. 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 choose my own teachers...free to follow the religion of my Fathers...free to think and talk and act for myself."
Chief Joseph, is regarded as one of the greatest of Indian strategists. He was born Hinmaton-Yalaktit in Oregon about 1840, and he became chief of the "non-treaty" Nez Perce upon his father's death in 1871. Joseph refused to recognize an 1863 agreement that ceded their lands and confined them to a reservation in Idaho, and the Nez Perce and their leader were drawn into a hopeless resistance.When a few of his men killed a group of whites, he decided to lead several hundred people on a march to find refuge in Canada.
He defeated United States Army units that tried to stop him on the Big Hole River in Montana, but was stopped about 30 miles from the border by a force under General Nelson Miles. Chief Joseph spoke these words when he surrendered after a five-day siege on October 5, 1877.
"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, Ta Hool Hool Shute 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"
Joseph and his people were sent to Oklahoma, where many became sick and died. In 1885 Joseph and the surviving Nez Perce moved back to Washington and Idaho. Chief Joseph tried every possible appeal to the federal authorities to return the Nez Perce to the land of their ancestors. Forbidden from returning to his homeland in the Wallowa Valley, Joseph died on the Colville Reservation in Washington. It is said he died from a broken heart.
"I have heard talk and talk, but nothing is done. Good words do not last long unless they amount to something. Words do not pay for my dead people. They do not pay for my country, now overrun by white men. Good words will not give my people good health and stop them from dying. Good words will not get my people a home where they can live in peace and take care of themselves. I am tired of talk that comes to nothing. It makes my heart sick when I remember all the good words and broken promises."
