The Great Chief Joseph.

The Great Chief Joseph was the chief of the powerful Nez Perće (Nimi’ipuu) tribe in the Pacific Northwest. Becoming the leader of his people after his father passed away he did many great things in his life and is often beaded onto powwow regalia of the descendants of his tribe. Let’s find out more about the Great Chief Joseph.

Birth Place.

Chief Joseph was born on March 3rd, 1840, in Present-day Oregon. The name was given to him was  “In-mut-too-yah-lat-lat” which translates to “Thunder Rolling Down the Mountain”.

Not much is know about Chief Joseph’s young life but when he was younger he was often called Young Joseph because his dad, Tuekakas (senior warrior), was baptized with the same name, and his father later become known as “Old Joseph” or “Joseph the Elder”.

The Treaty Of Walla Walla and The Steal Treaty

While he was mostly peaceful to the region’s new white settlers, Old Joseph grew frustrated when they wanted more land. As the settlers appropriated traditional Indian lands for farming and livestock, The tensions between the tribes and the settlers began to grow.

The Governor of the Washington Territory at the time, Isaac Stevens, put together a council to place separate areas for the settlers and native’s in 1855. Old Joseph and some other Nez Perce chiefs signed the Treaty of Walla Walla which allowed larger part of the land to be given to the two largest tribes the Yakimas and Nez Perces.

These reservations were placed on most of their traditional hunting grounds. The smaller tribes then moved to the smaller of the three reservations. The Governor was able to get 45,000 sq mi of land and then the United States established a Nez Perce reservation covering 7,700,000 acres in present-day Oregon, Idaho, and Washington.

Attracted by a gold rush, however, In 1864 a new wave of settlers led the government to call another council. The Government at this time asked the Nez Perce tribe to accept a new, much smaller reservation of 760,000 acres which was around the village of Lapwai, Idaho.

However, this territory excluded the Wallowa Valley. for this small piece of land, they were promised money, schools, and a hospital for the reserve. Chief Lawyer and one of his allied chiefs signed which became to be known as “The Steal” the treaty on behalf of all of the Nez Perce Nation, but Joseph the Elder and several other chiefs did not agree to sell their lands and did not sign.

The Chief’s refusal to sign caused separation between the “non-treaty” and “treaty” people of Nez Perce. The “treaty” people moved within the new reservation’s boundaries, and the “non-treaty” people remained on their ancestral lands. Joseph the Elder places poles on Wallowa land and proclaimed, “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.”

How He Became Chief Jospeh?

In 1872 Young Joseph became Chief Joseph after his father Old Joseph passed away.

Before he passed onto the spirit world Old Joseph said to 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.”

As his father drifted away Chief Joseph said  “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.”

From then on Chief Joseph was the leader of his people.

After The Steal Treaty

Led by Chief Joseph, The non-treaty Nez Perće people had many injustices done to them at the hands of settlers and the new prospectors, but out of fear of getting killed from the superior government, Chief Joseph never allowed any violence against the settlers, instead of having many meetings with them in hopes of having peace.

After the Steal Treaty, Army General Oliver O. Howard threatened to attack, If Chief Josephs People did not relocate to the Idaho reservation with the other Nez Perce People. Joseph being a peacemaker reluctantly agreed. Before any outbreak of fighting began, The General held a meeting at Fort Lapwai with Chief Joseph to try to get his people to relocate. At the end of the meeting, Chief Joseph said to the general by saying in a tone of disbelief “the Great Spirit Chief gave one kind of men the right to tell another kind of men what they must do.” The general angrily thought the statement was a challenge to his authority. When another leader named Toohoolhoolzote protested, Toohoolhoolzote was thrown in jail for five days.

The day following the council, Chief Joseph, and other leaders White Bird, and Looking Glass all joined Howard to look at different areas within the reservation. Howard offered them some land that was already lived on by White people and Native American People, and he promised to clear out the current residents. Joseph and his leaders did not agree, going by to their tribal tradition of not taking what did not belong to them.

Unable to find any suitable solution, Howard informed Joseph that his people had 30 days to move to the reservation. Joseph pleaded for more time to move, but Howard told him that after the 30 days he would consider their presence in the Wallowa Valley, an act of war.

Returning home to his, Chief Joseph put together a meeting among his people. At the meeting, he spoke of peace and wanted to abandon his father’s grave over then go to war. The leader Toohoolhoolzote angered by him getting thrown in jail wanted to go to war. In June 1877, Chief Josephs People began making preparations for a long journey to the reservation the general talked about.

Meeting first with other bands along the way at Rocky Canyon. Many leaders urged war as well, Chief Joseph was still in favor of peace. While at this meeting, a young man whose dad had been killed rode up on his horse and announced that he and some other young men had killed four white settlers fro revenge. To avoid further bloodshed, Chief Joseph and other non-treaty Nez Perce leaders began moving people away from Idaho.

Nez Perće War

Led by Chief Joseph and others, they attempted to escape from Idaho and this became known as the Nez Perce War. At first, they went take refuge with the Crow Nation people in Montana, but the Crow refused to help them.

The Nez Perce then went north to obtain refuge with the Lakota people led by Chief Sitting Bull, who had fled to Canada after the Great Sioux War in 1876.

For over 3months, the Nez Perce people outmaneuvered and occasionally battled their pursuers, traveling more than 1,170 miles (1,880 km) across  Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana. One of those battles was at White Bird Canyon. This battle was led by Captain Perry and 2 cavalry companies of the U.S. Army.

These 2 companies were led by Captain Trimble and Lieutenant Theller, who attacked Chief Joseph and his people on June 17, 1877. The Nez Perce attacked back, killing 34 soldiers while the Nez Perce only had 3 wounded. The Nez Perce continued to repel the Army’s and eventually ended up reaching the Clearwater River. It was there they united with another Nez Perce chief, Looking Glass, and his people. This brought their size to 740, but only 200 of these were warriors.

The final battle of the Nez Perce War happened about 40 miles south of the Canadian border, where the Nez Perce people were camped by Snake Creek near the Bears Paw Mountains. This is close to present-day Chinook in Blaine County, Montana.

On September 30, a U.S. Army detachment commanded by the name General Nelson A. Miles and accompanied by Cheyenne scouts caught up the Nez Perće People at the Battle of Bear Paw. First, the general’s attacks were repelled, Miles captured Chief Joseph; however, he would later be forced to exchange Chief Joseph for one of his captured officers.

General Howard then arrived on October 3. He was impressed with the skill with which the Nez Perce fought. After a devastating five-day battle during freezing weather, with no food or blankets and the major war leaders dead, Chief Joseph formally surrendered to General Miles on the afternoon of October 5, 1877.

The battle is remembered 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 here the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.”

Although Joseph was not technically a war chief, many of the chiefs who did had died. His speech brought attention his way and earned the praise of General William Tecumseh Sherman and became known in newspapers as “The Red Napoleon”.

After The Nez Perće War

By the time Chief Joseph had surrendered, 150 of his people had been killed or wounded. Their bad luck, however, did not end. Although Chief Joseph had negotiated with Miles and Howard for a safe return home for him and his people. General Sherman overruled this decision and forced Chief Joseph and 400 Nez Perce People to be taken on freezing cold unheated rail cars to Fort Leavenworth, in eastern Kansas.

It was where they were held in a prisoner of war campsite for 8 months. Toward the end of the following summer, the surviving Nez Perce people were taken by train to a reservation in the Indian Territory which is now Oklahoma, where they lived for seven years. Many of them died of epidemic diseases while there.

In 1879, Chief Joseph went to meet with then-President Rutherford B. Hayes to plead his people’s case. Even though Chief Joseph was respected as a spokesman, people from Idaho prevented the U.S. government from granting his petition to return to his homelands.

In 1885, Chief Joseph and his people were finally granted permission to return to the Pacific Northwest to live on a reserve around Kooskia, Idaho. Instead, Chief Joseph and others were actually taken to the Colville Indian Reservation in Nespelem, This was far from both their homeland in the Wallowa Valley and the rest of their people in Idaho.

Chief Joseph continued to lead his people on the Colville Reservation, where he came into conflict with the leaders of the 11 other unrelated tribes also living on the reservation. 

In the last of his years, Chief Joseph spoke against the injustice of United States policies toward him and his people and had hope’s that America’s promise of freedom and equality might one day be fulfilled for Native Americans as well.

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

In 1903, Chief Joseph visited Seattle, where he stayed in the Lincoln Hotel as a guest to Edmond Meany, a history professor at the University of Washington. It was there that he also made friends Edward Curtis.

Curtis was actually the photographer, who took one of his most memorable and well-known photographs of Chief Joseph. Chief Joseph was also visited by then-president Roosevelt in Washington, D.C. that same 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, to this day it never happened

Transition Into the Spirit World

Chief Joseph passed on into the spirit world on September 21, 1904,.

According to his doctor he passed away from “a broken heart”.

Chief Joseph’s family buried their chief near the village of Nespelem, Washington^, where many of his people still live today.

Other Facts About Chief Jospeh.

• Old Joseph was one of the first Nez Percé converts to Christianity.
• There is a statue of Young Chief Joseph in Enterprise, Oregon
• Chief Joseph’s 1870s war shirt was sold to a private collection for the sum of $877,500 in July 2012.
• He was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in 1973.
• a school was named after him in Great Falls Montana called Chief Joseph Elementary

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