Because of the treatment accorded the reservation Indians by the government, Tu-eka-kas ignored the orders of the constantly changing agents. He refused to place his welfare in the hands of men who either failed through their own dishonesty, to perform the work they were paid to do, or who were unable to do so because of the lack of cooperation of the federal government, which failed to help those agents who conscientiously tried to fulfill their duties. Upon learning that the Indian Bureau’s committee had decided Lawyer’s act in signing the treaty was binding upon all the Nez Perce bands, Tu-eka-kas, it is said, tore up a copy of the 1863 treaty and destroyed his New Testament.14 Thus he definitely broke his friendly relations with the whites.
Young Joseph shared the views of his father. He had reached manhood’s estate, for when the council of 1863 was held, he was twenty-three years old. At full growth he possessed an athletic figure and a handsome, intelligent face. He stood six feet two inches in his moccasins, weighed two hundred pounds, and was broad of shoulder and deep of chest. With a square chin, finely shaped features, and black piercing eyes he was an Indian Apollo. He had a dignified and quiet demeanor, and he clung to the aboriginal habit of wearing his hair in two long braids over his shoulders.
That Joseph accompanied his father to the council of 1863 and there met his future first wife may perhaps be deduced from the fact that his first child, a baby girl later known as Sarah Moses, was born in 1865. The mother was a daughter of Chief Whisk-tasket of the treaty Nez Perces at Lapwai.15 In accord with their tribal courtship customs, the lovers told their parents that they intended to marry. Young Joseph then went to the chosen maiden’s father and asked for his consent to the match. If he had not been the son of a great chief, his parents would have had to obtain permission for him from the parents of the girl. Then his father would have had to arrange the time of marriage and offer Whisk-tasket gifts of blankets or horses. But being a desirable suitor, Joseph himself could approach his prospective father-in-law with his request. Whisk-tasket gave his consent and waived the presents.
There is no record to indicate whether Young Joseph utilized his privilege of taking his girl-bride to his lodge at once, or whether he waited an interval of several days. He probably left that to the wishes of his heart’s desire. In any event, the young couple spent a honeymoon lasting two or three weeks. Then the bride informed her parents that she would come home on a certain day.
In Whisk-tasket’s lodge the women made great preparations for the nuptial feast. The chief killed a variety of game, while his wives and daughters picked gallons of berries. When the appointed day arrived, the bride, accompanied by her husband’s family, went to the lodge of her parents. She was gaily dressed for the occasion in her finest garments. Joseph’s people brought presents with them, and in return for these gifts they would receive others of equal value. Nearly everyone in the village partook of the feast which the bride’s relatives had prepared, and all shared in the distribution of presents. The young wife got her start for housekeeping by receiving the horn spoons used at the feast.
Perhaps a month or so later, Joseph’s family would give a feast in honor of the bridal couple. These repasts would not be repeated when Joseph took another wife, as they were held only for the first marriage.16
The non-Christian Nez Perces commonly practiced polygamy, and so it is not surprising that Joseph, like his father, married four times during his life. His various wives were Wa-win-te-pi-ksat, I-a-tu-ton-my,17 Aye-at-wai-at-naime18 (Good Woman), and one other whose name has been lost to history. In these unions Joseph became the father of nine children—five girls and four boys. All except two girls died in infancy. Of these, one apparently died in her youth, and the other, Sarah Moses, lived to maturity and married, but passed on without leaving issue.19
Regarding the first two wives named above, Inspector McLaughlin says:
. . . When [Looking Glass] was killed, Joseph honored his memory by taking to wife his two widows—they were with the old chief at Nespelim, on the Colville Reservation, when I visited there, [which was in June and July, 1900].20
Although Joseph ruled the men, he did not always have the final say in his household, if we can judge by his statement: “When you can get the last word with an echo, you may have the last word with your wife.”21
7
The Tah-mah-ne-wes Beckons
As Tu-eka-kas began to grow blind and feeble, he relied more and more on Young Joseph to assume his duties as chief of the Wal-lam-wat-kin band in the Wallowa Valley. This business of being a chief was no easy task, since the young men were incensed at the encroachments of stockmen whose herds occupied their grazing lands. Settlers had moved into the territory marked off by Tu-eka-kas, and they refused to leave when ordered off by the old chief and his son. Disputes frequently arose concerning the ownership of cattle claimed by both whites and Indians.
Relations with the treaty Nez Perces had also become strained. The nontreaty group taunted the treaty Indians for their loyalty to an unreliable government. Young Joseph’s diplomatic powers were severely taxed to maintain peace with the treaty faction of his tribespeople and to prevent his men from precipitating bloodshed with the settlers.
To add to the young chieftain’s troubles, the agent at Lapwai began insisting in 1868 that the Wallowa band should move onto the reservation. But Tu-eka-kas and Joseph had witnessed too much dissatisfaction with agency administration among the treaty Indians to accept Lapwai for a home. Consistently, father and son turned a deaf ear to all removal orders.
The nontreaty group, numbering about five hundred in Young Joseph’s band at this time, found in their religious beliefs further justification for their refusal to move. Among the Nez Perces a new faith had arisen, preached by the prophet Smohalla (Shmoquala). He was, in a sense, a forerunner of Freud, as he asserted that divine revelation came from dreams. Those who professed his cult thus became known as “Dreamers.” Being subject to catalepsy, he capitalized on his misfortune by declaring these spells were the visible evidence of his communication with the Tah-Mah-Ne-Wes, or Great Spirit. Joseph’s tribesmen all became followers of this “Dreamer” religion.1
It was an auspicious moment for an Indian Moses to arise. James Mooney has clearly expressed this need in his study of the Ghost Dance religion:
From time to time in every great tribe and at every important crisis of Indian history we find certain men rising above the position of ordinary doctor, soothsayer, or ritual priest, to take upon themselves an apostleship of reform and return to the uncorrupted ancestral beliefs and customs as the necessary means to save their people from impending destruction by decay or conquest.2
Smohalla’s religion offered a panacea to the distraught people. The prophet was a member of a band of two hundred Indians closely related to Joseph’s Wal-lam-wat-kins; and to them he was both medicine man and chief. General Howard, who met him on several occasions, thus describes Smohalla: “He is a large-headed, hump-shouldered, odd little wizard of an Indian, and exhibits a strange mixture of timidity and daring, of superstition and intelligence.”3 William McLeod, another authority on Indian religious beliefs, says of him:
About 1850, when he was about thirty years old, he began teaching a millennial doctrine, his ideas or revelations apparently having evolved independently of influences from the messianism of the eastern tribes.4
After the Indian uprising of 1856–58, sometimes called the Yakima War, Smohalla left his tribe and his people and wandered from band to band. When he returned to the Nez Perces he began to preach his gospel of passive resistance to white civilization. He condemned his tribesmen for adopting agriculture and stock raising, basing his philosophy on the widespread conception among Indians that the earth was their mother. He declared to his people, reports James Mooney, that
. . . the Sa’ ghalee Tyee [Tah-Mah-Ne-Wes], the Great Spirit Chief Above, was angry at their apostasy, and commanded them through him to return to their primitive manners, as their present miserable condition in
the presence of the intrusive race was due to their having abandoned their own religion and violated the laws of nature and the precepts of their ancestors.5
The prophet promised his people an Indian would rise up to drive out every white person and would raise to life all the dead Indians. This latter idea had been current among the various tribes for many years. Wily Smohalla undoubtedly incorporated it into his teachings so as to appease the subconscious desires of his people.
The prophet had a persuasive manner of speaking, at times attaining oratorical eloquence, and so impressive was his speech that he held the Indians spellbound. Even white men who could not understand a word spoken were entranced by the tonal beauty of his impassioned discourse. He won hundreds of converts, although his religious philosophy never spread beyond a limited area in the Northwest. Yet the Dreamer religion still exists and is practiced by many highly educated Indians.
Smohalla’s religion is described by Mooney as a system “based on the primitive aboriginal mythology and usage, with an elaborate ritual which combined with the genuine Indian features much of what he [Smohalla] had seen and remembered of Catholic ceremonial and military parades, with perhaps also some additions from Mormon forms.”6 To this might be appended the essentials of spiritualism.
Smohalla, to render more impressive his public religious ceremonies, used a heraldic flag and the ringing of bells. The mystic numeral seven was an essential feature in the arrangement of the congregation, as the men knelt in rows of seven behind the prophet, who was flanked by six altar boys dressed in white. Along the walls of the lodge-church the women, also, were arranged in groups of seven. Bell ringers started and ended each song with a certain number of rings, and tinkled the bells while the people sang. Loud testimonials, familiar to religious revivals in much more civilized sects, provided the personal touch.
That the prophet’s philosophy of the Earth-Mother made an especial appeal to the warriors may be understood from the nature of some of Smohalla’s doctrines:
My young men shall never work. Men who work cannot dream; and wisdom comes to us in dreams. . . . You ask me to plow the ground. Shall I take a knife and tear my mother’s bosom? You ask me to dig for stone. Shall I dig under her skin for her bones? You ask me to cut grass and make hay and sell it and be rich like white men. But how dare I cut off my mother’s hair?7
A knowledge of this deeply engrained religious belief is important for an understanding of Nez Perce history, because in the War of 1877 the nontreaty Indians were fighting not merely for the homeland of their fathers, but for that same land made sacred to them by their religion. Hence, when the crisis came, the war advocates had a powerful argument: the tenets of the Dreamer faith were irreconcilable with the land-tenure system as practiced by the whites. One or the other must go; and this was the reasoning by which the tewats, or medicine men, swayed the disaffected chiefs in the decisive war councils.
The differences in religion between the nontreaty group, many of whom were “Dreamers,” and the treaty Indians, most of whom were “Christians,” added to intertribal friction. The reservation or treaty Indians, however, were even more divided among themselves as to the respective saving graces of the Catholic and Protestant faiths. One of the most vexing problems facing the administration of Indian affairs in the Northwest was the missionary question. In order to put an end to the duplication of missionary work on the reservations by the various rival religious denominations, the government finally apportioned the reservations so that each sect would have an exclusive sphere of influence over one or more tribal reservations. At the time of this allotment the Presbyterians were given the monopoly of carrying salvation to the Nez Perces. The Indians, however, were permitted to continue the practice of the faith of their choice without interference.
1. Monument to Tu-eka-kas, Chief Joseph’s father, at Lake Wallowa, Oregon. Photo taken by the author, August, 1940.
In the midst of controversies between white settlers and Indians, between Christian treaty and Dreamer nontreaty tribesmen, Young Joseph successfully maintained a peaceful policy without jeopardizing his freedom from reservation control. His father’s increasing infirmities had necessitated transferring the responsibilities of chieftainship upon his broad shoulders before he was thirty.
Then tragedy came to Joseph in 1871.8 Tu-eka-kas, old and sightless, lay dying in his lodge; he knew the Great Spirit was preparing his spirit home for him. Chief Joseph, with touching sentiment and restraint, has described the death of his father:
. . . my father sent for me. I saw he was dying. I took his hand in mine. 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 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.” I pressed my father’s hand and told him I would protect his grave with my life. My father smiled and passed away to the spirit-land.
I buried him in that beautiful valley of winding waters. I love that land more than all the rest of the world. A man who would not love his father’s grave is worse than a wild animal.9
For a time the body of the old chief lay in state, dressed in fine clothes and decorated with ornaments and necklaces. Probably his face was painted, in accordance with an ancient custom of his tribe.10 The widows of Tu-eka-kas, dressed in soiled and tattered clothing, mourned their departed spouse. They cut off their long braids of hair and threw them into the fire.
After an interval of two days the chief’s body was tightly wrapped in deerskin and laid upon poles. This rude bier was then carried on the shoulders of four warriors to where a grave had been dug. Tu-eka-kas’ sorrowing relations and friends followed his remains, the women voicing their grief in loud wails.
The warriors lowered the corpse into the grave with the head to the east.11 Beside the opening a shaman, or medicine man, spoke a few words in praise of the deeds of Tu-eka-kas. Then the grave was covered with split cedar staves, on top of which stones were heaped. As a final protection against prowling coyotes, numerous upright cedar pickets were thrust between the stones. The wives and four daughters of Tu-eka-kas, and Joseph and Alokut probably, threw many trinkets into the grave. Then the Earth-Mother was spread over the corpse of her son. In the old days the favorite horse was killed and left nearby. Possibly because of the influence of white civilization, the Nez Perces adopted a new custom of laying a stuffed effigy of a horse over the grave.12 Thus Chief Tu-eka-kas was buried in the valley of winding waters in accordance with the customs of his tribe.
The sad family and friends returned slowly to the village. To prevent the ghost of the dead from bringing madness to the living, the lodge was moved to another location at once. The medicine man then performed the Pasapukitse (“his blowing the ghost away”) ceremony of blowing smoke from a pipe in all corners to disperse the ghost spirit before the family entered their home. Those who had touched the corpse had to spend a week in the sweat lodge in order to purify their blood.13
A month later the family gave a great feast, to which all the friends of the late chief were invited. Many of the personal belongings of Tu-eka-kas were given to the guests. So ended the burial ceremonies.
Joseph’s people continued their peaceful occupation of the Wallowa Valley, despite the increasing number of settlers. In filial obedience to his father’s wishes the young chief refused all annuities for his band. The Nez Perce agent, John B. Monteith, reported in August of 1872: “. . . the non-treaty portion, with a very few exceptions, reside on the outside of the reserve, along the Snake River and its tributaries. They never ask for assistance, and take nothing from me, except, perhaps, a little tobacco.”14
&n
bsp; About this time the reorganized Indian Bureau granted to the various sects the privilege of choosing someone from their own denomination as reservation agent. In 1871 the Presbyterian Church selected John B. Monteith, and his appointment was ratified by the government. Of course, the Catholic Nez Perces objected to this choice and accused Monteith of “sectarianism.” Yet he probably managed reservation affairs to the best of his ability and tried to perform his duties conscientiously. Such efforts were in marked contrast to the work of a few of his predecessors. He died August 7, 1879, and was buried at Spalding, Idaho.
In 1873 the government made a determined attempt to persuade Joseph to move onto the reservation, as both stockmen and Indians in the Wallowa Valley were growing restless and dissatisfied with the presence of the other. T. B. Odeneal, superintendent of Indian Affairs for Oregon, acting under instructions of the Secretary of the Interior, held a council at Lapwai on March 27 with the young chief and the agent. This was the first conference in which Joseph, then thirty-three years old, represented his people. With shrewd logic he well acquitted himself.
They had orders, the commissioners informed him, from the Great White Chief at Washington for the Nez Perces to go upon the Lapwai Reservation. If he obeyed, the government would help his people in many ways, but first he would have to move to the agency. To these arguments Joseph replied:
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. Neither Lawyer nor any other chief had authority to sell this land. It has always belonged to my people. It came unclouded to them from our fathers, and we will defend this land as long as a drop of Indian blood warms the hearts of our men.15
Saga of Chief Joseph Page 8