by Neil Oliver
But the land occupied by the Nez Perces—like every other scrap of mountain, water and valley between the two coasts of North America—fell eventually under the hungry gaze of the incomers. Old Joseph, like others of his kind, did not regard his territory as something “owned” by him or anyone else. It was just there—a self-renewing source of food, clothing and shelter. Anyone and anything was therefore free to roam across every part of it.
This was a philosophy that had had its day, however noble it may appear when viewed from today’s perspective. For all the millennia when the population of North America could be counted in terms of hundreds of thousands, or a few million, there was so much empty land that ownership of it mattered not at all; in fact it was a meaningless concept. But when the land-hungry and the dispossessed of the Old World poured into these formerly empty places in their tens of millions, they brought a lumbering juggernaut of new thinking with them as well. In time they would find a grand name for their unstoppable advance across the land—Manifest Destiny—but in the short term it was a simple land-grab.
When in 1855 the governor of Washington Territory, a man named Isaac Stevens, told Old Joseph that he would have to limit himself and his few hundred people to a clearly defined portion of the land—and accept that the rest of the territory was now “owned” by the whites—he refused to listen. Old Joseph was just one of the chiefs among the Nez Perces, however, and although he refused to sign up to any treaty formalizing the proposed arrangement, there were others who did. As far as the US Government was concerned, therefore, all the Nez Perces had accepted the deal.
By 1863 there were more new people pressing in on the territory west of the Rockies, and hunger for the land was greater again. A new treaty was offered to the Nez Perces. This time they were to give up 90 percent of the land ceded to them by Stevens’s paper of 1855. Among other places sacred to Old Joseph, he was now expected to surrender the land of the Wallowa Valley, known to his people as the Valley of the Winding Waters. Having refused to acknowledge the legality of the 1855 treaty, Old Joseph was doubly enraged at this new proposal.
“The country was created without lines of demarcation and it is no man’s business to divide it,” he said. “Perhaps you think the Creator sent you here to dispose of us as you see fit. If I thought the Creator sent you, I might be induced to think you had a right to dispose of me. Do not misunderstand me, but understand fully with reference to my affection for the land. I never said the land was mine to do with as I choose. The one who has a right to dispose of it is the one who has created it. I claim a right to live on my land and accord you the privilege to return to yours.”
Once again, Old Joseph refused to make his mark on any paperwork. But other chiefs—strangers to the Wallowa Valley in any case—duly signed the treaty and gave away the land.
When Old Joseph died in 1871 his son replaced him as a chief. If Joseph the younger inherited anything from his father, it was the unshakable belief that no one had the right to tell him or his people where or how they might live. Like his father, he refused to acknowledge the “treaties” of 1855 and 1863, and so when white men came to tell him he must now move his people to the newly created Lapwai Reservation, he ignored them. It was a mark of the intelligence of the man, however, that he also attempted to play the white man at his own game. With a sense that he was entitled to the same legal rights as anyone else living under the protection of the President of the United States, Chief Joseph wrote to Ulysses S. Grant asking that he be allowed to continue living on the land of his ancestors. There was support for the Nez Perces among some sections of the white community, too. They, like Chief Joseph, could see the questionable legality of foisting treaties upon a people given no option but to submit. In what must have seemed like a crowning triumph, on June 16, 1873, President Grant ruled that the Wallowa Valley—the Valley of the Winding Waters so beloved by Old Joseph and all his people—belonged to the Nez Perces and was not to be colonized by any whites.
Betrayal of promises was not, however, a character weakness limited to nameless bureaucrats. Within two years of the executive order, the President decreed the Wallowa Valley open to settlement once more. Now soldiers returned to the land of the Nez Perces to tell Chief Joseph that their time was up and that they must ready themselves and their animals for the journey to the Lapwai Reservation to the north. It was 1877, the year after General George Armstrong Custer’s catastrophe at the Little Bighorn at the hands of Sioux warriors led by Sitting Bull and the legendary Crazy Horse, and there was no love left for any of the Native Americans.
Tribes the length and breadth of the country were already suffering. The Cheyenne, the Navajo, the Sioux, the Apache, the Arapaho—all of these peoples and more had felt the harsh hand of the US Government and its military.
General Otis Howard was the soldier in charge of clearing the Nez Perces out of the Wallowa Valley, and on arrival at Lapwai he sent messengers to Chief Joseph summoning him to a meeting. Together with his most trusted comrades—his own brother Ollocot, Lean Elk, the prophet Toohoolhoolzote, White Bird and Looking Glass—Chief Joseph rode up to the reservation to try to face down the inevitable. But they arrived at Lapwai as emissaries of a world already living beyond its allotted time. What their opponents called their Manifest Destiny—their apparently divine right to rule the Americas—was just the arrival of the future in a world of the past. Chief Joseph and his men were already ghosts, haunting the living.
The meeting was ill-tempered from the start, and Toohoolhoolzote argued so bitterly with Howard that the General had him arrested and thrown into the guardhouse. He was freed once he was judged to have calmed down, and returned to the Wallowa with Chief Joseph and the others to begin the job of preparing their people for exodus. It was May, and at that time of year the livestock of the Nez Perces, horses and cattle, was scattered over many square miles. En route to Lapwai they would have to cross the Snake River, which was still running deep and fast. Despite these complications, Chief Joseph had his people on the move within a few weeks. He had considered his options and understood all too well that he lacked the numbers of fighting men needed to keep the white soldiers out of the Wallowa by force. Better, he thought, to keep everyone together and safe—and to move out of harm’s way.
He would say later:
…we could not hold our own with the white men. We were like deer. They were like grizzly bears. We had a small country. Their country was large. We were contented to let things remain as the Great Spirit Chief made them. They were not, and would change the rivers and mountains if they did not suit them.
In the end, matters were taken out of Joseph’s hands—not by the white man but by the actions of a handful of his own warriors. Unlike their chief, the prophet Toohoolhoolzote was no longer counseling peace. On the contrary, he wanted a fight to avenge himself for the indignity of his imprisonment at Lapwai. And he was able to argue quite persuasively that obeying the white man’s orders would give them no guarantee of safety. After all, though they had only covered a few miles, they had already been harried by whites who had stolen some of their livestock while they struggled across the swollen Snake River. After months and years of simmering acrimony, insults and slights felt on both sides, it was one wrong too many. Whipped up into a killing mood by Toohoolhoolzote’s words, a few Nez Perces braves slipped away from the rest of the tribe and spilt the blood of the first whites they could find.
When Chief Joseph learned what they had done, he knew peaceful relocation was no longer possible. He also knew his Nez Perces were not the only members of the tribe to have refused to sign the treaties of 1855 and 1863. More so-called “non-treaty” Nez Perces were encamped in nearby White Bird Canyon, and now, with blood on his warriors’ hands, Chief Joseph decided to join up with the rest of the fugitives.
The people who gathered together that spring and early summer by the waters of White Bird Creek were hardly a war band. It is hard to be precise about numbers, but there were no more than 700 i
ndividuals. Of these, perhaps 250 were fighting men, the rest being the elderly, the women and the children. Also there with them was what remained of their material wealth—around 2,000 head of horses. Threatened and outnumbered though they were, there was no panic. Instead there was dignity and resolve—an understanding that the actions taken now must be for the good of the group.
It was there in White Bird Canyon, on June 17, 1877, that the Nez Perces began the fight to preserve some remnants of their way of life. Looking Glass had been chosen as war chief and, with a superior understanding of the terrain, he deployed his slim forces. Using skirmishers to draw forward the horsemen of Howard’s 1st US Cavalry, the Nez Perces warriors were able to isolate and expose their attackers’ flank. Around a third of the cavalrymen, lured into this vulnerable position, were killed within minutes. The rest were forced to flee for their lives. Looking Glass had demonstrated an understanding of guerrilla tactics that would serve them well.
The war had begun, and as the gunsmoke of that first battle drifted high into the sky, Chief Joseph understood what they must do. Gathering his fellow chiefs around him, he told them what they already knew in their hearts: that the Wallowa Valley could never again be home to the Nez Perces. He said, too, that none among them wanted to see their people herded like cattle into the Lapwai. There was only one option available to them—to follow the lead of Sitting Bull, victor of the Little Bighorn. Sitting Bull and his Sioux people had travelled north, all the way across the border into Canada. Chief Joseph said that since that land was governed not by the US, but by Great Britain, they could not be followed there by the cavalrymen who had fought with them just now. In Canada, the land of Queen Victoria—whom they knew as the Grandmother—they could live their old lives once more, free from persecution.
The other chiefs agreed—or could suggest no better option—and so began the flight of the Nez Perces. From the very beginning it was an unequal contest—and one that captured the imagination of those who heard of its unfolding by means of telegraph communications that crackled across the country. This was not an army on the move but a people, the vestiges of a civilization made alien in its own homeland.
Howard’s men had had their noses bloodied, but were far from beaten. As Chief Joseph led his people toward the Lolo pass through the Bitterroots—a trail they knew well, since it led to their buffalo hunting grounds in Montana—the cavalrymen gave chase. Even slowed down by their elders, their women and children and the horse herd, the Indians were far quicker over the broken, rugged ground than their pursuers. Five weeks later, however, they encountered a fortified defensive position slung across the Lolo trail by soldiers commanded by a Captain Charles Rawn.
After some inconclusive skirmishing over several days, the warriors managed to slip past the enemy and continue on their route north—but they could not know that a third force had been dispatched against them and was closing in fast. Colonel John Gibbon, with 15 officers, 146 troopers, and 34 volunteers, was moving into position to strike. This then had been Rawn’s real objective all along—to stall the fugitives and give time for the larger trap to be sprung. By the second week in, August Gibbon’s men were in place and on the 9th they launched a night-time attack on the encampment.
It was a scrappy offensive, carried out by men who had prepared for the job by drinking whisky. Drunken and badly executed though the assault had been, for some little while it looked as if the element of surprise might carry the night. Instead, a Nez Perces chief named White Bird rallied his braves. The rearguard action he choreographed punished the soldiers severely—and gave time for Chief Joseph to bring order out of the chaos and get the remains of the camp up and moving through the cries of the dying. With the false warmth of liquor and adrenaline now draining fast from their veins, the soldiers lost the taste for the fight. Driven back in disorder, many of their number stumbling blindly into a river, they saw sense and turned tail, back into the darkness. It had been a cruel night for the Nez Perces nonetheless, with many women and children lying dead and mutilated across the broken ground.
Just days later the fleeing group was attacked once more. This time it was by Howard’s cavalry, still infuriated by their drubbing two months before in White Bird Canyon. They were to be humiliated again—this time losing their baggage train and many of their horses as Chief Joseph and his warriors brushed past them in the manner befitting the ghosts they were.
By now their flight had brought them to the territory of the Yellowstone—land designated as North America’s first national park in 1872. There waiting for them was General William Tecumseh Sherman, hero of the Civil War and commander of the US Army. How, Sherman wanted to know, was a ragtag band of fugitives leading his professional soldiers such a merry dance? They were taking their women and children along for the ride, for God’s sake, and still they were outwitting and outfighting his men at every turn.
Risen like a phoenix after their destruction at the Little Bighorn, the 7th Cavalry was desperate for the chance to show its mettle and to prove to the General that they would not be found wanting a second time. But although they threw themselves after the fleeing Nez Perces, they failed to pin down the main body. Outriding forces of skirmishers from both sides played cat and mouse with one another, but the fugitives remained elusive to the last. Fighting rearguard actions to cover the flight of the old, the women and the young, they drew red blood from the blue coats time and again as August gave way to September.
By the end of that month Chief Joseph and his people had been on the run for over sixteen weeks. They had traveled more than 1,500 miles from their homes in the Valley of the Winding Waters and evaded the best efforts of 2,000 of the best trained and best armed soldiers the US Army could send against them. They had bested or equaled their enemy at three major encounters and countless other running engagements—and they had done all this while moving and protecting their women and children and everything of value they possessed.
General Sherman would later report:
The Indians throughout displayed a courage and skill that elicited universal praise; they abstained from scalping; let captive women go free; did not commit indiscriminate murder of peaceful families, which is usual; and fought with almost scientific skill, using advance and rear guards, skirmish lines, and field fortifications.
It was the least he could have said.
By the end of September Chief Joseph had brought his people to within one long day’s march—perhaps 40 miles—of the Canadian border. His people were hungry, and once they had made it across the Missouri River he allowed them to make camp in the Bear Paw Mountains in northcentral Montana. They had seen no soldiers for several days and for the first time in a long while they were allowing the fires of hope to be rekindled. Soon perhaps they would be with Sitting Bull and his Sioux in the land of the Grandmother.
After a night spent feasting on freshly killed buffalo, the quiet of the morning was torn apart by the thunder of approaching horsemen. It was a cavalry force commanded by Colonel Nelson Miles and they had managed to place themselves between the Indians and their promised land of Canada. Disciplined to the end, those of the Nez Perces who were still able to fight took up positions and calmly unleashed a volley of rifle fire into the approaching horsemen. The fighting that followed was intense and brief. The Indians successfully drove off the attackers but with heavy losses on their own side. Among the dead were the prophet Toohoolhoolzote and Chief Joseph’s brother, Ollocot.
While Joseph and his surviving war chiefs held their final councils, around campfires stacked high against the aching chill of falling snow and freezing wind, General Howard and his men arrived to surround the Indian position.
In one final skirmish, Looking Glass was killed by a single bullet to the head, and Chief Joseph’s heart was broken. Some of the survivors, Chief White Bird among them, begged Joseph to fight on. They had come so far, they said. Even if they should die now, it was better than surrender. Chief Joseph did not agree and his mind was made
up.
The American journalist Charles Sutherland witnessed what happened on October 5, 1877. He said the chief appeared on the prairie just as the sun was setting. He was on horseback, his chin lowered to his chest. He was accompanied by just five of his comrades. As he came close he suddenly raised his head, the better to look into the eyes of his tormentors. He held his rifle in one hand and now he straightened his arm out toward Howard, signifying the end of his resistance and of the flight of the Nez Perces.
The speech he made to his captors then has become one of the best known of all statements made by Native Americans of the period. The poignancy and the poetry of it is clear to all—but whether that is down to Chief Joseph or to the soldier who recorded and translated it, will never now be known:
Tell General Howard I know his heart. What he told me before I have in my heart. 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 all 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 forever.
Later that night, White Bird and a handful of the still rebellious braves crept stealthily through the encircling cordon. A few days later they made it to the camp of Sitting Bull.