Chief Joseph

Previously:

The Nez Perce show why they are admired.

Chapter 28

The Nez Perce womenfolk were some of the finest seamstresses that ever lived. They could skin an antelope, and make clothes that a first-class lady would be proud to wear. I felt out of place among the Nez Perce with my gray trousers and shirt. The Indians felt sorry for me and made me a new pair of buckskin pants and a fringed shirt. One of the women embroidered an eagle on the back of my shirt. She used beads for the eyes. The bird's wings spread from shoulder to shoulder.

I put on my new clothes and felt downright dapper. I was right at home among the Nez Perce now. I couldn't stop grinning as I walked around the camp. I wished there was somebody to take one of them tin-types. I wished Inga had been there to see it.

The woman who did the embroidery would walk in circles around me, admiring her handy work. She would touch me all over and run her hands on my shirt, smoothing out the wrinkles. I tried turning around real fast to see the eagle on my back, but it didn't work. Sometimes I took the shirt off, just to look at it. Now I knew what little children feel like when they get new clothes. I wore the clothes until they fell apart. I hated it when I had to put my gray trousers back on.

On account of the cold weather, the Indians were covered from head to foot. The men had fringe on their shirts and pants. The women wore long dresses that went all the way down to their moccasins. They had beads and dyes on their dresses like they were in a parade every day. They gave me a pair of moccasins, and I still have them.

Idaho had the blackest dirt I ever saw. The Indians said it was because of the volcanoes. I never saw a volcano, but if the Nez Perce said it, it had to be true. The Nez Perce knew how to farm. They could grow anything. They grew squash as big as my head, but I imagine, with that black dirt, anyone could be a farmer. But those Indians had a real knack for it. Corn as high as trees was nothing for them, and they could dance and make it rain when there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

Another thing about the Nez Perce, I never saw an angry one the whole time I was in Idaho. I had come to believe that the reason Indians were red was they were so mad all the time. The Nez Perce were the first even-tempered Indians I ever met. I believe you could steal a man's horse, and he would give you the blanket. They were too smart to fight. They would rather reason things out. The Nez Pierce were always laughing. Show me a man who laughs all the time and I'll show you a smart man. Either that or an idiot.

They had a Chief with a white man's name, Joseph. He had an Indian name, too, but you had to be drunk to say it. His Indian name meant Thunder Rolling Down the Mountain. The name Joseph was given to him by Rev. Spalding, a Presbyterian missionary when he became a Christian and was baptized.

Spalding's daughter, Eliza, in describing Joseph said, “He was an ideal type of an American Indian, six feet in height, graceful of movement, magnificently proportioned, with a deep chest and splendid muscles. His expression was mild and impassive, except when aroused, then a light would come into his bright eyes, which denoted the iron will and defiant, war-like spirit that lay beneath."

Yet, Chief Joseph did not have a reputation within his band as a warrior or even as a hunter. He was valued more for his counsel and his strength of purpose, and his commitment to the old ways on the band's ancestral lands. During a series of parlays with government officials, he continued to insist that he 'would not sell the land' nor 'give up the land'.

After many betrayals by the government, Chief Joseph tore up the Bible that had been given to him by Rev. Spalding.

Soon his steadfast commitment would be stretched to the breaking point. Pressure was building to move all of the Nez Perce onto the small Idaho reservation. General O. O. Howard called another treaty council, but this time, there would be no negotiation. Howard told Joseph and the other chiefs that their people would need to move, and would have 30 days to do it. If they refused, the army would move them by force. 

When Joseph returned from the council, he discovered that soldiers had already moved into the Wallowa Valley, ready to force them off the land.

"I said in my heart that, rather than have war, I would give up my country," Joseph later said. "I would rather give up my father's grave. I would rather give up everything than have the blood of the white men upon the hands of my people" Still, Chief Joseph was considered a savage by the government.

Chief Joseph had to make the hardest decision a man ever made. When government troops tried to move the Nez Perce to a reservation, he refused to go. He said. “I was born upon the prairie where the wind blew free and there was nothing to break the light of the sun. I was born where there were no enclosures and where everything drew a free breath. I want to die there, and not within walls.”

He decided to lead his people to Canada. The Nez Perce walked 1,600 miles north. The last battle, the Battle of Bear Paw Mountains, was the last great fight between a nation of Native Americans and the United States government. It was there that Chief Joseph said, “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 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.”

Many people say Chief Joseph died of a broken heart after living on a reservation for two decades. Why the government didn't let him go is beyond me. They attacked and harassed the Indians every step of the way. For four months, the tribe walked through the snow. By the time the border was in sight, they were too weak and starving to continue. Chief Joseph started out with over two thousand braves. By the end of his march, he had eighty-seven fighting men left. It was one of many great American tragedies.

President Andrew Jackson had made a promise that no land would ever be taken from the Indians without their permission. I guess, in a way, the government kept his word. They didn't take the land away from the Indians. They took the Indians away from the land.

Chief Joseph said, “I have carried a heavy load on my back ever since I was a boy. I realized then that 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 content 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. How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong like right.”

This was the west for Chief Joseph, the smartest Indian who ever lived.

To be continued . . .