Exhibits > Chief Joseph > Part 3

Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce Indians (Cont'd)

   Problems mounted for the Nez Perce after 1863. The United States Senate finally ratified (approved) the Treaty of 1863 in 1867, but promises made by the United States were not being met back in Idaho. In 1868, a delegation of four Nez Perce leaders traveled to Washington, D.C., where they met with representatives of the United States to iron out their differences. Three of the four were photographed wearing white man’s clothing during their trip to the East.

   Upon their return, the situation with white ranchers and farmers grew tense. An 1873 executive order from the President of the United States gave the title to the Wallowa Lake region to Joseph’s descendants, but white homesteaders demanded that these fertile lands be renegotiated. In 1875, the Wallowa country was reopened to non-Indian settlement. A commission met with Nez Perce leaders in 1876 and recommended to the Indian Bureau that all non-treaty bands be persuaded to move into the formal 1863 reservation boundaries, and that they be forced to do so after 1 April, 1877. General Oliver O. Howard was placed in charge of relocation.

   A striking, broad-shouldered man possessing unusual oratorical skill, Joseph held his own against Howard, but he eventually acquiesced, arguing that it was “better to live at peace than to begin a war and lie dead.”

   In good faith, Joseph and his brother, Ollokot, a warrior and leader of buffalo hunters, agreed to move the entire Wallowa Band of Nez Perce from to Idaho.

   In leaving Oregon, Joseph’s people had to cross the Snake River, which was running high and fast with spring rains. Many horses and some cattle were lost, but the Nez Perce made it across and continued toward the reservation in Idaho. They rested at Tolo Lake, only a two days’ ride from the agency at Lapwai and not far from locations where whites had committed depredations and murders against Nez Perce without penalties or police action.

On 12 June, 1877, several young Nez Perce sought revenge for the murder of their relatives in the Salmon River area. Joseph and Ollokot were absent from the camp. When they returned, seventeen whites had been slain to avenge the deaths of at least forty Nez Perce in recent years at the hands of white ranchers and miners from settlements along the Snake and Salmon rivers. The Nez Perce War had begun!

Fearing retribution, the Nez Perce sought refuge in White Bird Canyon, but were attacked by civilians and soldiers on June 17. At the end of the day, thirty-four white soldiers were dead; only two Nez Perce were wounded, and none were killed. Despite this attack, the Nez Perce continued in an effort to reach the new reservation. Three more skirmishes on the trail toward the reserve and two battles within the new reservation boundaries on the Clearwater River in July convinced Nez Perce leaders that they would have no peace in Idaho.

Joseph opposed continued violence and further flight, and hoped to negotiate with General Howard, but the consensus of the rest of the leaders favored leaving Idaho Territory.

   By now, the Nez Perce patriots consisted of two hundred men and approximately 550 women and children. They rounded up and packed 2,000 horses and fled toward the buffalo country in Montana, intent upon reaching friends among the Crow.

A surprise attack against the Nez Perce encampment at the Big Hole River on 9 August left between sixty and ninety Nez Perce dead, most women and children. Every Nez Perce family suffered at least one loss. Sixty Nez Perce sharpshooters held off a superior force of United State Seventh Infantry under Colonel John Gibbon, while Joseph led survivors out of immediate danger. By the end of the battle, thirty or more Nez Perce warriors had died, killing twenty-five soldiers, five civilian volunteers, and wounding another thirty-eight. Of the seventeen officers with Gibbon, fourteen lay dead or suffered wounds. Although Looking Glass survived this battle, faith in his leadership had been shaken. From this point on, the people placed in Chief Hototo (Lean Elk) and in Joseph more authority and responsibility.

Due to the casualties inflicted upon Gibbon’s troops, the U. S. Army was not able to pursue the Nez Perce immediately. Joseph organized the surviving women, children, and elderly men while the warriors regrouped under Lean Elk, who had friends among the Crow in Montana and Wyoming. Thinking that the Crow Tribe, would help them out, the survivors crossed Horse Prairie and Bannock Pass and reentered Idaho, turning east toward Yellowstone National Park. Along the way, more Nez Perce warriors, as well as several women and children who had been wounded at the Big Hole died, adding to the level of frustration and grief among the remaining people. Chief Joseph and other leaders attempted to restrain those seeking revenge, but three ranches were raided for horses and five white ranchers, as well as another five civilian freight-teamsters were killed en route, prompting the whites throughout the region into a “siege mentality,” taking up arms in stockades.

This turned the eastern press against the Nez Perce. Harper’s Weekly , a very popular magazine of the day gave its readers the following images of the war, with “Joseph and his brethren” depicted as wild and drunk.

General Howard continued his pursuit and almost cornered the Nez Perce but a party of warriors led by Ollokot, Looking Glass and Toohoolhoolzote held them off and ran off the army’s mule herd, temporarily immobilizing them. By late August, the Nez Perce had entered West Yellowstone and began moving up the Madison and Firehole rivers. Newspapermen throughout the country were now involved in reporting the saga of the fleeing Nez Perce, especially since they had entered the nation’s only “national park” where tourists were “at risk.” Nine were actually captured in one tourist party, and ten in another, adding to the hysteria. All but two were freed or managed to escape, suffering minor wounds, but the nation was angry in the wake of the defeat of General Custer and his entire column of troops the year before at Little Big Horn. Americans demanded revenge.

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