Chief Joseph
~ In-mut-too-yah-lat-lat ~
~ Thunder coming up over the land from the water ~
~Nez Perce~
The Legend Continues

In 1855 Chief Joseph's father, Old Joseph, signed a treaty with the U.S. that allowed his people to retain much of their traditional lands. In 1863 another treaty was created that severely reduced the amount of land, but Old Joseph maintained that this second treaty was never agreed to by his people.

A showdown over the second "non-treaty" came after Chief Joseph assumed his role as Chief in 1877.

After months of fighting and forced marches, many of the Nez Perce were sent to a reservation in what is now Oklahoma, where many died from malaria and starvation.

Chief Joseph tried every possible appeal to the federal authorities to return the Nez Perce to the land of their ancestors. In 1885, he was sent along with many of his band to a reservation in Washington where, according to the reservation doctor, he later died of a broken heart.

Chief Joseph, was kept captive, never being allowed to return to his Nez Pearce Homeland even though General Miles promised he could live in Idaho. Chief Joseph is buried on the Colville Reservation in Washington and today I visited his grave to do ceremony.

The small village there consists of one gas station....very few houses and no businesses...very desolate in an unforgiving country of arid, desert surroundings. His grave sits on a small hill....surrounded by others of the People...most without headstones, but some with small rocks marking their final resting place.

I find him easily, sensing to know exactly where to go...he is buried under the only tree in the cemetery....a sort of gnarled, broken, old, withered tree....A marker is there, furnished by Western Washington University in 1906, a few months after he died in 1905 at the age of 60, alone and forgotten by most of that time.

A sense of profound sadness captures me as I sit by the neglected grave of one of our People's greatest Leaders...Long ago items, now withered and decaying....left by those who do now remember his greatness, scattered in disarray, cluttering the ground in their glory to him.

Arrows..beads...plastic roses..feathers...strips of decaying cloths....a Colville Reservation emblem jacket, hanging on the tree...a bic lighter...many cigarettes stained by rains, or teardrops...a plastic water bottle....a priceless bone necklace draped on the tombstone...rocks....hand drawn pictures...private written messages held down by rocks....and countless coins, strewn all around broken vases holding stems of sage.

No one seems to clean up around it. It bothers me to know that this great leader is neglected as I sit caressed in the cool shadows of that ancient tree and I try to understand it all.

I notice that they even buried him facing West and not East towards his homeland....I weep...my tears joining countless unknown others who have felt the pain there. I tell him I hope he has found his peace....and the winds begin to come. Another there with me, who is watching from a respectful distance tells me later I have spoken aloud..."He is here."

The winds become stronger and he tells me later that they suddenly change direction, coming from the North...the direction they captured and brought him here from.

The light is dimming....I look up...and shade my eyes, looking over the horizon hills....seeing in my heart his figure on a pony. Silently I watch....and continue with the sage and cedar....and feel an overwhelming sense of sacredness like I have never felt before. I look up in the overhanging branches and see the long deserted birds nest...and the sky shows clear. Through its twigs I see the Nez Perce in their long retreat....fighting...struggling to reach freedom and asylum with Sitting Bull across the Border in Canada...for 105 days...always moving...700 people...women, children...elderly...walking 1,800 miles...only to be captured within 50 miles of their destination and freedom. Captured only because he was forced to surrender, refusing to leave the sick and dying of his People there, alone.

I remember that his tactics were so brilliant they are taught to this day at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.....and as I clear the decay from the ground which holds him captive, my heart remembers his words, "From where this sun now stands, ."

I watch the sun leaving me....and the shadow of this warrior falls back into the mountains. I touch the ground which caresses him....and weep for a man who believed in the goodness of others....who wanted nothing more than freedom....who was so great that an entire People walked those tortuous miles in freezing sleet and snows... who was never allowed to see his home again....and these words come strong to my heart to share with you... spoken from that sacred place:

"We live, we die, and like the grass and trees, renew ourselves from the soft clods of the grave. Stones crumble and decay, faiths grow old and they are forgotten but new beliefs are born. The faith of the villages is dust now...but it will grow again....like the trees. May serenity circle on silent wings and catch the whisper of the winds."

I turn and leave honor in my farewell as the shadows take him back....Now I shall miss him....even more.

Harper's Weekly, August 16, 1890 Volume 34.

The remnant of the Nez Perce to which Joseph belongs are now on a portion of the Cherokee Reservation, purchased in 1878 from the Cherokee. It is a square containing about 91,000 acres, lying across the Salt Fork of the Arkansas River, just above that which was bought for the Poncas. They have the Poncas on the east, and the Otoes and Missourias on the southeast. Kansas lies well to the north, and one crosses the big Osage Reservation when approaching it from the eastward. After their capitulation to General Miles in 1877, the remnant of the tribe, numbering 431 souls, were taken to Fort Leavenworth, where the location of their camp was so unhealthy that they lost many by disease. They were removed to their reservation on the Salt Fork in 1879, whence it has been proposed to move them again, in pursuance of the hand-to-hand policy which has affected Cherokee, Osage, and other larger nations in their gradual removal to the West before the swarming settlers. It was probably because of business relating to the further removal of the Indians that Chief Joseph came within range of our sculptor, and found himself immortalized in clay. Though he had ridden hard for many days to reach head-quarters, the old chief was fresh and alert. But, curiously enough, he found that sitting for his portrait was quite a different task from sitting a horse. Mr. Warner says that it wearied Chief Joseph exceedingly, far more than it does white men who are much less vigorous.

The Nez Perce belonged in what is now the State of Idaho, and the greater part of the tribe remained on reservations in that Territory. A few years ago several thousand were flourishing in the northern part of the Territory, having farms, schools, and churches. Other accounts make them out as debased by drink and the vices of white adventurers. A minority of the Nez Perce never agreed to the cession of their lands, and occupied the army for some months at various times in making them submit. The name given the Nez Perce by the French coureurs de bois is singularly inappropriate, as they do not mutilate their noses, and seem never to have done so as a tribe, whatever may have been the fashion in some branch of their kindred. The Sahaptins, for example, who have given the name to a congeries of tribes including the Nez Perce, are said to have bored the nose in order to carry a nose ornament like the Hindoo women and some tribes of Brazil.

Chief Joseph calls himself Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekht, and the tribe is said to use Numepo as their preferred title, though nomenclature among Indians is a parlous thing, many names at the same time and different names at different epochs being the fashion with them individually and in the mass. He is a very high type of Indian as regards brains and courage, but he possesses many of the peculiarities of the savage. His eyes are dull and his features stolid as a rule, but if a bird passes, an animal makes a sound in the bush, an insect comes within earshot or eyesight, something happens in that vacant look. Things that we do not regard have hidden meanings to him, either in connection with the weather, or by reason of superstitions which link certain results with certain appearances, or because the sight of one animal or insect has to do with the presence or the absence of another. The sculptor says that only when some beast, bird, or insect was in sight did the old chief look the warrior and the Indian. When that was gone he relapsed into the apparently unthinking state of an animal, and showed very plainly that to remain in one position while the clay was modelling itself under the artist's fingers was a penance greater than to wait immovable for hours until game revealed itself or an enemy crept in sight.

Chief Joseph belongs to the light-colored Indians. As most people are aware, the native races vary in tint from a brown that approaches the blackness of a negro to a light coffee-color not so dark as many Europeans. The Quichuas of Peru are very black, and the Heidahs of Queen Charlotte and Blackfeet of the Saskatchewan are fair. The Pammas of Brazil are lighter than many Spaniards and Portuguese, while the Iroquois and Algonquin tribes are coppery or light brown. But what is often overlooked is the apparent unimportance of climate on the color of the Indians under the arctic circle or at the equator. Were it not for the broad plaits of hair and absence of beard, giving to Chief Joseph that curious resemblance, in our eyes, to an old woman which we see in so many Indians, the face might be that of a European. As heavy lips, as bent a nose, as high a cheek-bone, may be seen in any crowd of white men. The forehead is good, and the brain cavity ample. In sailors and woodsmen we find the same close-lipped, somewhat saturine expression.

On the artistic side one may note how Mr. Warner has felt the building up of the cranium and jaw, and how strongly yet subtly he has modelled the texture of the face. From the inscription the marks of quotation might well be spared at the words Joseph and Nez Perce, while the word Indians itself might be criticised as redundant.