gations toward the Indians. A failure to do this is looked upon as bad faith, and can be productive of only bad results." At last Chief Joseph consented to remove from the Wallowa Valley with his band, and go to the Lapwai Reservation. The incidents of the council in which this consent was finally wrung from him, are left on record in Chief Joseph's own words, in an article written by him (through an interpreter) and published in the North American Review in 1874. It is a remarkable contribution to Indian history. It drew out a reply from General O. O. Howard, who called his paper "The true History of the Wallowa Campaign;" published in the North American Review two months after Chief Joseph's paper. Between the accounts given by General Howard and by Chief Joseph of the events preceding the Nez Percé war, there are noticeable discrepancies. General Howard says that listened to the "oft-repeated dreamer nonsense of the chef, 'Too-hool-hool-suit,' with no impatience, but finally said to him: Twenty times over I hear that the earth is your mother, and about the chieftainship of the earth. I want to hear it no more."" Chief Joseph says: "General Howard lost his temper, and said 'Shut up! I don't want to hear any more of such talk.' "Too-hool-hool-suit answered, 'Who are you, that you ask us to talk, and then tell me I sha'n't talk? Are you the Great Spirit? Did you make the world?" " General Howard, quoting from his record at the time, says: "The rough old fellow, in his most provoking tone, says something in a short sentence, looking fiercely at me. The interpreter quickly says: 'He demands what person pretends to divide this land, and put me on it?' In the most decided voice I said, 'I am the man. I stand here for the President, and there is no spirit, bad or good, that will hinder me. My orders are plain, and will be executed.'' Chief Joseph says: "General Howard replied, 'You are an impudent fellow, and I will put you in the guard-house,' and then ordered a soldier to arrest him." General Howard says: "After telling the Indians that this bad advice would be their ruin, I asked the chiefs to go with me to look at their land. The old man (Too-hool-hool-suit) shall not go. I will leave him with Colonel Perry.' He says, 'Do you want to scare me with reference to my body?' I said, 'I will leave your body with Colonel Perry.' I then arose and led him out of the council, and gave him into the charge of Colonel Perry." have nothing to take You can arrest me, but Chief Joseph says: "Too-hool-hool-suit made no resistance. He asked General Howard, 'Is that your order? I don't care. I have expressed my heart to you. back. I have spoken for my country. you cannot change me, or make me take back what I have said.' The soldiers came forward and seized my friend, and took him to the guard - house. My men whispered among themselves whether they should let this thing be done. I counselled them to submit. * * * Too-hool-hool-suit was prisoner for five days before he was released." 66 General Howard, it will be observed, does not use the word arrested," but as he says, later, "Too-hool-hool-suit was released on the pledge of Looking-glass and White Bird, and on his own earnest promise to behave better," it is plain that Chief Joseph did not misstate the facts. This Indian chief, therefore, was put under military arrest, and confined for five days, for uttering what General Howard calls a tirade" in a council to which the Indians had been asked to come for the purpose of consultation and expression of sentiment. 66 Does not Chief Joseph speak common-sense, as well as natural feeling, in saying, "I turned to my people and said, 'The arrest of Too-hool-hool-suit was wrong, but we will not resent the insult. We were invited to this council to express our hearts, and we have done so.' If such and so swift penalty as this, for "tirades" in council, were the law of our land, especially in the District of Columbia, it would be "no just cause of complaint" when Indians suffer it. But considering the frequency, length, and safety of "tirades" in all parts of America, it seems unjust not to permit Indians to deliver them. However, they do come under the head of "spontaneous productions of the soil;" and an Indian on a reservation is "invested with no such proprietorship" in anything which comes under that head.* Chief Joseph and his band consented to move. Chief Joseph says: “I said in my heart that, rather than have war, I would give up my country. I would give up my father's grave. I would give up everything rather than have the blood of white men upon the hands of my people." It was not easy for Joseph to bring his people to consent to move. The young men wished to fight. It has been told that, at this time, Chief Joseph rode one day through his village, with a revolver in each hand, saying he would shoot the first one of his warriors that resisted the Government. Finally, they gathered all the stock they could find, and began the move. A storm came, and raised the river so high that some of the cattle could not be taken across. Indian guards were put in charge of the cattle left behind. White men attacked these guards and took the cattle. After this Joseph could no longer restrain his men, and the warfare began, which lasted over two months. It was a masterly campaign on the part of the Indians. They were followed by General Howard; they had General Crook on their right, and General Miles in front, but they were not once hemmed in; and, at last, when they surrendered at Bear * Annual Report of the Indian Commissioner for 1878, p. 69. Paw Mountain, in the Montana Hills, it was not because they were beaten, but because, as Joseph says, "I could not bear to see my wounded men and women suffer any longer; we had lost enough already. *** We could have escaped from Bear Paw Mountain if we had left our wounded, old women and children, behind. We were unwilling to do this. We had never heard of a wounded Indian recovering while in the hands of white men. *** I believed General Miles, or I never would have surrendered. I have heard that he has been censured for making the promise to return us to Lapwai. He could not have made any other terms with me at that time. I could have held him in check until my friends came to my assistance, and then neither of the generals nor their soldiers would ever have left Bear Paw Mountain alive. On the fifth day I went to General Miles and gave up my gun, and said,‘From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more.' My people needed rest; we wanted peace." The terms of this surrender were shamefully violated. Joseph and his band were taken first to Fort Leavenworth and then to the Indian Territory. At Leavenworth they were placed in the river bottom, with no water but the river water to drink. "Many of my people sickened and died, and we buried them in this strange land," says Joseph. "I cannot tell how much my heart suffered for my people while at Leavenworth. The Great Spirit Chief who rules above seemed to be looking some other way, and did not see what was being done to my people." Yet with a marvellous magnanimity, and a clear-headed sense of justice of which few men would be capable under the circumstances, Joseph says: "I believe General Miles would have kept his word if he could have done so. I do not blame him for what we have suffered since the surrender. I do not know who is to blame. We gave up all our horses, over eleven hundred, and all our saddles, over one hundred, and we have not heard from them since. Somebody has got our horses." This narrative of Chief Joseph's is profoundly touching; a very Iliad of tragedy, of dignified and hopeless sorrow; and it stands supported by the official records of the Indian Bureau. "After the arrival of Joseph and his band in Indian Territory, the bad effect of their location at Fort Leavenworth manifested itself in the prostration by sickness at one time of two hundred and sixty out of the four hundred and ten; and 'within a few months' in the death of 'more than one-quarter of the entire number.'"* "It will be borne in mind that Joseph has never made a treaty with the United States, and that he has never surrendered to the Government the lands he claimed to own in Idaho. *** Joseph and his followers have shown themselves to be brave men and skilful soldiers, who, with one exception, have observed the rules of civilized warfare. *** These Indians were encroached upon by white settlers, on soil they believed to be their own, and when these encroachments became intolerable, they were compelled in their own estimation to take up arms."t Chief Joseph and a remnant of his band are still in Indian Territory, waiting anxiously the result of the movement now being made by the Ponca chief, Standing Bear, and his friends and legal advisers, to obtain from the Supreme Court a decision which will extend the protection of the civil law to every Indian in the country. Of the remainder of the Nez Percés (those who are on the Lapwai Reservation), the report of the Indian Bureau for 1879 is that they "support themselves entirely without subsistence from the Government; procure of their own accord, and at their own expense, wagons, harness, and other farming imple ments beyond the amount furnished by the Government under * Annual Report of the Indian Commissioner for 1878, p. 33. |