THE LAST INDIAN

Chief Joseph's greatest gift as a leader of the Nez Perces was his ability to get inside the heads of his enemies By Elliott West DREAMWEAVE

He was called the Red , a military genius who outwitted and outfought several army commands while being chased across nearly a quarter of the nation. He appeared too as an ideal of native nobility who, when finally run to ground, gave up the fight so his people would not suffer further. His dignity at that surrender and the eloquence of his hundred words, ending with "From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever," secured his fame and his position as a worthy, even beloved opponent. He was Joseph, a chief of the Indians of the Columbia Plateau. When the Nez Perces went to war with the in June 1877, Joseph was pictured as a treacherous, irredeemably depraved savage. By the war's end he had emerged, improbably, as a hero, in particular as a model of leadership— cagey and dogged, courageous, brilliant in a fight yet humane toward innocents in harm's way, a great warrior who balanced determination with integrity. and the Nez Of all American Indian leaders during the torturous four centuries after Perces outfoxed the U.S. Army on a 1,500-mile Columbus, Joseph was among the most gifted. He was also among the most retreat to in 1877. misunderstood. He was not the brilliant war leader immortalized in popular press accounts. Instead, his true gifts were as a diplomat skilled in the subtle game of reading the mood, values and fantasies of his victorious enemies, then playing them to his people's advantage. Like most Indian leaders, he learned that native understandings of society and authority—of who was in charge and what being in charge meant—were profoundly different from and opposed to those of the

"Chief Joseph and the Challenge of Indian Leadership," by Elliott Went, iidapted from Profiles in Leadership: Historians on the Elusive Quality of Greatness, edited by Walter Isaacson, © 2010 by W.W. Norton & Company Ina & 2010 by Elliott West Used with the permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company Inc.

56 AMERICAN HISTORY "S-

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"Good words will not give my people a home," Chief Joseph told U.S. officials in 1879. American nation. Unlike most, he took them the usual problems. Into the raw what he learned and applied it, turning town of Lewiston came not only miners A it back on the government that had but what a visitor called "the last pressed its ideas of power on him and scrapings of the earth," thieves and brought thieves his people, challenging the republic's cutpurses, sharpers, whores and leaders on their own terms. whoremongers, who found prime and cutpurses, targets in local Indians. Farmers He was born in 1840, with grabbed land along the rivers, and whores and two names. His father, Tuekakas, was ranchers pastured cattle on Nez Perce headman of the largest Nez Perce horse pastures and their vital camas whoremongers- band that lived in a valley called the fields. An 1855 treaty with the Territory Wallowa, meaning "Land of the of had left Nez Perce Winding Waters." The Wallowa, in country largely intact, but little was 'the last scrapings today's far eastern , west of done to stop the rush, and by the time the Snake River, was isolated but the strikes played out after a couple of of the earth'who spectacularly beautiful, with lakes, years, whites were well entrenched in streams and lush summer pastures. Lewiston and among the northern found prime Tuekakas was baptized in 1839 by bands. Washington's response was not the Presbyterian missionary Henry to enforce the old treaty but to demand targets in local H. Spalding and chose the Christian a new one. The resulting council at name Joseph. He in turn christened Lapwai in June 1863 was a turning Indians his new son Ephraim but gave him point in Nez Perce history and in the as well a Nez Perce name, Heinmot nature of their leadership. Tooyalakekt, which roughly translated Nez Perce leadership varied with as "Thunder Rising to Loftier place and circumstance. Day-to-day special gifts in the task at hand: a fine Mountain Heights." "Ephraim" never leadership was by band headmen, strategist and warrior to lead them took hold, but whites later called the sometimes called chiefs, recognized for on a raid, a coolheaded bargainer to maturing son Young Joseph. skills at dealing with other bands and negotiate with others. His leadership In 1860 as Young Joseph was for being modest, generous, fair and was conditional and temporary. entering full manhood, the Nez Perces always ready with kind words. When Beginning in 1840, however, the felt a shock of the sort that, more than bands came together in a joined effort, government had insisted that one man, any other, shattered the well-being they chose as a leader someone with a "head chief," speak for all the Nez of Indians: a gold rush. News Perce bands, and since then some of strikes in their homelands brought English-speaking Nez Perce had acted thousands of gold seekers and with WILY RETREAT as their spokesman. In 1863 that man Hoping in vain to escape was Lawyer, a Christian friendly to confinement on a reservation, assimilation and phant to Washington's the Nez Perces made a bold run for Canada between June wishes. Calvin Hale, who as the and September 1877. 's Indian superintendent was the government's Bears Paw • agent at the council, would claim that Lawyer held full power to act on all the bands' behalf. WA At an all-night meeting during the council, however, whatever gauzy unity existed among the bands ended. After Lapwai hours of argument over the new treaty, • Clearwater those for and against it shook hands Wallowa and, "with a warm and emotional White Bird manner," wrote an army officer who Wallowa was there, "declared the Nez Perce OR nation dissolved." Now leaders of fully independent bands would speak for their people alone. A few hours later Route of Nez Perce ID Yellow^one W the bands opposed to a treaty left for Nez Perce Homeland Nationalpark S 1) home. That same day Lawyer and cooperating band chiefs signed what Looi(ing Giass was Washington was to claim was a treaty the principai military governing all Nez Perces. All the leader during the bands that signed the treaty would . but keep their lands. All that had refused tactical errors cost him his position and. and gone home would lose theirs. A ultimately, his life. pleased Calvin Hale wrote that for about 8 cents an acre, the government would gain just under 7 million acres of valuable mining, farming and grazing lands, 90 percent of what had been guaranteed the Nez Perces eight years earlier. Many Nez Perces today still call this the steal treaty Years later Joseph, who at 23 was almost certainly with his father at the council, explained in simple marketplace terms what had happened: "Suppose a white man should come to me and say, 'Joseph, I like your horses, and I want to buy them.' I say to him, 'No, my horses suit me, I will not sell them.' Then a neighbor tells the hopeful buyer: 'Pay me the money, and I will sell you Joseph's horses.'" The deal completed, the white man then demands "his" animals. "If we sold our lands to the government," Joseph explained, "this is the way they were bought." For several years the isolated Wallowa drew only slight attention from settlers. Old Joseph sensed what was coming, however, and as he was dying in 1871, his words were of vigilance. "You are the chief of these people. They look to you to guide them," his son recalled his father saying. "Always remember that your father never sold his country....A few years more and white men will be all Howard, it was his first significant test of white invaders and the return of around you....This country holds your as a leader. Riding into the Lapwai golden times if converts shunned father's body. Never sell the bones of agency at the head of 60 followers, he farming and lived by what the land your father and mother." Young Joseph, was physically impressive, well over 6 and rivers gave naturally. Followers now Chief Joseph, took the words to feet tall, with a powerful chest, broad were called Dreamers, from the belief heart and never sold the Wallowa. shoulders and a vdde face with large that God spoke to them especially in Keeping it, however, was another matter. dark eyes and a high forehead. As he visions while asleep, and wore their A confrontation finally came, in sat down vdth the commissioners, his hair in a rearing pompadour. June 1876, when a rancher in the expression was unthreatening but The commissioners were struck Wallowa killed a Nez Perce man. unrevealing: a diplomat's face. He by Joseph's "alertness and dexterity Tensions heightened over the next wore his hair in twin braids and in an in intellectual fencing" and even more weeks, and Washington used the crisis upward sweep in front—a sign of by his "serious and feeling manner" to press its hardest case for the lands. another resistance to the new order. in expressing his people's fundamental When Joseph met that fall with a Joseph followed a native religious beliefs. Calmly he explained that the special presidential commission led movement that had arisen in the late Wallowa was "sacred to his affections." by the uncompromising Oliver Otis 1850s that promised the banishment He was a child to it, and so to leave

DECEMBER 2010 59 "would be to part with himself." As for 'I am tired of and shot and killed four white settlers his people's turning to agriculture, the and wounded another, and when they "Creative Power" had meant for people returned to boast in the camp, more to live on the earth as they had found fighting. Our warriors set off for killing of their own. it and to feed themselves with what it Over the next two days, 14 more settlers freely gave. (How could I take up the chiefs are killed. were killed. Meanwhile a stunned plow, asked the founding prophet of Howard wired for several hundred the Dreamers, and "take a knife and The children reinforcements and sent what troops tear my mother's bosom? Then when I he had, a hundred green cavalrymen die she will not take me to her bosom are freezing to under Captain David Perry, to protect to rest.") Blunted again and again, the settlers crowding into the towns of commissioners finally told Joseph that death. My heart Grangeville and Mount . When he faced a government now ruling Perry learned the bands were camped from ocean to ocean. Surrender your at nearby White Bird Creek, he chose homeland, they said, or face its full is sick and sad. instead to ride against them. His force. Joseph answered that he would attack at dawn on June 17 quickly not—could not—give up the Wallowa. From where the reversed into a rout. In less than an hour the Nez Perces killed 34 soldiers Over the next several months sun now stands while suffering only two wounded. Joseph and his brother OUokut ("Frog") So began the Nez Perce War, during tried to dance away from a showdown, I will fight no which some 800 Nez Perces outwitted but in mid-May 1877 they agreed to the U.S. Ai-my over a 1,500-mile another council at Lapwai, this one for more forever' retreat. It lasted 15 weeks. The bands all bands rejecting the treaty. To speak in the fight—the majority of Nez Perces for them, the band chiefs chose an by then were on the reservation and older warrior and holy man among the remained at peace—first led the army Dreamers, ("Noise" or with the divine. For 72 years after on a chase around their home country's "Growler"), the leader of a band even pledging their alliance as equals to the rugged mountains and wide prairies. more isolated than Joseph's. He was as United States, Nez Perce leaders had In several clashes they at least held confrontational and abrupt as Joseph kept their promise while maneuvering their own, but they could maneuver for was cool, and the more Howard within the reality of an expanding only so long. A month into the war pressed him, the harder he pushed nation. Now, as the resisting bands they made a choice no other western back, sneering at the claim that his dismantled their lives and prepared to Indians ever had. They would run for people were under Washington's uproot, it appeared they would be one it. In mid-July they crossed the authority. "So long as the earth keeps more people, like dozens across the Bitterroot Mountains eastward to me, I want to be left alone," the old West, giving in to the power they had over Lolo Pass. Their hope Dreamer answered. "I am NOT so misjudged. In fact they were about was to find temporary refuge among going on the reservation." With that to take a course unique among Indian their Crow allies on the Montana Howard and another officer grabbed peoples. It made them famous, even as plains and to return after passions had Toohoolhoolzote by the arms and it led them into their darkest time, and cooled, a hope based on the belief that walked him to the nearby guardhouse. as it played out, Joseph found himself by passing over the mountains, away Apparently cowed, the other leaders pressed into roles that none before him from their immediate enemy, they submitted. At a final meeting a week had faced and leading his people in would be out of harm's way. later Howard issued another, especially ways he could not have imagined. They soon learned differently. A shocking order. The bands had one command under Colonel month to gather all belongings, Leaving behind hundreds was dispatched in pursuit, and at dawn round up their herds and report to of cattle, the resisting bands, led by on August 9 at Big Hole, a traditional the reservation. Joseph, Toolhoolhoolzote and White camping spot in western Montana, The Lapwai council was as stark a Bird, leader of another resisting Gibbon launched a surprise attack. confrontation of native and national band, packed up all they could and by Although they took heavy casualties, cultures as the 19th century offers. June 14 had assembled at a traditional the Nez Perces once again turned back The steal treaty was almost incidental. camping spot just south of the their attackers and nearly annihilated The true clash was between different reservation. The next day they were to them. From August 26 to September 5, ways of addressing the world, two cross into new, constricted lives. Early the Indians passed through the newly drastically different social orders, that morning, however, three young created Yellowstone National Park, perceptions of identity and relations men rode down to the Salmon River killing a few tourists before breaking

60 AMERICAN HISTORY ñ-ee of what had seemed an led on the young men is dead. It is Joseph's near veneration is inescapable trap as they left. After cold and we have no blankets. The another of the war's revelations, but not their friends the Crows turned them little children are freezing to death. because its picture is true. Its lessons away, they fought and bested their My people, some of them, have run are in what the public needed to see pursuers one more time and broke away to the hills and have no and believe and in how a gifted leader northward across the Montana plains. blankets, no food; no one knmvs leai'ned those lessons and used them to The bands' goal now was to reach where they are—perhaps freezing to find a way out of his people's dark time. Canada and live among the several death. I want to have time to look In fact Joseph never devised hundred Sioux under , who for my children and see haw many military strategy or led anyone in had fled there the year before. They I can find. Maybe I shall find them battle. If he had a role in the fray, nearly made it. Just 40 miles shy of among the dead. Hear me, my it apparently was to watch over the the international border, at the base of chiefs. I am tired; my heart is sick camp and horse herd, and his greatest the on the last and sad. From where the sun now contribution was to save the animals day of September, a command under stands I will fight no mx/re forever. at the start of the Big Hole fight. War Colonel Nelson Miles caught them, was one of those unusual occurrences drove off their horses, and laid siege Exaggerated press accounts saluted when men with skills for the moment to their camp. Joseph's famous Joseph as a leader with skills "as if were pulled into temporary service. surrender came a week later. they had been acquired at West Point," In 1877 those leaders were Looking The words Joseph ostensibly said and the New York Tribune ranked him Glass, Toohoolhoolzote, Joseph's on the snowy afternoon of October 5 and his warriors above the "cavalry men brother OUokut, Rainbow and others. would come to be indelibly set in the of the Don and Volga." His compassion Joseph's gifts were in diplomacy, and public mind: was said to match his generalship. even so, he was one among several in Under his orders, readers learned, the that role. When the war was over, it Tell General Howard I know Nez Perces had forgone scalping, spared was time for a bargainer. Besides, as Ids heart. Whut he told trie before, women, children and the wounded, and he said in his supposed surrender I have in my heart. I am tired treated captives kindly. This is the speech, just about everybody else in of fighting. Our chiefs are Joseph who has survived in the popular authority was dead. killed. Looking Glass is dead. perception, the master strategist The surrender speech solidified Toohoolhoolzote is dead. The old formidable in a fight and, once a victor, the public perception of Joseph the men are all dead. It is the young as a western editor concluded, "almost commander. But he spoke virtually men who say yes and no. He who too humane for belief." no English, and whatever he said was

DECEMBER 2010 61 conveyed through two couriers and miserable winter and sweltering let me be a free a translator. The famous words were summer they were exiled to the Indian written down by Howard's aide-de- Territory (today's ). They man-free to camp, Charles Erskine Scott Wood, spent nearly seven years in what they who in the decades ahead became a called Eeikish Pah (the Hot Place, or follow the religion prolific poet, a successful attorney and the Heat). Nearly half of them died defender of radical causes, and a bitter there, including most young children of my fathers, critic of the government, especially and many elderly. of its treatment of Indians. After the From the outset Joseph gauged free to think and surrender he and Joseph quickly took what advantage whites offered, and he to each other, and years later Wood leveraged it as best he could. As he led talk and act for sent his son to spend two summers the bands into Bismarck, protected by with the Nez Perce chief. Whether troopers, locals broke through the lines the writerly Wood composed or shaped in a frenzy of admiring generosity, myself-and I will the speech to cultivate sympathy for a thrusting pies, boiled hams and other man and a people he admired cannot eatables on people that, the last Joseph obey every law' be known, but it's a valid question. knew, had been condemned as rabid, Joseph was no historical fraud, degenerate savages. As for Joseph however. Behind the misperceptions is himself, a reporter who interviewed another story of heroism and masterful him wrote that this "ideal Indian," a leadership. It does not end with the "prince of misfortune," was "just the surrender but begins with it. character to live in romance and Joseph and his people were poetry..,.A more noble captive has first marched to Bismarck, Dakota never graced our land." Later, as up to Territory, then taken by train to Fort 5,000 locals in a day came to see the Leavenworth, Kan., where after a Nez Perces camped in a malarial

Chief Joseph was denied his last wish—to return to the Wallowa Valley in Oregon. He died on this Washington reservation, some ik, 300 miles away.

f bottom at , Joseph social elite "pressed up to shake the a group of Nez Perces sent to live sat stoically in public view and granted savage hand." Reporters found him in northern Washington State. The interviews to fawning journalists. "I a living exhibit of the beoju sauvage, Wallowa still remained off limits to expect what I speak will be said dignified and regal, wearing "that them. Joseph subsequently shed white throughout the land," he said at one melancholy air that makes him so trappings, refusing a cabin and living l)()int, "and I only want to speak good." interesting to the people who have in his lodge, and he continued to try to abused him so." When he spoke publicly, bring his band fully home. He went east During the next months and it was of that abuse, but his message again in 1897, met with several officials, years hü directed that good speech, was subtler than that. rode in the parade dedicating Ulysses always through a translator, at those He now knew his people must S. Grant's tomb and attended Buffalo with power to help. In January 1879, change and be part of this nation, he Bill Cody's Wild West show in Madison he was permitted to travel to the said, but the nation's leaders ought to Square Garden. He was permitted two national capital and meet with change, too. If all were to live under one brief trips to his home country to plead high officials, including President law, as the Nez Perces had been told for his case to locals and to visit his Fiutherford Hayes. He spoke at so long, then all should be treated alike: father's grave, but ultimately failed in Lincoln Hall to members of Congress, "Let me be a ñ-ee man—free to travel, his quest to bring his people back to ("abinet members and diplomats, and free to stop, free to work, free to the Land of Winding Waters. He died his dictated account of the war was trade.. .free to follow the religion of my in 1904, probably from a heart attack, published the following April in the fathers, free to think and talk and act while sitting by a fire in his lodge. NoHh American Remew. He waded for myself—and I will obey every law." into the social swirl. At a White House In 1885 the artful efforts of Joseph Elliott West is the author of The Last i-eception, a "model of courtly grace" and others paid off, and the Nez Perces Indian War: The Nez Perce Story. in blankets and shell earrings, he became the rarest of rarities in Indian bowed to the first lady and chatted relations, a removed people permitted with General William Sherman as the to go back. Joseph, however, was among

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