Saga of Chief Joseph

by Helen Addison Howard

  In 1963 the University of Nebraska Press, recognizing the appeal of Howard’s work, arranged with Caxton to offer War Chief Joseph in paperback under its Bison Books imprint, where it remains, revised and retitled, today. The paperback edition was published at about the same time that Caxton and Howard were preparing the book’s fifth edition, a release again coinciding with U.S. involvement in a major foreign war. While planning her revisions, Howard once more consulted Yellow Wolf and, as she read Hear Me, My Chiefs! for the first time, she realized that the “thesis of War Chief Joseph [was] no longer tenable.” She thus proposed a significantly revised and retitled work with a “new interpretation of Joseph” as “a ‘guardian of the people,’ a diplomat, a peace leader and an occasional warrior.”17 In her prologue to the retitled book, Howard credits McWhorter for “painstakingly collect[ing] over a period of thirty-six years” the Native “testimony” that forced the reappraisal.18

  Because the revised and retitled work was essentially a new publication, Caxton sought input from an outside reviewer, whose response exemplifies the resistance of mainstream historians to McWhorter’s approach: “Mr. McWhorter’s materials were obtained, mostly through interpreters, some thirty years after the events narrated occurred and therefore must be classed as ‘reminiscence.’” It was, therefore, suspect as solid historical evidence.19 (This reviewer scants the fact that O. O. Howard’s My Life and Experiences among Our Hostile Indians, a standard historical source, was published thirty years after the Nez Perce War.)

  Nevertheless, Caxton agreed to Howard’s plan. She changed her title to Saga of Chief Joseph and made numerous cosmetic emendations, changing “he” to “they” in an effort to emphasize the communal nature of wartime leadership. Regrettably she did not revise her freighted language, retaining terms such as “primitive,” “barbaric,” “warpath,” and “savage treachery.” She substantively changed her account of the 1877 campaign. Here she replaced her original characterization of Joseph as “a Napoleon” with this statement: “As the Nez Perce evidence clearly shows, . . . Looking Glass and Poker Joe (Lean Elk) served as war chiefs on most of the march. The Indians . . . fought a defensive war. Their strategy and tactics on the retreat were worked out . . . to suit the immediate exigencies as they arose. Yet Joseph became the symbol of the fighting Nez Perces’ skill and courage, and through no overt act on his part.”20

  In 1965 Saga of Chief Joseph was released. The book’s reviews were similar to those of its earlier iterations. Frederick Hoxie found it to be “admirable for both its pace and accuracy,” but concluded, “Howard does not succeed in carrying her readers beyond the popular notion that Joseph was a noble primitive who suffered with dignity.”21 By 1971, however, when Caxton released a second printing of Saga, historians, teachers, and custodians of public memory had begun to embrace revisionist, ethnographically and orally based approaches to history. For example, in 1972 the English Journal discussed the “ethnic scene” in publishing, mentioning Saga as “the most scholarly” of a new group of biographies.22

  Since 1965 scholars have followed McWhorter’s lead. Alvin M. Josephy’s The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the Northwest (1965) presented an encyclopedic tribal history to the war of 1877. It was followed by Noon-Ne-Me-Poo, an official tribal history written by Allen P. Slickpoo Sr. (1973). Elliott West’s The Last Indian War (2011) exemplifies the fascination this subject still holds for scholars. Others have extended the history of the Nez Perce peoples beyond 1877. J. Diane Pearson’s The Nez Perces in Indian Territory: Nimiipuu Survival (2008) documents Joseph’s leadership during the Oklahoma internment, while my book The Allotment Plot (2012) extends tribal history through 1892, and Mick Gidley’s Kopet (1981) presents a detailed photographic account of Joseph’s last years.

  All these historians owe a debt to Helen Addison Howard, even if they do not list her work as a bibliographic source. They rely on the secondary sources that she was the first to compile in what has become a standard bibliography. They recognize, as Howard did, that history told by the victors is, at best, an empty enterprise and willingly honor Native epistemologies and emphasize Nez Perce survivance in their accounts.

  Prologue

  This is the biography of Hin-mut-too-yah-lat-kekht, known to the whites as Young Joseph, Nez Perce chief, diplomat, and warrior. His story is the tragic and epic struggle of the American Indians who were relentlessly, fraudulently, and treacherously dispossessed of their hunting, fishing, and grazing grounds to satisfy the white man’s greed for more land. The conflict in which Joseph was forced to engage against the whites, known as the Nez Perce War of 1877, was the last important contest between the Indians and the United States Army. Dr. Cyrus T. Brady has called Joseph’s struggle “the story of the bitterest injustice toward a weak but independent people to which the United States ever set its hand.”1 Buffalo Bill also put the matter succinctly when he said: “They [the Indians] never broke a treaty, and we never kept one.”

  Joseph, it has been stated by earlier writers, conducted the most scientific campaign against the United States Army ever generaled by an Indian. No one knew better than he the tremendous odds against him, yet, for the freedom of his people, he fought with a puny force of never more than three hundred warriors against superior forces of a mighty nation of millions. He stood up in battle array against veteran troops, fresh from the victory of Appomattox, who were considered the “greatest soldiers in the world.” He has been called the “Red Napoleon of the West,” and his march toward Canada has been likened to Xenophon’s March of the Ten Thousand.

  However, more recent available data based on the Indian testimony so painstakingly collected over a period of thirty-six years by the late L. V. McWhorter and published in his Hear Me, My Chiefs! caused him to conclude that “Chief Joseph was not a military genius,” nor was he the “war chief” during the retreat, although he did fight as a warrior. Indians were individualists; they recognized no supreme head chieftain. Thus, Nez Perce tribal organization precluded this rank. Unlike the chain of command in the white man’s military organization, they had no commander in chief serving continuously throughout the campaign. Chief Looking Glass, though, along with Poker Joe (Lean Elk), did act as a war leader during much of the march. On the other hand, Joseph, according to McWhorter’s two dozen sources, was the camp guardian during the war, protector of the women and children and old men. His was a “sacred trust,” in McWhorter’s words. In the battles Joseph fought only in self-defense when the families of the five warring bands were hard pressed by the soldiers.

  But few men in the world’s history have fought for the cause of liberty on both the diplomatic and military fronts as long as this Nez Perce chief. For thirty-three years—from 1871 until 1904—Chief Joseph carried the burdens of his people and used every resource to win what he believed to be justice for his tribe. He tried every kind of peaceful means to gain his ends. Like Ghandi, he pursued a policy of noncooperation, and when this failed, he unwillingly sought recourse to arms.

  His valiant efforts, unparalleled in the Indian annals of America, gained for him an immortal place among the heroes of the West. Far more remarkable, however, was the chief’s strict adherence to the white man’s civilized code of war. The evidence shows that all the atrocities committed against civilians were perpetrated by White Bird’s band before Joseph reluctantly cast his lot with the hostiles.

  His character fulfilled the fondest desires of novelists who would depict the “noble red man.” Colonel G. O. Shields, who knew Joseph, rated him as “easily the peer of Red Cloud in courage and daring, of Logan or Tecumseh or John Grass in oratory; of Spotted Tail in craftiness; of Crazy Horse or Gall in strategy and generalship in battle; of Quanah Parker in statesmanship and diplomacy. He combined within himself all these attributes in a degree that made him greater than them all.”2

  His leadership won plaudits from his enemies. Brigadier General Oliver O. Howard, hero of Antietam and Gettysburg, and Joseph’s most persistent foe,
declared, “The leadership of Chief Joseph was indeed remarkable. No general could have planned a battle more skilfully.”3 Colonel Nelson A. Miles, the most famous of the Indian fighters, and victorious Union leader at the battle of Fredericksburg, wrote: “Chief Joseph was the highest type of Indian I have ever known.”4

  Yet beneath the chief’s bravery, whether he is to be considered as a “war” chief or as a “camp guardian,” there beat a heart of kindliness. White men who expected to meet a fierce and warlike savage were amazed to find Joseph cordial and gentle in manner. Judge William I. Lippincott, in a personal interview with Dan McGrath and the author at Los Angeles, California, said: “I have never before witnessed such tenderness and solicitude on the part of a man as Chief Joseph exhibited toward two Nez Perce women who were ill.”5 Among his own people the famous Nez Perce was given the place of honor wherever he appeared. Until his death he remained their recognized leader.

  When the Great Spirit Above6 beckoned this Indian patriot to enter the Spirit Lodge, a white man, Judge C. C. Goodwin, penned his eulogy: “. . . No son of the Northwest will ever be braver than he, more true to his native land than he; more self-controlled under terrible dangers than was he.” His character, Judge Goodwin continues, “will be an everlasting challenge to the schools to present a braver or more self-contained hero, or one with more native genius or more tenacity of purpose.”7

  This revised edition of the former volume is a reappraisal of the story of Young Joseph and of his people, an intelligent, peace-loving, and trustworthy tribe which preferred to “suffer wrong, rather than do wrong.” A new interpretation of Joseph’s war leadership is needed as a consequence of much significant material made available in the last twelve years through additional Indian sources.

  Part I

  Early History

  1

  The Valley of Winding Waters

  Many, many moons ago, so many moons that not even the oldest people of the tribe could remember, the Nez Perces1 wandered, a free and happy people, over a vast area of mountains, plains, valleys, and sagebrush plateaus. Their hunting and fishing grounds extended throughout what is now north central Idaho, southeastern Washington, and northeastern Oregon. For generations these healthy red men and women had been bred in the mountains, and they had become a tall, big-boned race whose erect and dignified carriage betokened their heritage of liberty. Their handsome features displayed intelligence and a gentle disposition. Like all free peoples they possessed an independent nature, as individuals as well as a tribe. The religion of their fathers held a powerful sway over their tribal life, which tended to make them strongly ethical.

  As the Great Spirit Above intended they should, these peace-loving and carefree Nez Perces roamed the grassy plateaus and valleys during the spring, summer, and fall, seeking pasturage for their large herds of well-bred horses. The men and boys devoted their days to hunting and fishing, while the women and girls gathered berries and herbs and made buckskin clothing out of deer hides, or wove baskets and mats out of rushes. In the spring and fall the Nez Perces migrated across the Bitterroot Mountains to engage in hunting buffalo on the plains of eastern Montana. But the cold storms of winter found their lodges in sheltered valleys.

  After Lewis and Clark passed through their country (about which more later), French-Canadian trappers came to trade the white man’s guns, cloth, metal articles, and trinkets for their pelts of beaver. The French traders, it is claimed, applied the name “Nez Percé” (Pierced Nose) to these Indians because a few members of the tribe used to pierce their noses to insert a shell for ornament. This habit was not a tribal custom, but the name clung to them. Young Joseph corroborates this theory:

  These men were Frenchmen, and they called our people “Nez Perces,” because they wore rings in their noses for ornaments. Although very few of our people wear them now, we are still called by the same name.2

  The Nez Perces called themselves “Numípu, or Nimípu, a word formed on the pronoun nun, we, with the addition of pu . . . commonly added to a place-name in forming the name of the inhabitants. Numípu, then, is equivalent to ‘we people.’ The name by which the tribe is known to us is the French equivalent of the appellation given to them by some other native tribes . . . in reference to a former custom of wearing a dentalium shell transversely in the septum of the nose.”3 Their language belongs to the Sahaptian (Shahaptin) group.

  Regarding their name, Herbert J. Spinden, who has written the only standard authority on the ethnology of the Nez Perce Indians, states:

  The word Shahaptin, which now supplies this need, [i. e. a native term embracing the whole stock] is of Salish origin and was used by the earliest fur traders as the name for both the Nez Percé nation and Snake river. . . . The word takes different forms . . . Chute-pa-lu, Chohoptins, Shawhaptins, etc. The word Chopunnish, much used by Lewis and Clark, may have been obtained from the eastern Salish or corrupted from the Indian word Tsupnitpelun. The word Chopunnish seems not to have been used after Lewis and Clark except on their authority. . . . Lewis and Clark sometimes call the tribe Pierced Noses, and mention explicitly the occasional wearing of the shell.4

  For a brief span the Nez Perces had intercourse with the traders of John Jacob Astor’s fur company. These traders were followed by the North West Company, a British firm, which took over the fort at Astoria and later merged with the Hudson’s Bay Company. This latter concern soon spread a chain of forts and trading posts throughout the Northwest.

  Then in 1832 Captain B. L. E. Bonneville’s expedition came into the country of the Nez Perces. These peaceful Indians hospitably received the Americans and gave aid to the leader on his journey to the Columbia River. Bonneville made an extended stay in the valley of Imnaha, near the Wallowa valley of winding waters, where he presumably became the guest of Old Joseph. Young Joseph had not yet been born.

  In return for the Indians’ kindness to him, Captain Bonneville treated the ailing and sick of the tribe. He found the Nez Perces eager to trade with the Americans, whom they called the “Big Hearts of the East.” They even requested a trading post to be established among them. Bonneville found these Indians “among the gentlest and least barbarous people of these remote wildernesses,” and also some of the most religious.5

  Their piety, according to a well-established account, caused them to send a delegation in 1831 to St. Louis in search of the white man’s teachers and Book. Although the authenticity of this spiritual quest by the Nez Perces has been doubted by some writers,6 a recent historian, after extensive and painstaking investigations, has presented conclusive documentary evidence that three Nez Perces and one Flathead did make the trip to St. Louis.7

  Arriving there, they were directed to Captain William Clark, who, since the expedition, had become governor of Missouri and superintendent of Indian Affairs. During the visit both Speaking Eagle and Man-of-the-morning died and were buried by Catholic priests. The third Indian, No-horns-on-his-head, died on the return journey near the mouth of the Yellowstone, and the fourth warrior, Rabbitskin-leggings, met a band of his tribespeople in the buffalo country of the present western Montana. He told them that the white men were coming and would bring the Book. But several years were to elapse before his words came true. The important thing was that the delegation’s journey brought the Western tribes to the attention of the missionaries as a fertile soil for their efforts.

  Meanwhile, the tribal life of the Nez Perces repeated its generations-old routine. In the summer camp of Chief Tu-eka-kas (Old Joseph)8 on the shores of Lake Wallowa in northeastern Oregon, the herald of the morning sun mounted his pony. According to ancient custom, when the first rays of the sun burst over the mountains to shed its golden warmth on the valley of winding waters and to light the copper skin of the herald, he rode through the village, shouting the morning speech:

  I wonder if every one is up! It is morning. We are alive, so thanks be! Rise up! Look about! Go see the horses, lest a wolf have killed one! Thanks be that the children are alive!—
and you, older men!—and you, older women!—also that your friends are perhaps alive in other camps. But elsewhere there are probably those who are ill this morning, and therefore the children are sad, and therefore their friends are sad.9

  His circuit of the village completed, the sun herald rode to his lodge to await his breakfast. Indian women soon emerged from the buffalo-hide tepees to stir the dying embers of the fires. The men came out later to stand around the flames, warming themselves, while their women prepared serviceberry cakes, blueback salmon, wild carrots and onions, roast fawn, or kouse gruel.10

  From the center of the encampment Tu-eka-kas, chief of the Wal-lam-wat-kin band of “Lower” Nez Perces in the Wallowa Valley, looked on the familiar village scene. He, son of a Cayuse chief and a Nez Perce mother,11 was a “sturdy, strong-built man with a will of iron and a foresight that never failed him, save when he welcomed the Americans to his country.”12 His best qualities he would impart to his sons; also the idea, which he clung to throughout his life, that “no man owned any part of the earth, and a man could not sell what he did not own.”13 At this early date the chief wore the barbaric costume of his tribe—a loose, long-sleeved shirt decorated with beads and elk teeth and a collar of otter skin, the tail hanging in front. Over his chest hung two long braids of shiny hair. A belt around his waist gave support to his deerskin leggings. On his feet were the traditional moccasins of the same material, the flaps snugly knotted by a double thong.

  Peace and a happy content shone in the dark eyes of Tu-eka-kas as his gaze roved from the camp to linger on the hills encircling his ancestral home. In the mountains to the west jagged ridges with forested slopes darkly blue-green in the early morning sunlight girdled the valley. To the south and east lofty peaks rose thousands of feet into the sky. Snowfields, which would remain unmelted by the July sun, sparkled among the crags of the Wallowa Mountains on the south. Closer by, bunchgrass and sage cloaked the floor of the valley, broken by the meandering course of streams where the first run of blueback salmon were fighting their way to the spawning grounds. Sage dotted the foothills. Here and there the chief’s eye caught the gleam of a tiny waterfall. Near the village the mountain-rimmed surface of Lake Wallowa lay as placid as a mirror until its waters were rippled by trout leaping for flies. The chief’s gaze studied the vast herd of ponies grazing on the nutritious grass among the sage as they roamed the plain guarded by young boys a mile or more from the camp. Life was good in this valley, a land of plenty.