Saga of Chief Joseph

by Helen Addison Howard, Nicole Tonkovich (Introduction)

Overview

In Saga of Chief Joseph, Helen Addison Howard has written the definitive biography of the great Nez Perce chief, a diplomat among warriors. In times of war and peace, Chief Joseph exhibited gifts of the first rank as a leader for peace and tribal liberty. Following his people’s internment in Indian Territory in 1877, Chief Joseph secured their release in 1885 and led them back to their home country. Fiercely principled, he never abandoned his quest to have his country, the Wallowa Valley, returned to its rightful owners. The struggle of the Nez Perces for the freedom they considered paramount in life constitutes one of the most dramatic episodes in Indian history.

This completely revised edition of the author’s 1941 version (titled War Chief Joseph) presents in exciting detail the full story of Chief Joseph, with a reevaluation of the five bands engaged in the Nez Perce War, told from the Indian, the white military, and the settler points of view. Especially valuable is the reappraisal, based on significant new material from Indian sources, of Joseph as a war leader.

The new introduction by Nicole Tonkovich explores the continuing relevance of Chief Joseph and the lasting significance of Howard’s work during the era of Angie Debo, Alice Marriott, and Muriel H. Wright.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781496204288
Publisher:	UNP - Bison Books
Publication date:	12/01/2017
Series:	Bison Classic Editions
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	420
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Helen Addison Howard (1904–1989) was a writer of U.S. Western history whose stories and articles have been published in magazines throughout the country. She is the author of Northwest Trail Blazers. Nicole Tonkovich is a professor of American literature at the University of California, San Diego. She is the author of The Allotment Plot: Alice C. Fletcher, E. Jane Gay, and Nez Perce Survivance(Nebraska, 2012). George D. McGrath (d. 1945) was a descendant of Montana pioneers. His grandmother knew Chief Joseph as a friend.
 
 

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 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 Perces 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.

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." 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.

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.

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, 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.

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 tribes people 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) 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.

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, blue back salmon, wild carrots and onions, roast fawn, or kouse gruel.

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, 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." 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." 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 hangingin 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.

Nor did the scene materially change after the missionaries had come to the Northwest. The people of Tu-eka-kas continued to live in their primitive valley of winding waters, a happy, healthy, and contented band. By the year 1844 the chief had become the father of two sons by his Nez Perce wife. The elder, who was to become known as Young Joseph, was born in 1840 — probably in the summer, as in 1878 he made the following statement: "I was born in eastern Oregon, thirty-eight winters ago"; and it was during the summer that his father's band visited the Wallowa Valley. The younger son, Alokut, was born two or three years after his brother. They grew to look so much alike that white people thought them twins.

As documentary records are lacking, the following account of Young Joseph's probable early life is drawn from material in H. J. Spinden's "The Nez Percé Indians." Without doubt the age-old life of the summer camp went on. Little Joseph rambled about the village, a naked, copper-skinned boy, and his beady black eyes sharply observed its every detail. He watched the women busy with pestle and mortar grinding flour from the roots of camas, and others placing berries on tule mats to dry in the sun. A few would pause in their work to smile at the chief's little son. Several of the women had sharp, disk-shaped fragments of boulders picked up in the nearby streams, and with these they were scraping the hides of deer and elk.

With childish curiosity the lad stared at young men fashioning spearheads and arrow points of obsidian rock found in the John Day region of Oregon. One young man, noticing the boy's interest, showed him an arrowhead. The child fondled the smooth symmetry of it, running his chubby palm over its hard, shiny surface.

Curiosity led the boy to the outskirts of the village where two warriors were plucking from captive eagles their first feathers, which they would use to adorn their war bonnets. Later, the choice feathers of second growth would be taken and the bird then given its freedom. Other eaglets, though, would be stolen from their nests and raised until the feathers had been obtained.

During his wanderings about the camp, little Joseph passed old men and women who sat outside their lodges to bask in the afternoon sun, while they dreamed perhaps of battles with the fierce Blackfeet in the buffalo country, or gossiped about their friends and relatives in other villages. A few grandmothers were busy sewing beads on buckskin garments for their grandchildren.

Then a group of little girls and small boys, naked like himself, attracted the sharp, bright eyes of the lad. The children sat in a circle about an aged warrior, listening to his tale of the white men with beards and glass eyes that came into their country many moons ago. Little Joseph, delighted, squatted among the group to hear again the story of Lewis and Clark — the first whites ever to be seen by the Nez Perces — although his father had recited it so many times that he already knew it by heart.

These strange white people came in September, the month of the hunting moon, the old warrior told his young listeners, and met Chief Twisted Hair's band on the Weippe prairie in what is now northern Idaho. The Nez Perces gave the strangers supplies of camas root and held a big feast for them and exchanged presents. After a short stay the visitors left their horses and saddles to be cared for by Chief Twisted Hair's tribe while they sailed down the great river to the ocean. Upon their return the following spring, everything they had left with the Indians was returned to them in good condition.

The leaders of these white people were great men, the old warrior declared, and not like the whites who now traveled in wagons through the Grande Ronde country to the northwest. Lewis and Clark did not wish to buy furs, to teach "spirit law," or to plow up the Earth-Mother for farms. They were content with the friendship of the Nez Perces, and as proof of their good will, they gave each chief a bronze disk with curious symbols carved upon it. Peace between red and white men was their message, which the Nez Perces cherished in their hearts. Although little Joseph did not know it, Patrick Gass recorded in his Journal: "The Nez Perce were better than the Flatheads, and the Flatheads were the whitest Indians Lewis and Clark had ever seen before ... Weippe Prairies."

In speaking of this expedition years later, Young Joseph said:

All the Nez Percés made friends with Lewis and Clarke, and agreed to let them pass through their country, and never to make war on white men. This promise the Nez Percés have never broken. No white man can accuse them of bad faith, and speak with a straight tongue.

All the testimony bears out the truth of these words of Young Joseph. Truly, he, at least, spoke "with a straight tongue."

Summer evenings were long in the valley of winding waters. Slowly the sun disappeared behind the mountains, its last rays flecking the peaks to the east with tints of burnished gold that gradually faded to purple in the afterglow. Breezes sprang up to rustle through the prairie grass, and the women built up the fires before the lodges, while the men wrapped buffalo robes about them to ward off the evening chill.

It was especially around the campfires inside the lodges on winter nights that little Joseph and other children would gather to hear the old men tell tribal legends. In answer to such questions as have been asked by children of all races since the beginning of time, of whence the people came, these tellers of tales would recite the myth of the origin of the Nez Perces.

A huge monster from the sea, the great Iltswetsix, roamed the Kamiah Valley in north Idaho. So enormous was his appetite that he sucked everything into himself, and was soon devouring all the animals in the land. When Spi-liyai, or Coyote (the fabled knave of Indian mythology), heard of this, he left the Umatilla country to engage in a test of strength with the monster. Upon reaching Kamiah, Coyote concealed himself under a grass bonnet and tied his body down with a wild grapevine. Then he defied Iltswetsix to pull him into his cavernous mouth. The great beast sucked and sucked, until slowly the ropes gave way and Coyote was drawn into the monster's stomach. But Coyote had not yet lost the contest. Taking a knife that he had concealed in his belt, he began to cut out the sea demon's heart, and so killed him. Then Coyote carved his way out of the monster's body.

At once Fox, who had witnessed the duel, joined him. Since Coyote did not know what to do with the body, Fox suggested that they cut it up and make people. So, from the head came the Flathead Indians; from the feet, the Blackfoot tribe; and thus from each part they made a different nation of Indians. Finally, only the heart remained. As Coyote held it aloft, the beast's blood dropped to the ground and from these drops more people sprang up. They were taller, stronger, nobler, and wiser than the others — these were the Nez Perces. The Great Spirit Chief, who rules above, was well pleased with Coyote, and, lest the people forget this wonderful deed, he turned the heart into a large stone, and it may be seen yet in the Kamiah Valley.

(Continues…)

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Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction to the Bison Classic Edition
Prologue
Part I. Early History
1. The Valley of Winding Waters
2. The Coming of the Missionaries
3. Thunder-rolling-in-the-mountains
Part II. Treaty History
4. The Council Smoke of 1855
5. War in the Columbia Basin—1856–58
6. The Treaty of 1863
7. The Tah-mah-ne-wes Beckons
8. The Earth-mother Drinks Blood
9. The Council at Fort Lapwai—1877
10. Chief White Bird’s Murders
Part III. The Military Campaign of 1877
11. The Settlers Prepare for War
12. The Battle of White Bird Canyon
13. The Skirmish at Cottonwood
14. The Battle of the Clearwater
15 The March Over the Lolo Trail
16. The Affair at “Fort Fizzle”
17. The Battle of the Big Hole
18. The Camas Meadows Raid
19. The Attack on the Cowan and Weikert Parties
20. The Battle of Canyon Creek
21. The Skirmish at Cow Island
22. Battle of the Bearpaw Mountains
23. Joseph’s Surrender
Part IV. Later History
24. Prisoners of War
25. “Somebody Has Got Our Horses”
26. Return from Exile
27. The Trail to the Setting Sun
Appendix 1: Genealogy Chart
Appendix 2: Sidelights
Notes
Bibliography
Index