Chief Joseph

Chief Joseph

     

Chief Joseph (1840-1904), chief of the Wallowa band of the Nez Perce and one of the leaders of Native American resistance to white encroachment in the western United States. His Nez Perce name was In-mut-too-yah-lat-lat (“thunder coming up from the water over the land”). Succeeding his father as chief in 1873, Joseph continued a policy of non-compliance to an 1863 treaty that had allowed the government to confine the Nez Perce to a reservation. In 1877 hostilities broke out as a result of attempts by the United States government to enforce the treaty. The Nez Perce were ordered to leave the Wallowa Valley of the Oregon territory and relocate to a reservation in Idaho. Joseph reluctantly agreed to the demand, but when a few Nez Perce warriors killed a group of whites, he decided to lead several hundred people on a march to find refuge in Canada. He defeated United States Army units that tried to stop him on the Big Hole River in Montana, but was stopped about 50 km (30 mi) from the border by a force under Colonel Nelson Miles, who forced him to surrender after a five-day battle.

Joseph and his people were sent to Oklahoma, where many became sick and died. In 1885 he and the survivors moved back to Washington and Idaho. Forbidden from returning to his homeland in the Wallowa Valley, Joseph died on the Colville Reservation in Washington. In 1903, one year before his death, Joseph visited Washington, D.C., where he received a welcome from President Theodore Roosevelt.