It is humbling to realize that Chief Joseph wrote these words, as gently as they appear, after an ordeal that would have made them impossible for any lesser mortal. A man like that, you dedicate your book to.
On June 15, 1877, Joseph took 800 men, women and children, the faithful that had refused to give up their land to white ranchers, for coerced relocation on a captive reservation, and ran to seek new sanctuary. Following the Battle of the Big Hole in Idaho, they fled from the US Calvary, east through Yellowstone, and briefly captured several tourists, before heading north up the Clarks Fork River.
They made a valiant attempt to reach the camp of Sitting Bull in the Grandmother’s country, almost two thousand miles across four states and two mountain ranges, in an epic flight to freedom. Two hundred Nez Percés warriors defeated or held off the pursuing troops, over 2,000 soldiers of the U.S. Army, in 18 engagements, during which more than 100 soldiers and 100 Nez Percés (including women and children) were killed. The Army ROTC Manual still contains a footnote. In 11 weeks Joseph had moved his tribe 1600 miles, engaged 10 separate US commands in 13 battles and skirmishes, and in nearly every instance had either defeated them or fought them to a standstill.
On October 5, 1877, only 30 miles from the Canadian border, the majority of the surviving Nez Percés were finally stopped, after the six-day Battle of the Bear Paw Mountains in Montana. In his surrender to General Howard, Chief Joseph sent an extraordinary message through his soldiers, expressing dignity in defeat. It was one of the greatest of American speeches.
‘Tell General Howard I know his heart. What he told me before I have in
my heart. I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed. Looking Glass is
dead. Toohoolhoolzote is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the
young men who say yes or no. He who led on the young men is dead.
It is cold and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to
death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have
no blankets. No food; no one knows where they are- perhaps freezing
to death. I want to have time to look for my children and see how
many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead.
Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired; My heart is sick and sad. From where
the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.’
Despite promises made to allow them back on their lands, the Nez Percés tribe was floated on flatboats down the Missouri to bottomlands of malaria and malaise. A quarter of them died over the winter. The survivors were herded into railcars in the heat of the following summer, and transported to the hot plains of ‘Indian Territory,’ where they died more slowly. In September 21, 1904, Thunder traveling over the Mountains was pronounced deceased by an agency physician, who listed the cause of death as a ‘broken heart.’
Just over a hundred years later, an auction house in Reno sold his shirt for almost $900,000. It was made of two deerskins, cut in half behind the front legs. The two back hides were joined at the shoulders to form the front and back of the shirt, and the two front skins were folded to make the sleeves. The retained forelegs extended below the open armpits. It was shaped to honour the spirit of the animal.
“That's a pretty special shirt.” Said the auction organizer.
Robyn and I continued on the same Clarks Fork that Chief Joseph had retreated along, down a curve of variegated green hills into a clay valley of winding switchbacks, pines on the inside and hoodoos on the horizon. We were flying under the blue and white puffs through a mountain desert, grey mesas and valley floor invaginations, crevices lined with pines and exploding parasols of yellow flowers. A singular sedimentary strata sombrero strutted a thick rock brim and a sloped rakish ribbon hatband of green forest. Into mist rose a mountain of Commagenean hoodoo gods, Antiochus and Apollo guardians standing vigil over the Beartooth Highway. Nothing lives long Only the earth and the mountains. We skated down past a spindled peak in the shape of a heart rhythm, with a repolarization wave that took us below the clouds into scattered pines, and the Northeast Gate of Yellowstone National Park.
‘The only good Indian is a dead Indian.’
General Philip Sheridan
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