#Chief Joseph

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Nez Perce Chief Joseph and his family in Leavenworth, Kansas where they were exiled from 1877 to 1885.

 Photographer: F. M. Sargent

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“U.S. people are taught that their military culture does not approve of or encourage targeting and killing civilians and know little or nothing about the nearly three centuries of war-fare-before and after the founding of the U.S.-that reduced the Indigenous peoples of the continent to a few reservations by burning their towns and fields and killing civilians, driving the refugees out--step by step--across the continent....Violence directed systematically against noncombatants through irregular means, from the start, has been a central part of Americans' way of war. “

Military Historian John Grenier

Excerpt from Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s book:

An Indigenous People’s History of the United States

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In the Name of All Humanity

photos (c) riverwindphotography, June 2023, taken at the Idaho Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial, Boise, ID

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My portrait of Chief Joseph in vibrant technicolor.

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Part 2

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Standing L-R Rabbit Skin Leggings, Yellow Bird Sitting L-R Charley Moses, Chief Joseph - Nez Perce - 1877 2

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Wie ! viel Vente

Diese Star- bucks-Terrasse schmiegt sich an die Klippen, so dass man die Gefahr spürt, die diese Kletterer bei den verschiedenen Schwierigkeitsgraden ertragen müssen Ich nehme den letzten Tisch und nippe an meinem Macchiato aus einer weißen Keramiktasse Eine Rotte von Radfahrern in Lycra-Uniform bremst plötzlich, stellt die Räder in den Ständer und stellt sich hinter ihm am Tresen für einen Latte an Ist das Cochise, der…

Fotografie: Portrait von Steve Katz (amerikanischer Schriftsteller, 1935-2019)

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Dewey Beard or Wasú Máza ("Iron Hail", 1858–1955) was a Lakota who fought in the Battle of Little Bighorn as a teenager. After George Armstrong Custer's defeat, Wasú Máza followed Sitting Bull into exile in Canada and then back to South Dakota where he lived on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation. Wasú Máza with his wife and granddaughter, Celane

[Scott Horton]

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Before dying (in 1871) Tu-eka-kas, the father of Chief Joseph des Nez-Percés, recalls to his son that he should not sell his father's bones. Chief Joseph describes his death. "MY FATHER DID CALL ME. I SAW HE WAS GOING TO DIE. I TAKEN HIS hand in mine. He said, “My son, my body will return to my mother earth, and my spirit will soon see the Chief Great Spirit. When I'm gone, think about your country. You are the leader of this people. They expect you to guide them. Always remember that your father never sold his country. You will cover your ears when you are asked to sign a treaty selling your land. A few more years and the white man will be there. They have their eyes on this country. Never forget, son, my dying words. This earth contains the body of your father. Never sell the bones of your father and mother. "I squeezed my father's hands and told him that I will protect his grave with my life. My father smiled and left for Spirit Land. I buried him in this beautiful valley where the water winds. I love this land more than the rest of the world. A man who wouldn't love his father's grave is worse than a wild animal." 

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I Will Fight No More Forever: The Story of Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce

November is Native American History Month; next year (2025) will mark the 350th anniversary of King Phillip’s War, the beginning of the end for the native people as the dominant polity on this continent. I’m marking the occasion with a series of daily posts related to the history of the Native Americans and their interactions with encroaching Europeans. Some will have to do with pop culture;…

[blondebrainpowered]

Chief Joseph (ca. 1840–1904)

Artist: Cyrenius Hall

Born in the Wallowa Valley in northeastern Oregon among the Nez Perce (Niimíipuu), Chief Joseph was also known as Young Joseph. His Nez Perce name means “Thunder traveling to higher areas.” 

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It makes my heart sick when I remember all the good words and the broken promises.

(Chief Joseph)

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Get to know the animals around you,

get to know the birds,

Get to know the land,

the water...

Because what you don’t know

you won’t understand,

And what you don't understand,

you will fear.

And what you fear, you will destroy.

– A poem by Kayah George's

great-grandfather, Chief Dan George

[eopederson2]

Wallowa Valley and Blue Mountains, Oregon, 2009.

"I will fight no more forever," Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce, 1877.

What Heimweh Chief Joseph and his band must have felt when he uttered those words of surrender when the attempt to escape into Canada failed after an epic flight from the US Army being driven from the ancestral homeland. Joseph probably knew that he was unlikely to ever again see the Wallowa Valley, though he never abandoned the hope of doing so. The extreme northeast corner of Oregon has to be one of the most beautiful places anywhere, and exile from it must have been almost unbearable. Joseph and the surviving members of the band were exiled to various places on the Great Plains, and Joseph was finally relocated to the Colville Reservation in Washington.

"In 1903, Chief Joseph visited Seattle, a booming young town, where he stayed in the Lincoln Hotel as guest to (sic)  Edmond Meany, a history professor at the University of Washington. It was there that he also befriended Edward Curtis, the photographer, who took one of his most memorable and well-known photographs. Joseph also visited President Theodore Roosevelt in Washington, D.C. the same year. Everywhere he went, it was to make a plea for what remained of his people to be returned to their home in the Wallowa Valley, but it never happened."

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The Legacy of Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce: A Tale of Courage and Sacrifice

Chief Joseph’s Raiding Party (AI) In the heart of the untamed Pacific Northwest, where towering pines whispered ancient secrets and the rivers sang songs of resilience, the Nez Perce tribe stood as guardians of the land. Chief Joseph, a man of wisdom and valor, led his people with a spirit as fierce as the mountain winds and a heart as unyielding as the granite peaks that surrounded them. When…

[simplicius-simplicissimus]

Coincindence or Lest We Forget?

Chief Joseph - Hinmaton-Yalatkit (Thunder Rolls Down The Mountain) - a chief of the Nez Perce tribe

„When Joseph died on September 21, 1904, the agency physician reported the cause of death as a broken heart“.

-Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

Comment: A small part of the escape route to Canada, taken by the North American Nez Perce tribe who fled from the US Army in 1877, went through Yellowstone. The story of the Nez Perce particularly touched me in Dee Brown's book "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" - even though they were only a small tribe. They had skillfully outsmarted the US Army because none of their “strategists” believed that the Nez Perce would attempt an escape route with women, children and the elderly over the mountains of Montana. They almost made it - but were then overtaken and stopped by US troops 40 miles from the Canadian border.

The story would probably have been long forgotten if I hadn't happened to stop at the memorial plaque in Yellowstone commemorating this escape during my US trip almost 30 years ago. The history of this tribe and my history collided in a strange way, so the story is still a conscious memory in my mind. The path from the north-east entrance of Yellowstone National Park led for hours over a deserted mountain range to Montana. An intense ride full of silence and emotions: “How can there be such beauty?” Then again the thoughts about the Nez Perce: “What hardships must it have been for the fleeing Native Americans in this harsh wasteland back then?”

What a book can do! Maybe someone will read this and buy the book? At least it has a place of honor on my shelf - also as a memory of my uncle, who gave it to me almost 50 years ago. He wanted me to read these stories. He was a catalyst for me in many ways - something I only realized as my life progressed. There are many stupid gifts - but there are also gifts that can shape your view of this world.

„On the mainland of America, the Wampanoags of Massasoit and King Philip had vanished, along with the Chesapeakes, the Chickahominys, and the Potomacs of the great Powhatan confederacy (only Pocahontas was remembered). Scattered or reduced to remnants were the Pequots, Montauks, Nanticokes. Machapungas, Catawbas, Cheraws, Miamis, Hurons, Eries, Mohawks, Senecas, and Mohegans (only Uncas was remembered). Their musical names remained forever fixed on the American land, but their bones were forgotten in a thousand burned villages or lost in forests fast disappearing before the axes of twenty million invaders. Already the once sweet-watered streams, most of which bore Indian names, were clouded with silt and the wastes of man; the very earth was being ravaged and squandered. To the Indians it seemed that these Europeans hated everything in nature - the living forests and their birds and beasts, the grassy glades, the water, the soil, and the air itself.“

-Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee