by Mary Gindling

Created on: January 20, 2010   Last Updated: March 19, 2011

On March 3, 1840, a Nez Perce baby was born in the Wallowa Valley in what is now northeastern Oregon. His name was Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt, meaning Thunder Rolling Down the Mountain. Later, this baby was to earn lasting fame as Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce.

Joseph’s father, called Joseph the Elder, was one of the first Nez Perce converts to Christianity in 1838 when he adopted the Christian name Joseph at his baptism by legendary missionary Henry Spalding, and youngJoseph spent much of his childhood at the mission. Joseph the Elder was active in maintaining a longstanding peace with the whites that began when Lewis and Clark first visited their camp.

The Road to War

In 1855, Joseph the Elder helped Washington’s territorial governor to create a reservation for the Nez Perce stretching from Oregon into western Idaho, which preserved most of the Nez Perce tribe’s traditional lands. But this treaty lasted only until 1863 when the government took back about six million acres of the reservation as a result of a gold rush that reached well into Nez Perce territory. The Nez Perce found themselves restricted to a reservation in Idaho that was now only a tenth the size of their original lands.

Old Joseph refused to sign the new treaty changing the reservation boundaries, and argued that it was never agreed to by his people. The U.S. Government refused to budge and the disappointed old chief destroyed his American flag and his Bible. He denounced the United States and refused to move his people out of the Wallowa Valley.

This standoff between the Nez Perce and the American government continued until Joseph the Elder died in 1871. His son, Joseph, was elected to succeed him. White settlers had continued to build their homesteads in the Wallowa Valley, and tensions built rapidly between the white men and their increasingly resentful Native American neighbors.

Joseph continued to resist efforts to force his people onto the Idaho Reservation. Finally, in 1873 a federal order to remove the white settlers from the Wallowa Valley and let his people remain gave Joseph hope. But the government once again reversed itself. Finally, in 1877, facing forcible removal by the U.S. Army, Joseph and the other chiefs who had not signed the treaty prepared to leave for the reservation. The band included about 200 to 300 warriors, along with many women and children.

Before they could leave, however, about twenty young Nez Perce warriors attacked a nearby settlement and

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