Chief Joseph

On March 3, 1840, in the Wallowa Valley of present-day northeastern Oregon, Chief Joseph was born into the Nez Perce community later pressured by federal treaty policy. His father, Tuekakas or Old Chief Joseph, had dealt directly with missionaries and treaty negotiators after the Treaty of Walla Walla in 1855. Those early encounters with the United States taught the younger Joseph that land, diplomacy, and survival were inseparable.

When federal officials tried to enforce the disputed treaty terms of 1863, Joseph resisted removal from the Wallowa homeland and became one of the leaders of the Nez Perce flight in 1877. The campaign moved through White Bird Canyon, the Big Hole, and the Bear Paw Mountains as Joseph, Looking Glass, and other leaders tried to reach Canada. His surrender to Nelson Miles in October 1877 turned him into an international symbol of Native resistance to U.S. expansion.

Joseph's speeches in Washington, D.C., after 1879 kept federal removal policy under public scrutiny long after the war ended. The Nez Perce experience also remained relevant to later debates over the Dawes Act of 1887, reservation administration, and the legal history of Native sovereignty in the American West.