The Final Removal of the Native Americans

The Final Removal of the Native Americans:

From the last stand of Chief Joseph to the passing of the Dawes Act

The Native Americans and their culture are something that I and many others

know next to nothing about. This is the result of an educational system that has limited our exposure to Native Americans and their cultures throughout our entire grade-school and adolescent schooling. The word removal as in the title of my paper would be a fitting word for the incidents that fell upon the Native Americans in the early stages of our country including the period from the last stand of Chief Joseph to the Dawes Act of 1887.

Chief Joseph or otherwise known as Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt (Thunder Rolling Down) was the leader of only one of the Nez Perces bands who lived in the Wallowa Valley in the northeastern corner of Oregon. The Nez Perces Indians were strong and intelligent people that were know as peaceful tribes that have lived in unionism with the whites since the coming of Lewis and Clark in 1805. Chief Joseph was a humanitarian and did not fit the traditional white view of a hostile Indian who grew up hating the white man. Chief Joseph was more of a logical and civil minded, rather than a war, chief (Josephy, Jr. 313-314).

His father, Joseph the Elder was an active supporter of the tribe’s longstanding peace with whites. Joseph the Elder even helped the territorial governor set up a Nez Perces reservation that stretched from Oregon to Idaho. In 1863, the “Gold Fever” that had struck in the Nez Perces’s territory resulted in the federal government taking back almost six million acres of this Nez Perce reservation, restricting the Nez Perces to a reservation in Idaho that was only one tenth its prior size. Feeling betrayed, Joseph the Elder denounced the United States, destroyed his American Flag and refused to move his band from the Wallowa Valley or sign the treaty that would make the new reservation boundaries official (“Chief Joseph”). In 1871, on his deathbed, Joseph the Elder told this son: “When I am gone, think of your country. You are the chief of these people. They look to you to guide them. Always remember that your father never sold the country. You must stop your ears whenever you are asked to sign a treaty selling your home. A few years more, and the white man will be all around you. They have their eyes on this land. My son, never forget my dying words. This country holds your father’s body. Never sell the bones of your father and your mother” (Joseph, Jr. 314).

These words held strong within the thirty-one year old Joseph. As young Joseph resisted all efforts to force his band onto a small Idaho reservation because of the increasing number of “gold hungry” white settlers that continued to arrive in the Wallowa Valley in search of riches. Joseph, being a skilled diplomat, protested to the Indian agent on the reservation, and an investigation was done by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to decide whether or not the Treaty of 1863 affected Joseph’s band, which had not agreed to it. The investigation resulted in a decision that the Wallowa still belonged legally to the Indians, and on June 16, 1873, President Grant set aside the Wallowa as a reservation for the Nez Perce Indians and ordered the money hungry white settlers to withdraw (Josephy, Jr. 321).

Then in 1877, which is to be expected, the federal government soon reversed itself claiming that: “the non-treaty Nez Perces cannot in law be regarded as bound by the treaty of 1863, and insofar as it attempts to deprive them of a right to occupancy of any land, its provisions are null and void. The extinguishments of their title of occupancy contemplated by this treaty is imperfect and incomplete” (Joseph, Jr. 322). This in part led to the Indian Bureau’s decision that within “reasonable time,” Joseph’s band and other holdouts move onto the small Idaho reservation. And to quicken the decision, General Oliver Otis Howard threatened a Calvary attack upon resistance. Knowing their resistance would be futile, Joseph reluctantly led his people toward the small Idaho reservation (“Chief Joseph”).

Unfortunately, Chief Joseph and his band never reached this small Idaho reservation because of the actions of a few young Nez Perces warriors. These young Nez Perces warriors led by a warrior named Wahlitits, had killed four white men along the Salmon River, which sparked a series of raids during the next two days. These raids resulted in the killing of fourteen or fifteen additional whites and set of a string of terror among settlers of the region (Josephy, Jr. 324-325).

Immediately, the army began to pursue Joseph’s band and the others who had not moved onto the reservation.