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He claimed the Wallowa Valley as the special home and inheritance of himself and his people, and said he would continue so to claim it, and to occupy it whenever he chose, against all other claimants, white or red. In this dissension he was in time joined by White Bird, Looking Glass, To-hul-hul-sote and other sub-chiefs, and several hundred warriors.
I believed that if I could remain safe at a distance and talk straight to the men sent by the Great Father, I could get back to the Wallowa Valley and return in peace. That is why I did not allow my young men to kill and destroy the white settlers after I began to fight. I wanted to leave a clean trail, and if there were dead soldiers on it I could not be blamed.
He was every inch a chief, and had a noble face. His people were the Lower Nez Percés, who lived in the beautiful Wallowa Valley their Valley of the Winding Waters, in northeastern Oregon. Here they raised many horses, and hunted, but put in few crops. Old Chief Joseph had believed that the earth should not be disturbed; the people should eat only what it produced of itself.
The tract relinquished to the United States in this instrument included the Wallowa Valley. When the chiefs returned to their people and reported their action, Young Joseph repudiated the treaty, and refused to be bound by it.
General Howard, then commanding the Department of the Columbia, repaired to the scene of the disturbance, and, with J. B. Monteith, agent of the Nez Percés, held several councils with the malcontents, and argued patiently and persistently to convince them that the treaty, whereby the Wallowa Valley had been ceded to the Government, was duly signed and ratified by the properly constituted chiefs of the tribe; that it was valid, and that every member of the tribe was bound by it; that the white men were only exercising their legal rights in settling on the land; and the Indians were assured that the whites would be protected in these rights by the white soldiers if necessary.
Not until 1884 was he permitted to return to the mountains of the Northwest. The majority of his people were located again in Idaho, among their kindred. He himself was placed upon another reservation, near Spokane, Washington. He pleaded for the Wallowa Valley his Valley of the Winding Waters; but that had been settled by the white men. All that he found was his father's grave.
The Nez Percés, belonging in Idaho, to the estimated number of two hundred, are found in Wallowa Valley, in the eastern part of the State. They claim that they were not parties to the treaty with the Nez Percé tribe years ago; that the valley in which they live has always belonged to them; and they strenuously oppose its settlement by the whites.
He had frequently gone into it during the summer to fish and hunt, in common with various other bands of the tribe, but had never staid more than a few weeks at a time, and had made his home during the greater portion of each year in the Imnaha Valley near the Snake River. In 1871, a few whites settled in the Wallowa Valley.
Complaints were made to the Government that the Indians were annoying and threatening the settlers, and in 1875 President Grant issued an executive order, proclaiming that the Wallowa Valley was a part of the public domain and open to settlement by white people.
He therefore proceeded at once to concentrate all available troops in his department within easy striking distance of the malcontents, in order to be prepared for any emergency. Before the thirty days asked for had expired, some of White Bird's band appeared in the Wallowa Valley and murdered a number of defenseless white men and women.
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