Chief Joseph died, 1904

21 September 2027

The Colville valley in September: a slow river, cottonwoods

Chief Joseph died on 21 September 1904 at Nespelem, on the Colville Reservation in northern Washington, where he had lived for nineteen years in exile from the Wallowa Valley in Oregon. He was 64. The doctor who attended him said he died of a broken heart.

His name in his own language was Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt, usually rendered as Thunder Rolling Down the Mountain. He became leader of the Wallowa band of the Nez Perce in 1871, on his father’s deathbed instruction never to sell the land. In 1877, after disputes over removal turned into fighting, about 800 non-treaty Nez Perce fled the U.S. Army across the Bitterroot Mountains. The flight lasted 126 days and covered more than 1,170 miles through four states, according to the National Park Service; one Park Service page gives 1,100 miles. It ended on 5 October 1877 at Bear Paw in Montana, forty miles short of the Canadian border. Joseph handed his rifle to Colonel Nelson Miles there and said, “From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.” More than 400 people surrendered; between 30 and 50 left that night with the leader White Bird and reached Canada.

The terms Joseph believed he had been given, a return to Idaho, were not kept. The band was sent to Indian Territory and then, in 1885, to Colville. In 1900 he was allowed back to the Wallowa to argue his case before the white settlers there, and was met with jeers. He was buried at Nespelem, not in the valley he had refused to sell.

One chronology places his death a week earlier, on 14 September 1904. The Oregon Encyclopedia, HistoryLink and his standard biographies all give 21 September.

Sources

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