On October 5, 1877, after a fighting retreat of over 1,170 miles across some of the most brutal terrain in North America, Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce surrendered to the United States Army. He was exhausted. His people were starving. Children were freezing to death in the Montana snow. He had been trying to reach Canada, where Sitting Bull had found refuge, and he was stopped forty miles from the border. He handed his rifle to General Oliver Howard and spoke words that have never been forgotten: From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever. That sentence contains the entire weight of American expansion in sixteen words.

He Never Wanted to Fight in the First Place

Chief Joseph, whose Nez Perce name was Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt, meaning Thunder Rolling Down the Mountain, was a peace chief. His authority was civil, not military. He negotiated. He advocated. He spent years trying to convince the American government that the Nez Perce had a legal right to their homeland in the Wallowa Valley of Oregon, a right guaranteed by an 1855 treaty that the government unilaterally revoked in 1863. Native American studies scholars at the University of Montana have documented that Joseph's father, also called Chief Joseph, had signed the original 1855 treaty and refused to sign the revised 1863 version that would have surrendered the Wallowa Valley. When the elder Joseph died in 1871, his son inherited both the chieftainship and the position that the original treaty was binding and the Nez Perce land could not be taken. The government disagreed. In 1877, General Howard gave the non-treaty Nez Perce bands thirty days to move to the Lapwai Reservation in Idaho. Thirty days to abandon their ancestral homeland. Chief Joseph, who had spent his entire career seeking peaceful resolution, was given an ultimatum that made peace impossible.

The Fighting Retreat Was a Military Masterpiece

When young warriors from the non-treaty bands killed several white settlers in retaliation for years of abuse, war became unavoidable. Chief Joseph, who was not the war leader but served as the political and logistical coordinator for the retreating bands, helped organize a march of approximately 750 people, including women, children, and elderly, across Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and back into Montana. The Nez Perce fought and outmaneuvered the US Army in over a dozen engagements across four months. Military historians at West Point have studied the retreat as one of the most tactically brilliant campaigns in American military history. The Nez Perce defeated or evaded forces that outnumbered them by as much as ten to one. They crossed Yellowstone National Park. They crossed the Missouri River. They came within forty miles of the Canadian border. General William Tecumseh Sherman, who had seen his share of warfare, said he was astonished by the Nez Perce's tactical skill. Generals Howard and Miles needed approximately two thousand soldiers, multiple cavalry units, and artillery to subdue approximately two hundred Nez Perce warriors protecting five hundred noncombatants.

The Surrender Was the Beginning of Another Betrayal

Joseph surrendered on the understanding that his people would be sent to the Lapwai Reservation in Idaho. Instead, they were shipped to a malaria-infested reservation in Indian Territory, present-day Oklahoma. Over a hundred Nez Perce died in the first year, mostly children and elderly. Joseph spent the rest of his life petitioning the government to allow his people to return to the Wallowa Valley. He traveled to Washington D.C. He met with President Theodore Roosevelt. He gave speeches that were covered by national newspapers. Research from the Nez Perce National Historical Park has documented that Joseph's public advocacy made him one of the most visible Native American leaders of the late nineteenth century. He was never allowed to return to the Wallowa Valley. He was sent to the Colville Reservation in Washington State, where he died on September 21, 1904. The reservation doctor listed the cause of death as a broken heart. From where the sun now stands. The sun has moved. The fight is not over. It never was.