Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez Perce (45 page)

All of this, of course, outraged Jones. He had always operated without any meaningful scrutiny. Baxter Springs, fifteen miles away, was little more than a rough cow town occupied with its own concerns. And it had no jurisdiction over him anyway, since Indian Territory was under federal control and the nearest federal oversight sat 150 miles north in Fort Leavenworth. His Quaker superiors were an equal distance away in Lawrence, Kansas, and were headed by his sympathetic brother-in-law. And to administrative entities measuring success by the lack of problems with which they had to deal, his agency was operating quite efficiently. He had kept his Indians from creating disturbances and had managed to convince many of them to take on the trappings of white civilization. That he had done so by depriving them of food, medicine, and their health did not show up on official reports. To a distant eye, he was a successful agent employing an effective “straightening-out process” to bring the Indians upward from savagery to civilization.

So when Chapman brought the harsh glare of official scrutiny upon him, Jones fought back with a vengeance. He accused Chapman of moral turpitude and impregnating a Modoc woman. He claimed that the townsfolk who spoke against him were simply unhappy at having lost bids for goods and services. He claimed that Chapman was seeking to supplant Jones and feather his own nest—a claim that may not have been entirely without merit, since Chapman, in fact, had taken to calling himself “acting agent, hospital steward, commissary sergeant, interpreter, and superintendent of farming” and even was seeking an appointment as an agent of a life insurance company.

Eventually this battle of scoundrels could no longer be ignored. The government was forced to turn its attention to the goings-on in this small, previously peaceful corner of Indian Territory. Arden Smith, the investigator for the Indian Bureau, reopened his dormant inquiry into Jones's practices, and a congressional joint commission was sent to take testimony as part of its ongoing assessment of whether civilian oversight of Indian affairs was really superior to the more efficient, more accountable oversight that had been provided previously by the Department of the Army.

All of this Joseph observed with interest. In the year since his people had been tricked into laying down their weapons, he had learned more and more about the workings of white society. On the train from Bismarck he had seen that the telegraph could outrun the horse, and he had seen how messages sent on this talking wire reached people in all the white cities all across the country. A few days before leaving Fort Leavenworth, he and Yellow Bull had been invited to the newspaper office in town and shown how white writing could be put on papers and copied thousands of times so it could be carried to every white house and family. He had even been shown a new machine that a person could talk into and be heard a far distance away, and he and Yellow Bull had sung into a horn and then had their own voices played back to them on a wax cylinder. It was clear to him that whites had the power to capture words and send them where they wanted faster and farther than any Indian had ever imagined.

He had also seen how white citizens flocked to him and wanted him to speak. It had been this way since Bismarck and had only increased on the train journey and in the camp at Leavenworth. They wanted to hear him, and they wrote down what he said and sent it out to other white people in the papers and on the talking wire.

All this knowledge led him to form an idea in his mind. If he could not fight for his people with guns, perhaps he could fight for them with words. Chapman, his onetime enemy, would serve as his mouthpiece.

When the congressional joint committee came south to hold its hearings, Joseph and Chapman traveled to nearby Seneca, Missouri, so he could provide testimony. Asked whether he thought Indians were better served by being under the control of the military or the Department of the Interior, he replied, through Chapman, that it did not matter which branch of government was over them because land should be free like the sun—equal to all—and that all men should be free to come and go when and where they pleased. He did acknowledge that he might prefer to live farther west and might even be willing to farm and raise crops if a suitable location could be found. But he much preferred to return north to healthier country and, ideally, to his own homeland, as had been promised.

The congressional committee was impressed by the chief. After hearing his testimony along with the testimony of the Modoc and the complaints of the various local merchants and farmers, they returned to Washington convinced, just as Stickney and Fisk had been, that Jones was indeed corrupt and that the situation in the Quapaw was seriously in need of redress.

The commission had corroborated many of the claims and complaints made by Chapman and the locals, but Joseph knew that the government would quickly forget its concern if the matter were not kept in the public eye. So he encouraged Chapman to continue his barrage of letter writing and telegraph dispatches.

Eventually, the complaints and reports and articles convinced Commissioner Hayt that he himself needed to get involved. Accusations and counteraccusations were continuing unabated, there was concern about white whiskey traders and timber thieves sneaking onto Indian lands, and pressure was mounting from white claims leagues insisting that the land be opened to white settlement. The letters from the local residents had even hinted at possible Indian uprisings if something wasn't done to improve the Indians' plight.

So Hayt traveled from Washington to assess conditions for himself. He immediately recognized the volatility of the situation and determined that perhaps there was some wisdom in resettling the unhappy Nez Perce on a different piece of land farther from the controversy and farther from the claims and counterclaims of corruption and negative influence.

After meeting with the Nez Perce, he arranged for Joseph, Yellow Bull, Husis Kute, and Chapman to accompany him on a journey deep into the far western reaches of Indian Territory to seek out a piece of land that the Nez Perce people might be more willing to accept as a permanent home.

Joseph was willing to go, but only with hesitation. It was a chance to talk man-to-man with the head of Indian Affairs as he had talked man-to-man with Miles on their long ride. And perhaps there was something to be said for finding a more isolated place in which to settle while they fought for their right to return to their own country. But he made it clear that he had no intention of accepting any place in Indian Territory as a final destination for his people.

On a sunny mid-October morning they set out on their long journey across the brushy inhospitable prairies of what eventually would become Oklahoma. After several days of riding, they came upon on a flat, windy strip of land at the bend of a silty, slow-moving river. Joseph surveyed the landscape and announced that he found it to his liking. Though the decision made no apparent sense in light of the rolling, verdant country he inhabited at Quapaw, Hayt was more than willing to accede to the chief's wishes if this would keep him satisfied. Perhaps more open space, 180 miles from the corrupt Jones, and under the supervision of a different agent, was what Joseph needed to finally allow him to make peace with his situation.

They returned to the Quapaw, with Hayt convinced that he had finally found a solution to the seemingly intractable problem of the Nez Perce. He immediately began making arrangements for Joseph and his people to move to this new country out west as soon as it would be practical, most likely the following spring.

But the public furor raised by Chapman and the other letter writers had spread beyond the halls of government. While Joseph and Hayt were traveling over the western prairies in search of new home for the Nez Perce, a special correspondent from the
New York Times
had made his way to Quapaw to report on their condition. He gave a description of the Nez Perce camp and its operations, noting the frequent medicine ceremonies being conducted over the dying and observing with a kind of compassionate contempt how the Indians had been reduced to living a life of “sulky scorn” in a land of “deadly fever and malaria.” He ended with the haunting question as to whether there was a place for them in American civilization, even if their children were turned into well-scrubbed, proper students of mathematics, spelling, geography, and the Bible.

It was a question that none could easily answer.

T
HE ONSET OF THE WINTER
of 1878 brought increasing horror and suffering to Joseph and his people. They had made the short move to the better land chosen for them by Stickney and Fisk, and they knew that they would be making the move farther west in the spring. But the change in location did not create any fundamental change in their situation. As long as they were in the Quapaw, they remained under the control of Jones, who had returned to his corrupt ways as soon as the investigators had left. Freed again from any meaningful scrutiny, he immediately resumed withholding medicines, short-weighting rations, and providing tainted and substandard food.

The people were also faced with surviving a cruel and cutting winter with no decent shelter and no way of supporting stock. Their move had come too late in the season to allow them to put up any hay, so they could not raise cattle for food or horses for trade and were reduced to relying on Jones for any assistance they needed. In their weakened physical and spiritual states, they could not easily survive a winter under Jones's hand.

Joseph knew that he had to act. Chapman's letter writing and telegrams were having some effect, but not enough to save his people. It was time to do whatever necessary to make his voice heard. He decided he needed to travel to Washington, D.C., where he could plead his case directly to the government officials.

He had always found a willing audience when he spoke to those who had visited his camp in Leavenworth, and he had gradually reduced the situation of his people to a story that he could tell succinctly and fairly whenever anyone took time to listen. With his skill at speaking and the apparent white interest in his people's plight he believed that if he could speak for himself and not have his words twisted by others, he could find men of influence who would give him and his people fair hearing. He also wanted to talk to the president himself to make sure that a move to the land Hayt had found would not mean that he and his people could never return to their homeland.

But his requests for a trip to the capital were turned down. So Joseph determined to do the next best thing. With the prospect of a winter of illness and starvation looming before his people, he arranged to have Chapman visit Washington in his stead. The people took up a collection of their few remaining dollars and traces of silver and gold and bought a ticket to send their enemy-turned-champion to the nation's capital to be their voice. Then they waited with faint hope for word that the government would honor the promises that Miles had made and that something would be done to deliver them from the cruel, killing ways of the Christian agent Hiram Jones.

But Jones himself was not standing still. In addition to mounting a vigorous justification of his own actions through a barrage of his own letters and explanations, he had quietly made arrangements with the Presbyterian agent, John Monteith, at the Lapwai reserve in Idaho, to have several nontreaty Nez Perce sent down to Oklahoma in an effort to supplant Chapman's influence and undermine Joseph's standing among the exiles. It was his hope that the Nez Perce were ripe for a conversion, if not to Christianity, then at least to a different regime under a more pliable leadership.

In fact, his scheme was not without merit. With their faith in the goodness of the earth as their mother and their strong belief in the power of the earth to heal and protect them, the nontreaty Nez Perce had experienced exile as a deep wound to their hearts and spirits. As Joseph himself had said, the Creator seemed to have turned his back on them. The earth was providing them with sickness, not health; their medicine men were powerless to ward off the deaths and diseases that were claiming their young and their elderly. Their seven-drum ceremonies were not gaining the favor of the Creator, and their
wayakin
spirits seemed to have lost their power to assist them in times of need. In the hearts of some, the hard question had started to rise up as to whether, indeed, the white people's way might not, in fact, be the chosen way of the Creator.

And if religious doubts were not sufficient to pry the wavering Nez Perce from Joseph's grip, Jones willingly assisted their conversion by withholding rations from those who stayed faithful to the obstinate chief and his old ways, and he increased the rations of those who converted to Christianity and embraced the new way of life that was being practiced so successfully by the Modoc and other tribes under his control.

The Christian Nez Perce back in Idaho were more than happy to assist Jones in his mission. In their eyes, their exiled relatives were lost sheep. Many of the people who had fled to Canada with White Bird had found life with Sitting Bull and the Sioux harsh and difficult and had begun to trickle back to the Lapwai reservation. From these returning families the treaty Nez Perce had learned of the suffering that their brothers and sisters had experienced during the flight. And though there was still great anger toward Joseph and the others who had caused this misery by their actions, they wanted to assist in any way they could to bring the exiled people back to their homeland. When the opportunity came to send three of their own number to Oklahoma to aid in this effort, they were only too happy to oblige.

James Reuben, the Kamiah leader who had been one of Howard's scouts and was proud of the fact, was chosen to go as interpreter. He was reputed to have been among those shot at by the escaping warriors near the Weippe Prairie, though it was unclear whether he had been shot there or whether he had been shot in the back while trying to run away from the Clearwater battle. Nonetheless, he had proven his loyalty to the government, and his Christian zeal had gained him this opportunity to travel to Indian Territory to try to arrange for the freedom and return of the exiles.

Archie Lawyer was to travel with him as schoolteacher and minister, and Mark Williams was sent along as chief farmer. That they were being used by the U.S. government and Indian agents was less important to them than that they were being used by the Lord to bring their brothers and sisters back to the flock. The agency life in Idaho was good; they were self-sufficient and prospering in the white manner, and the gifts they had received from the Lord had shown them that the spiritual path they had chosen was right for the Nez Perce people.

In early November 1878 they set out by train to the Indian Territory to begin their work for the Lord. They were accompanied by a number of White Bird's returning stragglers, who were being sent into exile so they would not create problems with either the treaty Nez Perce or the still-angry white settlers in the area.

The group arrived in Baxter Springs on December 6, while Chapman was still in Washington. Jones immediately installed James Reuben as official interpreter and set Williams and Lawyer to work trying to convert the Nez Perce who were already wavering in their faith in the old ways.

The three men took their status as civilized, Christian men very seriously. They arrived dressed in black suits and white shirts, their hair cropped short. They took up lodging in Jones's house rather than staying among their nontreaty brothers and sisters in their camp two miles away. They insisted on proper wages, proper respect, and proper treatment in all things, just as would have been accorded white visitors in their capacities.

Joseph, however, accorded them little respect. He was occupied with the suffering of his people—a young boy he had taken as his son was on the verge of dying—and his families were now almost indifferent in their despair. The arrival of these nontreaty Christian Nez Perce who had fought against him and his people was an affront and insult. He had come to rely upon, if not entirely trust, Chapman and was not about to give over the power of his voice to a man like James Reuben, who had taken up arms against his own people. He continued his resistance, refusing to be party to the efforts of Reuben, Lawyer, and Williams to offer assistance to the tribe.

But others among the tribe were not so adamant. Husis Kute, who had always been a spiritual man, was beginning to waver in his faith in the old ways and rankled under the constant designation of Joseph and Yellow Bull as the head chiefs. He had been allowed to accompany Hayt to look for land to the west, but it was clear that he was not accorded the respect given to Joseph. He did not see why he should always be placed third on government rolls and listed behind Yellow Bull, a subchief, when he, in fact, was a full chief of the Palouse people.

Others too were beset by doubts and desperate to find a spiritual power that would deliver them from this exile. Still others simply wanted full rations so they could maintain their strength and ward off the illness that was claiming the health and lives of so many in the camp.

When Joseph refused to sign for rations in Chapman's absence, not trusting Reuben and not wishing to place his name on a white document that he did not understand, Husis Kute stepped up and signed in the people's behalf, further dividing hearts and allegiances. Soon Reuben, Williams, and Lawyer began making allies and converts among the suffering people, becoming exactly the wedge that Jones had hoped for.

When Chapman returned from Washington and found the three Lapwai Nez Perce living in Jones's house, he knew immediately what Jones had been up to, and in his mind it had nothing to do with religion. These three Indians, with their white clothing and white ways, were here to take his authority and, equally as important, his job.

He also knew that these men would be tools of Jones, who would use them to continue his oppression and exploitation of Joseph and the others who would not adapt to the agent's ways. During his stay in Washington, three more children had died, including the young boy Joseph called his son. The people had run out of rations, the cattle allotted for future slaughter had gotten so thin that the white man in charge doubted that more than ten of the fifty could even survive, and the healthy cows that had been weighed into the herd before Chapman's departure had mysteriously disappeared. In addition, the weather had turned snowy and bitterly cold. Once again, death and starvation were descending in full force upon the suffering Nez Perce people.

Chapman immediately shot off a new fusillade of letters and telegrams to officials in Washington describing the situation, vilifying Jones, and promoting his claim as the legitimate translator. Jones responded with counterclaims, and Reuben, Lawyer, and Williams chimed in on their own, indignant at their poor treatment as civilized men and requesting more funds to cover the cost of their stay in Jones's house. All the while, the Nez Perce sat in their leaky canvas teepees amid snow and frigid rains, hoping for an answer, or at least a ray of hope, that would deliver them from their increasingly hopeless and seemingly endless situation.

Joseph realized that the situation was now perilous. Chapman's visit to Washington had succeeded in keeping the issue of the Nez Perce before the public eye, but he could not be sure exactly what Chapman had done, and on whose behalf, during his visit. But whatever Chapman had done, it had not resulted in any significant lessening of his people's suffering. It also had allowed Reuben, Williams, and Lawyer to gain a foothold with the people. Sickness and despair were now being joined by divisiveness and doubt. He needed to get to Washington himself.

The one person who could help him was his longtime acquaintance, Colonel A. B. Meacham, who had once been the Superintendent of Indian Affairs in Oregon and since had begun writing a pro-Indian newspaper in Washington called the
Council Fire.
Though Meacham himself had earlier pleaded with Joseph to accept the truth of history and begin living in the white manner, he had always held Joseph in high regard. He also was a confidante of Chapman, and he had previously visited the Nez Perce encampment and seen their pitiful situation. When Chapman and Joseph pleaded with him to assist them in saving the Nez Perce from a slow death at the hands of Jones, he willingly agreed to take up their cause. Through his influence, Commissioner Hayt and Secretary Schurz of the Department of the Interior finally granted permission for Joseph to travel to Washington to present his case. If there was a chance that Joseph could change people's hearts and minds, this was it.

On a cold, wintry day in January 1879, Joseph, Chapman, and Yellow Bull set off for Baxter Springs to catch the train to Kansas City. From there they would proceed to St. Louis, then on to Washington, D.C.

The three men tried to travel unobtrusively, but they were unable to avoid public attention. Neither Joseph nor Yellow Bull had ever become comfortable in white man's clothes, so they continued to dress in their traditional outfits. The presence of Indians in full tribal regalia created excitement wherever they went, even if no one knew the true celebrity of the barrel-chested, self-possessed Indian they saw sitting silently next to them in railroad coaches and at restaurants.

In St. Louis, they caused a great stir at the grand three-hundred-room, six-story Lindell Hotel when they walked into the dining room along with the thin, scruffy Chapman. They took a table in the corner of the room and tried to keep to themselves, but two Indians with shoulder-length hair wearing moccasins and red, white, and blue blankets were not easily ignored. The other diners began whispering animatedly about these exotic creatures who had glided noiselessly among them and now were eating adjacent to them, skillfully using knives and forks and the other utensils of civilization.

After the strange group finished and left the dining room, a reporter for the
St. Louis Globe Democrat,
who had happened to be dining there that evening, rushed up to the front register and asked about the identity of the unusual visitors. When he was informed that it was the famous Chief Joseph along with one of his subchiefs and an interpreter, the reporter immediately sent his card up to the room, hoping he would have the unbelievable good fortune of getting an interview with this legendary war chief.

Joseph was more than willing to meet the man. A reporter, especially one whose work was distributed in this great, astonishing city of St. Louis, was exactly the kind of quarry he had hoped to catch in his hunt for public support. And, truth be told, he had actually begun to enjoy the celebrity status that white American was according him. He quickly arranged to have the man invited up.