Chief Joseph Biography Quotes 41 Report mistakes

Names, Origins, and Early Life
Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt, widely known as Chief Joseph, was born around 1840 in the Wallowa Valley of the Pacific Northwest, a homeland the Nez Perce (Nimiipuu) had occupied for generations. His name is often translated as Thunder Rolling Down the Mountain. He was the son of the respected leader Tuekakas, remembered to Americans as Joseph the Elder or Old Joseph, who had accepted some Christian teachings from missionary Henry Spalding in the 1840s before later rejecting pressures to cede ancestral lands. Growing up amid profound change as traders, missionaries, and settlers entered the region, Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt learned both Nimiipuu lifeways and the diplomatic skills required for dealing with outsiders. His younger brother Olikut (often spelled Ollokot) became a gifted war leader, while Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt developed a reputation for measured judgment, careful speech, and an emphasis on protecting families and homelands without needless bloodshed.

Leadership and the Treaty Crisis
The Nez Perce negotiated with territorial authorities in the 1850s, notably at Walla Walla in 1855, when a treaty recognized a large Nimiipuu homeland that included the Wallowa. As gold strikes and settler pressure mounted, a second treaty in 1863 drastically reduced the reservation to a fraction of its former size, excluding the Wallowa altogether. Old Joseph refused to sign and tore up the symbolic papers that, to him, represented a betrayal. When he died in the early 1870s, Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt succeeded him as civil leader of the Wallowa band of the Nez Perce who had not agreed to the 1863 terms. He urged peace, asked for impartial enforcement of U.S. law against violent trespassers, and pressed to remain in the Wallowa. At the same time, he worked closely with other prominent Nez Perce leaders, including Olikut, Looking Glass, White Bird, and the orator and spiritual figure Toohoolhoolzote. Their unity was frequently tested as federal officials insisted that all Nez Perce move to the smaller reservation at Lapwai in Idaho.

War, Flight, and Strategy in 1877
In 1877, after tense councils with General Oliver Otis Howard, U.S. troops moved to compel relocation. A violent incident involving young Nez Perce men who killed settlers ignited open conflict that most leaders had sought to avoid. Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt and his allies guided a desperate strategy: protect noncombatants, withdraw quickly, and avoid annihilation by superior forces. Early in the campaign, at White Bird Canyon, Nez Perce warriors under field leaders like White Bird won a sharp victory. Pursued by Howard, the bands crossed Lolo Pass into Montana, hoping to outmaneuver the Army and, if necessary, reach safety in Canada near Sitting Bull, who had taken refuge there.

The journey became an epic fighting retreat marked by alternating engagements and long, grueling marches. At the Big Hole in Montana, U.S. troops under Colonel John Gibbon launched a surprise pre-dawn attack on the Nez Perce camp, killing many, including women and children. Though Nez Perce fighters rallied and drove Gibbon back, the losses were devastating. The flight continued across the Yellowstone region, with another clash at Canyon Creek against forces commanded by Colonel Samuel Sturgis. Throughout, Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt focused on moving the camps, negotiating when possible, and maintaining cohesion among bands battered by cold, hunger, and grief.

Bear Paw, Surrender, and Separation
Near the Bear Paw Mountains of northern Montana, only a short distance from the Canadian border, the exhausted Nez Perce were intercepted by troops under General Nelson A. Miles, with Howard eventually completing the encirclement. The fighting was fierce. Olikut and Toohoolhoolzote were killed, and Looking Glass was shot by a scout during the siege. With winter closing in, people wounded and starving, and many children and elders at risk, Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt agreed to surrender in the autumn of 1877. A set of words attributed to him at Bear Paw, preserved in English by Army officer and later poet Charles Erskine Scott Wood, would become famous for their dignity and despair, encapsulating his belief that further resistance would only destroy the people he was bound to protect. White Bird and a portion of the band refused surrender and reached Canada, but most of the Wallowa and allied families entered U.S. custody.

Exile, Advocacy, and Relocation
After surrender, the Nez Perce were taken far from their homeland. They were held first under military guard and then sent to confinement areas in the Midwest and the Indian Territory, where disease and poor conditions claimed many lives. Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt repeatedly petitioned officials to honor assurances that his people could return to the Northwest. In 1879 he traveled east to plead the Nez Perce case, speaking to audiences and visiting Washington, where he met national leaders, including President Rutherford B. Hayes. He described the Wallowa as the heart of his people and argued that justice required a return to it or to lands near their kin. Though some Nez Perce who had long lived on the reservation in Idaho remained in their homeland, the non-treaty bands were not permitted to go back to the Wallowa.

By 1885, federal authorities transferred Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt and many of his followers to the Colville Reservation in what is now Washington State, placing them at Nespelem among other bands and nations. It was a partial reprieve from the deadly conditions of exile, but it left the Wallowa beyond reach. He continued to advocate for his people, meeting officials, corresponding with intermediaries, and addressing journalists and reformers who were increasingly attentive to Native rights and the failures of federal policy. His public profile rose, yet he remained, in his own eyes, a spokesman for families who wanted simply to live in peace on their ancestral ground.

Later Years and Death
In the closing decades of the nineteenth century, Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt traveled at times to speak about the war and about promises unkept, gaining a reputation across the United States as a voice of Native dignity and endurance. He urged that treaties be honored, that legal redress replace violence, and that the next generation be spared the losses his people had endured. Despite these efforts, federal policy did not restore the Wallowa to the Nez Perce who had been exiled.

He died around 1904 at Nespelem on the Colville Reservation. Contemporary accounts record a physician's observation that he died of what was called a broken heart, a phrase that, whether clinical or metaphorical, captured how many understood the weight of dispossession he bore. He was laid to rest there, far from the Wallowa Valley that had shaped his identity and to which he had sought to return his people.

Character and Legacy
Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt's leadership drew strength from people around him: Old Joseph's insistence on the integrity of the Wallowa; Olikut's courage in defense; the counsel of Looking Glass and White Bird; the spiritual resolve of Toohoolhoolzote; and the resilience of families who endured flight and siege. His counterparties in the U.S. Army and government, General O. O. Howard, Colonel John Gibbon, Colonel Samuel Sturgis, General Nelson A. Miles, and policy makers from territorial negotiators such as Isaac Stevens to presidents in Washington, shaped the choices he faced. The meaning of his words, as filtered through translators and writers like Charles Erskine Scott Wood, helped craft a national memory of him as a humane statesman. Yet his legacy is most tangible in the survival of the Nez Perce as a people, in their language and traditions, and in an enduring claim to justice grounded in the land itself.

To many, he remains a symbol of principled resistance carried out with restraint, a civil leader who sought to protect the vulnerable amidst war. To the Nez Perce, he is also a son of the Wallowa who kept faith with his father's charge not to sell the bones of their fathers. His life illuminates a pivotal era in the history of the American West, when competing sovereignties, rapid migration, and the force of the United States pressed against Native homelands, and when a leader's courage was measured by his unwavering commitment to his people's survival and dignity.

Our collection contains 41 quotes who is written by Chief, under the main topics: Truth - Justice - Freedom - Equality - Peace.

• 1879 Address to U.S. Officials and the President (Washington visit) (Speech)
• 1877 I Will Fight No More Forever (Surrender Speech) (Speech)