Seth King Humphrey

“ I point you, commencing with Lewis and Clark in 1804 to the present day, to the accounts of all travellers across the continent; and with one accord they point to the Nez Perces and Flatheads as two bright, shining points in a long and weary pilgrimage across a prairie desert and rugged mountain barrier, alive with savage hordes of Indians, where they have been relieved and aided when most in need; and instances sufficiently numerous to swell a volume exist, that render it needless for me here to refer to them. But I make one more appeal in behalf of these people. ”

“ Deny this as they may, or seek to excuse it on the ground of the Indian's incompetence, it is to their lasting dishonor that for their own personal gain a people boasting the equality of all men should have steadily denied to the Indian the one thing by which he might hope to come into an advantageous relation with the superior race,—recognition under the law. ”

“ Too much praise cannot be awarded Lawyer, the head chief of the nation, for his endeavors to keep peace between his people and the whites, and to account to them for the want of good faith on the part of the Government. . . .
"It is uphill work for an agent to manage his Indians well when he refers them to certain treaty stipulations reserved as their part, when they can retort by saying that but few of the stipulations on the part of the Government are kept." ”

“ When they surrendered to superior force they did it in the most solemn manner and under the most solemn promises of protection and a return to their own country. That that promise has not been kept is an historical fact, and never has been explained. Might never made right, and the power to punish can never excuse its exercise wrongfully. As the years go by the eyes of this people are turned to the Northwest, and their yearning hearts pulsate naught but Idaho. ”

“ Indians, even Indians grieving over real or fancied wrongs, do not commit indiscriminate murder without some immediate inciting cause; what that was, the official records do not disclose, but the Indians' story of the whites' rapacity remains uncontroverted.
Among Indians in a less inflammable mood, this act of a few vengeful hotheads need not have plunged the whole tribe into war; but the smouldering fire of discontent needed only these murders to turn instantly the whole body of non-treaty Indians from the calm persuasion of their chiefs. ”

“ The entire band, with perhaps one or two exceptions, are quiet, peaceable, and orderly people. They receive what is provided for them with apparent thankfulness, ask for nothing more and give no trouble whatever. They are extremely anxious to return to their own country. They regard themselves as exiles. The climate does not seem to agree with them, many of them have died, and there is a tinge of melancholy in their bearing and conversation that is truly pathetic. ”

“ In 1866 the Nez Perces were still dreaming of the alluring benefits which were to come to them under their second treaty:
"The Indians of southern Idaho are fast fading away, and as we occupy their root grounds, converting them into fields and pastures, we must either protect them or leave them to the destroying elements now surrounding them, the result of which cannot be doubtful. A humane magnanimity dictates their protection and speedy separation from those evils to which they are exposed by intermingling with white men. ”

“ We never fought the whites; they did. If you whites pay the Indians that fight you, it must be good to fight."
"It must be good to fight." Slowly the Indians came into a full understanding of the "hopelessly illogical" policy of the Government under which its benefits were "proportioned not to the good but to the ill desert of the several tribes." War and desolation filled the land, and the tribes of the mountains stubbornly maintained an unequal struggle for that which, to their untutored minds, seemed to be their own country. ”

“ In those days, before the United States Government had conceived its mission to impress Christian civilization upon foreign peoples by means of the military, its army was so insignificant that one band of runaway Indians served to draw the whole available force into the field. ”

“ Joseph now says that the greatest want of the Indians is a system of law by which controversies between Indians, and between Indians and white men, can be settled without appealing to physical force. He says that the want of law is the great source of disorder among Indians. They understand the operation of laws, and if there were any statutes the Indians would be perfectly content to place themselves in the hands of a proper tribunal, and would not take the righting of their wrongs into their own hands, or retaliate, as they now do, without the law. ”

“ A despairing and pathetic contest it is when an unlettered race, with its simple views of fundamental justice, comes against calculating, enlightened, and overwhelming might; the dim realization of inferiority kindles in the benighted mind a desperate ferocity which is akin to patriotic zeal in more civilized defenders of native land.
It is impossible to account for this policy of inaction. ”

“ That flight of months before the troops was one long tragedy for Joseph and his people. If it taxed to the utmost the endurance of General Howard's command, what must it have been for the Indians, encumbered with their families? Many fell by the way who were not the victims of their pursuers' bullets; many women and children of Joseph's band were left in hastily made graves. It is a sad truth that desperate men among the fleeing Indians committed a number of robberies and murders which could not be considered as acts of war ”

“ So brave, good, and generous a people deserve well of their Government, and I can only express the hope that such generous action will be taken by the coming Congress in their behalf as may enable the department to furnish them with the horses and implements of agriculture that they so much need. Such a people should not be allowed to perish, and this great Government can afford to be generous and just. ”

“ The present unhappy condition of these Indians appeals to the sympathy of a very large portion of the American people. I had occasion in my last annual report to say that 'Joseph and his followers have shown themselves to be brave men and skilful soldiers, who, with one exception, have observed the rules of civilized warfare, and have not mutilated their dead enemies.' These Indians were encroached upon by white settlers on soil they believed to be their own, and when these encroachments became intolerable they were compelled, in their own estimation, to take up arms. ”

“ Diplomacy never more delicately screened a real intention behind a fictitious one. No time was wasted in defining the limits of the reserve; the white men knew where they were; the Indians understood them; nobody misunderstood them. A new treaty was drawn up, cutting down the reservation to a plat of land about one-eighth of its original size, in the centre of the old reserve. Then came the usual struggle to gain the Indian assent. The Wallowa Valley was excluded under the new treaty, and Joseph refused to sign it ”

“ The Indians can see no good while you are along; you advise them to resist, to lose all their horses and cattle, and have unending trouble. Will Joseph and White Bird and Looking-glass go with me to look after the land? The old man shall not go; he must stay with Captain Perry.' The Old Dreamer says: 'Do you want to scare me with reference to my body?' I then said I would leave his body with Captain Perry, and called for the captain to take him out of the council. ”

“ All history acquits Joseph and his band in the Wallowa Valley of the murders which decided the "non-treaty" Indians for war. Nevertheless, Joseph had led the combined forces in their hopeless struggle; and afterward it was Joseph's voice that was raised in continual protest against the extinction of his people. So, in the selection of a scapegoat to offer up to the good people of Idaho, the lot naturally fell to Joseph. ”

“ I never said the land was mine to do with it as I chose. The one who has the right to dispose of it is the one who has created it. I claim a right to live on my land, and accord you the privilege to live on yours. ”

“ One of their number was wickedly slain by a white man during the last summer, but he would not avenge his death. But, unavenged by him, the voice of that brother's blood, sanctifying the ground, would call the dust of their fathers back to life, to people the land in protest of this great wrong. ”

“ The subsequent history of the Northwest would have been less bloody, less filled with tales of Indian massacres and Indian wars, had the Government fulfilled with any degree of promptness its obligations; but Congress, year after year, failed to render the treaties operative by ratifying them, while the Indians, accepting in good faith the terms of their agreements, vacated the ceded lands and gathered upon the tracts reserved for them, to await the benefits that were promised in the way of annuities, instruction, and implements of agriculture. ”

“ Joseph's band of Nez Perees are more or less unsettled and of a restless character; they appear to be greatly dissatisfied at times with their location. In my opinion the causes of their dissatisfaction are just. Owing to many of their friends and relatives living on the Nez Perce reservation in the State of Idaho, an effort should be made to remove them from their present location at Nespilem to the Nez Perce Agency, Idaho, where they claim land would be allotted to them, as is being done with their friends and relatives of that reservation. ”

“ It is impossible to perceive either honesty or justice in thus getting a favored portion of an Indian nation to sign away the possessions of outside tribes, who were holding their native valleys under express agreement with their Great Father in Washington. A few of the outside Indians bowed to the inevitable, and removed to the reserve, but the majority did not; Joseph, always tenacious of the Indian right to lead the Indian life, refused to move; he continued in possession of the Wallowa Valley. ”

“ Brave and hardy soldiers, doing a stern duty under orders from their Government, pressed to the utmost a band of some six hundred fleeing men, women, and children who could not be made to understand why the country of their fathers from time without reckoning should pass to the white man "by right of discovery and occupation." ”

“ But few over half of the entire tribes of the Nez Perces are under treaty. The fidelity of those under treaty, even under the most discouraging circumstances, must commend itself to the favorable consideration of the department. The influx of the white population into their country has subjected them to all the evils arising from an association with bad white men, and, as might well be expected, the effect upon the Indians has been most unhappy. ”

“ It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led on the young men is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food; no one knows where they are, perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs. ”

“ The Indians feel that their rights have been trifled with by promises, made by agents armed and vested with authority to act, which the Government has not ratified. And will it, I ask, longer remain in this passive mood? Will it longer act inertly while lives are sacrificed and millions squandered, and still longer hesitate to act? ”

“ These Indians boast with great pride that they as a nation never shed a white man's blood, but the Government has, through its agents, been so dilatory in fulfilling its treaty stipulations, and agents have promised so often that all the stipulations of the treaties would soon be fulfilled, and to so little purpose, that these Indians do not believe that an agent can or will tell the truth. ”

“ The non-treaty side throw it up to the other side that now they have sold their country and have got nothing but promises which are being received from year to year, that their annuities will never be here. They use it, too, with such good effect that every day their side is increasing in strength. Many of the young men, and some of the old ones of the Lawyer side, say it is true, and that they had rather be with the non-treaty side and not expect anything than to remain with the Lawyer side and have, every few days, these promises repeated to them. ”

“ By the acts of a few, all were compromised; "the Indians have risen!" went up the cry, and with it ended the peaceful removal so nearly accomplished.
The outbreak occurred many miles east of the Wallowa Valley; neither Joseph nor any member of his band were concerned in it. Yet such was the instantaneous effect of this unhappy incident that to have opposed the common cause of all would have been little short of traitorous; sides were taken in a day, and the non-treaty Indians almost to a man were arrayed with their chiefs against the military. ”

“ They fought against the whites, while we, who have never been angry with them, get nothing."
And this from a Snohomish chief:
"We want our treaty to be concluded as soon as possible; we are tired of waiting. Our reasons are that our old people (and there are many of them) are dying. Look at those two old men and old women; they have only a little while to live, and they want to get their pay for their land. The white people have taken it, and you, Mr. Simmons, promised us that we should be paid. You and Governor Stevens. Suspense is killing us. ”

“ Joseph came into the chieftainship at a critical period in the history of his tribe. In the early seventies white settlers became so numerous and persistent in their claims to rich portions of the Wallowa Valley, and pressed upon Washington their desire for the expulsion of the Indians with such political force, that in 1873 a commission was sent into the valley to arrange with the Indians for their removal. ”

“ Some friction arose between the settlers and White Bird's Indians, and friction with Indians yielding their homes to superior force is dangerous business—as well strike a match in a powder-mill. There is a story that the white settlers, taking advantage of the Indians' movement of their herds, endeavored to stampede and run off with their horses and cattle,—an act which the exasperated Indians summarily avenged. ”