c. 1840-1904 · Leader of the Wallowa band of the Nez Perce during the 1877 war
About Chief Joseph
Chief Joseph (c. 1840-1904), known among his own people as Hinmatóowyalahtq̓it (Thunder Rolling Down the Mountain), led the Wallowa band of the Nez Perce of northeastern Oregon after the death of his father, Old Joseph, in 1871. He and his band refused to leave the Wallowa Valley for the Lapwai reservation in Idaho, and in 1877 he was one of the leaders of the Nez Perce in their long retreat toward Canada. After the surrender he spoke and wrote in Washington and elsewhere on behalf of his people's return to the Northwest, and he died on the Colville Reservation in Washington in 1904.
I Will Fight No More Forever is the message of surrender that Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce sent to General Oliver O. Howard and Colonel Nelson A. Miles on 5 October 1877, at the end of the siege at the Bear Paw Mountains in Montana Territory. Since June the non-treaty Nez Perce bands, some 750 people including many women, children, and elderly, had retreated more than a thousand miles from Idaho, through the Bitterroot Mountains, across Yellowstone, and north toward refuge in Canada, fighting a series of engagements with the army along the way.