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The 1855 Treaty of Walla Walla gave the Nez Perce 7.5 million acres across present-day Idaho, Oregon and Washington. Gold near Pierce, Idaho in 1860 brought miners, the illegal town of Lewiston and settlers who plowed up the camas prairies. The 1863 treaty cut the reservation by 90 percent, and Chief Joseph’s Wallowa band refused to accept it. In May 1877 General Oliver Otis Howard gave the non-treaty bands 30 days to move and jailed the elder Toohoolhoolzote for objecting. Joseph agreed to go, but young men shamed over unavenged killings raided nearby settlements, and the bands fled.

About 250 warriors guarded more than 500 noncombatants and 2,000 horses on a 1,170-mile flight through Idaho, Montana and Yellowstone. After the victory at White Bird Canyon, newspapers cast Joseph as the Red Napoleon, though Ollokot, Looking Glass and Poker Joe led the fighting while Joseph managed the camp. A dawn attack at the Big Hole killed many women and children. At the Bear Paw Mountains, 40 miles from Canada, General Nelson Miles trapped them, and Joseph surrendered on October 5, 1877. William Tecumseh Sherman voided the promise of return, sending the Nez Perce to Fort Leavenworth and Indian Territory.

• The surrender speech was translated by Arthur Chapman and written down by Lieutenant C.E.S. Wood, a poet who may have polished it.
• The Nez Perce fought 18 engagements before Bear Paw.
• Ollokot, Looking Glass and Toohoolhoolzote were all killed in the five-day siege.
• Joseph met the president and Congress in 1879 and published his case in the North American Review.
• In 1885, 268 survivors returned to the Northwest, but Joseph was barred from the Wallowa and died on the Colville Reservation in 1904.