esser chiefs
counseled revolt then and there, Joseph maintained his self-control,
seeking to calm his people, and still groping for a peaceful settlement
of their difficulties. He finally asked for thirty days' time in which
to find and dispose of their stock, and this was granted.

Joseph steadfastly held his immediate followers to their promise, but
the land-grabbers were impatient, and did everything in their power
to bring about an immediate crisis so as to hasten the eviction of the
Indians. Depredations were committed, and finally the Indians, or some
of them, retaliated, which was just what their enemies had been looking
for. There might be a score of white men murdered among themselves on
the frontier and no outsider would ever hear about it, but if one were
injured by an Indian--"Down with the bloodthirsty savages!" was the cry.

Joseph told me himself that during all of those thirty days a tremendous
pressure was brought upon him by his own people to resist the government
order. "The worst of it was," said he, "that everything they said was
true; besides"--he paused for a moment--"it seemed very soon for me to
forget my father's dying words, 'Do not give up our home!'" Knowing as I
do just what this would mean to an Indian, I felt for him deeply.

Among the opposition leaders were Too-hul-hul-sote, White Bird, and
Looking Glass, all of them strong men and respected by the Indians;
while on the other side were men built up by emissaries of the
government for their own purposes and advertised as "great friendly
chiefs." As a rule such men are unworthy, and this is so well known to
the Indians that it makes them distrustful of the government's sincerity
at the start. Moreover, while Indians unqualifiedly say what they mean,
the whites have a hundred ways of saying what they do not mean.

The center of the storm was this simple young man, who so far as I can
learn had never been upon the warpath, and he stood firm for peace and
obedience. As for his father's sacred dying charge, he told himself that
he would not sign any papers, he would not go of his free will but from
compulsion, and this was his excuse.

However, the whites were unduly impatient to clear the coveted valley,
and by their insolence they aggravated to the danger point an already
strained situation. The murder of an Indian was the climax and this
happened in the absence of the young chief. He returned to find the
leaders determined to die fight