re: then at the last
moment he was surprised and caught at a disadvantage. His army was
shattered; he had lost most of the leaders in these various fights;
his people, including children, women, and the wounded, had traveled
thirteen hundred miles in about fifty days, and he himself a young man
who had never before taken any important responsibility! Even now he was
not actually conquered. He was well entrenched; his people were willing
to die fighting; but the army of the United States offered peace and he
agreed, as he said, out of pity for his suffering people. Some of his
warriors still refused to surrender and slipped out of the camp at night
and through the lines. Joseph had, as he told me, between three and four
hundred fighting men in the beginning, which means over one thousand
persons, and of these several hundred surrendered with him.

His own story of the conditions he made was prepared by himself with my
help in 1897, when he came to Washington to present his grievances. I
sat up with him nearly all of one night; and I may add here that we
took the document to General Miles who was then stationed in Washington,
before presenting it to the Department. The General said that every word
of it was true.

In the first place, his people were to be kept at Fort Keogh, Montana,
over the winter and then returned to their reservation. Instead they
were taken to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and placed between a lagoon and
the Missouri River, where the sanitary conditions made havoc with them.
Those who did not die were then taken to the Indian Territory, where the
health situation was even worse. Joseph appealed to the government again
and again, and at last by the help of Bishops Whipple and Hare he was
moved to the Colville reservation in Washington. Here the land was very
poor, unlike their own fertile valley. General Miles said to the chief
that he had recommended and urged that their agreement be kept, but the
politicians and the people who occupied the Indians' land declared they
were afraid if he returned he would break out again and murder innocent
white settlers! What irony!

The great Chief Joseph died broken-spirited and broken-hearted. He did
not hate the whites, for there was nothing small about him, and when he
laid down his weapons he would not fight on with his mind. But he was
profoundly disappointed in the claims of a Christian civilization. I
call him great because he was simple and honest. Without ed