In 1874, the United States Army appointed General Oliver Otis Howard as the head of the army’s Department of the Columbia (present-day Oregon and Washington). General Howard, known as “America’s Christian General”, had been in charge of the Freedman’s Bureau following the Civil War. A Presbyterian, General Howard was viewed by non-Christians as a bit of a religious zealot.
According to Kent Nerburn, in his book Chief Joseph and the Flight of the Nez Perce: The Untold Story of an American Tragedy:
“Howard understood his task to be the military arm of the Christian peace process to which his denomination had committed itself.”
General George Crook, a contemporary of General Howard, says of him:
“He told me he thought the Creator had placed him on earth to be the Moses of the Negro. Having accomplished that mission, he felt satisfied that his next mission was with the Indian.”
When General Howard arrived in the Pacific Northwest, one of the government’s concerns was the rise of an American Indian religion led by the Wanapan prophet Smohalla whose followers were known as Dreamers.
By 1875, Smohalla’s teachings had placed him in conflict with the American government. The American government felt that Indians must become farmers in order to be assimilated into American society. Smohalla, on the other hand, was preaching that Americans were destroying the earth. While he did not advocate violence, he opposed farming. The Tacoma Herald called him the most dangerous savage in the country. The Indian superintendent for Oregon and Washington felt that Smohalla’s Dreamer Religion had to be suppressed, with military force if needed. He was incredulous that “their model of a man is an Indian.” It was apparent that he felt that Indians could not be religious leaders nor spiritual models for other Indians. In his biographical sketch of Smohalla in Notable Native Americans, Michael Turek reports:
“Government officials and most other whites could not comprehend the Dreamers’ belief; to them the Dreamer religion was nothing more than superstition and its followers ‘fanatics.’”
By 1875, the American government was actively seeking to convert Indians to Christianity and to destroy traditional native religions. Under theocratic rule, proselytizing on many reservations was restricted to the ruling denomination and Native American spiritual practices were outlawed. The Nez Perce Reservation at this time was a theocracy run in accordance with Presbyterian Christianity.
There were a number of Nez Perce bands which had not been relocated to the Idaho reservation. Many of these bands were followers of Smohalla. One government commission which was looking at Chief Joseph’s band in the Wallowa Valley in Oregon reported that Joseph and his band were under the “spell” of the Dreamers. The commission recommended that the leaders of this religion should be removed to Oklahoma, and that the band should be removed to the Idaho reservation, by force if necessary.
In 1876, the Indian superintendent for Oregon and Washington felt that Chief Joseph’s Nez Perce band was a part of an intertribal Dreamer conspiracy. According to the superintendent, the government had an obligation to suppress the Dreamer religion and to force Joseph’s band to live on the Idaho reservation where they must become Christians.
In 1877, General Howard met in council with the non-treaty Nez Perce bands to give them an ultimatum to move to the Christian reservation or face war. General Howard felt that it was his duty as an American officer and a Christian to force the non-treaty bands into becoming Christian. He opened the council by having a Christian Nez Perce speak a Christian prayer.
Among those at the council were Joseph (Heinmot Tooyalaket; Young Joseph), Ollokot (brother of Young Joseph), Young Chief, White Bird (Penpenhihi), Toohoolhoolzote, Husishusis Kute (Little Baldhead), Taktsoulkt Ilppilp (Red Echo) and Looking Glass (Allalimya Takanin; Looking Glass the Younger). The Nez Perce chiefs selected Toohoolhoolzote to speak for them.
Regarding Toohoolhoolzote, Kent Nerburn writes:
“He was a man of powerful medicine and a committed follower of Smohalla’s teachings about the living spirit of the earth.”
Husishusis Kute, a Palouse civil chief who had been wounded in war against the Americans, was also one of Smohalla’s followers.
From the American viewpoint, there could be only one outcome from the council: the non-treaty bands were going to move to the reservation. The Nez Perce Tribe, in their book Treaties: Nez Perce Perspectives, reports:
“Breaking every agreement, it had made with the Nez Perce, the military demanded that all the bands outside of the 1863 boundaries move onto the reservation within thirty days.”
General Howard told the Nez Perce:
“I am here to put you on the Lapwai Reservation, and this I shall do or go to war with you. There is no use talking about the Wallowa Valley. I am already sending my soldiers there to take possession of it.”
The difference in viewpoints between the Americans and the Nez Perce can be seen in the words of Chief Joseph:
“I do not believe that the Great Spirit Chief gave one kind of men the right to tell another kind of men what they must do.”
At one point Toohoolhoolzote asks:
“You are always talking about Washington. I would like to know who Washington is? Is he a Chief or a common man, or a house, or a place? Every time you have a council you speak of Washington. Leave Mr. Washington, that is if he is a man, alone. He has no sense. He does not know anything about our country. He never was here.”
The Americans, concerned about the Dreamers, made promises that the government would not interfere with their religion. Toohoolhoolzote continued to tell the Americans that his people had never given up their land and that they were trifling with the laws of the earth. Toohoolhoolzote says:
“You white people get together, measure the earth, and then divide it…Part of the Indians gave up their land. I never did. The earth is part of my body, and I never gave up the earth.”
General Howard replied:
“You know very well that the government has set apart a reservation, and that the Indians must go upon it.”
According to the Indian accounts, General Howard told the old man to shut up and shoved him over some Indians who were sitting on the ground.
General Howard finally grabbed Toohoolhoolzote and took him to the guardhouse where he was placed under arrest. In an 1879 story reprinted in Eyewitnesses to the Indian Wars 1865-1890, Volume Two: The Wars for the Pacific Northwest, General Howard later writes:
“We listened to the oft repeated Dream nonsense with no impatience, till finally he accused us of speaking untruthfully about the chieftainship of the earth.”
In his book The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the Northwest, Alvin Josephy writes:
“It was bad enough that Howard failed to understand the depth of Toohoolhoolzote’s spiritual beliefs, and that he lost first his patience and then his temper. But in the exchanges between the two men there must also have been considerable misunderstanding, possibly caused by the interpreters.”
In a traditional fashion, the Nez Perce chiefs left their weapons outside of the council tent. This was a statement that there would be no violence, no belligerence during the discussion. However, when Howard told them: “you will go onto the land, or I will send soldiers to put you on it” this was a violation of the traditional Indian code of conduct. Any mention of violence during a council session was considered a violation of the rules of decorum. Nez Perce warrior Yellow Bird puts it this way:
“In peace councils, force must not be talked. It was the same as showing us the rifle.”
By the end of the council, all of the Nez Perce chiefs were convinced that General Howard wanted to go to war against them and that he was only looking for an excuse. They were determined not to give him that excuse. They had come into the meeting to talk with General Howard as equals, as free men. Alvin Josephy writes:
“They left in humiliation, with their last illusion of fair treatment by Americans totally shattered.”
Ten days after the council, General Howard called together all the leaders of the non-treaty bands to issue them their removal orders. Initially, he gave them just ten days to move to the reservation—an impossible deadline. He finally settled on thirty days to move their women, children, horses, cattle, and personal belongings across the rivers which were running high with the spring runoff. He told them:
“If you let the time run over one day, the soldiers will be there to drive you to the reservation, and all your cattle and horses outside of the reservation at that time will fall into the hands of white men.”
Alvin Josephy reports:
“The band’s thousands of horses and cattle were spread across a vast, rugged expanse of canyons, ridgeslopes, prairies, forests, and meadows.”
Alvin Josephy also writes:
“What the Indians were trying to do in thirty days could have taken them half a year.”
Indians 101
American Indian histories are often offensive to people who believe one of the popular creations myths of the United States. History, however, should be based on reality rather than fantasy. More Nez Perce histories from this series:
Indians 201: Looking Glass, Nez Perce chief
Indians 101: Heathens on the Nez Perce Reservation
Indians 101: Gold and the Nez Perce
Indians 101: The Nez Perce in Exile
Indians 101: Setting the Stage for the Nez Perce War
Indians 101: Imposing Laws on the Nez Perce
Indians 101: Fort Fizzle and the Nez Perce