This is week 2 of our 5 part series honoring the strength, culture and history of Native Americans.This is the heartbreaking story of the Nez Perce. The Tonkawa Tribe says it best on their website, “One might ask, how did the Nez Perce who were from the Northwest happen to be here in Oklahoma territory? This story is another one of the shameful chapters from American history; how the west was really won.”In 1805 the Lewis and Clark expedition came out of the Rocky Mountains. The Nez Perce found them starved, sick and near death. They fed them and took care of them until they were able to continue. The Nez Perce and the whites remained friends until greed turned them into enemies. Treaties and promise after promise were broken by the whites, supported by the US Army.Chief Joseph fled eastward in 1877 to find refuge in Canada with only 250 warriors. They held the military at bay for 15 weeks during a 1700 mile chase.The army pursued them through snowstorm and blizzard, and after killing more than 50 women and children in a pre-dawn attack, the army succeeded in turning them southward.They were forced to surrender at Bear Paw Mountain, thirty miles from the Canadian border.In Nov. of 1877 the Nez Perce were moved to Fort Levenworth, KS and the following year to the Quapaw Agency near Baxter Springs, KS. They were then placed in Tonkawa on the Oakland reservation in 1879, not before 100 Nez Perce died from sickness or mistreatment, including the daughter of Chief Joseph. Despite the heartbreak and hardship placed on them by the whites, they became economically self sufficient by leasing agreements with ranchers but they longed to return to their homeland.In May of 1884, petitions by Congress passed a bill that became law that authorized the removal to Northern Washington, instead of their homeland near Lapwai, Idaho. By 1885 only 285 Nez Perce remained alive. Chief Joseph and a few other warriors were separated and lived in exile. On Sept. 21, 1904 Heinmont Tooyalaket, Chief Joseph, died at the age of 63. The attending physician reported the cause of death was that he died of a broken heart.“Let me be a free man, free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free ...
