Chief Joseph Goes to War and Out Generals the US Army

After Colonel Nelson A. Miles of the Fifth Infantry had driven Sitting Bull and Chief Gall of the Sioux into Canada and his troops were trying to stop their raids back, at present Fort Keogh near Miles City on the Yellowstone River in southeastern Montana he received word of another Indian war. The friendly Pierced Noses of Oregon had broken the peace chain. They had crossed the mountains and were on their way north, for Canada. That the Pierced Noses had taken the war trail was astonishing news. For one hundred years they had held the hand of the white man. Their proudest boast said: "The Nez Perces have never shed white blood." They spoke truly. During the seventy years since the two captains Lewis and Clark had met them in 1805, only one white man had been killed by a Pierced Nose. That was not in war, but in a private quarrel between the two. Hunters, traders and missionaries had always been helped by the Pierced Noses. The white man's religion had been favored. The Good Book had been prized. Young Chief Joseph was now the leader of the Pierced Noses upon the war trail. His Indian name was Hin-ma-ton Ya-lat-kit-Thunder-rising-from-the-water-over-the-land. But his father had been christened Joseph by the missionaries; so the son was called Young Chief Joseph. A tall, commanding, splendid-looking Indian he had grown to be, at forty years of age. He was every inch a chief, and had a noble face."