Page:The Indian Dispossessed.pdf/136

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

The Indian Dispossessed

while Joseph, to save his. people from annihilation, surrendered to Colonel Miles, after his brother Ollicut, five other chiefs, and many warriors had been killed in the battle.

"This reply of Joseph's was taken verbatim on the spot," says General Howard's report:

"Tell General Howard I know his heart. What he told me before I have in my heart. I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed. Looking Glass is dead. Too-hul-hul-sote is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led on the young men is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food; no one knows where they are, perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs. I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever."

Captives at last. A strange tragedy, this, to be enacted on the one hundredth anniversary of the patriots' darkest winter!

1777, 1877; a liberty-loving nation, dwelling at this centennial time on the memories of its own struggle for independence; pointing its youth to the picture of Washington and his men at Valley

120