The Indian Dispossessed
"I want them to take hold of hands and never let go. We have taken your hands, my white friend, and I hope we will never part. I have heard the Lawyer and others talk, and my heart is the same as theirs."
Joseph, chief of the Nez Perces in the Wallowa Valley, delivered the most serious and thoughtful speech of them all. Looking into the future, as his fellow-chiefs evidently did not, he saw in the white man's protection the loss of Indian control, of tribal restraint, and in the loose communism of the reservation he saw the danger to the individual. Joseph saw these things darkly, instinctively; his untutored mind could grasp only the immediate needs of his people; but the breaking down of tribal restraints without the substitution of adequate law, and the herding together of a heterogeneous mass in a communism of idleness with the consequent destruction of individual incentive, have been solely responsible for the fearful degeneracy of the reservation Indian during the past forty years. In Joseph's words there is a wisdom that he knew not of; his earnest plea for the Indian's individuality is of deep significance:
"I want to tell you my heart. I am a red man. I have my own opinion about this country; we should make up our minds before we talk. When we made a treaty with Governor Stevens, the line was drawn; I know where it is; you told us right yesterday; it is as you said. When Governor Stevens made the
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