Chief Joseph

Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt, also known as Chief Joseph, led a decades-long campaign to protect his people’s right to live on ancestral lands. Chief Joseph’s father was among the Nimiipuu, or Nez Perce, who rejected a treaty in 1863 that gave the federal government custody of virtually all the tribe’s Oregon homeland, where gold had recently been discovered. Throughout the early 1870s, Chief Joseph negotiated against federal attempts to relocate his community.

Finally, in 1877, military troops threatened to forcefully move the Nez Perce to a reservation in Idaho. Chief Joseph led approximately eight hundred followers on a strategic retreat toward Canada. Only thirty miles from the border, a siege by U.S. troops forced Chief Joseph’s surrender. For the next eight years, he was imprisoned at several sites, including Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where Cyrenius Hall painted this portrait. Following his release, Chief Joseph resumed diplomatic efforts on behalf of the Nez Perce.