War chief can refer to

Warlord

Tribal chief during wartime, particularly among Native Americans

:See also Roy Phillips (musician)

Roy Phillips (b.February 12, 1943 d.March 23, 2002) was Director, System Design and Integration at Cessna Aircraft Co. in Wichita, Ks. He was employed at Cessna Aircraft Co. for 38 years. He was a long time contributor to the Wichita State University athletic department. His family has set an Engineering scholarship for WSU baseball student athletes.

External links

WSU athletics website

Category:2002 deaths Category:1943 births

Name	Julian Assange
Caption	Assange in 2010
Birth date	July 03, 1971
Birth place	Townsville, Queensland, Australia
Alma mater	University of Melbourne
Occupation	Editor-in-chief and spokesperson for WikiLeaks
Awards	Economist Freedom of Expression Award (2008)Amnesty International UK Media Award (2009)Sam Adams Award (2010)
Death date
Nationality	Australian

Julian Paul Assange ( ; born 3 July 1971) is an Australian publisher, software developer and Internet activist. He is the founder, spokesperson, and editor in chief of WikiLeaks, a whistleblower website and conduit for worldwide news leaks, with the stated purpose of creating open governments. Assange has worked as a computer programmer and was a hacker during his youth. In 2010, he published classified details about American involvement in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. On 28 November 2010, WikiLeaks and its five media partners began publishing secret US diplomatic cables. The White House has called Assange's release of the diplomatic cables "reckless and dangerous" while sources in the Kremlin linked to President Dmitry Medvedev suggested that he "could be awarded a Nobel prize."

For his work with WikiLeaks Assange has received glowing praise and accolades, along with public condemnation and calls for his execution. He received a number of awards and nominations, including the 2009 Amnesty International Media Award for publishing material about extrajudicial killings in Kenya and Readers' Choice for Time magazine's 2010 Person of the Year. He is currently on bail and under house arrest in England pending an extradition hearing. Assange has denied the allegations and claimed that they are politically motivated.

Early life

Assange was born in Townsville, Queensland, and spent much of his youth living on Magnetic Island.

When he was one year old, his mother Christine married theatre director Brett Assange, who gave him his surname. Brett and Christine Assange ran a touring theatre company. His stepfather, Julian's first "real dad", described Julian as "a very sharp kid" with "a keen sense of right and wrong". "He always stood up for the underdog... he was always very angry about people ganging up on other people." and other organisations, via modem. After they split up, they engaged in a lengthy custody struggle, and did not agree on a custody arrangement until 1999. The entire process prompted Assange and his mother to form Parent Inquiry Into Child Protection, an activist group centered on creating a "central databank" for otherwise inaccessible legal records related to child custody issues in Australia. Starting in 1994, he lived in Melbourne as a programmer and a developer of free software. He helped to write the book (1997), which credits him as a researcher and reports his history with International Subversives. On his personal web page, he described having represented his university at the Australian National Physics Competition around 2005. In his blog he wrote, "the more secretive or unjust an organisation is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie.... Since unjust systems, by their nature induce opponents, and in many places barely have the upper hand, mass leaking leaves them exquisitely vulnerable to those who seek to replace them with more open forms of governance."

Assange sits on Wikileaks's nine-member advisory board, and has stated that he has the final decision in the process of vetting documents submitted to the site. In 2006, CounterPunch called him "Australia's most infamous former computer hacker." The Age has called him "one of the most intriguing people in the world" and "internet's freedom fighter."

WikiLeaks has been involved in the publication of material documenting extrajudicial killings in Kenya, a report of toxic waste dumping on the coast of Côte d'Ivoire, Church of Scientology manuals, Guantanamo Bay procedures, the 12 July 2007 Baghdad airstrike video, and material involving large banks such as Kaupthing and Julius Baer among other documents.

Public appearances

, 2009]] In addition to exercising great authority and editorial control within WikiLeaks, Assange acts as its public face. He has appeared at media conferences such as New Media Days '09 in Copenhagen, He announced that the WikiLeaks submission system was again up and running, after it had been temporarily suspended. Assange was a surprise speaker at a TED conference on 19 July 2010 in Oxford, and confirmed that WikiLeaks was now accepting submissions again. He said that "from Australia's point of view, we think there are potentially a number of criminal laws that could have been breached by the release of this information. The Australian Federal Police are looking at that". McClelland would not rule out the possibility that Australian authorities will cancel Assange's passport, and warned him that he might face charges should he return to Australia. As of 11 December 2010 only 1295 cables have been released, or 0.5 percent of the total. In relation to its ongoing investigations of WikiLeaks, on the 14 December 2010 the US DoJ issued a subpoena ordering Twitter to release information relating to Assange's account, amongst others.

Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said that Assange "is serving our [American] democracy and serving our rule of law precisely by challenging the secrecy regulations, which are not laws in most cases, in this country." On the issue of national security considerations for the US, Ellsberg added that "He's obviously a very competent guy in many ways. I think his instincts are that most of this material deserves to be out. We are arguing over a very small fragment that doesn’t. He has not yet put out anything that hurt anybody's national security". Assange told London reporters that the leaked cables showed US ambassadors around the world were ordered "to engage in espionage behavior" which he said seemed to be "representative of a gradual shift to a lack of rule of law in US institutions that needs to be exposed and that we have been exposing."

Role as a publisher

Assange received the 2009 Media award from Amnesty International, and he has been recognized as a journalist by the Centre for Investigative Journalism. In December 2010, US State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley objected to the description of Assange as a journalist, and also stated that the US State Department does not regard WikiLeaks as a media organization. In response to a question from the press, Crowley said; "I think he’s an anarchist, but he’s not a journalist." Alex Massie wrote an article in The Spectator called "Yes, Julian Assange is a journalist", but acknowledged that "newsman" might be a better description of Assange.

Financial sanctions

On 6 December, the Swiss bank, PostFinance, announced that it had frozen assets of Assange's totalling 31,000 euros, because he had "provided false information regarding his place of residence" when opening the account. MasterCard, Visa Inc., and Bank of America also halted dealings with Wikileaks. Assange described these actions as "business McCarthyism". The English-language Swedish newspaper web-site "Local" quoted Assange on 27 Dec 2010 as saying that legal costs for the whistleblowing website and his own defence had reached £500,000. The decisions to halt donations to WikiLeaks by Visa, MasterCard and PayPal had cost it £425,000, the same amount it costs the website to publish for six months. Assange claimed WikiLeaks had been receiving as much as £85,000 a day at its peak.

Autobiography

In December 2010 Assange sold the publishing rights to his autobiography for over £1million. He told the Sunday Times that he was forced to enter the deals for an autobiography due to the financial difficulties he and the site encountered, he told them "I don't want to write this book, but I have to. I have already spent £200,000 for legal costs and I need to defend myself and to keep WikiLeaks afloat".

Criticism

In July 2010, after WikiLeaks released classified documents related to the war in Afghanistan, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen, said in an interview with Democracy now, "Disagree with the war all you want, take issue with the policy, challenge me or our ground commanders on the decisions we make to accomplish the mission we’ve been given, but don’t put those who willingly go into harm’s way even further in harm’s way just to satisfy your need to make a point. Mr. Assange can say whatever he likes about the greater good he thinks he and his source are doing, but the truth is, they might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family." Assange responded, "There is, as far as we can tell, no incident of that. So it is a speculative charge. Of course, we are treating any possible revelation of the names of innocents seriously. That is why we held back 15,000 of these documents, to review that. ...it’s really quite fantastic that Robert Gates and Mullen...being the former head of the CIA during Iran-Contra and the overseer of Iraq and Afghanistan, and Mullen being the military commander for Iraq and Afghanistan—I’m not sure what his further background is, who have ordered assassinations every day, are trying to bring people on board to look at a speculative understanding of whether we might have blood on our hands. These two men arguably are wading in the blood from those wars."

On 29 November 2010, in the aftermath of WikiLeaks release of more classified American documents Sarah Palin wrote of Assange on her Facebook page, "He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands. His past posting of classified documents revealed the identity of more than 100 Afghan sources to the Taliban. Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders?" she added, "Assange is not a 'journalist', any more than the 'editor' of al-Qaeda's new English-language magazine Inspire is a 'journalist'."

A number of political and media commentators, as well as current and former US government officials, have accused Assange of terrorism. US Vice President Joe Biden argued that Assange was "closer to being a high-tech terrorist than the Pentagon papers." In May 2010 Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had used the phrase, calling Assange "a high-tech terrorist", and saying "he has done enormous damage to our country. I think he needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law".

Also in May 2010, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said: "Information terrorism, which leads to people getting killed, is terrorism, and Julian Assange is engaged in terrorism. He should be treated as an enemy combatant." In December 2010 former Nixon aide and talk radio host G. Gordon Liddy told WorldNetDaily, "Julian Assange is a severe national security threat to the U.S., and that then leads to what to do about it. This fellow Anwar al-Awlaki – a joint U.S. citizen hiding out in Yemen – is on a 'kill list' [for inciting terrorism against the U.S.]. Mr. Assange should be put on the same list."

Support

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, former president of Brazil, expressed his "solidarity" with Assange following his 2010 arrest in the United Kingdom. He further criticised the arrest of Assange as "an attack on freedom of expression".

Prime Minister of Russia, Vladimir Putin condemned Assange’s detention as "undemocratic". A source within the office of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev suggested that Assange be nominated for a Nobel Prize, and said that "Public and non-governmental organisations should think of how to help him."

In December 2010, the United Nations' Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Opinion and Expression, Frank LaRue, said Assange or other WikiLeaks staff should not face legal accountability for any information they disseminated, noting that "if there is a responsibility by leaking information it is of, exclusively of the person that made the leak and not of the media that publish it. And this is the way that transparency works and that corruption has been confronted in many cases."

Daniel Ellsberg, who was working in the U.S. Department of Defense when he leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, was a signatory to a statement by an international group of former intelligence officers and ex-government officials in support of Assange’s work, which was released in late December 2010. Other signatories included David MacMichael, Ray McGovern, and five recipients of annual Sam Adams Award: Frank Grevil, Katharine Gun, Craig Murray, Coleen Rowley and Larry Wilkerson. Ellsberg has said, "If I released the Pentagon Papers today, the same rhetoric and the same calls would be made about me ... I would be called not only a traitor — which I was [called] then, which was false and slanderous — but I would be called a terrorist... Assange and Bradley Manning are no more terrorists than I am."

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has come under widespread condemnation and a backlash within her own party for failing to support Assange after calling the leaks "an illegal act" and suggesting that his Australian passport should be cancelled. Hundreds of lawyers, academics and journalists came forward in his support with Attorney-General Robert McClelland, unable to explain how Assange had broken Australian law. Opposition Legal Affairs spokesman, Senator George Brandis, a Queen's Counsel, accused Gillard of being "clumsy" with her language, stating, "As far as I can see, he (Assange) hasn't broken any Australian law, nor does it appear he has broken any American laws." Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd, who supports Assange, stated that any decision to cancel the passport would be his, not Gillard's. Queen's Counsel Peter Faris, who acted for Assange in a hacking case 15 years ago, said that the motives of Swedish authorities in seeking Assange's extradition for alleged sex offences are suspect: "You have to say: why are they [Sweden] pursuing it? It's pretty obvious that if it was Bill Bloggs, they wouldn't be going to the trouble." Following the Swedish Embassy issuing of a "prepared and unconvincing reply" in response to letters of protest, Gillard was called on to send a message to Sweden "querying the way charges were laid, investigated and dropped, only to be picked up again by a different prosecutor."

On 10 December 2010 over five hundred people rallied outside Sydney Town Hall and about three hundred and fifty people gathered in Brisbane where Assange's lawyer, Rob Stary, criticised Julia Gillard's position, telling the rally that the Australian government was a "sycophant" of the US. A petition circulated by GetUp!, who have placed full page ads in support of Assange in The New York Times and The Washington Times, received more than signatures. Accepting the award, Assange said, "It is a reflection of the courage and strength of Kenyan civil society that this injustice was documented." Readers' Choice in Time magazine's Person of the Year poll, and runner-up for Person of the Year., and an informal poll of editors at Postmedia Network named him the top newsmaker for the year after six out of 10 felt Assange had "affected profoundly how information is seen and delivered".

Le Monde named him person of the year with fifty six percent of the votes in their online poll. Le Monde is one of the five publications to cooperate with Wikileaks' publication of the recent document leaking.

Allegations of sexual assault

On 20 August 2010, Swedish police opened an investigation against Assange in connection with sexual encounters with two women, aged 26 and 31, one in Enköping and the other in Stockholm. Within hours, Stockholm's chief prosecutor Eva Finne reviewed the case and dropped the rape investigation, saying there was insufficient evidence to suggest rape but kept open the molestation investigation, and on 30 August Stockholm police questioned Assange. He denied the allegations, saying he had consensual sexual encounters with the two women.

Claes Borgström, who represents the two women, appealed against the decision to drop the rape investigation. The Swedish Director of Public Prosecution then reopened and expanded the investigation on 1 September. Swedish investigators reinterviewed the two women, wanting to clarify their allegations before talking to Assange but he left Sweden on 27 September, according to statements in UK court, and refused to return to Stockholm for questioning in October, according to Borgström. According to Assange's lawyer, Mark Stephens, Assange made repeated attempts to contact the prosecution, spending over a month in Stockholm before obtaining permission to leave the country, with the Swedish prosecution stating an interview would not be required.

On 18 November 2010 the Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny asked the local district court for a warrant for Assange in order for him to be heard by the prosecutor. The court ordered detention as a suspect with probable cause for rape, sexual assault, and coercion. An appeal from the legal representatives of Assange was turned down by the Svea Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court of Sweden declined to hear the case. On 6 December 2010, Scotland Yard notified Assange that a valid European arrest warrant had been received. He presented himself to the Metropolitan Police the next morning and was remanded to London's Wandsworth Prison. On 16 December he was granted bail and placed under house arrest at Ellingham Hall, Norfolk, the High Court Judge rejected the prosecution's argument that he was a flight risk. Bail was set at £240,000 surety with £200,000 ($312,700) required to be actually deposited in the courts account.

On release Assange said "I hope to continue my work and continue to protest my innocence in this matter," Assange claimed that the extradition proceedings to Sweden were "actually an attempt to get me into a jurisdiction which will then make it easier to extradite me to the US." Swedish prosecutors have denied the case has anything to do with WikiLeaks. His defence team outlined seven strands of their argument, including a challenge for abuse of process as well as the potential risks to Assange's person were he "rendered" to the US.

Residency

Though an Australian citizen, Assange has not had a permanent address for several years. Assange has described himself as constantly on the move. He has lived for periods in Australia, Kenya and Tanzania, and began renting a house in Iceland on 30 March 2010, from which he and other activists, including Birgitta Jónsdóttir, worked on the 'Collateral Murder' video. In December 2010 it was reported that US Ambassador to Switzerland Donald S Beyer had warned the Swiss government against offering asylum to Assange.

In late November 2010, Deputy Foreign Minister Kintto Lucas of Ecuador spoke about giving Assange residency with "no conditions... so he can freely present the information he possesses and all the documentation, not just over the Internet but in a variety of public forums". Lucas believed that Ecuador may benefit from initiating a dialogue with Assange. Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino stated on 30 November that the residency application would "have to be studied from the legal and diplomatic perspective". A few hours later, President Rafael Correa stated that WikiLeaks "committed an error by breaking the laws of the United States and leaking this type of information... no official offer was [ever] made." Correa noted that Lucas was speaking "on his own behalf"; additionally, he will launch an investigation into possible ramifications Ecuador would suffer from the release of the cables. He was ultimately released, in part because journalist Vaughan Smith offered to provide Assange with an address for bail during the extradition proceedings, Smith's Norfolk mansion, Ellingham Hall.

References

External links

Full coverage at Aljazeera

Profile: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange at BBC News

Julian Assange: Hero or Villain? – slideshow by Life magazine

Archived versions of the home page on Julian Assange's web site iq.org (at the Internet Archive)

Russia Today via You tube">WikiLeaks editor on Apache combat video: No excuse for US killing civilians - April 2010. Russia Today via You tube

Interview with Julian Assange on release of Afghan war files - 1 August 2010 Russia Today via YouTube

Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks - July 2010 video at ted.com

Frost Over the World - Julian Assange - December 2010. Al Jazeera English via You tube

Category:1971 births Category:Australian Internet personalities Category:Australian activists Category:Australian computer programmers Category:Australian journalists Category:Australian whistleblowers Category:Internet activists Category:Living people Category:People from Townsville, Queensland Category:University of Melbourne alumni Category:WikiLeaks

John R. Stockwell is a former CIA officer who became a critic of United States government policies after serving in the Agency for thirteen years serving seven tours of duty. After managing U.S. involvement in the Angolan Civil War as Chief of the Angola Task Force during its 1975 covert operations, he resigned and wrote In Search of Enemies, a book which remains the only detailed, insider's account of a major CIA "covert action."

Early years

Born in Angleton, Texas, his Presbyterian father moved the family to the Belgian Congo so that he could provide engineering assistance. Stockwell attended school in Lubondai before studying in the Plan II Honors program at The University of Texas.

CIA career

As a Marine, Stockwell was a CIA paramilitary intelligence case officer in three wars: the Congo Crisis, the Vietnam War, and the Angolan War of Independence. His military rank is Major. Beginning his career in 1964, Stockwell spent six years in Africa, Chief of Base in the Katanga during the Bob Denard invasion in 1968, then Chief of Station in Bujumbura, Burundi in 1970, before being transferred to Vietnam to oversee intelligence operations in the Tay Ninh province and was awarded the CIA Medal of Merit for keeping his post open until the last days of the fall of Saigon in 1975.

In December 1976 he resigned from the CIA, citing deep concerns for the methods and results of CIA paramilitary operations in third world countries and testified before Congressional committees. Two years later, he wrote the exposé In Search of Enemies, about that experience and its broader implications. He claimed that the CIA was counterproductive to national security, and that its "secret wars" provided no benefit for the United States. The CIA, he stated, had singled out the MPLA to be an enemy in Angola despite the fact that the MPLA wanted relations with the United States and had not committed a single act of aggression against the United States. In 1978 he appeared on the popular American television program 60 Minutes, claiming that CIA Director William Colby and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger had systematically lied to Congress about the CIA's operations.

Civil Disobedience and Activism

Writing career

Stockwell was one of the first professionals to leave the CIA to go public by writing a bestselling book, In Search of Enemies. The CIA retaliated by suing him in the 4th District Court in Washington, D.C.. Part of the suit intended to eliminate the possibility of selling the story for the purpose of making the movie and requested all future publications be submitted to the CIA for review. Unable to afford the travel necessary to contest the case, Stockwell filed for bankruptcy in Austin, Texas. After the litigation was processed through the bankruptcy, the CIA eventually dropped the suit. It's been previously reported that Stockwell lost the suit as his case is often confused with that of ex-CIA operative Frank Snepp.

His book is useful in many ways for researchers and journalists interested in uncovering secret information about the conduct of US foreign policy in Africa and Asia. For example, a brief story in the book is about a CIA officer having Patrice Lumumba's body in the trunk of his car one night in then Elizabethville, Congo. Stockwell mentions in a footnote to the story that at the time he did not know that the CIA is documented as having repeatedly tried to arrange for Lumumba's assassination.

His concerns were that, although many of his colleagues in the CIA were men and women of the highest integrity, the organization was counterproductive of United States national security and harming a lot of people in its "secret wars" overseas.

"Red Sunset" was Stockwell's next book and was published in 1982 by William Morrow Publishing Co., Inc. in hard back, then in paperback by Signet a year later. In it he discusses his prediction of a peaceful end to the cold war. Stockwell presented these ideas in fiction form in order to get it published.

In 1991, Stockwell published a compilation of transcriptions of many of his lectures called The Praetorian Guard.

Organization Founding

Stockwell was a founding member of the short-lived Association for Responsible Dissent, an organization of former CIA and government officials who were critical of the CIA's Cold War activities.

Lectures

During the 1980s Stockwell visited college campuses to speak out against CIA support for Central American death squads.

Quotes

"It is the function of the CIA to keep the world unstable, and to propagandize and teach the American people to hate and fear, so we will let the Establishment spend any amount of money on arms." "Enemies are necessary for the wheels of the U.S. military machine to turn." "Short, successful military adventures are as effective as the Super Bowl in diverting peoples' attention from unpleasant truths."

In 1980, Stockwell said,

"if the Soviet Union were to disappear off the face of the map, the United States would quickly seek out new enemies to justify its own military-industrial complex."

Further reading

External links

Category:1937 births Category:American activists Category:American anti-war activists Category:American spies Category:History of Angola Category:Living people Category:People of the Central Intelligence Agency Category:Historians of the Central Intelligence Agency Category:University of Texas at Austin alumni Category:American whistleblowers

Name	Joseph the Younger
Tribe	Nez Perce
Lead	1871–1904
Birth date	March 3, 1840
Birth place	Wallowa Valley
Death date	September 21, 1904
Death place	Colville Indian Reservation
Predecessor	Joseph the Elder
Native name	Hinmatóowyalahtq’it (Aoki 1994:155)
Nicknames	Chief Joseph
Death cause	Natural causes
Resting place	Nespelem, Washington
Spouse	Heyoon YoyiktSpringtime
Children	Jean-Louise, daughter
Parents	Tuekakas (father)Khapkhaponimi (mother)
Relations	Sousouquee (elder brother)Ollokut (younger brother)four sisters

Chief Joseph (March 3, 1840 – September 21, 1904) was the chief of the Wal-lam-wat-kain (Wallowa) band of Nez Perce during General Oliver O. Howard's attempt to forcibly remove his band and the other "non-treaty" Nez Perce to a reservation in Idaho. For his principled resistance to the removal, he became renowned as a humanitarian and peacemaker.

Background

Chief Joseph was born Hinmuuttu-yalatlat (alternatively Hinmaton-Yalaktit or Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt, Nez Perce: "Thunder Rolling Down the Mountain") in the Wallowa Valley of northeastern Oregon, he was known as Young Joseph during his youth because his father was baptized with the same Christian name.

While initially hospitable to the region's newcomers, Joseph the Elder grew wary when settlers wanted more Indian lands. Tensions grew as the settlers appropriated traditional Indian lands for farming and grazing livestock.

Isaac Stevens, governor of the Washington Territory, organized a council to designate separate areas for Natives and settlers in 1855. Joseph the Elder and the other Nez Perce chiefs signed a treaty with the United States establishing a Nez Perce reservation encompassing 7.7 million acres (31,000 km²) in present-day Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. The 1855 reservation maintained much of the traditional Nez Perce lands, including Joseph's Wallowa Valley.

An influx of new settlers caused by a gold rush led the government to call a second council in 1863. Government commissioners asked the Nez Perce to accept a new, much smaller reservation of centered around the village of Lapwai in Idaho, and excluding the Wallowa Valley. In exchange, they were promised financial rewards and schools and a hospital for the reservation. Head Chief Lawyer and one of his allied chiefs signed the treaty on behalf of the Nez Perce Nation, but Joseph the Elder and several other chiefs were opposed to selling their lands, and did not sign.

Their refusal to sign caused a rift between the "non-treaty" and "treaty" bands of Nez Perce. The "treaty" Nez Perce moved within the new Idaho reservation's boundaries, while the "non-treaty" Nez Perce remained on their lands. Joseph the Elder demarcated Wallowa land with a series of poles, proclaiming, "Inside this boundary all our people were born. It circles the graves of our fathers, and we will never give up these graves to any man."

As chief

Alice Cunningham Fletcher and her interpreter James Stuart.]]

Joseph the Younger succeeded his father as chief in 1871. Before his death, the latter counseled his son:

Chief Joseph commented "I clasped my father's hand and promised to do as he asked. A man who would not defend his father's grave is worse than a wild beast."

The non-treaty Nez Perce suffered many injustices at the hands of settlers and prospectors, but out of fear of reprisal from the militarily superior Americans, Joseph never allowed any violence against them, instead making many concessions to them in hopes of securing peace.

In 1873, Chief Joseph negotiated with the federal government to ensure his people could stay on their land in the Wallowa Valley. But in 1877, the government reversed its policy, and Army General Oliver Howard threatened to attack if the Wallowa band did not relocate to the Idaho Reservation with the other Nez Perce. Chief Joseph reluctantly agreed.

Before the outbreak of hostilities, General Howard held a council to try to convince Joseph and his people to relocate. Joseph finished his address to the General, which focused on human equality, by expressing his "[disbelief that] the Great Spirit Chief gave one kind of men the right to tell another kind of men what they must do."

Howard reacted angrily, interpreting the statement as a challenge to his authority. When Chief Too-hul-hul-sote protested, he was jailed for five days.

The day following the council, Joseph, White Bird, and Chief Looking Glass all accompanied General Howard to look at different areas. Howard offered them a plot of land that was inhabited by Whites and Indians, promising to clear them out. Joseph and his chieftains refused, adhering to their tribal tradition of not taking what did not belong to them.

Unable to find any suitable uninhabited land on the reservation, Howard informed Joseph that his people had thirty days to collect their livestock and move to the reservation. Joseph pleaded for more time, but Howard told him that he would consider their presence in the Wallowa Valley beyond the thirty-day mark an act of war.

Returning home, Joseph called a council among his people. At the council, he spoke on behalf of peace, preferring to abandon his father's grave over war. Too-hul-hul-sote, insulted by his incarceration, advocated war.

The Wallowa band began making preparations for the long journey, meeting first with other bands at Rocky Canyon. At this council too, many leaders urged war, while Joseph argued in favor of peace.

While the council was underway, a young man whose father had been killed rode up and announced that he and several other young men had already killed four white men, an act sure to initiate war.

Still hoping to avoid further bloodshed, Joseph and other Nez Perce chiefs began leading his people north toward Canada.

Retreat and surrender

With 2,000 U.S. soldiers in pursuit, Joseph and other Nez Perce chiefs led 800 Nez Perce toward their friends the Crows, but when the Crows betrayed them and joined the United States army for money, the Nez Perce went towards freedom at the Canadian border. For over three months, the Nez Perce outmaneuvered and battled their pursuers traveling across Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana. General Howard, leading the opposing cavalry, was impressed with the skill with which the Nez Perce fought, using advance and rear guards, skirmish lines, and field fortifications. Finally, after a devastating five-day battle during freezing weather conditions with no food or blankets, Chief Joseph formally surrendered to General Nelson Appleton Miles on October 5, 1877 in the Bear Paw Mountains of the Montana Territory, less than 40 miles (60 km) south of Canada in a place close to the present-day Chinook in Blaine County. The battle is remembered in popular history by the words attributed to Chief Joseph at the formal surrender:

"Tell General Howard I know his heart. What he told me before, I have it 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."

The popular legend deflated, however, when the original pencil draft of the report was revealed to show the handwriting of the later poet and lawyer Lieutenant Charles Erskine Scott Wood, who claimed to have taken down the great chief's words on the spot. In the margin it read, "Here insert Joseph's reply to the demand for surrender" Although Joseph was not technically a warchief and probably did not command the retreat, many of the chiefs who did had already died. His speech brought attention - and therefore credit - his way. He earned the praise of General William Tecumseh Sherman and became known in the press as "The Red Napoleon".

Aftermath

Joseph's fame did him little good. By the time Joseph surrendered more than 200 of his followers had died. His plight, however, did not end. Although he had negotiated a safe return home for his people, General William Sherman forced Chief Joseph and about four hundred followers to be taken on unheated rail cars to Fort Leavenworth in eastern Kansas to be held in a prisoner-of-war campsite for eight months. Toward the end of the following summer the surviving Nez Perce were taken by rail to a reservation in the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) for ten years. Many of them died of epidemic diseases while there. Finally they were returned to a reservation around Kooskia, Idaho.

In 1879 Chief Joseph went to Washington, D.C. to meet with President Rutherford B. Hayes and plead the case of his people. Finally, in 1885, Chief Joseph and his followers were allowed to return to the Pacific Northwest, although many, including Chief Joseph, were taken to the Colville Indian Reservation far from both the rest of their people in Idaho and their homeland in the Wallowa Valley.

Joseph continued to lead his band of Wallowa for another 25 years, at times coming into conflict with the leaders of 11 other tribes living on the reservation. Chief Moses of the Sinkiuse-Columbia in particular resented having to cede a portion of his people's lands to Joseph's people, who had "made war on the Great Father."

In general, however, the relocated Nez Perce made few enemies in their new home and even kept friendly relations with their white neighbors. In fact, Chief Joseph Dam, the nation's second largest hydroelectric power plant, was named after him.

In his last years Joseph spoke eloquently against the injustice of United States policy toward his people and held out the hope that America's promise of freedom and equality might one day be fulfilled for Native Americans as well. An indomitable voice of conscience for the West, he died in 1904, still in exile from his homeland, according to his doctor "of a broken heart."

Helen Hunt Jackson recorded one early Oregon settler's tale of his encounter with Chief Joseph in her 1902 Glimpses of California and the Missions:

"Why I got lost once, an' I came right on [Chief Joseph's] camp before I knowed it . . . 't was night, 'n' I was kind o' creepin' along cautious, an' the first thing I knew there was an Injun had me on each side, an' they jest marched me up to Jo's tent, to know what they should do with me ...

Well; 'n' they gave me all I could eat, 'n' a guide to show me my way, next day, 'n' I could n't make Jo nor any of 'em take one cent. I had a kind o' comforter o' red yarn, I wore rund my neck; an' at last I got Jo to take that, jest as a kind o' momento."

The Chief Joseph band of Nez Perce Indians who still live on the Colville Reservation bear his name in tribute to their prestigious leader. Chief Joseph died in September 1904 and was buried in Nespelem, Washington, the site where many of his tribe's members still live.

Films and books about Chief Joseph

in the World Showcase pavilion of Walt Disney World's Epcot.]] Chief Joseph has been portrayed in poems, books, television episodes, and feature films. Notable among the latter is I Will Fight No More Forever, a 1975 historical drama starring Ned Romero. The saga of Chief Joseph and his people is also depicted in the 1982 poem "Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce" by Robert Penn Warren. In the children's fiction book, Thunder Rolling in the Mountains, by Newbery medalist Scott O'Dell and Elizabeth Hall, the story of Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce is told by Joseph's daughter, Sound of Running Feet.

Legacy

Numerous structures, including schools, dams and roads, have been named for Chief Joseph, as well as several geographic features. Some of the most notable of these are Chief Joseph Scenic Byway in Wyoming, and Chief Joseph Dam on the Columbia River in Washington. Chief Joseph Dam is the second largest hydropower producer in the U.S. and is the only dam in the Northwest named after an American Indian.

The city of Joseph, Oregon is also named for the chief, as well as Joseph Canyon and Joseph Creek, on the Oregon-Washington border, and Chief Joseph Pass in Montana. Chief Joseph is depicted on currently issued $200 Series I Savings Bonds.

References

Further reading

Aoki, Haruo. 1994. Nez Perce Dictionary. University of California Publications in Linguistics, Volume 122. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Chief Joseph. Chief Joseph's Own Story. Originally published in the North American Review, April 1879.

Will Henry: From where the Sun now stands, Bantam Books, New York 1976 ISBN 0-553-02581-3

External links

U.S. Treasury

U.S. Library of Congress Today in History: October 5

Friends of the Bear Paw, Big Hole & Canyon Creek Battlefields

PBS biography

Chief Joseph, bronze sculpture

Category:1840 births Category:1904 deaths Category:American humanitarians Category:Native American history of Oregon Category:Native American leaders Category:Native American people of the Indian Wars Category:Native American people of the Pacific Northwest Category:Nez Perce tribe Category:Nez Perce War Category:People from Lewiston, Idaho Category:People from Oregon