USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce peoples surrenders to U.S. General Nelson A. Miles in the Bear Paw mountains of Montana, declaring, “Hear me, my chiefs: My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.”

Detailed explanation-2: -Chief Joseph (1840-1904) was a leader of the Wallowa band of the Nez Perce Tribe, who became famous in 1877 for leading his people on an epic flight across the Rocky Mountains.

Detailed explanation-3: -Chief Joseph, after all, believed that, upon surrender, the original terms of the previous Nez Perce treaty would still be in effect. He would give up the fight, and the independence of the Nez Perce nation, in exchange for peaceful removal to a reservation.

Detailed explanation-4: -Chief Joseph and his band were sent at first to a barren reservation in Indian Territory (later Oklahoma); there many sickened and died. Not until 1885 were he and the remnants of his tribe allowed to go to a reservation in Washington-though still in exile from their valley.

Detailed explanation-5: -Chief Joseph led his band of Nez Perce during the most tumultuous period in their history, when they were forcibly removed by the United States federal government from their ancestral lands in the Wallowa Valley of northeastern Oregon onto a significantly reduced reservation in the Idaho Territory.