Nez Perce War - Aftermath

Aftermath

During the surrender negotiations, Howard and Miles had promised Joseph that the Nez Perce would be allowed to return to their reservation in Idaho. But, the commanding general of the Army, William Tecumseh Sherman, overruled them and directed that the Nez Perce be sent to Kansas. "I believed General Miles, or I never would have surrendered," Chief Joseph said afterward.

Miles marched his captives 265 miles to the Tongue River Cantonement in southeast Montana Territory, where they arrived on October 23, 1877 and were held until Oct. 31. The able-bodied warriors were marched out to Fort Buford, at the confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers. On November 1, the ill, wounded, and women and children set out for Fort Buford in fourteen Mackinaw boats.

Between November 8 and 10, the Nez Perce left Fort Buford for Custer's post command at the time of his death; Fort Abraham Lincoln across the Missouri River from Bismark in the Dakota Territory. About two hundred left in the mackinaws on November 9 guarded by two companies of the First Infantry; the rest traveled on horseback escorted by troops of the Seventh Cavalry en route to their winter quarters.

A majority of Bismarck's citizens turned out to welcome the Nez Perce prisoners, providing a lavish buffet for them and their troop escort. On November 23, the Nez Perce prisoners had their lodges and equipment loaded into freight cars and themselves into eleven rail coaches for the trip via train to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas.

Over the protests to Sherman by the commander of the Fort, the Nez Perce were forced to live in a swampy bottomland. “It was horrible,” a writer said, “the 400 miserable, helpless, emaciated specimens of humanity, subjected for months to the malarial atmosphere of the river bottom.” Chief Joseph went to Washington in January 1879 to plead that his people be allowed to return to Idaho or, at least, be given land in Indian Territory, what would become Oklahoma. He met with the President and Congress and was greeted with acclaim, but opposition in Idaho prevented the U.S. government from granting his petition. Instead, Joseph and the Nez Perce were sent to Oklahoma and eventually located on a small reservation near Tonkawa, Oklahoma. Conditions in “the hot country” were hardly better than they had been at Leavenworth.

In 1885, Joseph and 268 surviving Nez Perce were finally allowed to return to the Pacific Northwest. Joseph, however, was not permitted to return to the Nez Perce reservation but instead settled at the Colville Reservation in Washington. He died there in 1904.