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.If, ulti-mately, Indians had to be removed by force and resettled in distant lands,so be that as well.The flood of white settlement, it was believed, could notbe stopped.It was both a physical and historical inevitability.The whiterace was destined by nature to overrun the Indian people, and any conces-sions made to protect these unfortunate souls were understood by settlersand the government to be acts of unnecessary generosity.Consequently, when the post Gold Rush tide of settlers began to flowin from California and the East, the Nez Perce and the other Plateau tribesfound themselves facing a very different set of circumstances than theyhad confronted even a few years before.Now they were being overrun bypeople who sought not to share the land, but to take it.And these peoplehad a government behind them to enforce their right to do so.Tuekakas watched all this from his hawk s eye vantage point in thehigh, mountainous Wallowa.Visitors from the tribes near the coast weretelling of white settlers flooding into their land, going where they would,doing what they wished, killing native people, and bringing new sicknessesthat could not be cured.They were drawing lines and building fences andshooting Indians who ventured across.Their numbers were so large thatSoyapo leaders could not hold them back, and even when they could, theychose not to.The coastal chiefs were being told that the only way to survive was tochoose a small piece of land and to move onto it so the government sol-diers could protect them.This met with no one s favor.No person had theright to tell another where to go or not go.No one could claim to makelaws about the land that went against the teachings of the Creator.44Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez PerceFrom across the mountains toward buffalo country, stories were filter-ing in of new forts being built on rivers and new Soyapo towns growing upin places that native peoples had always known as their own.Even in theNez Perce s own country, the trails were now alive with the groaningwheels of white-topped Soyapo wagons moving in formation across thehills and along the river valleys.Most disturbing of all was the rumor of a white chief from the East whowas coming with soldiers to buy Indian land and open it to white settle-ment.The  chief  to whom these rumors referred was Isaac Stevens, an ener-getic whippet of a man who had gotten himself appointed as the governorof Washington Territory, a new jurisdiction carved out of the vast originalOregon Territory.Stevens was an impetuous man, impatient with obsta-cles and wasted time.In addition to being appointed governor, he had con-vinced the Department of War to make him head of a survey team thatwould try to find a potential railroad route to the Pacific.In his efforts tolearn the best trails and pathways he had hired Indian guides who hadpassed the word of his coming from band to band until it had crossed themountains and reached the ears of the Yakima, and then the Palouse andCayuse and Nez Perce.With forces gathering around them, the chiefs of the Plateau tribes de-termined that they needed to take preemptive action.They met in grandcouncil and decided that none would act alone to make agreements withthis new white chief and that if they had to draw lines around their land tokeep the white settlers out, all the land that the Creator had given to eachtribe must be protected by those lines.Though the sentiment for protecting the land was universal, opinionson how to achieve this were not.Many among the Nez Perce, and someamong the Cayuse, had embraced the ways taught by the now-departedmissionaries.They had no quarrel with the white newcomers, only a desireto protect the land that the Creator had given their people as a birthright,and a healthy fear of the diseases that the white settlers brought in theirwake.Others, like Tuekakas, wished to remain on friendly terms, even ifthey did not wish to embrace the white people s ways.Then there werethose who still harbored ill will toward the white invaders and happilywould have taken up arms against the interlopers who demanded land,fealty, and abandonment of the old ways as taught by the ancestors.ManyA Tide of Laws and Men 45of these were followers of Smolholla, a diminutive, hunchbacked manfrom the Wanapum tribe that lived on the edge of the Columbia River inthe dry country west of the Nez Perce.Smolholla was a person of great spiritual power who had fallen into adeath state and awakened three days later with a vision from the spiritworld [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]