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 settlers . Still hoping to avoid further bloodshed Joseph and other non-treaty Nez Perce leaders began moving people away from Idaho .
For over three months , the Nez Perce outmaneuvered and battled their pursuers traveling 1,170 miles ( 1,880 km ) across Oregon , Washington , Idaho , Wyoming , and Montana . In the end Chief Joseph is said to have spoken these well known words , " 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 war chief and probably did not command the retreat , many of the chiefs who did had 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 ".
Joseph ' s fame did him little good . By the time Joseph surrendered , 150 of his followers had been killed . Their plight , however , did not end . Although he had negotiated a safe return home for his people , General Sherman forced Joseph and 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 seven years . Many of them died of epidemic diseases while there .
In 1879 , Chief Joseph went to Washington , D . C . to meet with President Rutherford B . Hayes and plead the case of his people . Although Joseph was respected as a spokesmen , opposition in Idaho prevented the U . S . government from granting his petition to return to the Pacific Northwest . Finally , in 1885 , Chief Joseph and his followers were allowed to return to the Pacific Northwest to settle on the reservation around Kooskia , Idaho . Instead , Joseph and others were taken to the Colville Indian Reservation far from both their homeland in the Wallowa Valley and the rest of their people in Idaho .
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 . In 1897 , he visited Washington again to plead his case . He rode in a parade honoring former President Ulysses Grant in New York City with Buffalo Bill Cody but he was a topic of conversation for his headdress more than his mission .
In 1903 , Chief Joseph visited Seattle , a booming young town , where he stayed in the Lincoln Hotel as guest to Edmond Meany , a history professor at the University of Washington . It was there that he also befriended Edward Curtis , the photographer , who took one of his most memorable and well-known photographs . He also visited President Theodore Roosevelt in Washington that year . Everywhere he went , it was to make a plea for what remained of his people to be returned to their home in the Wallowa Valley . It never happened and in September 1904 , he died still in exile from his homeland , according to his doctor " of a broken heart ." He was buried near the village of Nespelem , Washington . Chief Joseph ' s band live on the Colville Reservation .