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.