ABSTRACT
Chief Joseph, a Native American leader of the Nez Percé people, was born In-mut-too-yah-lat-lat in the Oregon Territories in the 1840s. The Nez Perce had enjoyed some of friendliest relationships with setders who began to colonize the fertile Oregon lands in the 1840s. Chief Joseph made a trip to Washington, D.C., to meet with President Theodore Roosevelt in order to plead, fruitlessly, for right to return to their ancestral homes. Chief Joseph protested in words, and then by flight, the pitiless treatment received by the native people of the United States, made all the more horrible because the Nez Perce were a peaceful people. Chief Joseph's negotiations with whites over issue of reservation——calling into question the authority of those natives who had negotiated for him without forming a community consensus——and his flight to Canada as a protest against policies of the United States brought into sharp focus the failure of the treaty system and relations with native peoples in general.
