Saturday, December 24, 2011

Chief Joseph: The Christmas message from the 'peaceful warrior'





La Grande is a small town in eastern Oregon, located in Wallowa Valley, an area of great history and cultural charm.  This town, that developed soon after the Lewis and Clark expedition, lies near the famous Oregon trail.  It is a repository of much West Coast Native American folklore and a place where Chief Joseph is revered, because the love for others from this 'peaceful warrior' reminds us of the message of Christmas.


Rugged mountains surround the pristine beauty of the valley landscape where Chief Joseph was born.   Every year the town of St. Joseph,  located not far from La Grande, honors Chief Joseph with an occasion known as "Chief Joseph Days."  During the holiday season, the life of this man and his wonderful message are worth remembering as they remind us that brotherhood is represented by many cultures and ways of life.  Now is a good time to remember the man of peace who taught love in the midst of violence and who offered an example of a life lived in kindness and forgiveness.

Chief Joseph lived 64 years, from 1840 until 1904. He was born in the Wallowa Valley and baptized  in 1838,  as his father before him had converted to Christianity by missionaries to the area. He belonged to the Nez Perce tribe that was one of the first in the West Coast to have Christian converts. The elder Joseph had an amicable relationship with the white men who had come to the valley until the gold rush of 1863 when the federal government, in an effort to further colonize the west, confiscated six million land acres and restricted the Nez Perce to a reservation.

After that, Chief Joseph’s father defied the United States government, tore up his Bible, denounced the American flag, and refused to move from his beloved valley.

Young Joseph became the tribal chief of the Nez Perce following the death of his father in 1871.  He carried on his father’s traditions and resisted the federal orders demanding the movement of the Nez Perce to a reservation. For a time it seemed the tribe might be allowed to stay in Wallowa Valley, but that was not to be.

In 1877 a United States military force, led by General Oliver Otis Howard, demanded the tribe move from its village.   When the Nez Perce refused these orders to move from their lands, the military began to plan an attack that so worried some of the Native Americans that members of the tribe raided a few white settlements and killed some of its members.  The fierce response of the Army led to one of the greatest and most tragic journeys of any Native American tribe, as the Nez Perce were chased across a 1400 mile stretch of country where they fought with pride and courage.  In one battle 200 Nez Perce fought valiantly against a force of nearly 2000 US soldiers.

The bravery of Chief Joseph and his people became the subject of newspapers in the late 19th century where the Chief was proclaimed as “the Red Napoleon.”  The Nez Perce brought other Native American tribes who rose to protect them during the latter campaigns the great tribe had with the US Army, but it was Chief Joseph nevertheless who was credited with great military feats so that by the time of his formal surrender in

1877 his successes were trumpeted far beyond his tribal reservation walls.

Chief Joseph represents one of the greatest leaders in American history. More than a hundred years later he remains a profile in courage of a man who stood proudly in defeat and who represented a people to whom many of us owe so much for the land we love and the country we value and proclaim as ours.

When we speak of our Founding Fathers, we do not speak of men like Chief Joseph, a true American, who provided an example not just for his own people, and not just for his own time, but for the ages.  Although he died a broken man in a non-Nez Perce reservation in Washington State in 1904, never allowed to return to his Oregon home, Joseph maintained his dignity throughout his years of pain, as he watched the exile of his people, many of whom died from epidemic diseases and in loneliness and despair.

Chief Joseph reached out to his brothers and gave the country some of its greatest lessons of strength in despair, of goodness in grief, and a model of peace for the world.  These are his great words that we should always remember and that we should honor as we should honor this great man as a Founding Father for us all this Christmas season and at any time we speak of great Americans and Christian values:



“If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian he can live in peace.

There need be no trouble. Treat all men alike. Give them the same laws. Give

them all an even chance to live and grow. All men were made by the same Great

Spirit Chief. They are all brothers. The earth is the mother of all people, and all

people should have equal rights upon it.”



This message of inclusive love among all people was the same message given by Jesus, whose birth we celebrate at Christmas.  Like the Christ whose words Chief Joseph encapsulated in his words and behavior, let us follow the ways of the peaceful warrior.