Chief Joseph Quotes
A chief called Lawyer, because he was a great talker, took the lead in the council, and sold nearly all the Nez Perce country.
Jackson refused to obey this decision, He was the only American President who disobeyed a Supreme Court Decision. In doing this, he killed tens of thousands of Indians, allowed the Southern Whites to steal most of the Cherokee land. His Indian Removal, contrary to this Supreme Court decision, was the worst case of ethnic cleansing in the history of the United States.
Abramoff was taking millions from the Choctaw Indians Tribe for his ‘services’ to get federal legislation so that they would not have to pay state taxes on their gambling profits. He also had other Indian tribes as clients. Privately he had no respect for the Indians and cheated them while they were trying to get unfair special treatment from the Republican controlled Congress and administration. Abramoff went to jail along with others in one of the biggest political scandals in modern America.
Note that there was still a serious attempt to coexist with the Indians and to pay for lands that whites moved into. This would change radically in the administration of Andrew Jackson who would replace Adams.
While Jefferson was clear on this point, there were other forces and points of view that did not recognize Indian rights and were prepared to use force to obtain Indian lands. These, together with some Indians who made bad and sometimes corrupt bargains and treaties ceding land, produced the loss of most of the Indian land in America.
Large wagon trains of settlers crossed the content on their way to the Oregon Territory. The Sioux Indians whose land the wagon trains had to pass through often attacked the wagon trains in a vain effort to discourage others from passing through the area. The Sioux believed that the large wagon trains frightened the buffalo away, which was probably not a significant factor in the diminishing of the buffalo herds. The Indians and white hunters both over-hunted the buffalo which became few in numbers. With modern wildlife management Buffalo are not only back but are plentiful and being raised for their lean meat which has become a delicacy.
The central Indian policy problem for Jefferson’s Administration was the fact that most Indians hunted for subsistence and the amount of land needed to support a hunting society was per capita much greater than an agricultural and especially an industrial one. Jefferson had no personal animosity against the Indians as many in his day did. But he perceived the need to obtain Indian lands for white agricultural use.
Not all whites were allowed to usurp all Indian lands. There were many attempts to limit white settlement to avoid friction with the Indians although the overall tendency was for the whites to take over and dominate the land.
The line, like many in good poetry, has several levels of meaning. The most obvious is that we had explored and conquered the land, before we became a nation.
This was the beginning of the Jeffersonian effort culminating in the Corps of Discovery and the Lewis & Clark Expedition. Presidential, confidential memoranda to the Congress were more common then than now when they have become a rarity.
Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt (or Hinmatóowyalahtq̓it in Americanist orthography), popularly known as Chief Joseph, Young Joseph, or Joseph the Younger, was a leader of the Wal-lam-wat-kain (Wallowa) band of Nez Perce, a Native American tribe of the interior Pacific Northwest region of the United States, in the latter half of the 19th century. He succeeded his father Tuekakas (Chief Joseph the Elder) in the early 1870s.
