Lot 133 email save

Chief Joseph, July 4th Celebration, Colville

Sign In to see what this sold for

The centerpiece of the Stillwell archive is this important, unpublished photograph by E.H. Latham. Chief Joseph, on the first horse, leads a line of his mounted warriors. These were the surviving warriers who fought with him, and were finally exiled with him to the Colville Reservation in Washington.

He wears an eagle feather headdress with a long trailer, and holds aloft an otter-fur-wrapped lance. The head of his white horse is crowned with eagle feathers. Canvas tipis and pine-clad hills rise in the background. This iconic photograph, unknown to the world for the past century, is the only image in existence which shows Chief Joseph actually leading the same men who participated in the battles of 1877.

The legendary Nez Perce Retreat of June-October 1877, has been recounted in many books. Only 700 people, a mere 200 warriors, some only in their teens, and encumbered with their wives, children, elderly and infants, 1000 horses and all of their belongings, attempted to escape U.S. Government domination by fleeing their homeland in the Wallowa Valley of northeastern Oregon, and trying to reach Canada. Sitting Bull's Lakota Sioux had escaped into Canada in May, 1877, but they had a much shorter distance to travel. The Nez Perce were chased and attacked repeatedly by more than ten times their number of U.S. Army troops, often with artillery support. Despite such overwhelming odds, the Nez Perce defeated the soldiers, or outmaneuvered them and escaped, in nine separate battles. Newspaper reports kept the country electrified for four months as the courageous Nez Perce doggedly traveled more than 1500 miles. By late-September, 250 of the Nez Perce had been killed. Believing they had crossed the unmarked border, they stopped at the Bear Paw Mountains in northern Montana so that the exhausted women and children could rest. But they were 40 miles short of their goal, and there they were surrounded. After three days of artillery bombardment, and enduring a blizzard with little or no cover, with most of the war chiefs dead around him, including his own brother, Chief Joseph walked out to the American line and surrendered, uttering his despair with an eloquence that has echoed through subsequent American history: "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 Nez Perce surrendered with the promise that they would be returned to their homeland. Instead, after they had been disarmed and their beloved horses taken from them, they were shipped down the Missouri River to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas; then in the following year they were moved into the Indian Territory (present Oklahoma). There, on the sweltering and dusty Plains, a third of the Nez Perce, including most of their children, died in the first three years. Joseph buried two of his own children in that barren ground. It was not until 1885 that the 268 surviving Nez Perce prisoners of war were allowed to return to the Northwest. But the rich Wallowa Valley had been given to White ranchers. So Joseph's people were sent into further exile, at the Colville Reservation in Washington. [These paragraphs by Mike Cowdrey.

Rich 6 3/8" x 8 ¼" gelatin silver print by E. H. Latham, with pen inscription on verso in Latham's hand. A tear in the lower left margin just grazes the image. Details are very clear. [D3+]

View Be-Hold next auction.

Similar lots up for auction