Editing Chief Joseph (section)

==Aftermath==
[[File:Chief Joseph and family.JPG|right|thumb|upright=1.10|Chief Joseph and family, c. 1880]]
[[File:Oliver O. Howard and Chief Joseph (1904).jpg|thumb|Oliver O. Howard and Chief Joseph (1904)]]
By the time Joseph had surrendered, 150 of his followers had been killed or wounded. Their plight, however, did not end. Although Joseph had negotiated with Miles and Howard for a safe return home for his people, General Sherman overruled this decision and forced Joseph and 400 followers to be taken on unheated rail cars to [[Fort Leavenworth]], in eastern Kansas, where they were 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]]); they lived there 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 his people's case. Although Joseph was respected as a spokesman, 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 granted permission 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]] in [[Nespelem, Washington]], far from both their homeland in the Wallowa Valley and the rest of their people in Idaho.

Joseph continued to lead his Wallowa band on the Colville Reservation, at times coming into conflict with the leaders of the 11 other unrelated tribes also living on the reservation. [[Chief Moses]] of the [[Sinkiuse-Columbia]], in particular, resented having to cede a portion of his people's lands to Joseph's people, who had "made war on the Great Father".

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, D.C. again to plead his case. He rode with [[Buffalo Bill]] in a parade honoring former President [[Ulysses Grant]] in New York City, but he was a topic of conversation for his traditional 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.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Joseph--Nez Percé |url=https://www.loc.gov/item/2002722462/ |access-date=December 17, 2020 |website=Library of Congress |archive-date=May 10, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210510000229/https://www.loc.gov/item/2002722462/ |url-status=live }}</ref> Joseph also visited President [[Theodore Roosevelt]] in Washington, D.C. the same 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, but it never happened.<ref>{{cite book |author=Pearson, J. Diane |title=The Nez Perces in the Indian Territory |location=Norman |publisher=[[U of OK Press]] |date=2008 |pages=297–298 }}</ref>