Joseph.

In 1889, the same year as the Oklahoma land rush, two Eastern women arrived at the Nez Percé reservation in Idaho determined to implement the Dawes Act. Alice Fletcher was a leader of the group that called itself the "Friends of the Indians," a pioneer in the emerging field of ethnology, and one of the architects of the new law.

Her companion was Jane Gay, a sometime poet who had learned the art of photography to document their time with the Indians. They had come, they believed, to "save" the Nez Percé from themselves -- by dividing up their land and making them homesteaders.

Alice explained ... the land allotment ... and her wish that the whole people would see the wisdom of the great change... At length one man stood up, a tall, broad-shouldered fellow... He said, "We do not want our land cut up in little pieces ..." A groan of assent ran along the dark line of Sphinxes ... "We must come together and decide whether we will have this law ..." She told them that there is nothing for them to decide ... The law must be obeyed. 

Alice Fletcher immediately set to work marking off the new boundaries on the reservation. The Nez Percé came to call her the "Measuring Woman." Chief Joseph himself came to pay a visit. After his long flight from the army in 1877, he had been exiled to Oklahoma, and then allowed to return to a reservation in eastern Washington -- but not to his beloved homeland, the Wallowa Valley in Oregon. Using a new device -- a wax cylinder -- Fletcher convinced Joseph to record one of his traditional songs. 

CONNECT

An excerpt from Fletcher's recording of Chief Joseph singing ...