In the long, cruel struggle that followed, when Chief Joseph and his braves struck terror to the settlers, leaving death and ruin in their path, Charlot remained staunch and true. Indeed, the boast of the Selish is that they, as a nation, were never guilty of taking a white man's life.
Meantime, while they lived in peace and plenty, the fates had sealed their doom. There is no use reiterating the long, painful story of the treaty between the Selish and the government, ceding to the latter the land where the tribal ancestors lived and died. Charlot declared he did not sign away the birth-right of his people and he was an honourable man. He and his friends went farther and said that his mark was forged. On the other hand some of those who were witnesses for the United States maintain that the name Charlot was written like that of Arlee and others, with a blank space left for the mark, or signature of each Chief. They further state that Charlot never affixed his mark to the document nor was it forged as he asserted to the end. This is at best mere evasion. One of two things happened: a fraudulent signature was put upon the face of the treaty to deceive the government, or Charlot, as Head Chief, was overridden and ignored. Whatever the means employed the outcome was the same. It was an unhappy day for the Indians. They had no recourse but to submit, so most of them headed by Arlee, the War Chief, struck their tipis, abandoned the toil-won fields where they had laboured so long and so patiently, left the shadow of the Cross where they were baptized, and went forth into the Jocko to begin again the struggle which should never be more than a beginning.
Joe La Mousse
But Charlot the royal-blooded, son of a long line of fighting chiefs, was not to be moved by the master-hand like a pawn in a game of chess. He haughtily refused to leave the Bitter Root Valley, telling his people that those of them who wished to go should follow Arlee, but he with a few of the faithful, would lie down to his repose in the land of his fathers beneath peaks that mingle with the sky. With impassive dignity he and a party of his loyal band went to Washington at the bidding of the Great Father to listen to the justice of the white man's claim. Charlot proudly declined to accept pension and authority bought at the price of his exile. He wished only the "poor privilege" of dwelling in the valley where his fathers had dwelt; of resting at last, where they had lain so long. He wanted neither money nor land,—simply permission to live in the home of his childhood, his manhood and old age. He added that he would never be taken alive to the Jocko Reservation. The Powers saw no merit in the sentiment of the old Chief. He had dared to oppose their will and they determined to break his spirit. He might remain in the Bitter Root the All-Wise decreed, but in remaining he relinquished every right. More crushing to him than poverty and exile was the final blow to his pride. In a sense he was King of his tribe. The title of Great Chief descended from father to son, even as the crowns of empires are handed down. The War Chiefs, on the other hand, were elected to command the warriors for a year and at the end of their service they became simple braves again. The government, ignoring the canons of the Selish, put Charlot aside, and Arlee, the Red Night, last of the War Chiefs, took precedence over him and became Head Chief of his nation. Charlot was stripped of his title, his honours, his privileges of land grant and pension; in other words, he was reduced from Great Chief to pauper.
Thus Charlot, who with his braves had defied his kinsfolk, the Nez Percés, to protect the weak colony of settlers in their Bitter Root home was driven forth by these same strangers within his gates, and he, the bravest and best of his kind, shorn of the dignities his forebears and he, himself, had won;—robbed, cast out, was held up to contumely as an unruly savage and spurned by the people his mercy had spared.
From the Bitter Root, the poor wanderers took their way into the Jocko, a region also fair, where some of their tribe already dwelt, and made for themselves new homes. They accepted the change uncomplainingly and set to work to sow and reap in this adopted land.
Charlot and his band of nearly two hundred lingered in the Bitter Root until 1891, when driven by hunger and suffering they followed their tribesmen into the Jocko. He had said he would never be taken alive to the new reservation, nor was he. Clad in his war dress, mounted on his best horse, surrounded by his young men in full war regalia, he rode into exile, proud, unbending as a triumphant Chief entering dominions won by conquest. No expression of pain crossed his bronze-stern face; no hint of humility or subjection softened the majesty of his mien. He and his braves were met by the Selish who had gone before, with great ostentation and ceremony. Charlot never forgot nor forgave. He had been cast out, betrayed, but not conquered.
The Selish have learned to love the soft, yellow-green of the Jocko hills, the free sweep of its prairies, where sun flowers flow in a sea of gold beneath the rushing tide of the summer wind, and the prettily boisterous little Jocko River laughs and plays over its rocky bed between a veritable jungle of trees and vines and flowers. In these woods bordering the stream, the most luscious wild gooseberries, strawberries and bright scarlet brew berries grow—this last, dear to the Indian, is picked by the squaws and made into a sparkling draught. There the trees are hung with dense tapestries of blossoming vines, thick moss deadens the footstep and birds call shrilly from the twilight of the trees. But the Jocko and Sin-yal-min are beautiful and fertile, and wherever there is beauty and fertility there comes the Master saying:
"This is mine by right of might! Go forth again O Indian! There are lean hills and deserts left for thee!"