Too-Hool-Hool-Suit answered: "Who are you, that you ask us to talk, and then tell me I shan't talk? Are you the Great Spirit? Did you make the world? Did you make the sun? Did you make the river to run for us to drink? or the grass to grow? Did you make all these things, that you talk to us as though we were boys? If you did, then you have the right to talk as you do."
General Howard replied, "You are an impudent fellow, and I will put you in the guard-house," and then ordered a soldier to arrest him. Too-Hool-Hool-Suit made no resistance. He asked General Howard: "Is that your order? I don't care. I have expressed my heart to you. I have nothing to take back. I have spoken for my country. You can arrest me, but you can not change me or make me take back what I have said."
Continuing, Joseph said: "The soldiers came forward and seized my friend and took him to the guard-house. My men whispered among themselves whether they should let this thing be done. I counseled them to submit. If I had said nothing, General Howard would never have given another unjust order against my men. I saw the danger, and, while they dragged Too-Hool-Hool-Suit to prison, I arose and said: 'I am going to talk now. I don't care whether you arrest me or not.' I turned to my people and said: 'The arrest of Too-Hool-Hool-Suit was wrong, but we will not resent the insult. We were invited to this council to express our hearts, and we have done so.' Too-Hool-Hool-Suit was a prisoner five days before he was released."
This Indian chief was, therefore, put under military arrest and confined for five days for delivering himself of what General Howard calls a "tirade" in a council to which the Indians had been invited to come for the purpose of consultation and expression of sentiment. As the Indian Commissioner, in his Annual Report for 1878, well says, "If such and so swift penalty as this, for 'tirades' in council were the law of our land, especially in the District of Columbia, it would be 'no just cause of complaint' when Indians suffer for it. But considering the frequency, length and safety of 'tirades' in all parts of America, it seems unjust not to permit Indians to deliver them. However, they do come under the head of 'spontaneous productions of the soil;' and an Indian on a reservation is invested with no such proprietorship in anything which comes under that head."
The position of the Government was now plain to the Indians. They must go to the reservation or fight. They decided to go. Joseph wrote: "I said in my heart that rather than have war I would give up my country. I would give up my father's grave. I would give up everything rather than have the blood of white men upon the hands of my people. General Howard refused to allow me more than thirty days to move my people and their stock. I said to him, 'My people have always been the friends of the white man. Why are you in such a hurry? I can not get ready to move in thirty days. Our stock is scattered, and Snake River is very high. Let us wait until fall, then the river will be low. We want time to hunt up our stock and gather supplies for winter. We want the people who live upon the lands we are to occupy at Lapwai to have time to gather their harvest."
General Howard replied, "If you let the time run over one day, the soldiers will be there to drive you on the reservation, and all your cattle and horses outside the reservation at that time will fall into the hands of the white men."
It does seem that this great haste was unnecessary and positively cruel, and that those Indians should have been given time to collect their stock, their sole means of subsistence, and get them safely over the river. But the theory is we must have firmness in dealing with the Indian, if we have nothing else; yet this time it proved to be a serious and costly blunder. Joseph truly said, "If General Howard had given me plenty of time to gather up my stock and treated Too-Hool-Hool-Suit as a man should be treated, there would have been no war."
The Indians went to make their preparations; they looked on their old home and their love for it increased at the thought that they were about to be deprived of it by fraud, even though they had never sold or signed it away. Too-Hool-Hool-Suit's indignation burned because of his imprisonment for the offense of telling his convictions in the council, the very thing he was expected to do. There was a warrior whose father had been killed by a white man, and the wrong was unrebuked. There were the two warriors who had been whipped by one Harry Mason. These formed a war party, and determined, over Joseph's counsel, to fight the soldiers when they came. It is said that at this time, Chief Joseph rode one day through his village, with a revolver in each hand, saying he would shoot the first one of his warriors who resisted the Government. Finally, they gathered all the stock they could find, preparatory to moving. A heavy rain raised the river so high some of the cattle could not be taken across. Indian guards were put in charge of the cattle left behind. White men attacked these guards and took the cattle. After this Joseph could not restrain his young men and the warfare began.
It was the desire of Joseph and others that the settlers should not be molested, in the hope that they would remain neutral; but it was voted down in the war-council, on the grounds that it was the settlers who brought on all the trouble, because they wanted the Nez Perces' land and stock, and, in fact, some of them actually got both.
The Indians now bought arms and ammunition wherever they could. They practiced military movements, in which they were already quite proficient. General Shanks says that "Joseph's party was thoroughly disciplined; that they rode at full gallop along the mountain side in a steady formation by fours; formed twos, at a given signal, with perfect precision, to cross a narrow bridge; then galloped into line, reined in to a sudden halt, and dismounted with as much system as regulars."