Page:The Indian Dispossessed.pdf/111

 and strengthen Joseph in his love of the independent life, in his contempt for civilization as it was presented to him, in his fine scorn for the Great Father's promises. He was forced by the logic of events to the conviction that there was no sincerity in the white man's covenants. For ten years after the attempt to extinguish their title to the Wallowa Valley Joseph and his people maintained their separate existence, filling the valley with their herds of horses and cattle during the summer, and retiring each fall to the more sheltered Imnaha Valley for the winter, or to the buffalo country east of the mountains for the annual hunt. During all these years, and as old age came upon him, Joseph impressed upon his two sons, In-me-tuja-latk and Ollicut, the importance of the trust that would devolve upon them to hold for their people the land which he had saved, "not for myself, but for my children." Upon his death In-me-tuja-latk assumed the name of Joseph, and succeeded to the chieftainship. Young Joseph was then a few years past thirty; in temperament, in ability, in the strength of his conviction that the Indian way was the only way for the Indian, he was the counterpart of his father. A description of this man, who was to be the central figure in the tragic events which cost this tribe its native valley, appears in an official report:

"He is in the full vigor of his manhood; six feet tall, straight, well formed, and muscular; his