Page:The Indian Dispossessed.pdf/157

 "While a majority of the settlers of the Wallowa Valley retain no ill will against the Nez Perces for the troubles of 1877, yet there are some whose relatives were ravished and killed by Indians on Salmon River and Camas Prairie during that outbreak who vow vengeance against all members of the band, and more particularly against Joseph, and many of the settlers predict that should the Indians be returned to this valley to stay permanently Joseph would be assassinated within a year."

Here again is the threat of assassination for crimes that he never committed. During all these years Joseph had lived in perfect safety within easy reach of the bereaved settlers, but were he to "ever return for a permanent residence" or, "to stay permanently," in other words, to occupy some of their precious land, then their gentle grief would rise to the pitch of murder. What finely balanced sorrow this, to be so weighed in the commercial scale!

It was an impracticable, impossible thing, this dream of a homesick Indian. So Joseph returned to his people. Four years more of idle longing; then, in September, 1904, Joseph departed for the happy hunting-ground, where treaties are not made to be broken, and liberty is real.

"The line was made as I wanted it; not for me, but my children that will follow me; there is where I live, and there is where I want to leave my body.