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.When thegovernment began assigning other tribes to the Colville as their place ofpermanent residence, they were denying the primacy of those tribes whoconsidered this land their own, and frictions quickly developed.The forcedimposition of outsiders put a strain on the fish and game supplies,changed settlement patterns, and placed people side by side who had dif-fering languages, differing beliefs, differing attitudes toward white culture,and long-standing histories of interaction that had not always been hos-pitable and amicable.Chief Moses, who had invited Joseph to live with hispeople, was one of these outsiders.Joseph and Moses had crafted this arrangement quietly through aseries of messages exchanged by courier.Moses was an old friend, elevenyears Joseph s senior.His people, the Columbias, had once lived farther tothe east near the Columbia River.He had spent time at Spalding s missionas a child and, much like Joseph, had striven to achieve a kind of distantaccommodation with the whites, accepting those aspects of white culturethat benefited his people but keeping a distance in matters of belief andmanners of living.He had once been a very powerful chief among all thepeoples in the Plateau and Columbia Basin, but his middle course hadalienated many who strongly supported or strongly opposed accommoda-tion with white culture, and his relocation to the Colville and lands previ-ously occupied by the Nespelem people had increased tensions between hispeople and some of the other Colville tribes.Nonetheless, he had managed to gain the favor of the white govern- I Would Be Happy with Very Little 385mental leaders by convincing them that he was a voice of moderation andin this way had made himself the spokesman for all the peoples on theColville, whether or not they approved of him.To the white observers andofficials, this made him the de facto chief, and he was happy to look uponhimself in that fashion.But, as well as an astute politician, he was a hard-drinking, self-promoting individual who had his detractors among the white locals aswell as among the tribes that did not consider him their actual leader.When Joseph arrived, supposedly as the guest of Moses, these underlyinganimosities and doubts rose to the surface.Joseph and his people becamethe objects of much of this resentment.The Colville agent who took charge of the Nez Perce upon their arrivalwas not happy to have such a problem dropped onto his lap.He had nosympathy for Joseph and no respect for what he considered the weak-willed decision of those back East to send this group of renegades to histerritory.He did not want them near the corrupting influence of what heconsidered to be a whiskey Indian like Moses, so he kept them in squalidconditions just off the reservation near agency headquarters, withholdingtheir supplies and rations rather than sending them to be with Moses.White shop owners and settlers, fearing that the proximity of the cele-brated marauder, Joseph, would decrease the desirability of the area for set-tlers, derided the chief as a large, fat-faced, scheming, cruel-looking cuss and lobbied against his presence.The other tribes who shared the Colvillewere no more sympathetic, calling the people of both Joseph and Moses horse thieves and murderers. The San Poil, on whose land the Nez Percewere initially placed, grew so angry at this imposition that troops had tobe called in to keep the situation from escalating into violence.It was nota welcome calculated to make Joseph s people feel at home.The new arrivals did their best but soon realized that that the situation,even if only temporary, was untenable.Joseph quickly began lobbying tobe moved fifty miles west to the Nespelem Valley, where his friend, ChiefMoses, resided with his people.After a few tense months, the move was arranged.Unfortunately, sincethe Nespelem Valley was also the aboriginal land of the Nespelem tribe,they were no more interested in having Joseph settle on their lands thanthey had been to have Moses and his people settle among them.Joseph andhis followers merely made a difficult situation even more difficult because 386Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez Percethe country was not well suited to farming, and the addition of morepeople with more stock simply put more stress on the grazing lands thatall of them were trying to share.Though the Nespelems did not respondwith the same fury as the San Poils, neither did they offer a warm welcometo the newcomers.Joseph and his people did what they could to make Nespelem theirhome
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