Chief Joseph was born in Wallowa Valley, Oregon, United States, on March 3, 1840. He was known as Young Joseph during his youth because his father, Tuekakas, was baptized with the same Christian name and later become known as "Old Joseph" or "Joseph the Elder".
He attended a mission school.
The Nez Perces had maintained amiable relations with white settlers in the Pacific Northwest during the nineteenth century; they regularly traded with the settlers. Many Nez Perces, including Chief Joseph, were educated in mission schools. As settlement increased during the 1850s, however, the U.S. federal government pressured the Nez Perces to sign treaties in 1855 and 1863, ceding their territory in exchange for money and reservation lands in western Idaho. Like his father, whom he succeeded as chief in 1871, Chief Joseph and a few other Nez Perce chieftains questioned the validity of the treaties, arguing that the signatories did not represent all of the Nez Perce peoples, and passively resisted white encroachment.
In 1877 whites began settling in the Wallowa Valley and the federal government gave the Nez Perces living in the region thirty days to relocate to western Idaho. On June 12, three Nez Perce warriors killed four whites who had settled in the Wallowa Valley. Fearful of military retaliation, several bands of Nez Perce under Chief Joseph and other chiefs—totaling approximately 800 men, women, and children—attempted to escape to Canada. Over the next several months, the Nez Perces traveled over sixteen hundred miles across Idaho, Oregon, Montana, and Washington; they engaged U.S. troops on thirteen occasions and either defeated or fought them to a standstill in every case except for the battle near the Bear Paw Mountains in Montana. There, less than forty miles from Canada, the Nez Perces were surrounded by federal soldiers, and on October 5, 1877, Chief Joseph surrendered, uttering his famous speech to an army scout who then relayed the message to the American commanders. Among those words were: “I will fight no more forever.” Although the band under Chief Joseph surrendered, approximately two hundred Nez Perces did manage to reach Canada.
To Chief Joseph’s dismay, the terms under which he surrendered were not upheld and his people were relocated to reservations in Kansas and Oklahoma, where many became sick and died. He traveled to Washington, D.C., twice in 1879 to present his case to the federal government, and in its April 1879 issue, the North American Review published "An Indian’s Views of Indian Affairs," Chief Joseph’s account of his people’s dealings with the whites. During his trips east, Chief Joseph gained the respect and support of many influential Americans who lobbied the federal government for the return of Chief Joseph’s people to the Northwest. In 1885 the Nez Perce were relocated to a reservation in Idaho. For the remainder of his life, Chief Joseph lived on various reservations in the Northwest and continued his efforts to negotiate his people’s return to the Wallowa Valley.
An indomitable voice of conscience for the West, in September 1904, still in exile from his homeland, Chief Joseph died, according to his doctor, "of a broken heart". Meany and Curtis helped Joseph's family bury their chief near the village of Nespelem, Washington.
Chief Joseph is buried in Nespelem, where many of his tribe's members still live.
