We just wanted to be free

There were few, so few of them left. The 418 remaining Nez Perce Indians of Chief Joseph’s Wallowa (OR) tribe consisted primarily of elderly, children, infants, women, and very few warriors. In 1877, in a last-ditch effort for freedom, the tribe (then numbering around 800) trekked 1170 miles toward the Canadian border, with the U.S. Army pursuing relentlessly behind them. For years, the Nez Perce had tried many means to overcome or pacify the aggressive forces of U.S. expansion promoted by financial magnates (the billionaires of the day) who thirsted after the West’s “Indian lands” for the resources there to be exploited. The Nez Perce negotiated. They signed treaties (which the U.S. Government dishonored). They fought. Who wouldn’t, whose lives and families and culture were attacked by a combative, bellicose enemy? The enemy’s goal was to displace at best, but more preferably, destroy. So in 1877 it came to a head, and the Nez Perce fled to Canada, where they hoped they could find some land, settle, and live out their lives in peace and with dignity. Forty miles from the border, they were overtaken, captured. This is where, in his famous surrender speech, Chief Joseph declared that he would “fight no more forever.” The painting, We Just Wanted to Be Free, is the artist’s view of a time after that surrender, when Chief Joseph's band – the elderly, the children, the infants, women, and very few warriors – were loaded up on trains and shipped out to a rese