[General O. O. Howard] had a long council with Joseph and his leading men, telling them they must obey the order or be driven out by force... Joseph was a mere youth without experience in war or public affairs. He now replied in his simple way that neither he nor his father had ever made any treaty disposing of their country, that no other band of the Nez Perces was authorized to speak for them, and it would seem a mighty injustice and unkindness...
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About Chief Joseph
Chief Joseph was a 19th-century American native american leader. Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt, popularly known as Chief Joseph, Young Joseph, or Joseph the Younger, was a leader of the wal-lam-wat-kain (Wallowa) band of Nez Perce, a Native American tribe of the interior Pacific Northwest region of the United States, in the latter half of the 19th century. He succeeded his father Tuekakas in the early 1870s. Read more on Wikipedia →