To quote Chief Joseph over and over and ...

So I'm sitting here at about 3:15 AM, wide awake, minding my own business and trying to decide what to post this AM when Outlook offers it's friendly little ding to let me know that I have mail.

"Hmmm. What's a Kaitlyn." I wonder as I open the link.

Well, evidently Kaitlyn is a regular around here, breeds the occasional Appaloosa horse and has forgotten more about Chief Joseph, the Nez Perce people, their culture and horses than most people are ever going to know.

And ......... she's got the links to prove it.

Viola, this mornings post.

With the exception of the first paragraph, these quotes were taken from an 1879 speech Chief Joseph made to a group of Congressman and "other dignitaries" in Washington DC where he had journeyed to meet President Rutherford B. Hayes in an effort to secure a better deal for his people.

The photo will link you up to an interesting timeline from student sketchbook project offering beau coup links to maps and first person accounts of the history of the Nez Perce War.

" I will not move (to the reservation). I do not need your help; we have plenty, and we are contented and happy if the white man will let us alone. The reservation is too small for so many people with all their stock. You can keep your presents; we can go to your towns and pay for all we need; we have plenty of horses and cattle to sell, and we won't have any help from you; we are free now; we can go where we please, our fathers were born here. Here they lived, here they died, here are their graves. We will never leave them."

Treat all men alike. Give them the same laws. Give them all an even chance to live and grow. All men were made by the same Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers. The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it.

You might as well expect all rivers to run backward as that any man who was born a free man should be contented penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases. If you tie a horse to a stake, do you expect he will grow fat? If you pen an Indian up on a small spot of earth and compel him to stay there, he will not be contented nor will he grow and prosper.

I have asked some of the Great White Chiefs where they get their authority to say to the Indian that he shall stay in one place, while he sees white men going where they please. They cannot tell me.

I know that my race must change. We cannot hold our own with the white men as we are. We only ask an even chance to live as other men live. We ask to be recognized as men. We ask that the same law shall work alike on all men. If an Indian breaks the law, punish him by the law. If a white man breaks the law, punish him also.

Let me be a free man, free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to talk, think and act for myself -- and I will obey every law or submit to the penalty.

Whenever the white man treats the Indian as they treat each other then we shall have no more wars. (Yeah, I'm not altogether sure about that one) 

Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekht has spoken for his people.