Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 2,059

This is the grave of Tuekakas, known to whites as “Old Chief Joseph.”

Born sometime around 1785, Tuekakas grew up in a world where the Nez Perce lived free. He did not die in that world. He was a leader of the Wallowa Band of the Nez Perce. Now, there were already some impacts from the arrival of European colonialism by the time he was born. British traders were on the Pacific Coast and the pressure from American colonization were moving surviving indigenous peoples to the west, where there were already indigenous people of course and so that led to war and more shuffling around. There were more goods around, but also more war.

The world changed forever for the Nez Perce when Lewis and Clark arrived in 1805. The Nez Perce were pretty helpful to the white explorers. It did not pay off for them. Soon, fur traders showed up. Well, at first the Nez Perce or other tribes didn’t mind. They could trade furs for guns, alcohol, whatever. But then the furs started to disappear as the animals were trapped out. Then came the missionaries. Now, there were plenty of indigenous people who were willing to convert. In fact, Tuekakas was one of them. He was one of the very first converts and as an influential man in the Nez Perce, that mattered. Now, what that meant to him, it’s just impossible for us to say. These conversions weren’t always what the Europeans thought they would. It’s not as if indigenous people just gave up on all their old ways. The history of syncretic Christianity is quite well-written. It might have been about status with the whites, the ability to serve as a mediator between his people and the Americans. The Americans most certainly had a lot of power behind their gods and don’t think that didn’t matter.

Now, at some level, it certainly seems that Tuekakas took whites at their word that converting to Christianity would lead to respect for his people and control over their land. Of course, missionaries are lying hypocrites, each and every damn one of them. See, you can’t be a missionary if you don’t believe your culture is better that the people you are missionizing to. That’s the point and there’s no way around it. And most certainly, even the most “pro-Indian” missionaries, such as those who assisted the Cherokees in their case against the state of Georgia to hold on to their land, did not in any way think of Native Americans equal. They thought of them as savages who needed to completely erase their culture and replace it with white culture. It’s just that they thought the Cherokee were actually doing that and so had earned the right to keep their land. With others, the hypocrisy was more open. They were going to steal Native land and that’s how it was.

So when whites started showing up to live on Nez Perce land in the Wallowa Valley of Oregon, Tuekakas was horrified. After all, this is exactly what was not supposed to happen. Moreover, these whites weren’t kind Christians. They were nakedly white supremacist and violent too. The Nez Perce could see what was happening to other people. Tuekakas had lived his whole life watching this. He began to question his own decisions and near the end of his life, he turned harshly on the white scumbag hypocrites. In 1863, gold was discovered on Nez Perce land. It wasn’t a lot of gold, but the whites flooded in and any pretension to his people getting to control their own lives was over. Tuekakas shredded his American flag and tore his Bible to pieces. He had been deceived. He also refused to negotiate any further with whites. He would not sign any new treaties and he would not shrink his people’s land or move them to a reservation.

Tuekakas died in 1871, a deeply bitter man. The gravepost, put up by whites, has the wrong date. He was approximately 86 years old. A few years later, his son Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt, known to whites as “Chief Joseph,” would lead the Nez Perce on a desperate trip to Canada. They failed, crushed by the genocidal white nation. Both “Chief Josephs” would then play a nostalgic role in white memory of the region’s history, giving a nice romantic diversion from the continued genocide and displacement that continues to the present.

Tuekakas is buried near Wallowa Lake, Wallowa County, Oregon. Whites reburied him without permission in 1926 in a nice convenient place to be a tourist attraction. He was originally buried where the Wallowa and Lostine Rivers meet.

If you would like this series to visit other indigenous Americans struggling to survive and thrive in this horror show of a nation, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Richard Oakes is in Stewarts Point, California and Egan is in Burns, Oregon. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.