One of the lesser-known sagas of the European expansion into the American West involves the story of Chief Joseph and the Nez Perch Indians, originally from the Wallowa Valley in Oregon. This tribe had signed treaties with the Federal Government in the mid-19th century that guaranteed them their ancestral lands in the Pacific Northwest. However, once white settlers began pouring into the area in the following decades, the government reneged on its agreement, and reduced the Nez Perch reservation to 10% of the size mandated in the first treaty. The government's intransigence, and the steady influx of settlers, led to mounting tension between the Native and the Euro-Americans. Joseph's people were commanded to go to the remnant of their reservation, in Idaho. Joseph, unlike his war chiefs, decided fighting was futile, but some of the more militant warriors took matters into their own hands, and at the start of the trek east, massacred some local settlers. The band then decided to flee for Canada; the killings served as all the excuse the US army needed, and under the command of General Howard, they pursued the Nez Perch over the 1400 mile march north. Sadly, the Nez Perch were caught just 40 miles south of their destination. The shrinking band suffered food and weather deprivations on top of battle losses. In October of 1877, Joseph surrendered to General Howard (and Colonel Miles, who'd joined the chase with fresh troops), in the foothills of north central Montana's Bear Paw Mountains. Here Joseph gave his eloquent, sad speech of surrender, finishing with the line "From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever."