This Indian chief was, therefore, put under military arrest and confined for five days for delivering himself of what General Howard calls a "_tirade_" in a council to which the Indians had been invited to come for the purpose of consultation and expression of sentiment. As the Indian Commissioner, in his Annual Report for 1878, well says, "If such and so swift penalty as this, for 'tirades' in council were the law of our land, especially in the District of Columbia, it would be 'no just cause of complaint' when Indians suffer for it. But considering the frequency, length and safety of 'tirades' in all parts of America, it seems unjust not to permit Indians to deliver them. However, they do come under the head of 'spontaneous productions of the soil;' and an Indian on a reservation is invested with no such proprietorship in anything which comes under that head." The position of the Government was now plain to the Indians. They must go to the reservation or fight. They decided to go. Joseph wrote: "I said in my heart that rather than have war I would give up my country. I would give up my father's grave. I would give up everything rather than have the blood of white men upon the hands of my people. General Howard refused to allow me more than thirty days to move my people and their stock. I said to him, 'My people have always been the friends of the white man. Why are you in such a hurry? I can not get ready to move in thirty days. Our stock is scattered, and Snake River is very high. Let us wait until fall, then the river will be low. We want time to hunt up our stock and gather supplies for winter. We want the people who live upon the lands we are to occupy at Lapwai to have time to gather their harvest." General Howard replied, "If you let the time run over one day, the soldiers will be there to drive you on the reservation, and all your cattle and horses outside the reservation at that time will fall into the hands of the white men." It does seem that this great haste was unnecessary and positively cruel, and that those Indians should have been given time to collect their stock, their sole means of subsistence, and get them safely over the river. But the theory is we must have firmness in dealing with the Indian, if we have nothing else; yet this time it proved to be a serious and costly blunder. Joseph truly said, "If General Howard had given me plenty of time to gather up my stock and treated Too-Hool-Hool-Suit as a man should be treated, _there would have been no war._"