I am getting old now, and I want to die where my father and mother and children have died. I do not wish to leave this land and go off to some other land.... I see where I have sweat and worked in trying to get food. I love my church, my mills, my farm, the graves of my parents and children. I do not wish to leave my land. That is all my heart, and I show it to you. A young chief said: I have only one heart, one tongue. Although you say, Go to another country, my heart is not that way. I do not wish for any money for my land. I am here, and here is where I am going to be.... I will not part with lands, and if you come again I will say the same thing. I will not part with my lands. The commissioner who was conducting the negotiations, after enumerating the promises made to the Indians in return for the lands which they had surrendered under the original treaty of 1855, tells how some of these promises have been fulfilled: ... A miserably inadequate supply of worn-out agricultural implements. A group of eight or ten dilapidated shanties used for the agency buildings. The physician promised has never resided upon the reservation, but lives and practices his profession at Pendleton. The hospital promised (fifteen years ago) has not yet been erected. Of their ever-living grievance Colonel Ross, superintendent of the Washington agencies, says: Their only troubles arise from the attempts of white men to encroach upon the reservations. A mania prevails among a certain class of citizens in this direction. I verily believe that were the snow-crowned summits of Mount Rainier set apart as an Indian reservation, white men would immediately commence jumping them. (_Comr., 14._) JOSEPH AND THE NEZ PERCÉ WAR We first hear officially of Smohalla and his people from A. B. Meacham, superintendent of Indian affairs in Oregon, who states, in September, 1870, that— ... One serious drawback [to the adoption of the white man’s road] is the existence among the Indians of Oregon of a peculiar religion called Smokeller or Dreamers, the chief doctrine of which is that the red man is again to rule the country, and this sometimes leads to rebellion against lawful authority. A few pages farther on we learn the nature of this rebellion: The next largest band (not on a reservation) is Smokeller’s, at Priest rapids, Washington territory. They also refused to obey my order to come in, made to them during the month of February last, of which full report was made. I would also recommend that they be removed to Umatilla by the military. (_Comr., 15._) Three months before this report Congress had passed a bill appointing commissioners to negotiate with the tribes of Umatilla reservation “to ascertain upon what terms they would be willing to sell their lands and remove elsewhere,” and Meacham himself was the principal member of this commission. (_Comr., 15._)