Forse and his men headed back to Fort Walla Walla on September 26, 1876. On his ride back through the valley, Forse “found everything quiet.” The peace was not to last. Earlier that summer Sioux and Cheyenne warriors had wiped out troops under Lieutenant Colonel George Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. The disaster put an end to the army’s patience and to much of the public’s sympathy for Indian rights.

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To avoid future confrontations, the government had to attend to the issue of removing the Nez Perce from the Wallowa country. Howard used the Wallowa incident to press for a five-member commission to decide how to get the Nez Perce onto a reservation. On October 3, 1876, the secretary of the interior appointed General Howard, Major Wood, and three easterners, David H. Jerome of Michigan, A.C. Barstow of Rhode Island, and William Stickney of Washington, D.C., to the commission. According to Mrs. John Monteith the last three members were “excellent men . . . all kings of finance, but with not a speck of Indian sense, experience, or knowledge.”

Joseph met with the commission at Lapwai in November and rejected its offer to buy what remained of Indian land, arguing eloquently that the Nez Perce should be allowed to stay there. But the commission’s recommendation to the Department of the Interior stated, “That unless in a reasonable time Joseph consented to be removed [from Wallowa], he should be forcibly taken with his people and given lands on the reservation.” Major Wood, however, refused to sign the document. Joseph, unaware of the commission’s report, went with his people to their winter encampment in the Imnaha canyon.

In April and May 1877 Joseph and his brother Ollokot met three times with General Howard and others trying to convince them that although the Nez Perce did not want to fight, they had the right to stay in the Wallowa Valley. By May 14, an impatient General Howard decided that “reasonable time” was up, and he gave the Wallowa band 30 days to move to the reservation. “If you are not here in that time,” he said, “I shall consider that you want to fight, and will send my soldiers to drive you on.”

To avoid war, the Nez Perce were prepared to do as Howard ordered, but violence found them anyway. On their way to the reservation, with 10 days left of freedom, the five nontreaty bands came together in a gathering of about 600 Indians. The young men staged war parades and rode around simulating battle. On June 13, two days before they were due at the reservation, a warrior named Wahlitits and two companions decided to seek revenge on a white man, Larry Ott, who had killed Wahlitits’ father two years earlier. When they couldn’t find Ott they waited a day then went to the cabin of a man known to be cruel to Indians and shot him. Roused by this first act of vengeance, they killed four more settlers and wounded one other. Soon other warriors joined them in a series of raids.

“For a short time we lived quietly,” Joseph later said about the pre-war days. “But that could not last.” One shot from a settler’s rifle helped shatter a fragile peace and set the Nez Perce on the path to war.

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