Brains and Courage

Chief Joseph calls himself Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekht, and the tribe is said to use Numepo as their preferred title, though nomenclature among Indians is a parlous thing, many names at the same time and different names at different epochs being the fashion with them individually and in the mass. He is a very high type of Indian as regards brains and courage, but he possesses many of the peculiarities of the savage. His eyes are dull and his features stolid as a rule, but if a bird passes, an animal makes a sound in the bush, an insect comes within earshot or eyesight, something happens in that vacant look. Things that we do not regard have hidden meanings to him, either in connection with the weather, or by reason of superstitions which link certain results with certain appearances, or because the sight of one animal or insect has to do with the presence or the absence of another. The sculptor says that only when some beast, bird, or insect was in sight did the old chief look the warrior and the Indian. When that was gone he relapsed into the apparently unthinking state of an animal, and showed very plainly that to remain in one position while the clay was modelling itself under the artist's fingers was a penance greater than to wait immovable for hours until game revealed itself or an enemy crept in sight.

from Harper's Weekly, August 16, 1890 Volume 34.

photograph by Edward S. Curtis