"I Will Fight No More Forever"

Chief Joseph uttered this phrase in an 1877 speech, when he and his band of Nez Perce Indians surrendered to the U.S. army.

In his native tongue, Joseph was called Hin-Mah-Too-Yah-Lat-Kekht, or Thunder Rolling down the Mountain. When he assumed leadership of the tribe, he continued his father's battle to retain rights to their ancestral homelands in the Pacific northwest. By 1877, after exhausting his ingenious battle strategies, the chief admitted defeat.

We salute Hin-Mah-Too-Yah-Lat-Kekht on the date of his 1904 death with this Levi Olin Warner medal.

Warner was introduced to Chief Joseph by his friend, Charles Erskine Scott Wood, who had personally witnessed Joseph's surrender to the army and recorded his much-admired speech for posterity.

Wood urged Warner to create a lasting remembrance of this noble chief, who is shown in profile, following traditions of antique and Renaissance medals. Quotation marks around the name “Joseph” remind us that this is not an Indian name but one used by the white man.

See more of Warner's medals depicting Native Americans in our exhibition Lure of the West: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Source: Merry Foresta. Lure of the West: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (exhibition text, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 1999).

Pictured: Olin Levi Warner, 1844–1896, "Joseph," Hin-Mah-Too-Yah-Lat-Kekht, Chief of the Nez Perce Indians, 1889, bronze, 17 5/8 in. diam., Smithsonian American Art Museum, A gift of Alison Warner Waterman in memory of her mother, Frances D. Warner.