Yellow Wolf, 1855-1935

Like most of the other Nez Perce in Joseph's band, Yellow Wolf was born in the Wallowa Valley. A young warrior at the time of the Nez Perce War, he took part in every major battle and was wounded five separate times. For his contributions in the war, Yellow Wolf was given the rank of Chief. He chose not to surrender with Chief Joseph after the Bear Paw battle, and subsequently spent two years in Canada before returning to Idaho, at which time he was arrested and sent to the Indian Territory of Oklahoma. When he returned to the Colville Reservation in Washington State, he supplemented his income by picking hops in the Yakama Valley. It was on one of these annual trips that he encountered L. V. McWhorter for the first time. At his death in 1935, Yellow Wolf was buried on the reservation next to Chief Joseph, his uncle. Yellow Wolf's war relics in the L. V. McWhorter Native American Artifact Collection include his war club, rifle, and war whistle.

Like other Nez Perce warriors, Yellow Wolf had a multiplicity of names. He was called Yellow Wolf {Hemene Moxmox} but was also known as White Thunder, or White Lightning {Heinmot Hihhih}. Yellow Wolf was a member of the Wallowa Nez Perce band, and he was related to Chief Joseph on his mother’s side. His father was Horse Blanket {Seekumses Kunnin}, who was rich in horses and cattle; and his mother was Swan Woman {Yiyik Wasumwah}, who was the first cousin to Chief Joseph. As a youth, Yellow Wolf was recognized by the members of his band for his superior horsemanship abilities and skills as a hunter. Yellow Wolf was born in the Wallowa Valley in 1855 in present -day Oregon. His band traditionally wintered in the warmer temperatures of Imnaha Valley and spent their summer and fall in the Wallowa Valley hunting and fishing for Salmon. Like other members of his band, he grew up as a non-Christian Nez Perce, following the Dreamer faith of his forefathers. He was about 21 years of age when he became involved in the Nez Perce War of 1877.
A year after the Nez Perce War, Yellow Wolf returned from Canada and formally surrendered at Lapwai. He was then sent to Indian Territory like the other non-treaty Nez Perce after the war. The Nez Perce referred to the Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma as the “Eeikish Pah,” or the Hot Place.
In 1935 at the age of seventy-nine, Yellow Wolf died of sickness, and not in battle as foretold in a dream. Today, he is buried near the grave of Chief Joseph,at Nespelem, Washington.
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Yellow Wolf or He–Mene Mox Mox (born c. 1855, died August 1935) was a Nez Perce warrior who fought in the Nez Perce War of 1877.From their meeting in 1907 till his death in 1935, Yellow Wolf talked annually to Lucullus Virgil McWhorter, who wrote Yellow Wolf: His Own Story for him.

Cousins: Sarpsis Ilppilp (Red Moccasin Tops) and Wetyetmas Wahyakt (Swan Necklace).

Federal and Indian Affairs census records have recorded the story of Yellow Wolf's family on the Colville Reservation. In 1910, the U.S. Federal Census asked Yellow Wolf to tell about his family, and he said he had married twice (the second for 17 years by that date) and had 9 children (of whom only two were living at that date). By the time of his death in 1935, he told McWhorter that only one of his children was alive, his son Billy.

He was married to a Nez Perce woman named Pe-Tol-Von-nan-Ick, who was known in English as Helen. They were listed together in the 1890, 1892 and 1893 censuses, and she was gone by the 1905 census. It is not recorded whether she died or they left each other. They had a son, Te-Yoh-Yoh-Shin (Billy Yellow Wolf) who was born in 1888. A woman, Chick-A-Moh-Peo (Jean), listed as mother lived with them, in her 80s.

Yellow Wolf had another wife by 1905, I-O-To-ton-My (Little Mountain Woman), and they had a son together who would have been born in 1901. She was eight years younger than Yellow Wolf. They lived with the two sons in the 1906, 1906 and 1910 censuses. The census lists a 1-year-old daughter in 1905, Epu-tepkoset who did not live until 1906.

His son Billy lived with the family off-and-on over the years. He was widowed at age of 21, with a son, and married at least two more times by 1916. Billy's child did not survive; neither did his next son.
Yellow wolf died in 1935, his son Billy Yellow Wolf was his last living child.

Purely by chance, a fateful meeting with prominent Nez Perce War veteran Yellow Wolf in October of 1907 helped McWhorter in his future investigation of the 1877 Nez Perce War and the Nez Perces generally. (Yellow Wolf needed temporary boarding for his horse, and McWhorter courteously obliged!) In the course of compiling material for this posthumously published "Field History" McWhorter worked diligently to acquire and appraise primary and secondary sources. He recorded first-hand Indian oral testimony, maintained an extensive correspondence, and made direct assessments of battle-sites in an effort to establish an accurate and comprehensive account of the 1877 conflict between the Nez Perces and the Federal government. Significantly, his research also included interviews with survivors from the armies of generals Howard, Sturgis, Gibbon, and Miles. McWhorter's historical efforts had the signal value of providing a fresh version of those events based on primary source materials; his books supplemented, supported, or contradicted previously published accounts and interpretations of the same events. Working with Yellow Wolf, and by utilizing the extensive mass of material (including photographs) he had gathered during years of research, McWhorter published Yellow Wolf: His Own Story in 1940.