ENTERPRISE — A Junction City man with ties to the Nez Perce and a passion for promoting the Indian people has come to Wallowa County to celebrate his 90th birthday.

Sidney Austin, a longtime partisan of the Nez Perce and other tribes, hopes spreading information about their history can be his legacy.

“That’s why I’ve been involved in promoting the Indian people,” he said Tuesday, July 12 — Austin’s birthday. “It’s something that I’m really devoted to … to getting information out there on Chief Joseph and Jackson Sundown.”

In fact, he’s even been “gifted” with the spiritual name of Jackson Sundown, a rodeo champion from the early 1900s.

According to the website of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, Sundown was said to be a nephew of Chief Joseph. Sundown was the first Native American to win a major rodeo championship.

Born around 1863 in Montana, his birth name was Waaya-Tanah-Toesits-Kahn (Earth Left by the Setting Sun). Sundown is believed to have fought against U.S. troops in the Nez Perce War of the late 1870s. After his people’s defeat, he took refuge on the Flathead Reservation, where he married, raised a family and learned to “cowboy.”

Sundown entered the bucking horse competition at the Pendleton Round-Up in 1914, 1915, and 1916. At an age when most cowboys have long since retired, the 53-year-old Sundown captured the trophy saddle. He later competed in a number of California rodeos.

According to Cowboys and Indians Magazine’s website, Sundown was inducted into the American Indian Athletic Hall of Fame, the National Multicultural Western Heritage Museum and Hall of Fame and the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum and Hall of Fame. He is considered a Native American and Pendleton Round-up icon.

Wounded three times in the Nez Perce War, he eventually made his way back to Nez Perce country in Idaho. Retracing the route of his flight 23 years earlier, Sundown finally arrived back in the Wallowa country and, in 1912, on the Nez Perce Reservation, married a Nez Perce widow he’d known as a child. All the while, he’d been developing a reputation among the Indian and ranching communities alike as a skilled horseman.

Asked why he was “gifted” Sundown’s moniker, Austin remains a little puzzled by it, even if totally overwhelmed.

“That’s a good question. It kind of came out of the blue in 2016 (the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the National Museum of the American Indian in New York City), I invited seven people to the museum and four or five of them were Nez Perce,” Austin said.

The museum now has a location in Washington, D.C., as part of the Smithsonian Institution.

“It was a wonderful experience. There were thousands of people there,” he said. “I gave (the director of the museum) $50 of gold and it was a beautiful, Indian gold coin … I gifted him with it at that time. That may have had something to do with it later on. They sent me the certificate and I didn’t argue with it one way or another.”

He finds the gifting of a spiritual name exhilarating.

“It’s a compliment and it happens every once in a while with palefaces,” he said. “It’s really a thrill.”

The Nez Perce connection first brought him to Wallowa County in 1982, when he heard about what is purported to be Chief Joseph’s birth cave in Joseph Canyon.

During his visit, “I realized why Joseph and his people loved this area so much, seeing it visually,” Austin said. “Then I learned about the cave and I spent a whole day looking for it. The second day, I found it and got into it.”

He said it’s not hard to get to and not far from a road.

“While I was there, there was an eclipse of the moon that night … It was late and I stopped and looked and could see where the entrance was and I didn’t try to go in then,” he said. “So I went down and camped in Hells Canyon and camped overnight. I stayed up and watched the eclipse.”

Now Austin is here again for Chief Joseph Days and Tamkaliks. It seems to be a place he tries to come on a regular pilgrimage.

“I try to come every year, but this year it cost $250 for gas,” he said.

Coming to Wallowa County to find the cave and take part in the events have enriched his live, Austin said.

“I’ve made many, many friends,” he said. “I think the Nez Perce people are a remarkable people and the Indian people overall are remarkable and I appreciate them sincerely.”