Dramatically recreates the life of the Indian chief who led the Nez Perces in their last, disasterous campaign against the white man

A biography of the great Nez Percae chief who, struggling desperately to keep his tribe safe and free, led them on a flight to Canada.

A biography of the Nez Percé Indian chief who led his people in a flight from their Oregon lands to Canada in 1877.

A portrait of the Nez Percé diplomat and defender covers the 1863 treaty that called for his tribe's removal to an Idaho reservation, his people's four month flight toward safety in Canada under his leadership, and his war leadership upon their capture forty miles from their destination. Chief Joseph, 1840-1904, became a legend due to his heroic efforts to keep his people in their homeland in Oregon's Wallowa Valley despite a treaty that ordered them onto a reservation in Idaho. In 1877, when the US army forced the Nez Percé away from their lands, Joseph led his tribe's people on a 1,500 mile, four month flight from western Idaho across Montana, through Yellowstone National Park and Wyoming, toward safety in Canada. During this journey, the Army attacked the Indians several times; in one battle alone, at the Big Hole in western Montana, ninety Indian men, women, and children were killed. The Nez Percé's flight ended at the Bear's Paw Mountains in northern Montana, just forty miles from the safety of the Canadian border. There the Army surrounded the Nez Percé captured their horses, killed all but two of their primary chiefs, and forced their capitulation. When Chief Joseph surrendered to military leaders he told them: from where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever. Promised by military commanders that they would be returned to Idaho, the Nez Percé were instead relocated to Indian Territory in Oklahoma where many died of fever and disease. Chief Joseph began a new fight for better conditions for his people and the right to return to their home country. His diplomacy and eloquence won public support and ultimately resulted in the Nez Percé return to Idaho and Washington.

In this elegant book, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer explores the manifold ways in which the Civil War changed the United States forever. He confronts its costs, not only human (six hundred thousand men killed) and economic (beyond reckoning) but social and psychological. He touches on popular misconceptions, including some concerning Abraham Lincoln and the issue of slavery. The war in all its facets “grows in our consciousness,” arousing complex emotions and leaving “a gallery of great human images for our contemplation.”

Hidden in the shadow cast by the great western expeditions of Lewis and Clark lies another journey every bit as poignant, every bit as dramatic, and every bit as essential to an understanding of who we are as a nation -- the 1,800-mile journey made by Chief Joseph and eight hundred Nez Perce men, women, and children from their homelands in what is now eastern Oregon through the most difficult, mountainous country in western America to the high, wintry plains of Montana. There, only forty miles from the Canadian border and freedom, Chief Joseph, convinced that the wounded and elders could go no farther, walked across the snowy battlefield, handed his rifle to the U.S. military commander who had been pursuing them, and spoke his now-famous words, "From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever." The story has been told many times, but never before in its entirety or with such narrative richness. Drawing on four years of research, interviews, and 20,000 miles of travel, Nerburn takes us beyond the surrender to the captives' unlikely welcome in Bismarck, North Dakota, their tragic eight-year exile in Indian Territory, and their ultimate return to the Northwest. Nerburn reveals the true, complex character of Joseph, showing how the man was transformed into a myth by a public hungry for an image of the noble Indian and how Joseph exploited the myth in order to achieve his single goal of returning his people to their homeland. Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez Perce is far more than the story of a man and a people. It is a grand saga of a pivotal time in our nation's history. Its pages are alive with the presence of Lewis and Clark, General William Tecumseh Sherman, General George Armstrong Custer, and Sitting Bull. Its events brush against the California Gold Rush, the Civil War, the great western pioneer migration, and the building of the telegraph and the transcontinental railroad. Once you have read this groundbreaking work, you will never look at Chief Joseph, the American Indian, or our nation's westward journey in the same way again.

A biography of Chief Joseph, who led the Nez Percâe as they hid from, fought with, and finally surrendered to Army soldiers, and who later spoke in Washington, D.C. about the rights of his people.