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Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce: A Photo-Illustrated Biography (Read and Discover Photo-Illustrated Biographies)

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The story of Chief Joseph is one of the most important and disturbing chapters in American history. In this book, Bill McAuliffe provides an excellent introduction to Chief Joseph, the Nez Perce, and the amazing story of their flight to escape the American Army. The book contains some excellent photographs and a time line of events. It concludes with words from Chief Joseph, "The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it." This is a man and a subject that we all should know more about. This book is an excellent begining.

Joseph was the leader of the Nimipu, 'The Real People.' They were the hosts of the explorers Lewis and Clark and from which tribe their female guide came to get them back to civilization. Joseph and 150 Nez Perce were confined on a reservation in NE Washington state for all of their efforts on behalf of the U. S. Government.

Robert Penn Warren is a disguished Southern writer, born in Guthrie, Kentucky. Since he graduated summa cum laude from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, we like to claim him as one of us. The first book of his I read was A PLACE TO COME TO. He went on to get degrees from University of California, Yale, and studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar in 1930.

He was a most prolific writer, some of the main ones I enjoyed were THE LEGACY OF THE CIVIL WAR, JEFFERSON DAVIS GETS HIS CITIZENSHIP BACK, JOHN BROWN: THE MAKING OF A MARTYR, BAND OF ANGELS (a movie was made of this), ALL THE KING'S MEN (won Pulitizer Prize for Fiction) and EYES, ETC.: A MEMOIR. He wrote a famous play called ALL THE KING'S MEN and many volumes of poems, most especially AUDUBON: A VISION, CHIEF JOSEPH OF THE NEZ PERCE, PROMISES (1957, which won the Pulitizer Prize for Poetry) and NOW AND THEN (his third Pulitizer Prize).

In 1944-45, he was the second occupant of the Chair of Poetry at the Library of Congress. He received numerous other awards for his writing of all sorts, as he continued to be a professor of English. He was one of 'The Fugitives,' a special group of Vanderbilt-educated writers, including some well known personages as prolific as he and as well-loved like Allen Tate and John Crowe Ransom (from Pulaski, Tennessee) the two major domos, along with Andrew Lytle and a Mr. Oswald. He did an in-depth study of Melville.

"Abou Ben Adhem -- may his tribe increase!
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, withint the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel, writing in a book of gold.
****************
The angel wrote and vanished. The next night
It came again, with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blessed;
And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest."