That All People May Be One People, Send Rain to Wash the Face of the Earth [Paperback]

Nez Perce Chief Joseph (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1995

Famed Nez Perce leader and orator Chief Joseph speaks of the earth's natural world, relationships among peoples, justice, war and his own life. His truthful, wise and gracefully spoken words were first recorded during an 1879 post-Nez Perce War interview in Washington, D.C., and first printed in the North American Review. What he said to the world then remains equally profound today.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"[This book]...gives the chief's articulate perspective of mankind's relationship with the planet and the oneness of the masses..." -- Walla Walla Union-Bulletin, 1995

"much of what...[Chief Joseph] said about political conflicts, the environment, and injustice applies to today's situations." -- The Book Report, 1995

The words of Chief Joseph, as related in 1879, come alive in this tribute to the Nez Perce Chief's messages. This is an important contribution to Native American literature: a personal memoir of his survival of the Nez Perce War, and a modern account of tribal struggles. -- Midwest Book Review

From the Inside Flap

In 1805, Nez Perce Indians welcomed to their homeland a small party of sick and starving men led by Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. "We are poor, but our hearts are good," Nez Perce chiefs advised Clark, as recorded in his journal. While the Nez Perces were "the most friendly, honest, and ingenious people that we have seen in the course of our voyage and travels," according to expedition member Sergeant Gass' records, and while their existence may have been humble, they were not poor. Their territory spanned from the Bitterroot Mountains of western Montana to the Wallowas of eastern Oregon. Their region was rich with fish, game, roots, berries, and the spiritual and cultural heritage of their ancestors. Within the next seventy-two years, however, the Nez Perces' homeland would be reduced by ninety-five percent and its people divided and indeed, in a much truer sense, poor. The culminating event of this process was the four-month long, 1300-mile Nez Perce War of 1877. While the war was waged largely under the leadership of Chief Looking Glass, it was In-mut-too-yah-lat-lat (Thunder-Traveling-Over-The-Mountains), known to whites as Chief Joseph, whose surrender forty miles from the sanctuary of Canada closed the war. "Our chiefs are killed," he reportedly said,"...It is cold and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. Some of my people have run away to the hills and have no blankets, no food; no one knows where they are--perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children and see how many I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead.

Hear me, my chiefs. I am tired; my heart is sick and sad."

In 1879, Chief Joseph journeyed to Washington D.C. to attempt to negotiate a return to his homeland for those Nez Perces who had survived the war and were being kept on a reservation in Oklahoma. While in Washington, he granted reporters an interview, the contents of which comprises the text of this book. This, then, is Chief Joseph's own story as given through an interpreter and first reported in the North American Review, April 1879. Readers today, as then, find herein truths of America's past and messages for America's future.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 53 pages
• Publisher: Mountain Meadow Pr; 1st edition (January 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 094551915X
• ISBN-13: 978-0945519157
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 7.4 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #633,596 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A masterpiece by a champion of American civil liberty., August 9, 2001

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Chattan Gordon - See all my reviews
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This review is from: That All People May Be One People, Send Rain to Wash the Face of the Earth (Paperback)

Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce, who was also known by his Nimipoo name Hin-Mah-Too-Yah-Lahket, gave an interview to the North American Review in l879. This book is a reprint of Chief Joseph's account of the Nez Perce's dealings with their white brothers, the Nez Perce War of l877 which he tried so hard to avoid, and his people's imprisonment on reservations following his surrender. The final portion of the book consists of Joseph's plea that all people treat each other with respect and human decency and as equals. Hin-Mah-Too-Yah-Lahket expresses himself in nothing short of pure poetry. He is generally considered in the Northwestern United States (where he is a hero with a town, schools and numerous memorials named after him) to be one of the greatest Native American orators. This book is a must-read for 1) students of American history and 2) proponents of civil liberties. This edition does contain some strange spellings (e.g., Rutherford B. Hayes is here spelled "Rutherford Hays" and Hin-Mah-Too-Yah-Lahket is spelled "In-Mut-Too-Yah-Lat-Lat"). However, since Nimiputan was an unwritten language, the spelling of Nimiputan words and names is anybody's guess. I'm just glad that Mountain Meadow Press reprinted Chief Joseph's l879 article.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Crying4U2Wakeup, October 17, 2007

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D. Horne (Mesa, AZ USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: That All People May Be One People, Send Rain to Wash the Face of the Earth (Paperback)

Its ironic to give a 5 star rating to a man who's nation was decimated by our government. At first blush its sinful to place an entertainment rating on genocide. Yet how else might you learn of the great wisdom of the Native Americans if I do otherwise. ALL ancient wisdom confirms: 1) Violence comes full circle to anyone, or any nation, that pursues it as a solution no matter what `rightous' banner is used to vindicate it. 2) All governments decay into lying, cheating, and stealing from the governed because unrestrained power steals the soul, the humanity, out of a human being. 3) Only love and foregiveness create lasting change in the world. 4) Nature buries her undertakers--do not abuse her. One definition of insanity is `doing the same thing expecting different results.' This is a must read if you care at all about yourself, your children and the greatness of all people.

Other recommendations:
Wisdom of the Vedas (Theosophical Heritage Classics)
Change Your Thoughts - Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao
Illusions
Life of Pi

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "All men were made by the same Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers.", February 20, 2008

By 

Kerry Walters (Lewisburg, PA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: That All People May Be One People, Send Rain to Wash the Face of the Earth (Paperback)

So concludes Chief Joseph at the end of this remarkable and touching book, based on an 1879 interview he gave to reporters from the "North American Review."

Joseph, chief of one of the clans of the Nez Perce, reluctantly conducted a four-month war in 1877 against the U.S. government. The Nez Perce, whose traditional grounds were in the western Montana-Idaho-astern Oregon region, had seen their land steadily whittled away by governmental decree and white settlement until, by 1863, they were allowed less than 1,000 square miles. This led to a splintering of the tribe into compliant and noncompliant bands. Joseph, following his father's insistence that the land belonged to no one and couldn't be apportioned by governmental treaty, led the noncompliant band.

Officially ignored for a few years, Joseph's Nez Perce fell under government scrutiny again when an in-rush of goldseekers in the mid-1870s led to increased tension between whites and Indians. The tension erupted into outright violence when a group of young and angry Nez Perce killed four white settlers, and the war which Joseph had tried so long and hard to avoid was thrust upon him.

Although the war was short in duration, it was intense in fighting. No fewer than four U.S. armies went after Joseph. Nez Perce women and children were butchered by U.S. troops and volunteers. Joseph finally surrendered because he was promised that his people could return to their own lands. But they were sent first to Leavenworth, where many of them died from malaria, and then Baxter, Kansas.

Throughout the interview, Joseph continuously expresses bewilderment at the greed of the white men who insist on owning all the land; at the fact that Indians are treated so unjustly, even though all men and women are kindred; at the willingness of the white community to dishonor itself by breaking treaties ("It makes my heart sick when I remember all the good words and all the broken promises," p. 41); and at the arrogance of whites, who just naturally presume that they have the right to subjugate Indians ("I have asked some of the great white chiefs where they get their authority to say to the Indian that he shall stay in one place, while he sees white men going where they please. They cannot tell me," p. 42).

An eloquent and heartbreaking document, one that makes the reader proud of Chief Joseph and ashamed of the U.S. government's treatment of the Nez Perce--a tribe, by the way, that saved the Lewis and Clark expedition at a crisis moment.