From Publishers Weekly
Nerburn (
Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder) brings balanced passion to this popular history of the man best known for his sad speech signaling his tribe's surrender at the end of an 1,800-mile retreat from their homeland in Oregon: "I will fight no more forever." Nerburn's novelistic chronicle moves from the kind welcome Lewis and Clark receive from the Nez Percé in 1805 to General O.O. Howard's May 1877 order for the tribespeople to move onto a reservation in Idaho within 30 days. The author follows chiefs Joseph, Ollokot, Looking Glass and White Bird through their armed resistance to Howard's order, their torturous six-month flight toward Canada and their final surrender to U.S. forces just 50 miles away from the Canadian border. Subsequently relocated to several reservations, the tribe was decimated in numbers, culture and spirit, and Joseph's efforts in the 1880s to regain legal ownership of his rightful land, Wallowa Valley, Ore., came to naught. While Joseph's symbolic importance as "America's premier Indian" bloomed, the actual Nez Percé dwindled toward extinction. Nerburn sets out to bust the myth of the "Red Napoleon" in this engaging volume, but his characterization of Joseph's "compassionate leadership" can lean toward stereotyping of a different sort: the noble and tragic Native American in defeat.
(Nov.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Among numerous biographies of Chief Joseph describing the Nez Perce retreat in 1877 from their home in Oregon's Wallowa Valley and their ultimate capture just miles south of Canada, Nerburn offers a somewhat different slant. After the council at Lapwai (Idaho), near their home, conflict arose within the tribe between those bands who had signed the 1855 treaty, and those who had not, those who wanted to move to the reservation lands they were offered at Lapwai, and those who wanted to fight for their right to return home to their beloved Wallowa Valley. According to Nerburn, U.S. Army General Oliver Otis Howard assumes that Joseph is the military leader of all the nontreaty bands, when in fact, "the Nez Perce were anything but Joseph's people," and Joseph was "barely listened to at all." Nerburn concludes that Joseph's role as the preeminent war-loving chief was emphasized by General Howard because "a strong enemy makes an opposing commander look good." An intriguing twist to a legendary saga, which is sure to encourage rebuttal.
Deborah DonovanCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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