From their meeting with Lewis and Clark in 1805 to the death of Chief Joseph in 1904, the story of the Nez Perce Indians is epic drama. No setting could be more spectacular than the rugged, beautiful homeland of this tribe. The Nez Perce friendship with white newcomers ended in the tragically bitter Nez Perce War. The participants in the developing drama tell the story in their own words, through excerpts from diaries, letters and contemporary accounts.

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

In 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant sent O.O. Howard, widely known as the "Christian general", as an ambassador of peace to the western Indian tribes. Famous Indians Chiefs I Have Known is Howard's account of his journey. He tells of his peace agreement with the great Apache chief Cochise; describes his pursuit of Joseph and the surrender of the Nez Perce chief, who became his friend; and provides a poignant glimpse of the defeated Apache war leader Geronimo, selling canes and autographs. Equally impressive are his portraits of Winnemucca of the Piutes, the Sioux chiefs Red Cloud and Sitting Bull, and his descriptions of meetings with Washakie of the Shoshones, Pasqual of the Yumas, Antonio of the Pimas, Santos and Pedros of the Apaches, Manuelito of the Navajos, three Indians women--Sarah Winnemucca, granddaughter of the Piute chief, and Mattie, her sister-in-law--both of them powerful peacemakes in their own right. Included are chapters on the Seminole chief Osceola and the Modoc chief Captain Jack, famed for their resistance to white domination. In the introduction, Bruce J. Dinges, editor of publications at the Arizona Historical Society, discusses Howard's career and sets his book in historical context. - Publisher.

“Beautifully wrought and impossible to put down, Daniel Sharfstein’s Thunder in the Mountains chronicles with compassion and grace that resonant past we should never forget.”—Brenda Wineapple, author of Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis, and Compromise, 1848–1877 After the Civil War and Reconstruction, a new struggle raged in the Northern Rockies. In the summer of 1877, General Oliver Otis Howard, a champion of African American civil rights, ruthlessly pursued hundreds of Nez Perce families who resisted moving onto a reservation. Standing in his way was Chief Joseph, a young leader who never stopped advocating for Native American sovereignty and equal rights. Thunder in the Mountains is the spellbinding story of two legendary figures and their epic clash of ideas about the meaning of freedom and the role of government in American life.

"What I have to say will come from my heart, and I will speak with a straight tongue. Ah-cum-kin-i-ma-me-hut (the Great Spirit) is looking at me and will hear me." Thus began Nez Perce Chief In-mut-too-yah-lat-lat, Thunder-Traveling-Over-the-Mountains, as he addressed a group of interviewers during an 1879 trip to washington D.C. Two years after the extraordinary saga of the Nez Perce War, In-mut-too-yah-lat-lat, known to most as Chief Joseph, was, with his fellow survivors of the war, a prisoner. Yet, with great dignity, clarity and eloquence, he spoke of his life, of promises made and broken, of humankind's relationship to the earth, and of the oneness of all peoples."--Page 4 of cover.

This newest volume in Oxford's acclaimed Pivotal Moments series offers an unforgettable portrait of the Nez Perce War of 1877, the last great Indian conflict in American history. It was, as Elliott West shows, a tale of courage and ingenuity, of desperate struggle and shattered hope, of short-sighted government action and a doomed flight to freedom. To tell the story, West begins with the early history of the Nez Perce and their years of friendly relations with white settlers. In an initial treaty, the Nez Perce were promised a large part of their ancestral homeland, but the discovery of gold led to a stampede of settlement within the Nez Perce land. Numerous injustices at the hands of the US government combined with the settlers' invasion to provoke this most accomodating of tribes to war. West offers a riveting account of what came next: the harrowing flight of 800 Nez Perce, including many women, children and elderly, across 1500 miles of mountainous and difficult terrain. He gives a full reckoning of the campaigns and battles--and the unexpected turns, brilliant stratagems, and grand heroism that occurred along the way. And he brings to life the complex characters from both sides of the conflict, including cavalrymen, officers, politicians, and--at the center of it all--the Nez Perce themselves (the Nimiipuu, "true people"). The book sheds light on the war's legacy, including the near sainthood that was bestowed upon Chief Joseph, whose speech of surrender, "I will fight no more forever," became as celebrated as the Gettysburg Address. Based on a rich cache of historical documents, from government and military records to contemporary interviews and newspaper reports, The Last Indian War offers a searing portrait of a moment when the American identity--who was and who was not a citizen--was being forged.

Historian Frederick E. Hoxie presents the story of two hundred years of Native American political activism. Highlighting the activists -- some famous and some unknown beyond their own communities -- who have sought to bridge the distance between indigenous cultures and the U.S. republic through legal and political campaigns, Hoxie weaves a narrative connecting the individual to the tribe, the tribe to the nation, and the nation to broader historical processes and progressive movements.