Books: Last Stand

THE NEZ PERCE INDIANS AND THE OPENING OF THE NORTHWEST by Alvin M. Josephy Jr. 705 pages. Yale University Press. $12.50.

Chief Joseph was splendid in defeat. When he came riding into the white man’s camp that cold, snowy morning in 1877, there was a bullet scratch across his forehead, wounds on his wrist and back, and bullet holes in his shirt and leggings. Handing his rifle to Colonel Nelson Miles, he spoke: “I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed. The old men are all dead. He who led the young men is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills . . . No one knows where they are—perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.” Then Chief Joseph drew his blanket over his head.

Resisting U.S. efforts to move them out of Oregon’s Wallowa Valley and resettle them on an Idaho reservation, some 750 Nez Perce men, women and children led by Chief Joseph had staged an incredible 1,700-mile retreat across four states, fighting off 2,000 U.S. troops along the way. Finally, seeking sanctuary in Canada, they were within 35 miles of their goal when they were surrounded, and Chief Joseph decided to surrender. With his surrender, the last major Indian resistance to the encroaching white man in the Northwest was broken.

In this big, splendidly researched history of the Nez Perce, Author Josephy never leaves any doubt about where his sympathies lie. By his colorfully documented account, the Nez Perce (Pierced Nose—a name given them by early French-speaking trappers because some braves wore bits of shell in their noses) were a notably peaceful tribe until provoked into rebellion by avaricious and cruel whites. He also paints the romanticized Indian-fighting army of the Old West as a shiftless and uninspired collection of sad sacks. In any pitched battle, Josephy maintains, Indians proved to be better fighters and better marksmen than U.S. troops or volunteers.

Author Josephy offers one final, even more disillusioning fact: despite all his bullet nicks and his sadly beautiful words, Chief Joseph was not a warrior at heart. During the Nez Perce war, he left most of the fighting to his subchiefs. He looked after the women, children and a herd of horses.