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    Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez Perce: The Untold Story of an American Tragedy
    Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez Perce: The Untold Story of an American Tragedy
    Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez Perce: The Untold Story of an American Tragedy
    Audiobook16 hours

    Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez Perce: The Untold Story of an American Tragedy

    Written by Kent Nerburn

    Narrated by Malcolm Hillgartner

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Hidden in the shadow cast by the great western expeditions of Lewis and Clark lies another journey every bit as poignant, every bit as dramatic, and every bit as essential to an understanding of who we are as a nation-the 1,800-mile journey made by Chief Joseph and eight hundred Nez Perce men, women, and children from their homelands in what is now eastern Oregon to Montana. There, only forty miles from the Canadian border and freedom, Chief Joseph, convinced that the wounded and elders could go no farther, walked across the snowy battlefield, handed his rifle to the U.S. military commander who had been pursuing them, and spoke his now-famous words, "From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever."

    Drawing on four years of research, interviews, and 20,000 miles of travel, Nerburn takes us beyond the surrender to the captives' unlikely welcome in Bismarck, North Dakota, their tragic eight-year exile in Indian Territory, and their ultimate return to the Northwest. Nerburn reveals the true, complex character of Joseph, showing how the man was transformed into a myth by a public hungry for an image of the noble Indian and how Joseph exploited the myth in order to achieve his single goal of returning his people to their homeland.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateJun 5, 2018
    ISBN9781977381408
    Author

    Kent Nerburn

    Kent Nerburn has been widely praised as one of the few writers who can respectfully bridge the gap between native and nonnative cultures. His book Neither Wolf nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder won the 1995 Minnesota Book Award.

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    Reviews for Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez Perce

    4.5/5

    32 ratings2 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Can you imagine being forced off your land in which you worshiped as if its the creator itself and that your ancestors were buried in. And then be forced to live in land so barren that you could not survive without hand outs from the government that forced you off your ancestral land. And after all this have to change your religion in order to get decent food.
      This is the history children in public schools should learn not white wash.
    • 5/5
      This is one of the best stories about American Indians I have yet read. Nerburn has spent a lifetime studying and living among western tribes and brings a lived perspective most historians lack. It mostly tells the story from the Nez Perce perspective. It gets the facts right and does not apologize for gloss errors on both sides. It's transportive to that time and place while also being hugely interesting and educational. So much about the Nez Perce is myth created at the time it was happening by the Eastern press, this book shows what actually happened. As one example, Chief Joseph was not actually the leader of the tribe for most of the time, nor was he ever a military leader. It is interesting to learn how Indian tribes worked with many leaders, or no leaders as the situations changed, something our Western minds have trouble with since we expect a hierarchical formation and anything less as primitive. Although the famous chase through the Bitterroots to the border of Canada makes up the majority of the pages, it is book-ended by a history of the Nez Perce from first contact with Lewis and Clark, and the subsequent fate of the people up until Joseph's death in the early 20th century. In this way we see the entire history of Joseph's life, what he was born in to, experienced and left behind. I am particularly taken by the quality of Nerburn's writing which has a mystic element, or perhaps spiritual (Nerburn is a theologian among other things), which might not be best in most history books but really works well here. It is a small masterpiece of creative non-fiction.