Kent Nerburn - Chief Joseph and the Flight of the Nez Perce

If you happen to be travelling in Yellowstone National Park you might drive on Chief Joseph Highway. Its a somewhat unusual name. Roads in the US tend to be named after US military heroes, not their adversaries. But Chief Joseph, or Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt, to give him his Nez Perce name was one of the most famous Native American leaders during the period after the Little Bighorn. In 1877 the Nez Perce Native Americans made a journey of almost 1200 miles from their ancestral homelands, across huge areas of what are now Wyoming and Montana trying to reach safety. Chief Joseph was one of Nez Perce chiefs, though for reasons that Kent Nerburn explains, he was not actually the supreme military leader that the US military, media and white population thought he was.

This account of Joseph, by one of the most talented non-Native American chronicllors of their history, begins with the first encounter the Nez Perce had with European settlers. This was the meeting between them and the Lewis and Clarke expedition, sent out from the East to learn more about the lands that would become the USA. The Nez Perce and the explorers got on well. So much so that later encounters were often marked by misunderstanding, confusion and tragedy. By the 1860s the US government was trying to force the Nez Perce to sign a treaty that would give up their lands so that settlers and gold hunters could use it. Some bands of the tribe did sign, but many, including Chief Joseph's, did not. A difference that became enshrined as the Treaty and non-Treaty Nez Perce.

Nerburn recounts the history of this period, as indignities and falsehoods grew, with the Nez Perce increasingly being forced into confrontations with the whites. By 1877 it was increasingly difficult for the Native Americans to avoid conflict, and more and more pressure was put on the non-Treaty Nez Perce to relocate. Refusing to do so, the Nez Perce were threatened with War. Thus began the long trek of the Nez Perce as they tried to escape and find sanctuary.

It is a gripping tale. The Nez Perce fled, intially with hope of finding a place to live, then simply to escape the persuing military. A series of confrontations took place as the Native Americans skillfully defeated the ill-equipped and under experienced troops. It might be described as a sort of fighting retreat, except the Nez Perce didn't think they were retreating. The telegraph and local journalists created a news story that was followed from coast to coast. Joseph became the supposed leader, though he was at the start only one of several other chiefs. Joseph infact was the least beligerent, the more warlike leaders unknown to the press. As the Nez Perce fled, lurid and racist stories followed behind and in front. Terror gripped the plains out of all proportion to the acts of the Native Americans, though as they travelled they did, under force of arms and increasing desperation commit acts. It is notable that by this point Yellowstone Park was open to tourists. Some of the first where indeed captured and killed by Native Americans. The history of the US war on its indigenous population is surprisingly close in time to our own.

Eventually the Nez Perce were defeated at the battle of Bear's Paw. They were a few tens of miles from the Canadian border and safety. Their defeat is remembered for Joseph's alleged speech that said he was no longer fighting. Promised much, but in reality offered little, the Nez Perce were relocated to Kansas where they became victims of racist and unscrupilous Indian Agents. Their they would have languised if Chief Joseph and others become skilled at public opinion. Joseph used every opportunity to speak to the press, to audiences and to visitors. He was skillful at highlighting the great injustice his people had suffered and how they only wanted to go home. Arthur Chapman, a translator, also wrote vast numbers of letters pleading the Nez Perce case.

There was some success. Many of the Native Americans did eventually return, though Chief Joseph was never allowed to. In fact he never again saw his own daughter, barred from visiting the lands she had been relocated to.

The tragedy of the Nez Perce is told brilliantly by Kent Nerburn's book. He highlights how the Nez Perce "war" as it is sometimes known arose out of the racist and genocidal policies of the US government that saw the Native Americas as people to be pushed and pulled from their homelands to wherever they were least in the way. It also demonstrates how, far from being the uncivilised people that racist politicians, military leaders and journalists thought they were, the Native Americans were skilled and careful politicians in their own right. And frequently far better soldiers than the US troops. Perhaps Kent Nerburn's greated achievement in this book is rescuing all the Native American leaders other than Joseph. But he also shows how many of the whites were also willing to show kindness and assistance to the Nez Perce after their capture. Even in the 1870s there were those who recognised the injustices of US settler colonialism. But Nerburn never lets you forget that the real heroes, and the ones that forced the US state to back down several times, though political campaigning and a fighting resistance, were the Nez Perce. Let's hope one day they receive adequate recompense for the injustices made against them. A superb read.

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