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A distinguished scholar of American history makes a significant contribution to Oxford's excellent series Pivotal Moments in American History in this definitive analysis of the United States' 1877 war with the Nez Percé. West (The Contested Plains) integrates a broad spectrum of sources to depict the fate of a people whose history of friendship with the U.S. dated to 1805. The Nez Percé were caught up in the questions posed by the Civil War and the period of expansion that followed: "who would be the Americans and what obligations would bind them together?" Such questions influenced Idaho and Oregon, where the Nez Percé lived, as much as Massachusetts and Virginia. The 1877 war, the Nez Percé's epic journey to reach the Canadian border, American conquest and Indian exile is the heart of the book, and West tells it brilliantly. No less compelling is his account of the Nez Percé taking up farming and making and selling Indian trinkets, developing their image as "beloved losers" and negotiating their return home-on white terms, but with honor and integrity upheld. 40 b&w illus., maps. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.West (American history, Univ. of Arkansas; The Contested Plains) uses the story of the Nez Percé War of 1877 and its origins and aftermath to illuminate the era of expansion and consolidation between 1845 and 1877 that forged the American identity, a period he calls the "Greater Reconstruction." Throughout his narrative, which begins with the early history of the Nez Percé and concludes with the death of Chief Joseph in 1904, he focuses on three underlying issues, seeing the Nez Percé from the perspective of the American West: whether a large and diverse republic could stay together, what the extent and limits of centralized authority were, and what were the nature and demands of citizenship. This framework allows the author to tie the specifics of his richly detailed narrative to the much larger national story and to present his characters in all their complexity. Based on extensive research in archival papers, government reports, and contemporary sources, this well-written book is an excellent place to start in understanding the Nez Percé War and is highly recommended for all libraries.
—Stephen H. Peters
List of Illustrations and Maps Editor's Note Preface Timeline Part One Ch 1: Real People Ch 2: Marks of Friendship Ch 3: The Place of the Butterflies Ch 4: "God Named This Land to Us"
Ch 5: Gold, Prophecy, and the Steal Treaty Ch 6: "Conquering by Kindness"
Part Two Ch 7: "It Will Have to Be War!"
Ch 8: Maneuvering and Scrapping Ch 9: Ways of Life, Ways of War Ch 10: Leaving Home Ch 11: Big Hole Ch 12: Toward Buffalo Country Ch 13: War in Wonderland Ch 14: "The Best Skirmishers in the World"
Ch 15: Toward the Medicine Line Part Three Ch 16: Under the Bear's Paw Ch 17: Going to Hell Ch 18: Eeikish Pah and Return Epilogue Acknowledgements Notes Bibliography Index
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Overview
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 ...