Thunder in the Mountains: Chief Joseph, Oliver Otis Howard, and the Nez Perce War

by Daniel J. Sharfstein

Overview

“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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393355659
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	04/03/2018
Pages:	640
Sales rank:	662,431
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Daniel J. Sharfstein is a professor of law and history at Vanderbilt University and a 2013 Guggenheim Fellow. His first book, The Invisible Line: A Secret History of Race in America, received the J. Anthony Lukas Prize. He lives in Nashville.

Table of Contents

Author's Note xiii

Overview Maps xviii

Prologue: The Dreamers 1

Part I

Chapter 1 A Willing Exile 17

Chapter 2 New Beginnings 45

Chapter 3 Quite Good Friends 66

Chapter 4 Winding Waters 79

Chapter 5 The Wilderness of American Power 93

Chapter 6 Adonis in Blue 115

Chapter 7 Wind Blowing 136

Chapter 8 A Sharp-Sighted Heart 150

Part II

Chapter 9 Aloft 179

Chapter 10 Split Rocks 201

Chapter 11 Fait Accompli 221

Chapter 12 A Perfect Panic 233

Chapter 13 Death in Ghastly Forms 247

Chapter 14 Bullets Singing Like Bees 264

Chapter 15 Heart of the Monster 282

Chapter 16 Lightning All Around 306

Chapter 17 Fury 323

Chapter 18 A World of Our Own 345

Chapter 19 Through the Veil 365

Chapter 20 Where the Sun Now Stands 382

Part III

Chapter 21 The Best Indian 405

Chapter 22 Red Moon 427

Chapter 23 A Glorious Era 447

Chapter 24 Swing Low 467

Epilogue: Acts of Remembering 484

Battle Maps 499

Acknowledgments 503

Notes 509

Illustration Credits 593

Index 595

Editorial Reviews

"An excellent new book.… Many of us shake our heads endlessly at the shabby treatment our ancestors rendered on Indians even as we enjoy the lands stolen from them. Would our leaders have handled the situation that much differently today? Would we object? And how does that relate to how we now treat some other oppressed people, immigrants, including refugees fleeing war-torn countries our nation has failed to help pacify? Sharfstein raises those questions well in Thunder in the Mountains."

Winston-Salem Journal - John Railey

"A thorough and well-documented work of history [that] delves into the human condition like the best fiction, offering insights not only into historical events but also into the ways people can grow and evolve."

Memphis Commercial Appeal

"Sharfstein presents his view without polemic. Indeed, the writing is lyrical—smooth and engaging, albeit with scrupulous bibliographical notes to underscore its historical authenticity.… Sharfstein shows how at each interaction with federal authorities and their texts, Joseph focused on understanding not so much the particular words as the mechanisms through which ‘authoritative’ documents were created, trying to find his way in the wilderness of American power."

Indian Country Today - Peter d’Errico

"A good post–Independence Day read in the sense that it really does show the scope of U.S. power, who makes certain decisions about the rights of native peoples, the meaning of liberty and equality and its relationship to ethnicity, color, place, and class."

The Takeaway - Dana Williams

"An important book that will doubtless enjoy a broad readership among the general public and should be read by students as well as specialists interested in the Civil War era, military history, the history of the American West, and indigenous studies."

Pacific Northwest Quarterly

"Brilliant… a timeless parable of two pious men who served, led and fought with honor and dignity for their nation’s causes.… Sharfstein’s Thunder in the Mountains will resonate loudly and remind readers that basic human rights in a democracy should never be taken for granted."

True West - Stuart Rosebrook

…a brisk narrative of one of the last major collisions between Native Americans and white America. [Sharfstein's] two main characters are complex and compelling—Chief Joseph, a thoughtful, powerful speaker who spent years trying to find a way for his people to live alongside American settlers, and General O. O. Howard, a moralistic liberal Army general whose fate it was to crush Joseph's small Nez Percé tribe.

The New York Times Book Review - Thomas E. Ricks

01/30/2017
Revealing all the strengths and weaknesses of popular history, Sharfstein (The Invisible Line), professor of law and history at Vanderbilt University, relates the oft-told tale of Native American bravery and misguided American policy during the Nez Perce War of 1877 through the lives and exploits of two great tragic figures. Sharfstein writes with great skill and due regard for the sad, human elements of the U.S. effort to hem in and defeat a defiant people whose great leader remains an example of moral courage and bearing. No other book better brings to the fore the qualities of Chief Joseph or better explores the dilemma of his pursuer, Gen. O.O. Howard, a major personage of Reconstruction whom Joseph frustrated at every turn. Moreover, Sharfstein dug deeper into the sources than any predecessor and unearthed new dimensions of this particular history. This is in many ways a splendid book. But it’s also a bloated one, filled with irrelevant details—the speed of a train, what people packed to travel. It’s also just a story, and no matter how well told it is, it reveals nothing of the place of the Nez Perce War in the larger scheme of American colonizers’ efforts to suppress native independence. (Apr.) This review has been corrected. A previous version incorrectly stated that the book does not include maps; it does.

Publishers Weekly

"In his penetrating new book, Thunder in the Mountains, Daniel J. Sharfstein shows how the meaning of freedom was contested after the Civil War not only in the South but all the way to the Pacific Northwest....Sharfstein's account makes for absorbing reading; it adds immeasurably to our understanding of the complicated, interwoven lives of those who fought for 'progress' east and west."

Henry Louis Gates Jr.

"Daniel Sharfstein offers a searing account of an American tragedy: how Oliver Otis Howard, a champion for the rights of freed slaves, became an architect of the dispossession and subjugation of Native people. This beautifully written book will change the way readers think about the era of Civil War and Reconstruction."

Ari Kelman

"Solidly researched, well-written and engaging."

Dallas Morning News

"One of the epic tales of American history, rendered by a master storyteller. Daniel Sharfstein breathes new life into the fascinating figures at the heart of the Nez Perce War."

Karl Jacoby

"Magnificent and tragic....Sharfstein is a wonderful storyteller with a deep knowledge of all the relevant source material from the period. His narrative is rich with fascinating historical details."

Christian Science Monitor - Nick Romeo

"Intimate, propulsive and ultimately heart-breaking....a compassionate military history and a shrewd examination of how cultural legends are created."

Chicago Tribune - Julie M. Klein

"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

"Revelatory and riveting."

Gregory P. Downs

★ 02/15/2017
Sharfstein (law, history, Vanderbilt Univ.; The Invisible Line) examines the causes and consequences of the Nez Perce War of 1877, using the intertwined stories of Gen. Oliver O. Howard (1830–1909) and Chief Joseph (1840–1904) to frame this thoroughly researched work. The author places this confrontation between Native peoples and white settlers within the context of broader events of the 19th century. Howard, a tireless champion of freed slaves, was tasked with convincing the Nez Perce to move onto reservations assigned to them by a series of treaties. When tensions flared, Joseph and Howard attempted to resolve the conflict, first peacefully and eventually through war. Sharfstein provides considerable detail about skilled and heroic Nez Perce fighters and families, who bested Howard's larger forces at many turns before their final defeat. The story is filled with considerable irony, as men seeking a peaceful resolution were drawn into deadly conflict. Among the many extraordinary stories here is that of C.E.S. Wood, whose participation in this war eventually led him to a life devoted to helping the disadvantaged. VERDICT Highly recommended for general readers as well as those interested in the history of Native peoples. [See Prepub Alert, 10/17/16.]—Charles K. Piehl, Minnesota State Univ., Mankato

Library Journal

★ 2017-02-06
A chronicle of the white conquest of the inland Northwest at the expense of native peoples defeated in a war that even the newcomers recognized to be unjust.Oliver Otis Howard enjoyed mixed success—but mostly failure, it seems—as an officer in the Army. At Gettysburg, his command suffered such heavy losses that he was summarily replaced by a junior officer, which, recounts Sharfstein (Law and History/Vanderbilt Univ.; The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White, 2011), left him "mortified." A leading agent of Reconstruction, Howard failed to avert Jim Crow. He was unwanted during the Spanish-American War, but he haunted the military camps as a kind of evangelical candy striper. In between, he commanded a badly conducted campaign against the Nez Perce Indians of the Northwest, led by a man named Chief Joseph, who, though not a war chief, had plenty of experience tangling with white invaders. Sharfstein looks at that well-studied campaign in light of those framing events, seeing westward expansion and the Indian Wars as a continuation of the nation's growing militarism, which closed off the century with war against Spain. The author contrasts Howard, a sometimes-competent, often self-doubtful man, with one of his junior officers, who went from fighting the Nez Perce in a savage war—as Sharfstein writes, "there was nothing abstract about the dead," scalped, mutilated, and blackened in the hot sun—to becoming a fierce critic of American imperialism. Even there, notes the author, the oppositional argument was tainted with social Darwinist ideas, warning against "the dangers of absorbing ‘an Asiatic population of mixed blood,' millions of ‘yellow, naked mongrels' and coolie laborers." Mixed with exciting set pieces—battles, treaty negotiations, oratory over whose rightful land it was—and bolstered by impressive archival research, Sharfstein's story unfolds as a swift-moving narrative of tragic inevitability. A superb, densely detailed complement to William Vollmann's poetic/fictional treatment The Dying Grass (2015), of compelling interest to any student of 19th-century American history.

Kirkus Reviews