Let Me Be Free: The Nez Perce Tragedy - Softcover

Lavender, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 080613190X ISBN 13: 9780806131900

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999

Synopsis

In Let Me Be Free, David Lavender tells the tragic story of the Nez Perce struggle against annihilation. Encroaching settlers and violent disputes resulted in the Nez Perce War of 1877, a desperate attempt by Chief Joseph and his small band of Nez Perce Indians from the Wallowa Mountains of Oregon to elude strong forces of U.S. Cavalry and civilian volunteers and escape to Canada.

About this title

About the Author:

David Lavender is the author of more than two dozen books on the West, among them Bent's Fort, California: Land of New Beginnings, Westward Vision: The Story of the Oregon Trail, The Southwest, and The Way to the Western Sea: Lewis and Clark Across the Continent.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Lavender, a prolific historian of the West (The Way to the Western Sea, 1988, etc.), offers a tragic tale of a Native American tribe's loss of its land, culture, and identity. The 1877 flight of the Nez Perc‚ is one of the most famous and mournful episodes in the long history of Indian disenfranchisement. For three and a half months and 1700 miles, they managed to elude General O.O. Howard in an escape from their Pacific Northwest homelands, only to be overtaken a mere two days' ride from safety in Canada. During that time, white Americans came to admire the tribe's Chief Joseph as a master orator and military tactician who continually managed to outfox his pursuers. Here, Lavender sees the flight of the Nez Perc‚ as the culmination of the tribe's more than 75 years of encounters with whites, including Lewis and Clark, British and American fur traders, missionaries, miners, farmers, Indian agents, and federal troops. In the process, the Nez Perc‚ were buffeted by outside forces--horses, guns, diseases, material goods they badly wanted but could scarcely afford--that filled them with doubt about their traditional guardian spirits (wayakins). Yet, Lavender says, the major mistake this peaceful, much put-upon people made was to believe the US government's promise that treaties guaranteed their right to the land of their fathers. As sympathetic as Lavender is to the Nez Perc‚, though, he is careful not to make exaggerated claims for them. For instance, he shows that General Howard invented Chief Joseph's skill as a wily military genius in order to excuse the general's own bumbling pursuit of the tribe. A powerful lament for a tribe that illustrates, as Lavender says, ``the infinite sadness of a race's defeat and death.'' (Sixteen pages of b&w photographs.) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 080613190X
• ISBN 13: 9780806131900
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 432