Chief Moses (Sulktalthscosum or Half-Sun) was chief of the Columbias, a Salish-speaking people of the mid–Columbia River area in what is now the state of Washington. This award-winning biography by Robert H. Ruby and John A. Brown situates Moses in the opening of the Northwest and subsequent Indian-white relations, between 1850 and 1898. Early in life Moses had won a name for himself battling whites, but with the maturity and responsibilities of chieftainship, he became a diplomat and held his united tribe at peace in spite of growing white encroachment. He resisted the call to arms of his friend Chief Joseph of the Nez Percés, whose heroic campaign ended in defeat and exile to Indian Territory. Yet their friendship persisted, and after Joseph's return to the Northwest, the two lived out their lives on the reservation, sharing their frustrations and uniting their voices in complaint.
Robert H. Ruby was both physician and independent scholar. Along with John A. Brown, he was coauthor of numerous books, including Indians of the Pacific Northwest: A History.
John A. Brown was Professor Emeritus of History at Wenatchee Valley College, Washington. He is coauthor of numerous books, including Indians of the Pacific Northwest: A History.
Angie Debo was reared in a pioneer community, at Marshall, Oklahoma, where it has been her privilege to know from childhood the folkways of the Indians and the traditions of the western settlers. A member of her community high school's first graduating class, she later attended the University of Oklahoma, where she was a Phi Beta Kappa, and took her B.A. and later her Ph.D. degree; she received her master's degree from the University of Chicago. Her education was combined with intervals of teaching in country schools, starting at the age of sixteen.
Miss Debo's distinguished reputation as a regional scholar has been enhanced by her book, The Rise and. Fall of the Choctaw Republic, which won the John H. Dunning prize of the American Historical Society for the best book submitted in the field of United States history in 1934, and for her later, book, And Still the Waters Run. She has been a teacher in schools and colleges both in Oklahoma and Texas and was curator of the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum in Canyon, Texas. More recently she has been state director of the Federal Writers' Project in Oklahoma, in which capacity she edited Oklahoma: A Guide to the Sooner State for the American Guide Series.
Deward E. Walker, Jr., is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
