Chief Joseph And The Flight Of Nez Perce

In this comprehensive and engaging biography, Kent Nerburn exposes the myth of Chief Joseph shedding new light on why his life and the ultimate surrender of the Nez Perce forever altered the American West.

Hidden in the shadow cast by the great western expeditions of Lewis and Clark and the westward-moving pioneers lies another journey every bit as poignant and essential to an understanding of who we are as a nation. Chief Joseph and the Flight of the Nez Perce is a grand saga of a pivotal time in our nation's history. Its pages are alive with the presence of Lewis and Clark, General William Tecumseh Sherman, General George Armstrong Custer, and Sitting Bull. Its events brush against the California Gold Rush, the Civil War, the great western pioneer migration, and the building of the telegraph and the transcontinental railroad. But at its center lies a group of men, women, and children fleeing for their lives across the vast American West, and a man Buffalo Bill Cody called the "greatest Indian America ever produced."