Description
The Last Indian War: The Nez Perce Story Elliott West
A distinguished scholar of American history makes a significant contribution to Oxford’s excellent seriesPivotal Moments in American History in this definitive analysis of the United States’ 1877 war with the Nez Perce. 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 Perce 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 Perce lived, as much as Massachusetts and Virginia. The 1877 war, the Nez Perce’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 Perce 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. 416 pages, 40 b&w illustrations, maps, maps. $17.95 Paperback