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REVIEWS
NEZ PERCE COUNTRY
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by Alvin M. Josephy, Jr.
introduction by Jeremy FiveCrows
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| University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London, 2007. Illustrations, photographs, maps, index. 191 pages. $14.95 paper. |
| Alvin Josephy, Jr. (1915–2005), began writing Native American history before the field even existed. In 1965, six years before Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (Holt, Rinehart & Winston), Josephy's monumental The Nez Perce Indians and the Opening of the Pacific Northwest (Yale University Press) offered one of the first historical accounts of American westward expansion from the Indian point of view. During the following forty years, he wrote or edited more than a dozen books about Native Americans and the West, including several that called attention to their history after the "Indian Wars" and the supposed closing of the frontier. The Nez Perces remained closest to his heart, as well as to his adopted home in the Wallowa Valley, and it is therefore fitting that his final publication should be a history of that tribe. Intended primarily for visitors to Nez Perce National Historical Park, Nez Perce Country provides an engaging introduction to Nimí·pu· history from their pre-contact origins to the present day. Readers familiar with Josephy's work will find little new in this volume, but its brevity and clarity could make it a useful college survey text as well as a guide for travelers. |
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Josephy divides the narrative chronologically into nine chapters, each focusing on a major phase in Nez Perce history. The first four sections survey the aboriginal world of the Nimí·pu·, their friendly interactions with the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the influence of the fur trade, and the arrival of American missionaries during the 1830s. Besides introducing the Nez Perces to Christianity, these "agents of change" generated factionalism among the Indians and provoked the backlash known as the Whitman Massacre, which hastened the assertion of U.S. authority over the Oregon Country (p. 40). Chapters five and six describe the consequences that followed, specifically the 1855 treaty that created the Nez Perce reservation and the 1863 treaty that drastically reduced it. Signed by the accommodationist chief Lawyer and his supporters, the supplemental agreement sold the lands of Hinmató·wyalahtqit (Chief Joseph) and other non-treaty Nez Perces without their consent. The tragic results of their betrayal are related in chapter seven, which traces the epic flight of Joseph's people from their beloved Wallowa Valley toward the safety of the Canadian border. Although the story of their running battle with the U.S. Army has been told many times before, Josephy's account effectively conveys the drama and heroism that captivated people even in 1877. He also gives credit where it is due, acknowledging the key roles played by åalokat and other war leaders whose exploits the contemporary press mistakenly attributed to Joseph. |
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Too often in the past, Joseph's famous "I will fight no more forever" speech has been used to usher the Nez Perces off the main stage and into the back alley of American history. Josephy avoids that mistake by including two chapters that follow them through the dark days of the late-nineteenth century and into a brighter present. Chapter eight describes the hardships endured by Joseph's band during their exile in Indian Territory, the continued erosion of the Nez Perce homeland under the allotment policy, and the dawning of self-determination during the 1930s and early 1940s. The tribe's ongoing effort to realize that promise receives cursory attention in chapter nine, which outlines modern initiatives involving tribal governance, land claims, treaty fishing rights, and economic development. Josephy could have done far more with this portion of the story — as he did in Now That the Buffalo's Gone — but he knew the expectations of his audience and the limits of his mandate in this volume. Nez Perce Country at least nods in the direction of the future, allowing readers to see that there is no "end of the trail" for Indian history even as they follow the trails that led Joseph's people to defeat more than a century ago. |
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The book's focus on the non-treaty Nez Perces does reflect Josephy's familiar bias toward Indian "militants" who refused to compromise with "the coming of the white men" (p. 2). Like such formulaic language, the narrative occasionally echoes the simplistic dichotomies of earlier studies, seeming to equate acculturation with "selling out" and resistance with cultural authenticity. Hence, readers will learn relatively little about the reservation Nez Perces and the various ways in which they adapted to or even subverted the aims of the federal government. To compensate for this slant, the book could use a bibliography or a list of suggested reading to direct interested parties to alternative sources. Many readers will also crave a pronunciation guide to help decipher the orthography of Sahaptian names for people and places. The decision to include those indigenous words, however, is indicative of the respect Josephy had for his subjects and of his willingness to solicit their views. He would likely agree, as tribal member Jeremy FiveCrows suggests in his introduction, that it is good for visitors to Nez Perce Country to remember that English was not the first language of this land. |
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| Andrew H. Fisher
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| The College of William and Mary |
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