Gain Thunder In The Mountains: Chief Joseph, Oliver Otis Howard, And The Nez Perce War Penned By Daniel J. Sharfstein Rendered As Print

an abolitionist who was a founder of Howard University and the head of the Freedmen's Bureau to be in charge of the military campaign against the Nez Perce Indians is a sad irony.
For a former Civil War general whose military skills were less than high level, personal bravery aside, to make a hash of the campaign was not surprising.


Sharfstein gives a full account of the war as seen through the lives of its two leadersOtis Howard and Chief Joseph.
His book is never less than eloquent, It is also immeasurably sad, The result was never really in doubt despite the early military failures of Howard's command, Largely innocent people died on both sides, The war serves as a dismal case study of the forces that led to their deaths, Having read at leastbooks on the subject of the Nez Perce people and the associated war of, I feel like I am getting close to being an expert on the subject.
Yet every new book on the subject, like this one, still manages to enlighten me further,

This book focuses on the major players in the war, especially General Oliver Otis Howard and Heinmot Tooyalatkekt, aka Chief Joseph.
With lots of details about their backgrounds and their beliefs, I feel like I came to be more understanding of what drove both of them not that I needed much more to increase my understanding and sympathy for Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce side of the story.


I would not recommend this book to someone who is generally unfamiliar with the associated history, but for people like me who are acquainted with it, this is a very good book very well researched and very well presented.
It definitely reflects a lot of the author's own judgments, opinions, and insights, however which is perfectly appropriate by my standards.


Another major character that is much more fully illustrated in this book than any other I have read is Howard's aide, Charles Erskine Scott Wood.
More than anyone else, he is the person responsible for transcribing and publicizing Chief Joseph's famous surrender speech ".
. . from where the sun now stands I shall fight no more forever",

After the war Wood became a successful lawyer, but he never stopped advocating for the less fortunate and especially for the nontreaty Nez Perce people who had been treated so cruelly and unfairly by the U.
S. Government.

Sixtyfive years after the war, Wood, in speeches to large audiences, kept returning to Chief Joseph and thewar to secure his audience's awe and attention:

It was Joseph, after all, who had awakened his political sensibility.
"In my youth, as an army officer," Wood wrote, "I chased and killed Indians driven to revolt by the oppressions of that vague thing called, 'The Government.
' I saw that Nationalism and Patriotism were used to narrow the human sympathy, inflame the hateand blind the vision of the people.
. . I left the Army and entered law and found that the law was not the servant of justice and the protector of liberty, but was the protector of property and that there was one law for the rich, another for the poor.
"

His encounter with Joseph set him on a path that led directly to his commitment to restoring the promise of a government that served every American, and not just the "powerful capitalists and 'captains of industry.
'"

Because of this book, Charles Erskine Scott Wood, like Heinmot Tooyalatkekt, will now be a name that I will associate with the virtues of integrity and compassion.
Viewed from any angle this is a tragic story, Historically

it is a reoccurring phenomenon: Natives pushed onto a reservations, forced to assimilate, Relocated when resources become coveted, Cheated. Lied to. Treated as subhuman.

All people fear what they do not understand,

I was impressed by Chief Joseph's ability to compare and relate his tribe to the frontier people.
Both cultures relied on the same fruitful earth, Back then frontier folks ate what they could hunt or grow, or squeeze out of a milk cow.
But behind the line of frontier folk was a machine called Progress, with cogs and wheels and a rumbling engine so fierce that to this day it shakes the very foundations of our world.


The double tongues still talk the same, Dole out injustices faster than a fellow can count, right off the assembly line, all in the name of prosperity.


We are so far advanced that we've passed up the stuff that really matters, Things like clean water, natural food and medicine, fresh air, family and friendships,

The double tongues keep us divided, They keep us tame with handouts, They gave humanity great gifts each came with great promises: nuclear energy, innumerous possessions, perpetual war, the McDonaldization of society, and Rockefeller medicine.
And they are still indoctrinating our children, Teaching them the greedy corporate ways of the machine world, Most of us during our time in school in history class heard of Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce Indians.
If you read one of the many books written about his tragic march towards the Canadian border with hundreds of women, children, and elderly in the dead of winter you may think there isn't a reason to read another book.
This book will change that perception,

As Joseph has been probably been the figure used to represent the sad plight of the Indians.
While Cochise, Geronimo, and Sitting Bull were known for their fierceness Chief Joseph was looked at more sympathetically.
This perception is not diminished in Thunder in the Mountains,

What is different is a much more indepth look at General Oliver O, Howard and his life leading up to Chief Joseph and for overyears after the campaign, Howard and Joseph are followed from their births to death and I believe Howard may be perceived as having almost a sad a life as Joseph.


Many other players such as Grant, Sherman, Miles, and a lesser known, but most interesting Erskine Wood play major roles.
I thought it was ironic that as the book ends a ninetyyear old Wood is trying to remove an old Japanese friend from the horrendous Japanese internment camps.
Hopefully, our country will learn from the marvelous Winston Churchill quote "those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
"
Oliver Otis Howard thought he was a man of destiny, Chosen to lead the Freedmens Bureau after the Civil War, the Union Army general was entrusted with the eras most crucial task: helping millions of former slaves claim the rights of citizens.
He was energized by the belief that abolition and Reconstruction, the countrys great struggles for liberty and equality, were Gods plan for himself and the nation.
To honor his righteous commitment to a new American freedom, Howard University was named for him,


But as the nations politics curdled in thes, General Howard exiled himself from Washington, D.
C. , rejoined the army, and was sent across the continent to command forces in the Pacific Northwest, Shattered by Reconstructions collapse, he assumed a new mission: forcing Native Americans to become Christian farmers on government reservations.



Howards plans for redemption in the West ran headlong into the resistance of Chief Joseph, a young Nez Perce leader in northeastern Oregon who refused to leave his ancestral land.
Claiming equal rights for Native Americans, Joseph was determined to find his way to the center of American power and convince the government to acknowledge his peoples humanity and capacity for citizenship.
Although his words echoed the very ideas about liberty and equality that Howard had championed during Reconstruction, in the summer ofthe general and his troops ruthlessly pursued hundreds of Nez Perce families through the stark and unforgiving Northern Rockies.
An odyssey and a tragedy, their devastating war transfixed the nation and immortalized Chief Joseph as a hero to generations of Americans.



Recreating the Nez Perce War through the voices of its survivors, Daniel J, Sharfsteins visionary history of the West casts Howards turn away from civil rights alongside the nations rejection of racial equality and embrace of empire.
The conflict becomes a pivotal struggle over who gets to claim the American dream: a battle of ideas about the meaning of freedom and equality, the mechanics of American power, and the limits of what the government can and should do for its people.
The war that Howard and Joseph fought is one that Americans continue to fight today, Pros: This is a very well written book, It is easy to read and enjoyable,

Cons: It almost reads more as a historical novel as compared to a history, I don't know how much of the narrative comes from quotes made after the fact, there isn't enough documentation to tell, but a lot of the book feels as if the author is taking historical liberties in telling the story.
There are too many places where the author writes things such as "the women were back at the camp tending to their children and thinking about the risks the men were taking.
" While it is likely true, it is projecting on to the subjects, In many cases, he tells us what specific people were thinking/feeling at specific junctures in the narrative.
Now it is possible that this battle has been well enough documented that he can make those statements, but I honestly do not know.


If you are looking for a good read on this subject, this is a great book.
I WANT to feel comfortable with the history accuracy, but I'm not, I trust the overall narrative, but its the details that I question, For me, no account of the tragic, brutal Native American chapter of our history compares with Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.
But this book reveals an intriguing other side to Oliver Otis Howard, the Union general, staunch abolitionist and defender of African American rights, founder of historically black Howard University and dogged but largely inept pursuer of Indian genocide.
You know how this book will end for all involved, and it's sad to see proud warrior Chief Joseph reduced to an Americanized propaganda tool in his final years.
And also bizarre that, while Howard ruined and/or ended the lives of thousands of Native Americans, the whole ordeal merits one short paragraph in his extensive memoirs.
This is near the top of my favorites list, I was just transported to another era, albeit an emotionally charged, and unbelievably sad one, Although this book was titled to be about Chief Joseph I've been a huge fan since childhood, Oliver Otis Howard and his selfabsorbed idealism.
. . and hypocritical pursuits, and the Nez Perce War I surprisingly got lost in the sections aboutother characters in the story.


I tried to post pictures for the following, but I am technologically illiterate sorry,

The first to capture my rapt attention was Ollokot, Chief Joseph's younger brother.
Chapter, titled Split Rocks, brought him into such perfect perspective that I could hear his pleas and see his mannerisms as he passionately defended the land rights of indians.
He questioned why the government couldn't treat all Americans with the same rules and equality, frustrated and moving from one audience to the next.
This obviously fell on morethandeafears, and his angst bled through the pages, I was very moved and read the chapter several times, Joseph made many moving speeches, but Ollokot's passionate delivery seemed to move me far more,

"I talk with heart, I want to show you my heart, "Ollokot

Second was Joseph's Nephew, Yellow Wolf, whose retelling of the war from his own perspective in a book by Lucullus Virgil McWhorter seemed to be a large source of information for this book, since many of the battles were from his perspective.
I just wanted to hug the young man for having to endure all that upheaval,

Third was Charles Erskine Scott Wood, a young military aide to Howard, who later became an attorney, artist, writer, and social activist.
I could relate to him for many reasons, I think he grabbed my heart and attention during a reflection about life on the trail:

"Wood wrote that he reveled in the privations of the trail, his long beard and matted hair, his riding pants 'out at the knees and fringed at the bottoms.
. . the wreck of a white slouch wilted on my head and a tattered blouse fluttering on my back.
' He was 'naked and careless as becomes banditti of the frontier,' he enthused, 'more artistically and picturesquely ragged than any other officer.
' He felt less like an aide to a brigadier general than a lieutenant to the Italian guerrilla leader and hero of a popular opera'Fra Diavolo.
' He expected, hoped even, that the campaign would last through Christmas, "

This was particularly amusing because early in his western travels, he spent ALL his money on fancy clothes to always look like a perfect gentleman and soldier.
Also amusing because in the passages leading up to this, the rest of the soldiers were miserable and wanting to quit and go home.
Interestingly, Erskine was reveling in the "freedom" of life on the move, just like the indians they the army were pursuing to move to a reservation.


Also, in the's, he later wrote, "I chased and killed Indians driven to revolt by the oppressions of that vague thing called, 'The Government'.
. . I saw that 'Nationalism', and 'Patriotism' were used to narrow the human sympathy, inflame the hate and blind the vision of the people.
"

Yep

Lastly, Peopeo Tholekt, a Nez Perce warrior under Chief Looking Glass.
Maybe it was his picture posted in the center of the book, but all his passages were impacted by the sad, desperation evident in his photo.
.