From Where the Sun Now Stands Author:Will Henry The story of Custer and the Battle of Little Big Horn has been the subject of countless books, fiction and nonfiction, but this is the first time that the Nez Perce campaign, last of the great Indian wars, has served as background for a novel. Told in the words of Heyets, a young Indian fighter, it recounts with rare understanding and perception... more » the saga of 113 days in the summer and autumn of 1877 when Chief Joseph reluctantly led his people in a rear-guard action from the Nez Perce reservation in Oregon to Montana, across more than one thousand miles of trackless mountain country.
The Nez Perce were a peaceful tribe, famed as the horse breeders who developed the Appaloosa. Young Heyets unfolds in poignant detail their traditions, their dependence on the buffalo, their religious and ancestral bonds to each other. Against this pastoral cycle are played out the crosscurrents - disastrous actions of the hotheads - which started the war and its ill-starred sequence of events.
The speeches of Joseph and the Army officers whom he met in council, preserved in memoirs and War Department records, form a notable part of this book and give an authentic picture of Joseph's far-seeing statesmanship.
The fictional love story of Heyets, amid the dark horror of the campaign, further enriches our view of the Indian way of life and lends a touch of humor and romance.« less