Preview of Chief Joseph: War Chief of the Nez Perce Summary:

Most nineteenth-century frontier literature created a negative stereotype of Native Americans, portraying them either as noble savages or as amoral villains. Both extreme characterizations, developed in such works as James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales (1823-1841), Francis Parkman's The Oregon Trail (1849), and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha (1855), perpetuated the myth that Native Americans were not only less than American; they were less than human.

But, like other works of the past few decades such as Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Evan Connell's Son of the Morning Star, and W. P. Kinsella's The Moccasin Telegraph, Chief Joseph: War Chief of the Nez Perce candidly addresses the U.S. government's reprehensible treatment of Native Americans. In their biographical novel, Ashabranner and Davis present Chief Joseph and his Nez Perce as ordinary men, devoted to their families and involved in routine daily activities, who want only to...