Lorraine Jean Hopping • Hopping Fun Creations

Chief Joseph: The Voice for Peace (Sterling, Spring 2010, ages 10-14) introduces young readers to a man with a big, heavy heart. Like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi, this great leader of a Nez Perce band understood to the core that violence begets violence. Yet despite illegal actions and horrific acts against his people, he refused to give in to rage and revenge.

When the U.S. government tried to seize his people's land in the Wallowa Valley of Oregon, he stood firm and negotiated rather than rebel. When ranchers moved onto his land anyway and murdered his friend, he pleaded with them to surrender or leave and kept his warriors from killing them. When, finally, the U.S. Army threatened to remove his people by force to a small reservation in Idaho, he did everything he could to avoid an all-out war that the outnumbered, outgunned, Nez Perce would surely lose.

In the eyes of American citizens, Chief Joseph became both famous and feared as the ruthless leader of a 1,500-mile rampage along a bloody trail of theft and murder. The truth is, he was an extraordinary man of peace. The so-called rampage was a long, desperate retreat from five pursuing armies, triggered by the rash killing spree of a handful of warriors. Chief Joseph, the other Nez Perce chiefs, and their 700 or so family members were running for their lives to the safety of Canada.

To his dying day, Chief Joseph remained true to his conviction that "If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian, he can live in peace. There need be no trouble."