The Warrior S Looking Glass

Although the Nez Perce (Nee-Me-Poo) Indians gave instrumental help to Lewis and Clark on their famous expedition, they were rewarded by decades of invasive treaties and encroachment upon their homeland. In June 1877, the Nez Perce struck back andøwere soon swept into one of the most devastating Indian wars in American history. The conflict culminated in an epic twelve-hundred-mile chase as the U.S. Army pursued some eight hundred Nez Perce men, women, and children, who tried to fight their way to freedom in Canada. In this enthralling account of the Nez Perce War, Bruce Hampton brings to life unforgettable characters from both sides of the conflict?warriors and women, common soldiers and celebrated generals. Looking Glass, White Bird, the legendary Chief Joseph, and fewer than three hundred warriors waged a bloody guerilla war against a modernized American army commanded by such famous generals as William Tecumseh Sherman, Nelson Miles, Oliver Otis Howard, and Philip Sheridan. Hampton also gives voice to the Native Americans from other tribes who helped the U.S. Army block the escape of the Nez Perce to Canada.

Second in five-volume series recreates the military struggle for the American West in the words of the soldiers, noncombatants, and Native Americans.

The US Armys fighting experience from the Civil Wars end in 1865 until the Western Frontiers end in 1890 has come to be known as the Indian Wars period. Previous conflicts had been limited to skirmishes with native tribes as their people were pushed westward into yet unwanted territory. Following the 1849 gold rush, travel routes and settlement pockets had increased across the trans-Mississippi regions as ever-greater numbers of Euro-Americans quested for land (and gold), enlarging the conflict between incompatible ways of life. As settlers and adventurers besieged tribesmen, some chose guerrilla warfare, characterized by skirmishes, raids, massacres, battles, and campaigns of varying intensities that ranged over plains, mountains, and deserts of the vast American West. Because the armys responsibilities involved great distances, limited resources, and extended operations (often impeded by governmental policies), its punitive actions suffered. From revolutionary times, the new United States held anti-standing-army sentiments believing that the Indian problem can be settled by nonmilitary means. Hence, the postCivil War army dropped in half by the critical centennial year when the nation was shocked by the Little Big Horn catastrophe. In the previous ten years, a series of forts had been built and a command structure was organized for frontier defense around two western commands: the Division of the Missouri (containing Departments of Arkansas, Missouri, and the Platte) and the Division of the Pacific (containing Departments of California, Columbia, and the Gulf). Since the theater of war was largely uninhabited, its variations in climate and geographical features and its extreme distances were accentuated by army manpower limitations, logistical problems, and movement difficulties. In the postwar decades, few officers and soldiers had frontier and Indian-fighting experience against an unorthodox enemy. Those who had previous contacts approached their opponents with respect and were often helpful in promoting solutions to the Indian problem. Most memorable among the armys nineteenth century leaders are the names of Sherman, Sheridan, Miles, Howard, Gibbon, Sully, Cooke, Canby, and Crook. Given the central role their soldiers made in dealing with the Indians, the US Army and a few of its notable leaders made major contributions to the consolidation of the American continent.

Nez Perce Summer, 1877 tells the story of a people’s epic struggle to survive spiritually, culturally, and physically in the face of unrelenting military force. Written by one of the foremost experts in frontier military history, Jerome A. Greene, and reviewed by members of the Nez Perce tribe, this definitive treatment of the Nez Perce War is the first to incorporate research from all known accounts of Nez Perce and U.S. military participants. Enhanced by sixteen detailed maps and forty-nine historic photographs, Greene’s gripping narrative takes readers on a three-and-one-half month 1,700-mile journey across the wilds of Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana territories. All of the skirmishes and battles of the war receive detailed treatment, which benefits from Greene’s astute analysis of the strategies and decision making on both sides. Between 100 and 150 of the more than 800 Nez Perce men, women, and children who began the trek were killed during the war. Almost as many died in the months following the surrender, after they were exiled to malaria-ridden northeastern Oklahoma. Army deaths numbered 113. The casualties on both sides were an extraordinary price for a war that nobody wanted but whose history has since fascinated generations of Americans.

This is the first scholarly book to look at the role of the 'warrior' in modern war, arguing that warriors' actions, and indeed thoughts, are increasingly patrolled and that the modern battlefield is an unforgiving environment in which to discharge their vocation. As war becomes ever more instrumentalized, so its existential dimension is fast being hollowed out. Technology is threatening the agency of the warrior and this volume paints a picture of early twenty-first century warfare, helping to explain why so many aspiring warriors are becoming disenchanted with their profession. Written by a leading thinker on warfare, this book sets out to explain what makes an American Marine a ‘warrior’ and why suicide bombers, or Al Qaeda fighters, do not qualify for this title. This distinction is one of the central features of the current War on Terror – and one that justifies much more extensive discussion than it has so far received. The Warrior Ethos will be of great interest to all students of military history, strategy, military sociology and war studies.