Vine Deloria, Jr. in his book “God is Red” argues that Native American tribal religions are spatial by nature compared with Western Christianity which he describes as temporal. His position is that Native American practices are about understanding the meaning of place and that Christianity is about the story of Man and God through time leading ultimately to a fullness of time. This claimed difference is profound and led to many of the conflicts between the indigenous peoples of North America and Western European migrants. The misunderstandings play out sharply in Daniel J. Sharfstein’s masterful storytelling in “Thunder in the Mountains: Chief Joseph, Oliver Otis Howard, and the New Perce War.” General Howard, a devout Christian and former Union officer in the Civil War, headed the Freedman’s Bureau during Reconstruction (he established what is now Howard University in Washington, D.C. – it is named after him), and was later assigned to the remote Pacific Northwest where issues with Native Americans were still playing out. Chief Joseph and his band of Nez Perce who had signed no treaties and refused to be put on a reservation were already becoming known.

As with many who met Joseph, Howard was initially an ally and was one of the multitudes who tried — ultimately in vain — to argue with the government in Washington, D.C. about the justice of Joseph’s claim to the Wallowa Valley. Ultimately, however, the United States decided that Joseph’s band would have to give up the Valley and move to a reservation. Howard was intent on enforcing this decision; it was his duty and was also a Christian mission. To his mind, by moving to a reservation Joseph’s band would have the opportunity to become settled Christian farmers. They could be separated from their old, “savage” ways. Joseph, it needs to be said was not a war chief and spoke calmly and patiently with all who met him. You can look up the vast number of quotes attributed to him (https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/chief-joseph-quotes) and he became quite the celebrity during and after the war; the U.S. Postal Service recently made a stamp of him. Nevertheless, on the way to the reservation a war broke out with white settlers, ultimately requiring the intervention of Howard and the U.S. Army. After heroic fighting, the band was finally caught just South of the Canadian border where they were trying to make their escape, and were imprisoned.

Chief Joseph never gave up trying to recover the Wallowa Valley for his people. Many could not understand why the Nez Perce should not just accept the reservation and U.S. help in exchange for the land – until they heard Joseph speak. No amount of money can compensate for the loss of familial and spiritual connection to a place. In the clearest example, the U.S. stole the Black Hills from the Sioux. In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with the Sioux but instead of giving the Hills back the Court awarded them compensation. The Sioux to this day have refused to accept the money because what matters is the land. The amount of money held in trust for the Sioux now amounts to more than $1 billion. “The Black Hills are not for sale.” It is a religious matter. This points to another sharp cultural difference — our legal system operates on financial compensation and the notion that the “highest and best use” of property is that which makes the most money. Nonsense. Deloria: “[E]conomics cannot and should not be the sole determinant of land use.” The Western system operates in a perverse way about land. No human being can “own” land; and this universal truth is even present in the U.S. system despite the words we use. Land in the U.S. operates based on feudal English law where a person can have a right to hold land under the permission of and by paying rents (taxes) to the sovereign. It is only the entity of the sovereign in our patchwork of Nation-States that claims to be the ultimate “owner.”

In “Thunder,” there is an amazing sub-plot about one of Howard’s junior officers — Charles Erskine Scott Wood. Wood came from a connected family, graduated from West Point, and married a Baltimore socialite. He was also with Howard when Chief Joseph surrendered. He spoke with Joseph, wrote about him, and became his friend. Wood eventually went to law school and became a successful attorney. But he never forgot what he learned from the Nez Perce; so much so that he sent his eldest son to live with Chief Joseph for a while. Later, Wood became disenchanted with the ways of privileged society and the way the law operated in the U.S. He rejected his past, advocated for Native Americans, and became a “philosophical anarchist” in the face of the modernity of the 1920s. Arguably, rightly so, after being a first-hand participant in the clash between Western European culture and Native American beliefs and practices. It is not uncommon for researchers today to see the definite advantages of the Native cultures as they existed over modernity.

Deloria saw Christianity and the institutions that came with it as a calamity. As much as Chief Joseph tried, he could not bridge the cultural gap and was forced to bend only by superior firepower. Yet, he never gave up hope.

Does might make right?