Reviews

Yellow Wolf: His Own Story by Lucullus Virgil McWhorter

ben_r's review against another edition

4.0

4.5 stars. US history that isn't taught.

bobbo49's review against another edition

4.0

Thanks to my teaching mentor Van Thompson, I studied the Nez Perce wars of the 1870s at some depth, and traveled the first part of the Nez Perce Trail with 8th grade students every year from Lapwai and White Bird. Somehow I never had read this account of the wars from Yellow Wolf, a nephew of Joseph, who in his early 20s participated as a warrior with his family as they fought and trekked into Montana. With others of his tribal group, Yellow Wolf ultimately left Montana when Joseph surrendered, joining the group that went to Canada to meet up with Sitting Bull; his small band later returned to Idaho and the reservation. McWhorter met Yellow Wolf in the early years of the 20th Century, and became his chronicler, with Yellow Wolf leading him back through the trail wars, and introducing him to other native participants. Although the writing style isn't great, the first-person accounts from the perspective of Native Americans who fought the wars are gripping and intimate, another reminder - if anyone needed one - of the horrible injustices done to the people who had lived and thrived on this western land since before Columbus "discovered" it.