1800s, Native North & South Americans, Schools & Teaching 

It was Spring of 1877 when Sound of Running Feet saw the white people panning gold in the little creek that fed the Wallowa River and brought word of them to her father, Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce.

"They are he first, but more are on the way," he said. "We are few and they are many. They will devour us."

"Not if we stand and fight," the girl protested.

"All the quicker," the old chief retorted gloomily.

So begins Scott O'Dell's powerful account of the tragic defeat of the Nez Perce, a retreat that ended, as the chief predicted, even before the year was over. Desperately trying to evade the American soldiers who'd been sent to force them onto the reservation, the Nez Perce fled toward Canada, standing off attacks with reckless courage along the way, winning every battle but the last one.

Through the eyes of the chief's daughter, a brave and independent young woman, the reader shares every twist in this classic tale of cruelty, heroism and betrayal, which ends with Chief Joseph's sad pledge, "I will fight no more forever."