"I Will Fight No More Forever" - Chief Joseph

"I Will Fight No More Forever" is a very sad tale of an Indian Chief of the Nez Perce tribe and what his people are going through. It is a very depressing story. "The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes and no. He who led on the young men is dead. It is cold and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills and have no blankets, no food; no one knows where they are - perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children and see how many I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs. I am tired; my heart is sick and sad" (Chief). This is never a position that a leader wants to have their people in; cold, starving, fleeing for their lives. It is sad that Chief Joseph recognizes his people are in trouble, but it is because of this realization that relates "I Will Fight No More Forever" to realism. According to Abby Werlock, "Realism is the attempt to depict life as it actually exists, not as the author wants it to be in the present or the future, or imagines it was in the past. A realist carefully chooses details that illustrate this vision" (Werlock). This is what Chief Joseph it doing. He wrote this down as a letter or a memo to General Howard and he wants to create this image of all of the suffering his people is going through for the General. He adds these real details to depict his and his people's lives as they are existing because of these small wars or fights are whatever you would like to call them.

This small letter or memo to General Howard reflects the struggles not just the Nez Perce Indians were having at the time, but all Native Americans were having at this time. In the background of Chief Joseph it says this memo was written sometime around the date of 1877. This was when the American government was removing the Native Americans from their lands to places like Oklahoma (Indian Territory) or Canada as the Nez Perce were forced to. This memo represents the Native American struggles they faced in this time period of American history.

This whole memo was started because of what the government did to the native Americans. The American people did not need to force the NATIVE Americans off of their rightful land. They did not need that much. They could have lived alongside of the native Americans in peace and harmony if they choose too. They could have had enough land for themselves too. But it was American expansionism and greed that began to remove the Native Americans from their land into times of struggle, was, starvation, and death. If it were not for the government forcing the situation upon the Native Americans, times of struggle like this would not have happened.



Chief Joseph. "I Will Fight No More Forever." Glencoe Literature. Comp. Jeffrey Wilhelm. American Literature ed. Columbus; McGraw-Hill, 2010. 533. Print.


Werlock, Abby H. P. "realism." The Facts On File Companion to the American Short Story, Second Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2009. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. Feb 15, 2011.