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Confronting the Death and Misery of War
Have the accounts and imagery of this misery helped to prevent wars?
“ I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed… 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 of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.”
From the 1877 surrender speech by Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce Tribe, known by his people as Thunder Traveling to the Loftier Mountain Heights.
How can one not be deeply moved? We’ve all felt exhaustion, despair and sorrow. But nothing can compare to the misery that this statement renders so palpable and heart wrenching.
War, no matter who starts it, no matter who’s in the right, always ends this way for many. The same image comes to mind no matter what the war, and when or where it took place. It’s an image of people starving and freezing to death, family members looking for one another, exhausted people walking listlessly in a landscape of destruction.
