A little bit of wisdom

the long version

A Little Bit of Wisdom is the first individual Nez Perce narrative published in more than half a century and the first ever told exclusively in English. This book tells the personal story of Isluumts (Horace Axtell), a contemporary Nez Perce elder and spiritual leader, who grew up in northern Idaho on a windy prairie speaking The Prairie dialect of his people. His great-grandfather fought and died in the battle at the Bear Paw Mountains, but the story Horace tells inside the pages of this book is about growing up Christian while maintaining a strong tribal identity, about going first to war and then to prison, and then coming home to rediscover the Long House and Sweat Lodge and the sacred practice of the Seven Drum Religion. It is a story he tells in his own plain-spoken style about what it means to speak two languages and to live simultaneously but harmoniously in two very different worlds. In these worlds Christianity and the native Nez Perce religion exist side-by-side in a careful relationship. But it is also a story about family and extended family relationships, about respect, tradition, patience, kindness, healing, and grace (as well as their opposites).