53 pages • 1 hour read
Scott O'DellThunder Rolling in the Mountains
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1992A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 16-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 16 Summary
The chiefs get into an argument about how quickly they move. Lean Elk’s pace wears out all the horses and the elderly people. He is afraid they will die if they move too slowly. Looking Glass takes over again, and they move slower. Everyone is happier. They stop in a cold meadow for the night, and Lean Elk is afraid of an ambush. Looking Glass ignores him. They eat buffalo meat, and Swan Necklace reassures Sound of Running Feet that soon they will marry. She is afraid: “I wondered if the ugly moon was a warning from the Great Spirit. Was it blood I saw on the rising moon?” (90).
Chapter 17 Summary
That morning, soldiers approach led by Cheyenne scouts. They descend upon the tribe. Horses run and bullets fly—it is chaos. Chief Joseph encourages Sound of Running Feet to take a horse and flee to Sitting Bull, but she gives the horse to a pregnant woman and child instead. She is in the battle. She hides in a gully, where Swan Necklace finds her. He is bleeding but alive. They hide until dusk when the fighting stops briefly, and they can bury the dead. Ollokot, Lean Elk, and Too-hul-hul-sote are all dead, among many others. No one sleeps that night. Instead, they dig holes to hide riflemen the next day. Sound of Running Feet is devastated: “As I dug with my camas hook I wondered if we would ever be safe” (96).
Chapter 18 Summary
Battle begins again the next morning. The women work to build tunnels for the warriors to shoot from. Halfway through the day, the soldiers send up a white flag, indicating truce. Chief Joseph meets with the soldiers through an intermediary translator named Tom Hill. He refuses to surrender and so they capture him and take him to their camp. A white solider, Captain Jerome, rides up to the gully where the Nez Perce hide and they capture him. He is given food, water, and blankets, and soon writes back to his fellow soldiers that he has “good food, a warm bed, and good treatment. He hoped that the Blue Coats were treating Chief Joseph the same way” (102). Finally, both sides call a truce, and both prisoners return safely. The white flag is lowered, and shooting begins again.
Chapter 19 Summary
The people fight with a new anger—at the solder’s camp, Chief Joseph was given a thick blanket and left to sleep outside with the animals with no food or water. The fighting is useless. Everyone is starving. Many have died. The white soldiers bring in reinforcements and stabilize their cannon. It hits the sheltered areas where the old and wounded rest. Chief Joseph wants to surrender but Looking Glass will not. Then, Looking Glass is shot dead. Chief Joseph surrenders to the white men. He and the warriors lay down their guns and all others follow. He says, “I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever” (107). But Sound of Running Feet cannot surrender. She cannot bring herself to join her people.
Chapter 20 Summary
Many Nez Perce sneak away with another chief to hide and avoid surrender. Sound of Running Feet smells cooking food and is so hungry but will not eat. That night, while everyone sleeps, she sneaks away from camp to find Sitting Bull. Swan Necklace finds her, and they go together. He says, “Better we die together than trust ourselves to those who speak with two tongues” (109). They travel through the cold eating what they can. Finally, they find an antelope and shoot it. The gun shot alerts some Assiniboin scouts. The Assiniboin insist they are brothers and invite them back to their camp. Sound of Running Feet doesn’t trust them, especially the leader Red Elk, who keeps eyeing their stolen rifles.
Chapters 16-20 Analysis
The theme of betrayal is prevalent in these late chapters—both the betrayal and lies of the white soldiers, and the threat of betrayal from one man to another.
Swan Necklace describes the white men as “those who speak with two tongues” (109). They betray the trust of the Nez Perce when they ask for a truce, raising a white flag and then capturing Chief Joseph when the Nez Perce will not surrender. Their betrayal is indicative of their own racism against the Nez Perce, who they do not see as men—instead, they manipulate them, trick them, and use their own values against them. While the Nez Perce act with honor, the white soldiers act duplicitously and without honor or shame.
Ultimately, the war leads to the surrender of the Nez Perce. Chief Joseph’s words at the end of the war are devastating and symbolic of a larger surrender of all Native peoples. He says, “I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever” (107). This battle is much larger than a single fight or a single war. Chief Joseph speaks for all Native Americans: those on reservations and those hiding in Canada from American forces. He speaks of a larger surrender, of all Native Americans to the brutality of white settlers and their military.
The only person who refuses to surrender is Sound of Running Feet, who again demonstrates her power by leaving to find Sitting Bull. She and Swan Necklace are sure of their principles: “Better we die together than trust ourselves to those who speak with two tongues” (109). They believe in honor above safety: in preservation of their beliefs above all else.
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