Chosen to lead the Freedmen's Bureau after the Civil War, Union Army General Oliver Otis Howard was entrusted with helping former slaves claim the rights of citizens. He believed that abolition and Reconstruction, the country's great struggles for liberty and equality, were God's plan for the nation. But as politics curdled in the 1870s, General Howard left Washington, D.C., rejoined the army, and was sent to the Northwest. His mission: forcing Native Americans to become Christian farmers on reservations, a plan that ran headlong into the resistance of Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce.