This final bit of the final episode of Ken Burns: The West (on Netflix) absolutely destroyed me recently:
‘There was a lieutenant named Erskine Wood, who was the diarist of the Nez Percé retreat, and he came to admire Joseph greatly. And at the end of that campaign, when Joseph was imprisoned, the two men became very fast friends. And Erskine Wood sent his son to live with Joseph for two summers. And I met Erskine Wood, Jr., who was an old man when I met him, and he told me this story which I have a hard time recounting.
The second summer he was with Joseph, his father wrote to him, through the Indian agent, and he said, 'You won't be going back to live with Joseph anymore. The time has come for you to go off to school. You must change your life. Tell Joseph that you won't be coming back, and tell him that I would like to give him a present, a token of my appreciation and esteem. Ask him what he would like.'
And the boy kept the letter until it was time for him to leave, and Joseph and the boy were riding off to the bluffs of the Columbia, where the boy was going to return to Portland. And on the way, he said, 'I've received a letter from my father, and he wants me to tell you that I won't be coming back. And he wants to make you a gift. What would you like?'
And at this point, in Erskine Wood Jr.'s eyes there appeared tears. And he said that after a long mile, a silent mile, Joseph said, 'Tell your father to give me a horse.' And the boy was so disappointed that he should ask for so paltry a thing. And he never told his father. And the two men died. And Erskine Wood, Jr., said, 'I didn't know what the gift of a horse was.'"
N. Scott Momaday
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_Joseph