SELLING YOUR FATHER’S BONES

British journalist Schofield debuts with a finely detailed history of the Nez Perce tribe.

He concentrates on the flight of 750 Nez Perce from U.S. troops in 1877. Angered by the government’s cruel treatment, they attempted to seek refuge in Canada, fighting back against pursuing soldiers in a struggle that spanned 1,700 miles across what are now the states of Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming and Montana. It was a brutal trek through mountainous and forbidding terrain. The Americans were ruthless in their pursuit and not above murdering defenseless Nez Perce women and children. Despite unimaginable hardships, the Nez Perce bravely marched on, facing starvation and exhaustion before finally being defeated in a battle just 40 miles from the Canadian border. In these sections, the author deftly brings to life several historical figures. Army commander William Tecumseh Sherman, for example, shows the Nez Perce mercilessness to be as chilling as that he displayed on his March to the Sea during the Civil War. Nez Perce leader Chief Joseph is particularly well drawn, and his famous surrender speech still moves with its powerful simplicity: “My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I shall fight no more forever.” Schofield juxtaposes the historical material with stories of hard modern-day economic conditions in the area. The most effective sections of the book, however, detail the mistreatment of Native Americans, and the Nez Perce in particular, in the 19th century, as white settlers overran their homelands. Tales of broken treaties, thievery and murder abound. In one particularly evocative section, Schofield shows that government land development and damming of rivers destroyed the homes and livelihoods of countless Native American tribes, at the same time greatly harming the environment. Indeed, white settlers’ determination to extract every last natural resource from the West through mining, logging and other destructive activities emerges as the story’s true villain.

A moving look at a shameful period in American history.