Selling Your Father’s Bones
The Epic Fate of the American West
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- 10,99 €
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- 10,99 €
Descrição da editora
Part historical narrative, part travelogue through the wilds of the West and part environmental polemic, ‘Selling Your Father's Bones’ is a thrilling journey through the history and wilderness of the stunning area of landscape that is Continental USA.
In the summer of 1877, around seven hundred members of the Nez Perce Native American tribe set out on one of the most remarkable journeys in the history of the American West, a 1,700-mile exodus through the mountains, forests, badlands and prairies of modern-day Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming and Montana. They had been forced from their homes by the great wave of settlement that crashed over the West as the American nation was born.
Led by their charismatic chiefs, the Nez Perce used their unerring knowledge of the landscapes they passed through to survive six battles and many more skirmishes with the pursuing United States Army, as they raced, with women, children and village elders in their care, towards the safety of the Canadian border. But all Chief Joseph, the young pastoral leader of the exodus, wanted was to return home – to his beloved Wallowa valley, which his dying father had ordered him never to abandon: 'Never sell the bones of your father and your mother.’
Now, Brian Schofield retraces the steps of that epic exodus, to tell the full dramatic story of the Nez Perce's fight for survival – and to examine the forces that drove them to take flight. The white settlement of the West had been largely motivated by patriotic fervour and religious zeal, a faith that the American continent had been laid out by God to fuel the creation of a mighty empire. But as he travels through the lands that the Nez Perce knew so well, Schofield reveals that the great project of the Western Empire has gone badly awry, as the mythology of the settlers opened the door to ecological vandalism, unthinking corporations and negligent leadership, which have lest scarred landscapes, battered communities and toxic environments.
About the author
Brian is only 32 years old and in 2003 he won the best British Travel Writer covering North America.He’s spent the last eight years writing for GQ, FHM, ‘Arena’ and the ‘Sunday Times’. He’s currently employed as assistant travel editor, culture and news review writer at the ‘Sunday Times’. This is his first book.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This account of the Nez Perc 's trials is a painful tale well told. British journalist Schofield writes a history of this Columbia River Valley tribe down to its present-day remnant, confined to a modest Idaho reservation. Casting a wide net, he also describes white settlement in the northwest, emphasizing its devastation of wildlife, soil, rivers and forests. The Nez Perc 's troubles began in the 1850s when the U.S. began insisting the tribe make room for white settlers. The author recounts 20 years of coercion and broken treaties until, in 1877 the tribe was ordered out of its homeland entirely. In defiance of the ordered confinement to a Christian reservation, Nez Perc leaders led their people on a heroic flight across Idaho and Montana, inflicting humiliating defeats on pursuing soldiers, but ending in a tragic surrender. America evicted the tribe in favor of that legendary frontier icon, the homesteader, but, ironically, the area is too dry for small farms. Today it consists largely of ranches, timber reserves and irrigated factory farms dependent on government-subsidized water. This is a colorful, action-packed frontier history in which, many will feel, the bad guys won.
